TENNYSON AND BOTANY. 193 



less species of animals and plants ; and it is not easy to conceive how, 

 under similar conditions, another planet should be simply a vast and 

 useless desert. — La Nature. 



-+•+- 



TENNYSON AND BOTANY. 



By J. HUTCHISON. 



WORDSWORTH, in the supplementary preface contained in the 

 second volume of his works, asserts in the most emphatic way 

 the deplorable ignorance of "the most obvious and important phe- 

 nomena " of Nature which characterizes the poetical literature of the 

 period intervening between the publication of the " Paradise Lost " 

 and the M Seasons." It is to be feared that his opinion is, to a large 

 extent, justified by the facts of the case. A very cursory examination 

 of the productions of the poets who flourished during the seventy years 

 referred to will suffice to show how little they were affected by the mani- 

 fold beauty and grandeur of the visible universe everywhere around 

 them. In this respect they contrast unfavorably, not only with their suc- 

 cessors of the present century, which might have been expected, but 

 with those of the two preceding centuries as well. The latter, whose 

 works embrace a period dating back a hundred years from Milton, 

 display, generally, a much more accurate acquaintance with the ap- 

 pearances and phenomena of the natural world, and spontaneousness 

 in the expression of it, than the school of Dryden and Pope, who may 

 be regarded as the most conspicuous examples of Wordsworth's strict- 

 ures. Of Pope, particularly, it might almost be said that, from his 

 writings, it could scarcely be inferred that there was much else in ex- 

 istence than courts, and fashion, and scandal — not much, at all events, 

 that was worth caring for. He excelled in the representation of the 

 modish life of the day — its fine ladies with their patches, its fine gen- 

 tlemen with their periwigs, and its general artificiality. Of Nature in 

 its endless continuity, and variety, and mysteriousness, which has 

 stirred the hearts of men in every age, and kindled many smaller poets 

 into enthusiasm, he knew and cared little, and the trim alleys and 

 botanical distortions of Versailles, which he has characteristically de- 

 scribed, may be taken as typical of his own inspiration on the matter. 

 It may be worth while mentioning, as a pertinent illustration of these 

 comments, that in his poem of " Windsor Forest," with the exception 

 of a semi-patriotic allusion to the oak, in connection with ship-building, 

 there is not a reference to a single forest-tree, not even to any of those 

 famous historical oaks which abound in the locality. Nature and 

 simplicity, in truth, had gone out of fashion, and were not much in 

 vogue again till far on in the century. 



Darwin, a mere poetaster compared with the genius of Twicken- 

 ham, is a well-known instance of the opposite defect — of the absence 



VOL. IV. — 13 



