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[Fac-simile of a letter from Lord Tennyson to Dr. Rand.]

OF

TENNYSON

WITH

INTRODUCTION AND NOTES

BY

FREDERICK HENRY SYKES, M.A., PH.D.,

FELLOW OF THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY,

Toronto

THE W. J. GAGE COMPANY (LTD.)

RCS190

HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
044*219

དོན་༧།

Entered according to Act of Parliament of Canada, in the office of the Minister of Agriculture, by THE W. J. GAGE COMPANY (Limited), in the year one thousand eight hundred and ninety-four.

PREFACE.

This edition of Select Poems of Tennyson is intended as an aid to the study of literature in High Schools, and more particularly for students preparing for the Government examinations of Ontario in 1895. The present volume endeavours to make possible for those who use it the thorough study of the poetry it contains, a study, the ideal of which, however much the editor falls short of it, is Ruskin's treatment of the passage from Lycidas in his lecture "Of Kings' Treasuries." It is only when we have striven with great poetry, weighing every sentence, every epithet, that it yields its utmost blessing.

Excluding The Holy Grail, which, as the chief pcem in the present selection, stands first, the poems are arranged chronologically, and, taken in all, furnish the material for a knowledge of the poet from his early rhythm and colour studies to the period of his greatest achievement. The text of these poems corresponds with that of the library edition of the poet's works, published by Macmillan; but the variant readings of the earlier editions have been carefully noted, thus affording comparisons by which a clearer sense of Tennyson's artistic excellence may be obtained. This same principle underlies the citations from Tennyson's sources; as, for example, from the Morte Darthur. Similarly the critical opinions that are quoted are not intended to furnish useless intellectual lumber, something to be learnt and stored away, killing the joy of poetry with the drudgery of prose. They must, if rightly used, be used only as suggestions of deeper

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