Page:Tennysoniana (1879).djvu/122

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112
TENNYSONIANA.
Of our fierce world did meet as friends
And brethren, in her halls of glass."

Shortly after the French coup d'état of December, 1851, Mr. Tennyson's voice, under the Arthurian pseudonym of "Merlin," was heard to give no uncertain sound in three stirring patriotic lyrics, printed in the pages of "The Examiner," viz.:

"Britons, guard your own." " Examiner," Jan. 31, 1852.

"The Third of February, 1852," "Examiner,"
Feb. 7, 1852.
"Hands all Round,"

His views respecting the character and conduct of the late "Emperor of the French," were, like those which Mr. Carlyle, Mr. Emerson, and Mr. Swinburne have always entertained and expressed, decidedly adverse and even abhorrent. The ring of these "Examiner" poems greatly resembled that of the war lyrics and war passages in the "Maud" volume published three years later. But it is presumable that in view of the alliance between England and France in the Crimean War, Mr. Tennyson, in his capacity of Poet Laureate, considered it at that time inexpedient to claim the authorship of them. The recent course of