Part 49 (1/2)

XCV

_Tiresias and Other Poems_, 1885. By permission of Messrs.

Macmillan. Included at Lord Tennyson's own suggestion. For the n.o.ble feat of arms (25th October 1854) thus n.o.bly commemorated, see Kinglake (v. i. 102-66). 'The three hundred of the Heavy Brigade who made this famous charge were the Scots Greys and the second squadron of Enniskillings, the remainder of the ”Heavy Brigade” subsequently das.h.i.+ng up to their support. The ”three”

were Scarlett's aide-de-camp, Elliot, and the trumpeter, and Shegog the orderly, who had been close behind him.'--_Author's Note._

XCVI, XCVII

_The Return of the Guards, and other Poems_, 1866. By permission of Messrs. Macmillan. As to the first, which deals with an incident of the war with China, and is presumably referred to in 1860, 'Some Seiks and a private of the Buffs (or East Kent Regiment) having remained behind with the grog-carts, fell into the hands of the Chinese. On the next morning they were brought before the authorities and commanded to perform the _Ko tou_. The Seiks obeyed; but Moyse, the English soldier, declaring that he would not prostrate himself before any Chinaman alive, was immediately knocked upon the head and his body thrown upon a dunghill.'--Quoted by the author from _The Times_. The Elgin of line 6 is Henry Bruce, eighth Lord Elgin (1811-1863), then Amba.s.sador to China, and afterwards Governor-General of India. Compare _Theology in Extremis_ (_post_, p. 309). Of the second, which Mr. Saintsbury describes 'as one of the most lofty, insolent, and pa.s.sionate things concerning this matter that our time has produced,' Sir Francis notes that the incident--no doubt a part of the conquest of Sindh--was told him by Sir Charles Napier, and that 'Truckee' (line 12) = 'a stronghold in the Desert, supposed to be una.s.sailable and impregnable.'

XCVIII, XCIX

By permission of Messrs. Smith, Elder, and Co. _Dramatic Lyrics_, 1845; _Cornhill Magazine_, June 1871, and _Pacchiarotto_, 1876, Works, iv. and xiv. I can find nothing about Herve Riel.

C-CIII

The two first are from the 'Song of Myself,' _Leaves of Gra.s.s_ (1855); the others from _Drum Taps_ (1865). See _Leaves of Gra.s.s_ (Philadelphia, 1884), pp. 60, 62-63, 222, and 246.

CIV, CV

By permission of Messrs. Macmillan. Dated severally 1857 and 1859.

CVI

_Edinburgh Courant_, 1852. Compare _The Loss of the 'Birkenhead'_ in _The Return of the Guards, and other Poems_ (Macmillan, 1883), pp. 256-58. Of the troops.h.i.+p _Birkenhead_ I note that she sailed from Queenstown on the 7th January 1852, with close on seven hundred souls on board; that the most of these were soldiers--of the Twelfth Lancers, the Sixtieth Rifles, the Second, Sixth, Forty-third, Forty-fifth, Seventy-third, Seventy-fourth, and Ninety-first Regiments; that she struck on a rock (26th February 1852) off Simon's Bay, South Africa; that the boats would hold no more than a hundred and thirty-eight, and that, the women and children being safe, the men that were left--four hundred and fifty-four, all told--were formed on deck by their officers, and went down with the s.h.i.+p, true to colours and discipline till the end.

CVII-CIX

By permission of Messrs. Macmillan. From _Empedocles on Etna_ (1853). As regards the second number, it may be noted that Sohrab, being in quest of his father Rustum, to whom he is unknown, offers battle as one of the host of the Tartar King Afrasiab, to any champion of the Persian Kai Khosroo. The challenge is accepted by Rustum, who fights as a nameless knight (like Wilfrid of Ivanhoe at the Gentle and Joyous Pa.s.sage of Ashby), and so becomes the unwitting slayer of his son. For the story of the pair the poet refers his readers to Sir John Malcom's _History of Persia_. See _Poems_, by Matthew Arnold (Macmillan), i. 268, 269.

CX, CXI

_Ionica_ (Allen, 1891). By permission of the Author. _School Fencibles_ (1861) was 'printed, not published, in 1877.' _The Ballad for a Boy_, Mr. Cory writes, 'was never printed till this year.'

CXII

By permission of the Author. This ballad, which was suggested, Mr. Meredith tells me, by the story of Bendigeid Vran, the son of Llyr, in the _Mabinogion_ (iii. 121-9), is reprinted from _Modern Love_ (1862), but it originally appeared (_circ._ 1860) in _Once a Week_, a forgotten print the source of not a little unforgotten stuff--as _Evan Harrington_ and the first part of _The Cloister and the Hearth_.

CXIII

From the fourth and last book of _Sigurd the Volsung_, 1877.