out; nor the land-grasping intruder that the Yankees have declared her to be; given, furthermore, that England has indeed a substantial and well-founded right to the territory of British Guiana: and that, therefore, England could rightly refuse, nay, scorn any offer, let alone any menacing cry for Arbitration; considering all these weighty points, England can accept Arbitration consonant with her honour in one way only, that is, by laying it down that the principle of Effective Occupation must be recognised as the lex of the Arbitration. With these two principles England can gain nothing that she does not already possess ; nor can she lose anything. To accept or not to accept Arbitration so conditioned, that is a matter of purely opportunist policy. What I have in this article endeavoured to convey and to bring out in, if I may say so, defiant plasticity, was the fact, which no foreign Commission can alter or minimise the fact that England has all the historic right in her favour. Such rights may be ignored; they may be silenced, or ceded; they cannot be denied. EMIL REICH. TALKS WITH TENNYSON* ORIC beauty," is the phrase by which the late Mr. Huxley once expressed the special character of Tennyson's conversation-with its terse simplicity and freedom from artificial ornament: "and yet," he added, "on hearing the first few words one might only say,- Exactly, this is the man who wrote the Northern Farmer'" In recording some past conversations with the late poetlaureate, I have used notes made at the time, some of which give his ipsissima verba. In all cases the substance of what is here recorded was written down very shortly after it was said. My first recollections of Tennyson date back as far as 1869, or earlier. As a boy, living near him in the Isle of Wight, I was somewhat in awe of the mysterious figure, whom I often saw in company with his friend and neighbour, Mrs. Cameron, or at times with my father, tall and thin, enveloped in a huge cloak, walking rapidly, with a slight stoop, on the Beacon Down or in the Freshwater lanes. He seldom spoke to me in those days, although I was intimate with his second son, Lionel. I think it was the report of a careful study I made of the Holy Grail, in Rome, in the year 1879, which changed this. On my return to England our acquaintance was at once on a new footing. I stayed with him at Aldworth next year: and thenceforward walks and talks with the poet were frequent. There were several things which struck me afresh after I had come to know him better. One was, that even at a time when I was walking with him often, and enjoying the real intimacy which was my privilege, his shyness on first coming into the room, before we started for our morning walk, remained. One had noticed it less when it appeared to be only the slowness of a man of a certain age to talk to a boy. But to the very end it was the same, even with those * This article was written last year, at the suggestion of the present Lord Tennyson, for the Deutsche Revue. Certain difficulties arose as to the conditions of publication, and its appearance was postponed. It is now transferred to the pages of THE NEW REVIEW, the Editor of which has kindly consented to the publication of a translation in the Deutsche Revue. whom he was most frequently seeing. How familiar the picture yet remains. One waited perhaps in the ante-room at Farringford for a few minutes before he appeared. And when he did so there was the far-off look in his eyes, something between the look of a near-sighted man and a very far-sighted man;-due, no doubt, partly to defective vision, but conveying also a sense that his imagination was still occupied with itself, and that his mind was not yet "focussed" on the world immediately about him. I have known him stand for several minutes, after a half absent " How d'ye do?" in this dreamy state, with his curious look of high-strung sensitiveness, before he began to talk. And if one waited silently for him to speak, one might have to wait in vain. To tell him an amusing story was the best means of breaking the spell. The gleam of humour came to his face at once, he broke into laughter, left the regions of mental abstraction, and probably at once capped the story himself. If a stranger had come to see him, the shyness and abstraction might last longer. I remember once going to Farringford with a friend-a true worshipper of his genius-and after the first words of greeting he seemed to be entirely in the clouds; until, after long waiting, we hit upon a device to arouse him. A picture by Edward Lear hung in the room, and under it were four lines from the Palace of Art: One seem'd all dark and red-a tract of sand And some one pacing there alone, Who paced for ever in a glimmering land, Lit with a low large moon. We were looking at the picture, and I said to my companion: “Read the lines." She read them, giving them a kind of metrical jingle. In a moment Tennyson, who had been standing alone at the other side of the room, stepped rapidly across, seized her arm, and said :—“ Don't read them like that," and went on with his deep, sonorous voice to read or rather chaunt them himself with the roll which was so well known to his friends. When once the spell had been thus broken the absolute freedom and naturalness of his conversation came on those who had not seen him before as a surprise. And no doubt the impression left on some, of his being difficult and holding himself aloof, came partly from meeting him on occasions when the first shyness failed to pass away. The earliest walks I remember with Tennyson were large parties. Six or eight would often go with him; and he himself talked with one at a time, changing his companion occasionally. But from about 1882 onwards I frequently went out with him tete-a-tête. And it was then that he waxed most earnest on problems connected with Metaphysics and Religious Philosophy. Before we started there would be a good deal to distract his attention. First there was the unloosening of the dogs who were to go with us. Don and Duke in earlier days, and later the beautiful stag-hound Lufra or the graceful Karenina, are an inseparable part of the picture of those walks that lives in the memory. And conversation was from time to time suspended while he dealt condign chastisement for their occasional misdemeanours-the chasing of a sheep, or the fighting with another dog. As we crossed the "careless-ordered garden" he would call attention to some little alteration or addition, in which he was sure to be keenly interested. "Did you ever see a cypress growing against a wall before?" he asks, as he points to a dark tree nailed against a wall. "We have crucified that tree to make it grow thus." We stop again at the tennis-lawn:-"The rabbits look on the chalk line as marking out charmed and forbidden ground." And he traces with his stick the minute disturbances of the turf which his watchful eye has noted near the outer line of the court, nowhere passing within it. A hundred yards outside the Park gates we pause at the shop of Rogers, the Naturalist, who has been stuffing a heron or a monkey which one of the Freshwater sailors may have given him, and the poet will study it with keen interest. Then the walk is resumed, but before we have gone far along the road to Freshwater Bay some tree or plant will again stop him. Then he suddenly breaks off with:-"But what is the good of speaking to you about this? You are as bad as your father, who noticed nothing, and did not even know his own fields from mine. You once took a lily of the valley for a snowdrop." : And then the conversation passes to literature, or personal reminiscence, or poetry, or metaphysics. But soon the sound of the cuckoo, perhaps, brings it back :—“ Do you hear that note? It differs from what we heard a week ago. If you want to remember when to listen for the cuckoo learn the lines I learnt in Lincolnshire as a boy." And he repeats the old verse : In April he opens his bill, In May he sings all day, In June he changes his tune, |