Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/24

Buonaparte was a 'madman' whose one thought in life was 'to quell the stubborn hearts of oak,' but 'we taught him lowlier moods—we—,' until 'late he learned humility perforce, like those whom Gideon school'd with briars'; and this is his criticism on history. Finally, my friends, these are troublesome days, these days of reform or Chartist agitation, but why should we doubt of the final issue? This is the land where, 'girt with friends or foes, a man may speak the thing he will' (so Byron and Shelley found it), and, thanks be to God, it is the land where nobody is influenced by thoughts or ideas; but our dear old friend, sober-suited Freedom, 'slowly broadens down from precedent o precedent,' till her base is more than pyramidal. The truth to put it shortly, is that if you are only fairly comfortably off, 'the world comes gently to those that are cast in gentle mould,' like our poet; and what can help us better towards this pleasant preliminary than writing poems which 'everybody' has to admire as quite too pretty and pathetic? 'The May Queen' stands for the first of those resolute bids for popularity which Lord Tennyson has always been careful to reiterate. There are thirty-nine verses in this well-known poem. In twenty-eight of them one of the most perfect little female prigs in all literature takes an even more unconscionable time in dying than Charles ii. The