This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
PATRIOTIC POEMS.
113

events in France has gone far, doubtless, to remove this scruple, and also to justify the strong utterances Mr. Tennyson delivered himself of in 1852. At any rate, in the third volume of the Library Edition of his Collected Works (published in the spring of 1872) Mr. Tennyson saw fit to reprint at last the second of the three pieces we have enumerated—"The Third of February, 1852," which refers to the famous debate held in the House of Lords on that evening, when the Peers advocated what the poet considered a pusillanimous and time-serving policy in regard to the then ruler of France. This acknowledgment and inclusion into the body of his works of the second of these three remarkable poems, places the authorship of the other two beyond all doubt, could any doubt have existed before on the subject.

"Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington. By Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. London: Edward Moxon, 1852."

This noble poem, the first draught of which was written probably in some haste, and was originally published on the day of the Duke's funeral, has since been subjected to more than the usual amount of alteration.