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CHAPTER IV.

IN MEMORIAM AND SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS.

It is a remarkable fact that throughout the poems of Tennyson, Shakespeare is mentioned no fewer than six times.[1] First, he is placed among the "choice paintings of wise men" in "The Palace of Art," as—

"Shakespeare bland and mild."

Second, his epitaph is quoted as a motto to those stanzas, full of burning indignation, on the poet's fate, in which occur the lines—

  1. Not counting the quotation from "Measure for Measure," prefixed to the poem of "Mariana," in the volume of 1830. Arthur Hallam speaks of this poem as "last, but, oh, not least—we swear by the memory of Shakespeare, to whom a monument of observant love has here been raised by simply expanding all the latent meanings and beauties contained in one stray thought of his genius."—Englishman's Magazine, ubi suprà.