PRINCESS, The, by Alfred Tennyson, pub lished in 1847, reprinted in 1848 and in 1850, was acclaimed as "the herald-melody of the higher education of women," a theme which Tennyson held to be one of the two great prob lems of the England of his day. The poem is the expression of his belief in a larger train ing and a fuller life for woman, based on her "distitfctive womanhood," her power of love. The story of the winning of the Princess Ida by the Prince who invades her college but re spects her cause is frankly a "medley," in which armored knights fight tourneys while gowned ladies lecture on the nebular hypothesis. Pro logue and conclusion, set amid a Gothic ruin and a Victorian Chautauqua, strike the smock heroic" key-note. But Tennyson lacked the true comic spirit that could fuse his theme, satire and sentiment into entire unity of mood and style. Yet the interest and charm of the parts almost conpensate fdr the lack of inte gral beauty. The characters, sketches though they are, embody all shades of opinion on women's education, from Lady Blanche, a true militant, to the old king, a father of "antis."
The Princess herself, the one full portrait, whom Tennyson held one of his noblest women, seems a trifle too heroic in her passion for freedom and too abject in her yielding to love. It is not she but the Prince who speaks the poet's famous verdict on the woman question.
No poetry is more Tennysonian than the blank-verse of