The Princess Author:Alfred Lord Tennyson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE PRINCESS A MEDLEY. Prologue. Sib Walter Vivian all a summer's day Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun 1. The scene is here laid in the groun... more »ds of an English country- seat, said to be that of Sir John Simeon, at Swainston, which the owner had opened for the day to his tenantry and to the Mechanics' Institute of the neighboring borough, or town, for a field-meeting. The poet represents himself as visiting at the house with a party of college friends, who gather in the Abbey-ruin, and there tell the story of The Princess, each taking up a part in succession, in round-robin fashion. The Prologue is an introduction, of which the purpose is to open the subject, to provide the occasion and the scenery of the tale, and to give the atmosphere which shall envelop it, or the tone. The description of the landscape (54-80), with its medley of mimic experiments in popular science, its reflection of new conditions of common education, and its general air of novelty and contemporary change, gives the background of the smaller party in the Abbey-ruin, but also fitly prepares the mind for the subjects of thought with which the poem deals. The description of the house and the Abbey- ruin, on the other hand, is more narrowly intended to lead up to the contrasts, the jumble of elements, and general miscellaneousness of the narrative itself. The actual scene has been assigned also to another locality. " I have every reason to believe that the mansion referred to in Tennyson's Princess belongs to the Lushington family, and is near Maidstone. I was present at a f§te of the Maidstone Mechanics' Institute, and took part in several of the experiments referred to, and the description exactly agrees with what occurred " (quoted from an anonymous source in Walters's In Tennyson Land, 1890,...« less