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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/3654-0.txt b/3654-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0eef9f3 --- /dev/null +++ b/3654-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6475 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Alfred Tennyson, by Andrew Lang + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: Alfred Tennyson + + +Author: Andrew Lang + + + +Release Date: September 24, 2014 [eBook #3654] +[This file was first posted on 3 July 2001] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALFRED TENNYSON*** + + +Transcribed from the 1901 William Blackwood and Sons edition by David +Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org + + [Picture: Book cover] + + + + + + ALFRED TENNYSON + + + * * * * * + + BY + ANDREW LANG + + * * * * * + + WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS + EDINBURGH AND LONDON + MCMI + + * * * * * + + + + +INTRODUCTION. + + +IN writing this brief sketch of the Life of Tennyson, and this attempt to +appreciate his work, I have rested almost entirely on the Biography by +Lord Tennyson (with his kind permission) and on the text of the Poems. +As to the Life, doubtless current anecdotes, not given in the Biography, +are known to me, and to most people. But as they must also be familiar +to the author of the Biography, I have not thought it desirable to +include what he rejected. The works of the “localisers” I have not read: +Tennyson disliked these researches, as a rule, and they appear to be +unessential, and often hazardous. The professed commentators I have not +consulted. It appeared better to give one’s own impressions of the +Poems, unaffected by the impressions of others, except in one or two +cases where matters of fact rather than of taste seemed to be in +question. Thus on two or three points I have ventured to differ from a +distinguished living critic, and have given the reasons for my dissent. +Professor Bradley’s _Commentary on In Memoriam_ {1} came out after this +sketch was in print. Many of the comments cited by Mr Bradley from his +predecessors appear to justify my neglect of these curious inquirers. +The “difficulties” which they raise are not likely, as a rule, to present +themselves to persons who read poetry “for human pleasure.” + +I have not often dwelt on parallels to be found in the works of earlier +poets. In many cases Tennyson deliberately reproduced passages from +Greek, Latin, and old Italian writers, just as Virgil did in the case of +Homer, Theocritus, Apollonius Rhodius, and others. There are, doubtless, +instances in which a phrase is unconsciously reproduced by automatic +memory, from an English poet. But I am less inclined than Mr Bradley to +think that unconscious reminiscence is more common in Tennyson than in +the poets generally. I have not closely examined Keats and Shelley, for +example, to see how far they were influenced by unconscious memory. But +Scott, confessedly, was apt to reproduce the phrases of others, and once +unwittingly borrowed from a poem by the valet of one of his friends! I +believe that many of the alleged borrowings in Tennyson are either no +true parallels at all or are the unavoidable coincidences of expression +which must inevitably occur. The poet himself stated, in a lively +phrase, his opinion of the hunters after parallels, and I confess that I +am much of his mind. They often remind me of Mr Punch’s parody on an +unfriendly review of Alexander Smith— + + “Most _women_ have _no character_ at all.”—POPE. + + “No _character_ that servant _woman_ asked.”—SMITH. + +I have to thank Mr Edmund Gosse and Mr Vernon Rendall for their kindness +in reading my proof-sheets. They have saved me from some errors, but I +may have occasionally retained matter which, for one reason or another, +did not recommend itself to them. In no case are they responsible for +the opinions expressed, or for the critical estimates. They are those of +a Tennysonian, and, no doubt, would be other than they are if the writer +were younger than he is. It does not follow that they would necessarily +be more correct, though probably they would be more in vogue. The point +of view must shift with each generation of readers, as ideas or beliefs +go in or out of fashion, are accepted, rejected, or rehabilitated. To +one age Tennyson may seem weakly superstitious; to another needlessly +sceptical. After all, what he must live by is, not his opinions, but his +poetry. The poetry of Milton survives his ideas; whatever may be the +fate of the ideas of Tennyson his poetry must endure. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + PAGE + I. BOYHOOD—CAMBRIDGE—EARLY POEMS. 1 + II. POEMS OF 1831–1833. 22 + III. 1837–1842. 35 + IV. 1842–848—THE PRINCESS. 46 + V. IN MEMORIAM. 61 + VI. AFTER IN MEMORIAM. 81 + VII. THE IDYLLS OF THE KING. 103 + VIII ENOCH ARDEN. THE DRAMAS. 158 + IX. LAST YEARS. 194 + X. 1890. 203 + XI. LAST CHAPTER. 212 + + + + +I +BOYHOOD—CAMBRIDGE—EARLY POEMS. + + +THE life and work of Tennyson present something like the normal type of +what, in circumstances as fortunate as mortals may expect, the life and +work of a modern poet ought to be. A modern poet, one says, because even +poetry is now affected by the division of labour. We do not look to the +poet for a large share in the practical activities of existence: we do +not expect him, like Æschylus and Sophocles, Theognis and Alcæus, to take +a conspicuous part in politics and war; or even, as in the Age of Anne, +to shine among wits and in society. Life has become, perhaps, too +specialised for such multifarious activities. Indeed, even in ancient +days, as a Celtic proverb and as the picture of life in the Homeric epics +prove, the poet was already a man apart—not foremost among statesmen and +rather backward among warriors. If we agree with a not unpopular +opinion, the poet ought to be a kind of “Titanic” force, wrecking himself +on his own passions and on the nature of things, as did Byron, Burns, +Marlowe, and Musset. But Tennyson’s career followed lines really more +normal, the lines of the life of Wordsworth, wisdom and self-control +directing the course of a long, sane, sound, and fortunate existence. +The great physical strength which is commonly the basis of great mental +vigour was not ruined in Tennyson by poverty and passion, as in the case +of Burns, nor in forced literary labour, as in those of Scott and +Dickens. For long he was poor, like Wordsworth and Southey, but never +destitute. He made his early effort: he had his time of great sorrow, +and trial, and apparent failure. With practical wisdom he conquered +circumstances; he became eminent; he outlived reaction against his +genius; he died in the fulness of a happy age and of renown. This +full-orbed life, with not a few years of sorrow and stress, is what +Nature seems to intend for the career of a divine minstrel. If Tennyson +missed the “one crowded hour of glorious life,” he had not to be content +in “an age without a name.” + +It was not Tennyson’s lot to illustrate any modern theory of the origin +of genius. Born in 1809 of a Lincolnshire family, long connected with +the soil but inconspicuous in history, Tennyson had nothing Celtic in his +blood, as far as pedigrees prove. This is unfortunate for one school of +theorists. His mother (genius is presumed to be derived from mothers) +had a genius merely for moral excellence and for religion. She is +described in the poem of _Isabel_, and was “a remarkable and saintly +woman.” In the male line, the family was not (as the families of genius +ought to be) brief of life and unhealthy. “The Tennysons never die,” +said the sister who was betrothed to Arthur Hallam. The father, a +clergyman, was, says his grandson, “a man of great ability,” and his +“excellent library” was an element in the education of his family. “My +father was a poet,” Tennyson said, “and could write regular verse very +skilfully.” In physical type the sons were tall, strong, and unusually +dark: Tennyson, when abroad, was not taken for an Englishman; at home, +strangers thought him “foreign.” Most of the children had the +temperament, and several of the sons had some of the accomplishments, of +genius: whence derived by way of heredity is a question beyond +conjecture, for the father’s accomplishment was not unusual. As Walton +says of the poet and the angler, they “were born to be so”: we know no +more. + +The region in which the paternal hamlet of Somersby lies, “a land of +quiet villages, large fields, grey hillsides, and noble tall-towered +churches, on the lower slope of a Lincolnshire wold,” does not appear to +have been rich in romantic legend and tradition. The folk-lore of +Lincolnshire, of which examples have been published, does seem to have a +peculiar poetry of its own, but it was rather the humorous than the +poetical aspect of the country-people that Tennyson appears to have +known. In brief, we have nothing to inform us as to how genius came into +that generation of Tennysons which was born between 1807 and 1819. A +source and a cause there must have been, but these things are hidden, +except from popular science. + +Precocity is not a sign of genius, but genius is perhaps always +accompanied by precocity. This is especially notable in the cases of +painting, music, and mathematics; but in the matter of literature genius +may chiefly show itself in acquisition, as in Sir Walter Scott, who when +a boy knew much, but did little that would attract notice. As a child +and a boy young Tennyson was remarked both for acquisition and +performance. His own reminiscences of his childhood varied somewhat in +detail. In one place we learn that at the age of eight he covered a +slate with blank verse in the manner of Jamie Thomson, the only poet with +whom he was then acquainted. In another passage he says, “The first +poetry that moved me was my own at five years old. When I was eight I +remember making a line I thought grander than Campbell, or Byron, or +Scott. I rolled it out, it was this— + + ‘With slaughterous sons of thunder rolled the flood’— + +great nonsense, of course, but I thought it fine!” + +It _was_ fine, and was thoroughly Tennysonian. Scott, Campbell, and +Byron probably never produced a line with the qualities of this nonsense +verse. “Before I could read I was in the habit on a stormy day of +spreading my arms to the wind and crying out, ‘I hear a voice that’s +speaking in the wind,’ and the words ‘far, far away’ had always a strange +charm for me.” A late lyric has this overword, _Far_, _far away_! + +A boy of eight who knew the contemporary poets was more or less +precocious. Tennyson also knew Pope, and wrote hundreds of lines in +Pope’s measure. At twelve the boy produced an epic, in Scott’s manner, +of some six thousand lines. He “never felt himself more truly inspired,” +for the sense of “inspiration” (as the late Mr Myers has argued in an +essay on the “Mechanism of Genius”) has little to do with the actual +value of the product. At fourteen Tennyson wrote a drama in blank verse. +A chorus from this play (as one guesses), a piece from “an unpublished +drama written very early,” is published in the volume of 1830:— + + “The varied earth, the moving heaven, + The rapid waste of roving sea, + The fountain-pregnant mountains riven + To shapes of wildest anarchy, + By secret fire and midnight storms + That wander round their windy cones.” + +These lines are already Tennysonian. There is the classical transcript, +“the varied earth,” _dædala tellus_. There is the geological interest in +the forces that shape the hills. There is the use of the favourite word +“windy,” and later in the piece— + + “The troublous autumn’s _sallow_ gloom.” + +The young poet from boyhood was original in his manner. + +Byron made him _blasé_ at fourteen. Then Byron died, and Tennyson +scratched on a rock “Byron is dead,” on “a day when the whole world +seemed darkened for me.” Later he considered Byron’s poetry “too much +akin to rhetoric.” “Byron is not an artist or a thinker, or a creator in +the higher sense, but a strong personality; he is endlessly clever, and +is now unduly depreciated.” He “did give the world another heart and new +pulses, and so we are kept going.” But “he was dominated by Byron till +he was seventeen, when he put him away altogether.” + +In his boyhood, despite the sufferings which he endured for a while at +school at Louth; despite bullying from big boys and masters, Tennyson +would “shout his verses to the skies.” “Well, Arthur, I mean to be +famous,” he used to say to one of his brothers. He observed nature very +closely by the brook and the thundering sea-shores: he was never a +sportsman, and his angling was in the manner of the lover of _The +Miller’s Daughter_. He was seventeen (1826) when _Poems by Two Brothers_ +(himself and his brother Frederick) was published with the date 1827. +These poems contain, as far as I have been able to discover, nothing +really Tennysonian. What he had done in his own manner was omitted, +“being thought too much out of the common for the public taste.” The +young poet had already saving common-sense, and understood the public. +Fragments of the true gold are found in the volume of 1830, others are +preserved in the Biography. The ballad suggested by _The Bride of +Lammermoor_ was not unworthy of Beddoes, and that novel, one cannot but +think, suggested the opening situation in _Maud_, where the hero is a +modern Master of Ravenswood in his relation to the rich interloping +family and the beautiful daughter. To this point we shall return. It +does not appear that Tennyson was conscious in _Maud_ of the suggestion +from Scott, and the coincidence may be merely accidental. + +_The Lover’s Tale_, published in 1879, was mainly a work of the poet’s +nineteenth year. A few copies had been printed for friends. One of +these, with errors of the press, and without the intended alterations, +was pirated by an unhappy man in 1875. In old age Tennyson brought out +the work of his boyhood. “It was written before I had ever seen Shelley, +though it is called Shelleyan,” he said; and indeed he believed that his +work had never been imitative, after his earliest efforts in the manner +of Thomson and of Scott. The only things in _The Lover’s Tale_ which +would suggest that the poet here followed Shelley are the Italian scene +of the story, the character of the versification, and the extraordinary +luxuriance and exuberance of the imagery. {7} As early as 1868 Tennyson +heard that written copies of _The Lover’s Tale_ were in circulation. He +then remarked, as to the exuberance of the piece: “Allowance must be made +for abundance of youth. It is rich and full, but there are mistakes in +it. . . . The poem is the breath of young love.” + +How truly Tennysonian the manner is may be understood even from the +opening lines, full of the original cadences which were to become so +familiar:— + + “Here far away, seen from the topmost cliff, + Filling with purple gloom the vacancies + Between the tufted hills, the sloping seas + Hung in mid-heaven, and half way down rare sails, + White as white clouds, floated from sky to sky.” + +The narrative in parts one and two (which alone were written in youth) is +so choked with images and descriptions as to be almost obscure. It is +the story, practically, of a love like that of Paul and Virginia, but the +love is not returned by the girl, who prefers the friend of the narrator. +Like the hero of _Maud_, the speaker has a period of madness and +illusion; while the third part, “The Golden Supper”—suggested by a story +of Boccaccio, and written in maturity—is put in the mouth of another +narrator, and is in a different style. The discarded lover, visiting the +vault which contains the body of his lady, finds her alive, and restores +her to her husband. The whole finished legend is necessarily not among +the author’s masterpieces. But perhaps not even Keats in his earliest +work displayed more of promise, and gave more assurance of genius. Here +and there come turns and phrases, “all the charm of all the Muses,” which +remind a reader of things later well known in pieces more mature. Such +lines are— + + “Strange to me and sweet, + Sweet through strange years,” + +and— + + “Like to a low-hung and a fiery sky + Hung round with _ragged rims_ and burning folds.” + +And— + + “Like sounds without the twilight realm of dreams, + Which wander round the bases of the hills.” + +We also note close observation of nature in the curious phrase— + + “Cries of the partridge like a rusty key + Turned in a lock.” + +Of this kind was Tennyson’s adolescent vein, when he left + + “The poplars four + That stood beside his father’s door,” + +the Somersby brook, and the mills and granges, the seas of the +Lincolnshire coast, and the hills and dales among the wolds, for +Cambridge. He was well read in old and contemporary English literature, +and in the classics. Already he was acquainted with the singular +trance-like condition to which his poems occasionally allude, a subject +for comment later. He matriculated at Trinity, with his brother Charles, +on February 20, 1828, and had an interview of a not quite friendly sort +with a proctor before he wore the gown. + +That Tennyson should go to Cambridge, not to Oxford, was part of the +nature of things, by which Cambridge educates the majority of English +poets, whereas Oxford has only “turned out” a few—like Shelley. At that +time, as in Macaulay’s day, the path of university honours at Cambridge +lay through Mathematics, and, except for his prize poem in 1829, Tennyson +took no honours at all. His classical reading was pursued as literature, +not as a course of grammar and philology. No English poet, at least +since Milton, had been better read in the classics; but Tennyson’s +studies did not aim at the gaining of academic distinction. His aspect +was such that Thompson, later Master of Trinity, on first seeing him come +into hall, said, “That man must be a poet.” Like Byron, Shelley, and +probably Coleridge, Tennyson looked the poet that he was: “Six feet high, +broad-chested, strong-limbed, his face Shakespearian and with deep +eyelids, his forehead ample, crowned with dark wavy hair, his head finely +poised.” + +Not much is recorded of Tennyson as an undergraduate. In our days +efforts would have been made to enlist so promising a recruit in one of +the college boats; but rowing was in its infancy. It is a peculiarity of +the universities that little flocks of men of unusual ability come up at +intervals together, breaking the monotony of idlers, prize scholars, and +honours men. Such a group appeared at Balliol in Matthew Arnold’s time, +and rather later, at various colleges, in the dawn of Pre-Raphaelitism. +The Tennysons—Alfred, Frederick, and Charles—were members of such a set. +There was Arthur Hallam, son of the historian, from Eton; there was +Spedding, the editor and biographer of Bacon; Milnes (Lord Houghton), +Blakesley (Dean of Lincoln), Thompson, Merivale, Trench (a poet, and +later, Archbishop of Dublin), Brookfield, Buller, and, after Tennyson the +greatest, Thackeray, a contemporary if not an “Apostle.” Charles +Buller’s, like Hallam’s, was to be an “unfulfilled renown.” Of Hallam, +whose name is for ever linked with his own, Tennyson said that he would +have been a great man, but not a great poet; “he was as near perfection +as mortal man could be.” His scanty remains are chiefly notable for his +divination of Tennyson as a great poet; for the rest, we can only trust +the author of _In Memoriam_ and the verdict of tradition. + +The studies of the poet at this time included original composition in +Greek and Latin verse, history, and a theme that he alone has made +poetical, natural science. All poetry has its roots in the age before +natural science was more than a series of nature-myths. The poets have +usually, like Keats, regretted the days when + + “There was an awful rainbow once in heaven,” + +when the hills and streams were not yet “dispeopled of their dreams.” +Tennyson, on the other hand, was already finding material for poetry in +the world as seen through microscope and telescope, and as developed +through “æonian” processes of evolution. In a notebook, mixed with +Greek, is a poem on the Moon—not the moon of Selene, “the orbed Maiden,” +but of astronomical science. _In Memoriam_ recalls the conversations on +labour and politics, discussions of the age of the Reform Bill, of +rick-burning (expected to “make taters cheaper”), and of Catholic +emancipation; also the emancipation of such negroes as had not yet tasted +the blessings of freedom. In politics Tennyson was what he remained, a +patriot, a friend of freedom, a foe of disorder. His politics, he said, +were those “of Shakespeare, Bacon, and every sane man.” He was one of +the Society of Apostles, and characteristically contributed an essay on +Ghosts. Only the preface survives: it is not written in a scientific +style; but bids us “not assume that any vision _is_ baseless.” Perhaps +the author went on to discuss “veridical hallucinations,” but his ideas +about these things must be considered later. + +It was by his father’s wish that Tennyson competed for the English prize +poem. The theme, Timbuctoo, was not inspiring. Thackeray wrote a good +parody of the ordinary prize poem in Pope’s metre:— + + “I see her sons the hill of glory mount, + And sell their sugars on their own account; + Prone to her feet the prostrate nations come, + Sue for her rice and barter for her rum.” + +Tennyson’s work was not much more serious: he merely patched up an old +piece, in blank verse, on the battle of Armageddon. The poem is not +destitute of Tennysonian cadence, and ends, not inappropriately, with +“All was night.” Indeed, all _was_ night. + +An ingenious myth accounts for Tennyson’s success: At Oxford, says +Charles Wordsworth, the author was more likely to have been rusticated +than rewarded. But already (1829) Arthur Hallam told Mr Gladstone that +Tennyson “promised fair to be the greatest poet of our generation, +perhaps of our century.” + +In 1830 Tennyson published the first volume of which he was sole author. +Browning’s _Pauline_ was of the year 1833. It was the very dead hours of +the Muses. The great Mr Murray had ceased, as one despairing of song, to +publish poetry. Bulwer Lytton, in the preface to _Paul Clifford_ (1830), +announced that poetry, with every other form of literature except the +Novel, was unremunerative and unread. Coleridge and Scott were silent: +indeed Sir Walter was near his death; Wordsworth had shot his bolt, +though an arrow or two were left in the quiver. Keats, Shelley, and +Byron were dead; Milman’s brief vogue was departing. It seemed as if +novels alone could appeal to readers, so great a change in taste had been +wrought by the sixteen years of Waverley romances. The slim volume of +Tennyson was naturally neglected, though Leigh Hunt reviewed it in the +_Tatler_. Hallam’s comments in the _Englishman’s Magazine_, though +enthusiastic (as was right and natural), were judicious. “The author +imitates no one.” Coleridge did not read all the book, but noted “things +of a good deal of beauty. The misfortune is that he has begun to write +verses without very well understanding what metre is.” As Tennyson said +in 1890, “So I, an old man, who get a poem or poems every day, might cast +a casual glance at a book, and seeing something which I could not scan or +understand, might possibly decide against the book without further +consideration.” As a rule, the said books are worthless. The number of +versifiers makes it hard, indeed, for the poet to win recognition. One +little new book of rhyme is so like another, and almost all are of so +little interest! + +The rare book that differs from the rest has a _bizarrerie_ with its +originality, and in the poems of 1830 there was, assuredly, more than +enough of the bizarre. There were no hyphens in the double epithets, and +words like “tendriltwine” seemed provokingly affected. A kind of +lusciousness, like that of Keats when under the influence of Leigh Hunt, +may here and there be observed. Such faults as these catch the +indifferent eye when a new book is first opened, and the volume of 1830 +was probably condemned by almost every reader of the previous generation +who deigned to afford it a glance. Out of fifty-six pieces only +twenty-three were reprinted in the two volumes of 1842, which won for +Tennyson the general recognition of the world of letters. Five or six of +the pieces then left out were added as _Juvenilia_ in the collected works +of 1871, 1872. The whole mass deserves the attention of students of the +poet’s development. + +This early volume may be said to contain, in the germ, all the great +original qualities of Tennyson, except the humour of his rural studies +and the elaboration of his Idylls. For example, in _Mariana_ we first +note what may be called his perfection and accomplishment. The very few +alterations made later are verbal. The moated grange of Mariana in +_Measure for Measure_, and her mood of desertion and despair, are +elaborated by a precision of truth and with a perfection of harmony +worthy of Shakespeare himself, and minutely studied from the natural +scenes in which the poet was born. If these verses alone survived out of +the wreck of Victorian literature, they would demonstrate the greatness +of the author as clearly as do the fragments of Sappho. _Isabel_ (a +study of the poet’s mother) is almost as remarkable in its stately +dignity; while _Recollections of the Arabian Nights_ attest the power of +refined luxury in romantic description, and herald the unmatched beauty +of _The Lotos-Eaters_. _The Poet_, again, is a picture of that which +Tennyson himself was to fulfil; and _Oriana_ is a revival of romance, and +of the ballad, not limited to the ballad form as in its prototype, _Helen +of Kirkconnell_. Curious and exquisite experiment in metre is indicated +in the _Leonine Elegiacs_, in _Claribel_, and several other poems. +Qualities which were not for long to find public expression, speculative +powers brooding, in various moods, on ultimate and insoluble questions, +were attested by _The Mystic_, and _Supposed Confessions of a Second-rate +Sensitive Mind not in Unity with Itself_, an unlucky title of a +remarkable performance. “In this, the most agitated of all his poems, we +find the soul urging onward + + ‘Thro’ utter dark a full-sail’d skiff, + Unpiloted i’ the echoing dance + Of reboant whirlwinds;’ + +and to the question, ‘Why not believe, then?’ we have as answer a simile +of the sea, which cannot slumber like a mountain tarn, or + + ‘Draw down into his vexed pools + All that blue heaven which hues and paves’ + +the tranquil inland mere.” {16} + +The poet longs for the faith of his infant days and of his mother— + + “Thy mild deep eyes upraised, that knew + The beauty and repose of faith, + And the clear spirit shining thro’.” + +That faith is already shaken, and the long struggle for belief has +already begun. + +Tennyson, according to Matthew Arnold, was not _un esprit puissant_. +Other and younger critics, who have attained to a cock-certain mood of +negation, are apt to blame him because, in fact, he did not finally agree +with their opinions. If a man is necessarily a weakling or a hypocrite +because, after trying all things, he is not an atheist or a materialist, +then the reproach of insincerity or of feebleness of mind must rest upon +Tennyson. But it is manifest that, almost in boyhood, he had already +faced the ideas which, to one of his character, almost meant despair: he +had not kept his eyes closed. To his extremely self-satisfied accusers +we might answer, in lines from this earliest volume (_The Mystic_):— + + “Ye scorn him with an undiscerning scorn; + Ye cannot read the marvel in his eye, + The still serene abstraction.” + +He would behold + + “One shadow in the midst of a great light, + One reflex from eternity on time, + One mighty countenance of perfect calm, + Awful with most invariable eyes.” + +His mystic of these boyish years— + + “Often lying broad awake, and yet + Remaining from the body, and apart + In intellect and power and will, hath heard + Time flowing in the middle of the night, + And all things creeping to a day of doom.” + +In this poem, never republished by the author, is an attempt to express +an experience which in later years he more than once endeavoured to set +forth in articulate speech, an experience which was destined to colour +his finial speculations on ultimate problems of God and of the soul. We +shall later have to discuss the opinion of an eminent critic, Mr Frederic +Harrison, that Tennyson’s ideas, theological, evolutionary, and generally +speculative, “followed, rather than created, the current ideas of his +time.” “The train of thought” (in _In Memoriam_), writes Mr Harrison, +“is essentially that with which ordinary English readers had been made +familiar by F. D. Maurice, Professor Jowett, Dr Martineau, _Ecce Homo_, +_Hypatia_.” Of these influences only Maurice, and Maurice only orally, +could have reached the author of _The Mystic_ and the _Supposed +Confessions_. _Ecce Homo_, _Hypatia_, Mr Jowett, were all in the bosom +of the future when _In Memoriam_ was written. Now, _The Mystic_ and the +_Supposed Confessions_ are prior to _In Memoriam_, earlier than 1830. +Yet they already contain the chief speculative tendencies of _In +Memoriam_; the growing doubts caused by evolutionary ideas (then familiar +to Tennyson, though not to “ordinary English readers”), the longing for a +return to childlike faith, and the mystical experiences which helped +Tennyson to recover a faith that abode with him. In these things he was +original. Even as an undergraduate he was not following “a train of +thought made familiar” by authors who had not yet written a line, and by +books which had not yet been published. + +So much, then, of the poet that was to be and of the philosopher existed +in the little volume of the undergraduate. In _The Mystic_ we notice a +phrase, two words long, which was later to be made familiar, “Daughters +of time, divinely tall,” reproduced in the picture of Helen:— + + “A daughter of the Gods, divinely tall, + And most divinely fair.” + +The reflective pieces are certainly of more interest now (though they +seem to have satisfied the poet less) than the gallery of airy fairy +Lilians, Adelines, Rosalinds, and Eleänores:— + + “Daughters of dreams and of stories,” + +like + + “Faustine, Fragoletta, Dolores, + Félise, and Yolande, and Juliette.” + +Cambridge, which he was soon to leave, did not satisfy the poet. Oxford +did not satisfy Gibbon, or later, Shelley; and young men of genius are +not, in fact, usually content with universities which, perhaps, are doing +their best, but are neither governed nor populated by minds of the +highest and most original class. + + “You that do profess to teach + And teach us nothing, feeding not the heart.” + +The universities, in fact, teach a good deal of that which can be +learned, but the best things cannot be taught. The universities give men +leisure, books, and companionship, to learn for themselves. All tutors +cannot be, and at that time few dreamed of being, men like Jowett and T. +H. Green, Gamaliels at whose feet undergraduates sat with enthusiasm, +“did _eagerly_ frequent,” like Omar Khayyám. In later years Tennyson +found closer relations between dons and undergraduates, and recorded his +affection for his university. She had supplied him with such +companionship as is rare, and permitted him to “catch the blossom of the +flying terms,” even if tutors and lecturers were creatures of routine, +_terriblement enfonces dans la matière_, like the sire of Madelon and +Cathos, that honourable citizen. + +Tennyson just missed, by going down, a visit of Wordsworth to Cambridge. +The old enthusiast of revolution was justifying passive obedience: thirty +years had turned the almost Jacobin into an almost Jacobite. Such is the +triumph of time. In the summer of 1830 Tennyson, with Hallam, visited +the Pyrenees. The purpose was political—to aid some Spanish rebels. The +fruit is seen in _Œnone_ and _Mariana in the South_. + +In March 1831 Tennyson lost his father. “He slept in the dead man’s bed, +earnestly desiring to see his ghost, but no ghost came.” “You see,” he +said, “ghosts do not generally come to imaginative people;” a remark very +true, though ghosts are attributed to “imagination.” Whatever causes +these phantasms, it is not the kind of _phantasia_ which is consciously +exercised by the poet. Coleridge had seen far too many ghosts to believe +in them; and Coleridge and Donne apart, with the hallucinations of Goethe +and Shelley, who met themselves, what poet ever did “see a ghost”? One +who saw Tennyson as he wandered alone at this period called him “a +mysterious being, seemingly lifted high above other mortals, and having a +power of intercourse with the spirit world not granted to others.” But +it was the world of the poet, not of the “medium.” + +The Tennysons stayed on at the parsonage for six years. But, +anticipating their removal, Arthur Hallam in 1831 dealt in prophecy about +the identification in the district of places in his friend’s +poems—“critic after critic will trace the wanderings of the brook,” +as,—in fact, critic after critic has done. Tennyson disliked—these +“localisers.” The poet’s walks were shared by Arthur Hallam, then +affianced to his sister Emily. + + + + +II. +POEMS OF 1831–1833. + + +BY 1832 most of the poems of Tennyson’s second volume were circulating in +MS. among his friends, and no poet ever had friends more encouraging. +Perhaps bards of to-day do not find an eagerness among their acquaintance +for effusions in manuscript, or in proof-sheets. The charmed volume +appeared at the end of the year (dated 1833), and Hallam denounced as +“infamous” Lockhart’s review in the _Quarterly_. Infamous or not, it is +extremely diverting. How Lockhart could miss the great and abundant +poetry remains a marvel. Ten years later the Scorpion repented, and +invited Sterling to review any book he pleased, for the purpose of +enabling him to praise the two volumes of 1842, which he did gladly. +Lockhart hated all affectation and “preciosity,” of which the new book +was not destitute. He had been among Wordsworth’s most ardent admirers +when Wordsworth had few, but the memories of the war with the “Cockney +School” clung to him, the war with Leigh Hunt, and now he gave himself up +to satire. Probably he thought that the poet was a member of a London +clique. There is really no excuse for Lockhart, except that he _did_ +repent, that much of his banter was amusing, and that, above all, his +censures were accepted by the poet, who altered, later, many passages of +a fine absurdity criticised by the infamous reviewer. One could name +great prose-writers, historians, who never altered the wondrous errors to +which their attention was called by critics. Prose-writers have been +more sensitively attached to their glaring blunders in verifiable facts +than was this very sensitive poet to his occasional lapses in taste. + +_The Lady of Shalott_, even in its early form, was more than enough to +give assurance of a poet. In effect it is even more poetical, in a +mysterious way, if infinitely less human, than the later treatment of the +same or a similar legend in _Elaine_. It has the charm of Coleridge, and +an allegory of the fatal escape from the world of dreams and shadows into +that of realities may have been really present to the mind of the young +poet, aware that he was “living in phantasy.” The alterations are +usually for the better. The daffodil is not an aquatic plant, as the +poet seems to assert in the first form— + + “The yellow-leavèd water-lily, + The green sheathed daffodilly, + Tremble in the water chilly, + Round about Shalott.” + +Nobody can prefer to keep + + “Though the squally east wind keenly + Blew, with folded arms serenely + By the water stood the queenly + Lady of Shalott.” + +However stoical the Lady may have been, the reader is too seriously +sympathetic with her inevitable discomfort— + + “All raimented in snowy white + That loosely flew,” + +as she was. The original conclusion was distressing; we were dropped +from the airs of mysterious romance:— + + “They crossed themselves, their stars they blest, + Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire, and guest; + There lay a parchment on her breast, + That puzzled more than all the rest + The well-fed wits at Camelot.” + +Hitherto we have been “puzzled,” but as with the sublime incoherences of +a dream. Now we meet well-fed wits, who say, “Bless my stars!” as +perhaps we should also have done in the circumstances—a dead lady +arriving, in a very cold east wind, alone in a boat, for “her blood was +frozen slowly,” as was natural, granting the weather and the lady’s airy +costume. It is certainly matter of surprise that the young poet’s vision +broke up in this humorous manner. And, after all, it is less surprising +that the Scorpion, finding such matter in a new little book by a new +young man, was more sensitive to the absurdity than to the romance. But +no lover of poetry should have been blind to the almost flawless +excellence of _Mariana in the South_, inspired by the landscape of the +Provençal tour with Arthur Hallam. In consequence of Lockhart’s +censures, or in deference to the maturer taste of the poet, _The Miller’s +Daughter_ was greatly altered before 1842. It is one of the earliest, if +not the very earliest, of Tennyson’s domestic English idylls, poems with +conspicuous beauties, but not without sacrifices to that Muse of the home +affections on whom Sir Barnes Newcome delivered his famous lecture. The +seventh stanza perhaps hardly deserved to be altered, as it is, so as to +bring in “minnows” where “fish” had been the reading, and where “trout” +would best recall an English chalk stream. To the angler the rising +trout, which left the poet cold, is at least as welcome as the “reflex of +a beauteous form.” “Every woman seems an angel at the water-side,” said +“that good old angler, now with God,” Thomas Todd Stoddart, and so “the +long and listless boy” found it to be. It is no wonder that the mother +was “_slowly_ brought to yield consent to my desire.” The domestic +affections, in fact, do not adapt themselves so well to poetry as the +passion, unique in Tennyson, of _Fatima_. The critics who hunt for +parallels or plagiarisms will note— + + “O Love, O fire! once he drew + With one long kiss my whole soul thro’ + My lips,” + +and will observe Mr Browning’s + + “Once he kissed + My soul out in a fiery mist.” + +As to _Œnone_, the scenery of that earliest of the classical idylls is +borrowed from the Pyrenees and the tour with Hallam. “It is possible +that the poem may have been suggested by Beattie’s _Judgment of Paris_,” +says Mr Collins; it is also possible that the tale which + + “Quintus Calaber + Somewhat lazily handled of old” + +may have reached Tennyson’s mind from an older writer than Beattie. He +is at least as likely to have been familiar with Greek myth as with the +lamented “Minstrel.” The form of 1833, greatly altered in 1842, +contained such unlucky phrases as “cedar shadowy,” and “snowycoloured,” +“marblecold,” “violet-eyed”—easy spoils of criticism. The alterations +which converted a beautiful but faulty into a beautiful and flawless poem +perhaps obscure the significance of Œnone’s “I will not die alone,” which +in the earlier volume directly refers to the foreseen end of all as +narrated in Tennyson’s late piece, _The Death of Œnone_. The whole poem +brings to mind the glowing hues of Titian and the famous Homeric lines on +the divine wedlock of Zeus and Hera. + +The allegory or moral of _The Palace of Art_ does not need explanation. +Not many of the poems owe more to revision. The early stanza about +Isaiah, with fierce Ezekiel, and “Eastern Confutzee,” did undeniably +remind the reader, as Lockhart said, of _The Groves of Blarney_. + + “With statues gracing that noble place in, + All haythen goddesses most rare, + Petrarch, Plato, and Nebuchadnezzar, + All standing naked in the open air.” + +In the early version the Soul, being too much “up to date,” + + “Lit white streams of dazzling gas,” + +like Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford. + + “Thus her intense, untold delight, + In deep or vivid colour, smell, and sound, + Was flattered day and night.” + +Lockhart was not fond of Sir Walter’s experiments in gas, the “smell” +gave him no “deep, untold delight,” and his “infamous review” was biassed +by these circumstances. + +The volume of 1833 was in nothing more remarkable than in its proof of +the many-sidedness of the author. He offered mediæval romance, and +classical perfection touched with the romantic spirit, and domestic +idyll, of which _The May Queen_ is probably the most popular example. +The “mysterious being,” conversant with “the spiritual world,” might have +been expected to disdain topics well within the range of Eliza Cook. He +did not despise but elevated them, and thereby did more to introduce +himself to the wide English public than he could have done by a century +of _Fatimas_ or _Lotos-Eaters_. On the other hand, a taste more +fastidious, or more perverse, will scarcely be satisfied with pathos +which in process of time has come to seem “obvious.” The pathos of early +death in the prime of beauty is less obvious in Homer, where Achilles is +to be the victim, or in the laments of the Anthology, where we only know +that the dead bride or maiden was fair; but the poor May Queen is of her +nature rather commonplace. + + “That good man, the clergyman, has told me words of peace,” + +strikes a note rather resembling the Tennysonian parody of Wordsworth— + + “A Mr Wilkinson, a clergyman.” + +_The Lotos-Eaters_, of course, is at the opposite pole of the poet’s +genius. A few plain verses of the _Odyssey_, almost bald in their +reticence, are the _point de repère_ of the most magical vision expressed +in the most musical verse. Here is the languid charm of Spenser, +enriched with many classical memories, and pictures of natural beauty +gorgeously yet delicately painted. After the excision of some verses, +rather fantastical, in 1842, the poem became a flawless masterpiece,—one +of the eternal possessions of song. + +On the other hand, the opening of _The Dream of Fair Women_ was marred in +1833 by the grotesque introductory verses about “a man that sails in a +balloon.” Young as Tennyson was, these freakish passages are a +psychological marvel in the work of one who did not lack the saving sense +of humour. The poet, wafted on the wing and “pinion that the Theban +eagle bear,” cannot conceivably be likened to an aeronaut waving flags +out of a balloon—except in a spirit of self-mockery which was not +Tennyson’s. His remarkable self-discipline in excising the fantastic and +superfluous, and reducing his work to its classical perfection of thought +and form, is nowhere more remarkable than in this magnificent vision. It +is probably by mere accidental coincidence of thought that, in the verses +_To J. S._ (James Spedding), Tennyson reproduces the noble speech on the +warrior’s death which Sir Walter Scott places in the lips of the great +Dundee: “It is the memory which the soldier leaves behind him, like the +long train of light that follows the sunken sun, _that_ is all that is +worth caring for,” the light which lingers eternally on the hills of +Atholl. Tennyson’s lines are a close parallel:— + + “His memory long will live alone + In all our hearts, as mournful light + That broods above the fallen sun, + And dwells in heaven half the night.” + +Though Tennyson disliked the exhibition of “the chips of the workshop,” +we have commented on them, on the early readings of the early volumes. +They may be regarded more properly as the sketches of a master than as +“chips,” and do more than merely engage the idle curiosity of the +fanatics of first editions. They prove that the poet was studious of +perfection, and wisely studious, for his alterations, unlike those of +some authors, were almost invariably for the better, the saner, the more +mature in taste. The early readings are also worth notice, because they +partially explain, by their occasionally fantastic and humourless +character, the lack of early and general recognition of the poet’s +genius. The native prejudice of mankind is not in favour of a new poet. +Of new poets there are always so many, most of them bad, that nature has +protected mankind by an armour of suspiciousness. The world, and +Lockhart, easily found good reasons for distrusting this new claimant of +the ivy and the bays: moreover, since about 1814 there had been a +reaction against new poetry. The market was glutted. Scott had set +everybody on reading, and too many on writing, novels. The great +reaction of the century against all forms of literature except prose +fiction had begun. Near the very date of Tennyson’s first volume Bulwer +Lytton, as we saw, had frankly explained that he wrote novels because +nobody would look at anything else. Tennyson had to overcome this +universal, or all but universal, indifference to new poetry, and, after +being silent for ten years, overcome it he did—a remarkable victory of +art and of patient courage. Times were even worse for poets than to-day. +Three hundred copies of the new volume were sold! But Tennyson’s friends +were not puffers in league with pushing publishers. + +Meanwhile the poet in 1833 went on quietly and undefeated with his work. +He composed _The Gardener’s Daughter_, and was at work on the _Morte +d’Arthur_, suppressed till the ninth year, on the Horatian plan. Many +poems were produced (and even written out, which a number of his pieces +never were), and were left in manuscript till they appeared in the +Biography. Most of these are so little worthy of the author that the +marvel is how he came to write them—in what uninspired hours. Unlike +Wordsworth, he could weed the tares from his wheat. His studies were in +Greek, German, Italian, history (a little), and chemistry, botany, and +electricity—“cross-grained Muses,” these last. + +It was on September 15, 1833, that Arthur Hallam died. Unheralded by +sign or symptom of disease as it was, the news fell like a thunderbolt +from a serene sky. Tennyson’s and Hallam’s love had been “passing the +love of women.” A blow like this drives a man on the rocks of the +ultimate, the insoluble problems of destiny. “Is this the end?” +Nourished as on the milk of lions, on the elevating and strengthening +doctrines of popular science, trained from childhood to forego hope and +attend evening lectures, the young critics of our generation find +Tennyson a weakling because he had hopes and fears concerning the +ultimate renewal of what was more than half his life—his friendship. + + “That faith I fain would keep, + That hope I’ll not forego: + Eternal be the sleep— + Unless to waken so,” + +wrote Lockhart, and the verses echoed ceaselessly in the widowed heart of +Carlyle. These men, it is part of the duty of critics later born to +remember, were not children or cowards, though they dreamed, and hoped, +and feared. We ought to make allowance for failings incident to an age +not yet fully enlightened by popular science, and still undivorced from +spiritual ideas that are as old as the human race, and perhaps not likely +to perish while that race exists. Now and then even scientific men have +been mistaken, especially when they have declined to examine evidence, as +in this problem of the transcendental nature of the human spirit they +usually do. At all events Tennyson was unconvinced that death is the +end, and shortly after the fatal tidings arrived from Vienna he began to +write fragments in verse preluding to the poem of _In Memoriam_. He also +began, in a mood of great misery, _The Two Voices_; _or_, _Thoughts of a +Suicide_. The poem seems to have been partly done by September 1834, +when Spedding commented on it, and on the beautiful _Sir Galahad_, +“intended for something of a male counterpart to _St Agnes_.” The _Morte +d’Arthur_ Tennyson then thought “the best thing I have managed lately.” +Very early in 1835 many stanzas of _In Memoriam_ had taken form. “I do +not wish to be dragged forward in any shape before the reading public at +present,” wrote the poet, when he heard that Mill desired to write on +him. His _Œnone_ he had brought to its new perfection, and did not +desire comments on work now several years old. He also wrote his +_Ulysses_ and his _Tithonus_. + +If ever the term “morbid” could have been applied to Tennyson, it would +have been in the years immediately following the death of Arthur Hallam. +But the application would have been unjust. True, the poet was living +out of the world; he was unhappy, and he was, as people say, “doing +nothing.” He was so poor that he sold his Chancellor’s prize gold medal, +and he did not + + “Scan his whole horizon + In quest of what he could clap eyes on,” + +in the way of money-making, which another poet describes as the normal +attitude of all men as well as of pirates. A careless observer would +have thought that the poet was dawdling. But he dwelt in no Castle of +Indolence; he studied, he composed, he corrected his verses: like Sir +Walter in Liddesdale, “he was making himsel’ a’ the time.” He did not +neglect the movements of the great world in that dawn of discontent with +the philosophy of commercialism. But it was not his vocation to plunge +into the fray, and on to platforms. + +It is a very rare thing anywhere, especially in England, for a man +deliberately to choose poetry as the duty of his life, and to remain +loyal, as a consequence, to the bride of St Francis—Poverty. This +loyalty Tennyson maintained, even under the temptation to make money in +recognised ways presented by his new-born love for his future wife, Miss +Emily Sellwood. They had first met in 1830, when she, a girl of +seventeen, seemed to him like “a Dryad or an Oread wandering here.” But +admiration became the affection of a lifetime when Tennyson met Miss +Sellwood as bridesmaid to her sister, the bride of his brother Charles, +in 1836. The poet could not afford to marry, and, like the hero of +_Locksley Hall_, he may have asked himself, “What is that which I should +do?” By 1840 he had done nothing tangible and lucrative, and +correspondence between the lovers was forbidden. That neither dreamed of +Tennyson’s deserting poetry for a more normal profession proved of great +benefit to the world. The course is one which could only be justified by +the absolute certainty of possessing genius. + + + + +III. +1837–1842. + + +IN 1837 the Tennysons left the old rectory; till 1840 they lived at High +Beech in Epping Forest, and after a brief stay at Tunbridge Wells went to +Boxley, near Maidstone. + +It appears that at last the poet had “beat his music out,” though his +friends “still tried to cheer him.” But the man who wrote _Ulysses_ when +his grief was fresh could not be suspected of declining into a +hypochondriac. “If I mean to make my mark at all, it must be by +shortness,” he said at this time; “for the men before me had been so +diffuse, and most of the big things, except _King Arthur_, had been +done.” The age had not _la tête épique_: Poe had announced the paradox +that there is no such thing as a long poem, and even in dealing with +Arthur, Tennyson followed the example of Theocritus in writing, not an +epic, but epic idylls. Long poems suit an age of listeners, for which +they were originally composed, or of leisure and few books. At present +epics are read for duty’s sake, not for the only valid reason, “for human +pleasure,” in FitzGerald’s phrase. + +Between 1838 and 1840 Tennyson made some brief tours in England with +FitzGerald, and, coming from Coventry, wrote _Godiva_. His engagement +with Miss Sellwood seemed to be adjourned _sine die_, as they were +forbidden to correspond. + +By 1841 Tennyson was living at Mablethorpe on the Lincolnshire coast; +working at his volumes of 1842, much urged by FitzGerald and American +admirers, who had heard of the poet through Emerson. Moxon was to be the +publisher, himself something of a poet; but early in 1842 he had not yet +received the MS. Perhaps Emerson heard of Tennyson through Carlyle, who, +says Sterling, “said more in your praise than in any one’s except +Cromwell, and an American backwoodsman who has killed thirty or forty +people with a bowie-knife.” Carlyle at this time was much attached to +Lockhart, editor of the _Quarterly Review_, and it may have been Carlyle +who converted Lockhart to admiration of his old victim. Carlyle had very +little more appreciation of Keats than had Byron, or (in early days) +Lockhart, and it was probably as much the man of heroic physical mould, +“a life-guardsman spoilt by making poetry,” and the unaffected companion +over a pipe, as the poet, that attracted him in Tennyson. As we saw, +when the two triumphant volumes of 1842 did appear, Lockhart asked +Sterling to review whatever book he pleased (meaning the Poems) in the +_Quarterly_. The praise of Sterling may seem lukewarm to us, especially +when compared with that of Spedding in the _Edinburgh_. But Sterling, +and Lockhart too, were obliged to “gang warily.” Lockhart had, to his +constant annoyance, “a partner, Mr Croker,” and I have heard from the +late Dean Boyle that Mr Croker was much annoyed by even the mild applause +yielded in the _Quarterly_ to the author of the _Morte d’Arthur_. + +While preparing the volumes of 1842 at Boxley, Tennyson’s life was +divided between London and the society of his brother-in-law, Mr Edmund +Lushington, the great Greek scholar and Professor of Greek at Glasgow +University. There was in Mr Lushington’s personal aspect, and noble +simplicity of manner and character, something that strongly resembled +Tennyson himself. Among their common friends were Lord Houghton +(Monckton Milnes), Mr Lear of the _Book of Nonsense_ (“with such a +pencil, such a pen”), Mr Venables (who at school modified the profile of +Thackeray), and Lord Kelvin. In town Tennyson met his friends at The +Cock, which he rendered classic; among them were Thackeray, Forster, +Maclise, and Dickens. The times were stirring: social agitation, and +“Carol philosophy” in Dickens, with growls from Carlyle, marked the +period. There was also a kind of optimism in the air, a prophetic +optimism, not yet fulfilled. + + “Fly, happy happy sails, and bear the Press!” + +That mission no longer strikes us as exquisitely felicitous. “The +mission of the Cross,” and of the missionaries, means international +complications; and “the markets of the Golden Year” are precisely the +most fruitful causes of wars and rumours of wars:— + + “Sea and air are dark + With great contrivances of Power.” + +Tennyson’s was not an unmitigated optimism, and had no special confidence +in + + “The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings + That every sophister can lime.” + +His political poetry, in fact, was very unlike the socialist chants of Mr +William Morris, or _Songs before Sunrise_. He had nothing to say about + + “The blood on the hands of the King, + And the lie on the lips of the Priest.” + +The hands of Presidents have not always been unstained; nor are +statements of a mythical nature confined to the lips of the clergy. The +poet was anxious that freedom should “broaden down,” but “slowly,” not +with indelicate haste. Persons who are more in a hurry will never care +for the political poems, and it is certain that Tennyson did not feel +sympathetically inclined towards the Iberian patriot who said that his +darling desire was “to cut the throats of all the _curés_,” like some +Covenanters of old. “Mais vous connaissez mon cœur”—“and a pretty black +one it is,” thought young Tennyson. So cautious in youth, during his +Pyrenean tour with Hallam in 1830, Tennyson could not become a convinced +revolutionary later. We must accept him with his limitations: nor must +we confuse him with the hero of his _Locksley Hall_, one of the most +popular, and most parodied, of the poems of 1842: full of beautiful +images and “confusions of a wasted youth,” a youth dramatically +conceived, and in no way autobiographical. + +In so marvellous a treasure of precious things as the volumes of 1842, +perhaps none is more splendid, perfect, and perdurable than the _Morte +d’Arthur_. It had been written seven years earlier, and pronounced by +the poet “not bad.” Tennyson was never, perhaps, a very deep Arthurian +student. A little cheap copy of Malory was his companion. {39} He does +not appear to have gone deeply into the French and German “literature of +the subject.” Malory’s compilation (1485) from French and English +sources, with the _Mabinogion_ of Lady Charlotte Guest, sufficed for him +as materials. The whole poem, enshrined in the memory of all lovers of +verse, is richly studded, as the hilt of Excalibur, with classical +memories. “A faint Homeric echo” it is not, nor a Virgilian echo, but +the absolute voice of old romance, a thing that might have been chanted +by + + “The lonely maiden of the Lake” + +when + + “Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps, + Upon the hidden bases of the hills.” + +Perhaps the most exquisite adaptation of all are the lines from the +_Odyssey_— + + “Where falls not hail nor rain, nor any snow.” + +“Softly through the flutes of the Grecians” came first these Elysian +numbers, then through Lucretius, then through Tennyson’s own _Lucretius_, +then in Mr Swinburne’s _Atalanta in Calydon_:— + + “Lands indiscoverable in the unheard-of west + Round which the strong stream of a sacred sea + Rolls without wind for ever, and the snow + There shows not her white wings and windy feet, + Nor thunder nor swift rain saith anything, + Nor the sun burns, but all things rest and thrive.” + +So fortunate in their transmission through poets have been the lines of +“the Ionian father of the rest,” the greatest of them all. + +In the variety of excellences which marks Tennyson, the new English +idylls of 1842 hold their prominent place. Nothing can be more exquisite +and more English than the picture of “the garden that I love.” +Theocritus cannot be surpassed; but the idyll matches to the seventh of +his, where it is most closely followed, and possesses such a picture of a +girl as the Sicilian never tried to paint. + +_Dora_ is another idyll, resembling the work of a Wordsworth in a clime +softer than that of the Fells. The lays of Edwin Morris and Edward Bull +are not among the more enduring of even the playful poems. The _St +Simeon Stylites_ appears “made to the hand” of the author of _Men and +Women_ rather than of Tennyson. The grotesque vanity of the anchorite is +so remote from us, that we can scarcely judge of the truth of the +picture, though the East has still her parallels to St Simeon. From the +almost, perhaps quite, incredible ascetic the poet lightly turns to +“society verse” lifted up into the air of poetry, in the charm of _The +Talking Oak_, and the happy flitting sketches of actual history; and +thence to the strength and passion of _Love and Duty_. Shall + + “Sin itself be found + The cloudy porch oft opening on the Sun?” + +That this is the province of sin is a pretty popular modern moral. But +Honour is the better part, and here was a poet who had the courage to say +so; though, to be sure, the words ring strange in an age when highly +respectable matrons assure us that “passion,” like charity, covers a +multitude of sins. _Love and Duty_, we must admit, is “early Victorian.” + +The _Ulysses_ is almost a rival to the _Morte d’Arthur_. It is of an +early date, after Arthur Hallam’s death, and Thackeray speaks of the poet +chanting his + + “Great Achilles whom we knew,” + +as if he thought that this was in Cambridge days. But it is later than +these. Tennyson said, “_Ulysses_ was written soon after Arthur Hallam’s +death, and gave my feeling about the need of going forward, and braving +the struggle of life, perhaps more simply than anything in _In +Memoriam_.” Assuredly the expression is more simple, and more noble, and +the personal emotion more dignified for the classic veil. When the +plaintive Pessimist (“‘proud of the title,’ as the Living Skeleton said +when they showed him”) tells us that “not to have been born is best,” we +may answer with Ulysses— + + “Life piled on life + Were all too little.” + +The Ulysses of Tennyson, of course, is Dante’s Ulysses, not Homer’s +Odysseus, who brought home to Ithaca not one of his mariners. His last +known adventure, the journey to the land of men who knew not the savour +of salt, Odysseus was to make on foot and alone; so spake the ghost of +Tiresias within the poplar pale of Persephone. + +_The Two Voices_ expresses the contest of doubts and griefs with the +spirit of endurance and joy which speaks alone in _Ulysses_. The man who +is unhappy, but does not want to put an end to himself, has certainly the +better of the argument with the despairing Voice. The arguments of “that +barren Voice” are, indeed, remarkably deficient in cogency and logic, if +we can bring ourselves to strip the discussion of its poetry. The +original title, _Thoughts of a Suicide_, was inappropriate. The suicidal +suggestions are promptly faced and confuted, and the mood of the author +is throughout that of one who thinks life worth living:— + + “Whatever crazy sorrow saith, + No life that breathes with human breath + Has ever truly long’d for death. + + ’Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, + Oh life, not death, for which we pant; + More life, and fuller, that I want.” + +This appears to be a satisfactory reply to the persons who eke out a +livelihood by publishing pessimistic books, and hooting, as the great +Alexandre Dumas says, at the great drama of Life. + +With _The Day-Dream_ (of The Sleeping Beauty) Tennyson again displays his +matchless range of powers. Verse of Society rises into a charmed and +musical fantasy, passing from the Berlin-wool work of the period + + (“Take the broidery frame, and add + A crimson to the quaint Macaw”) + +into the enchanted land of the fable: princes immortal, princesses +eternally young and fair. The _St Agnes_ and _Sir Galahad_, companion +pieces, contain the romance, as _St Simeon Stylites_ shows the repulsive +side of asceticism; for the saint and the knight are young, beautiful, +and eager as St Theresa in her childhood. It has been said, I do not +know on what authority, that the poet had no recollection of composing +_Sir Galahad_, any more than Scott remembered composing _The Bride of +Lammermoor_, or Thackeray parts of _Pendennis_. The haunting of +Tennyson’s mind by the Arthurian legends prompted also the lovely +fragment on the Queen’s last Maying, _Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere_, +a thing of perfect charm and music. The ballads of _Lady Clare_ and _The +Lord of Burleigh_ are not examples of the poet in his strength; for his +power and fantasy we must turn to _The Vision of Sin_, where the early +passages have the languid voluptuous music of _The Lotos-Eaters_, with +the ethical element superadded, while the portion beginning— + + “Wrinkled ostler, grim and thin!” + +is in parts reminiscent of Burns’s _Jolly Beggars_. In _Break_, _Break_, +_Break_, we hear a note prelusive to _In Memoriam_, much of which was +already composed. + +The Poems of 1842 are always vocal in the memories of all readers of +English verse. None are more familiar, at least to men of the +generations which immediately followed Tennyson’s. FitzGerald was apt to +think that the poet never again attained the same level, and I venture to +suppose that he never rose above it. For FitzGerald’s opinion, right or +wrong, it is easy to account. He had seen all the pieces in manuscript; +they were his cherished possession before the world knew them. _C’est +mon homme_, he might have said of Tennyson, as Boileau said of Molière. +Before the public awoke FitzGerald had “discovered Tennyson,” and that at +the age most open to poetry and most enthusiastic in friendship. Again, +the Poems of 1842 were _short_, while _The Princess_, _Maud_, and _The +Idylls of the King_ were relatively long, and, with _In Memoriam_, +possessed unity of subject. They lacked the rich, the unexampled variety +of topic, treatment, and theme which marks the Poems of 1842. These were +all reasons why FitzGerald should think that the two slim green volumes +held the poet’s work at its highest level. Perhaps he was not wrong, +after all. + + + + +IV. +1842–848—THE PRINCESS. + + +THE Poems, and such criticisms as those of Spedding and Sterling, gave +Tennyson his place. All the world of letters heard of him. Dean Bradley +tells us how he took Oxford by storm in the days of the undergraduateship +of Clough and Matthew Arnold. Probably both of these young writers did +not share the undergraduate enthusiasm. Mr Arnold, we know, did not +reckon Tennyson _un esprit puissant_. Like Wordsworth (who thought +Tennyson “decidedly the first of our living poets, . . . he has expressed +in the strongest terms his gratitude to my writings”), Arnold was no +fervent admirer of his contemporaries. Besides, if Tennyson’s work is “a +criticism of Life,” the moral criticism, so far, was hidden in flowers, +like the sword of Aristogiton at the feast. But, on the whole, Tennyson +had won the young men who cared for poetry, though Sir Robert Peel had +never heard of him: and to win the young, as Theocritus desired to do, is +more than half the battle. On September 8, 1842, the poet was able to +tell Mr Lushington that “500 of my books are sold; according to Moxon’s +brother, I have made a sensation.” The sales were not like those of +_Childe Harold_ or _Marmion_; but for some twenty years new poetry had +not sold at all. Novels had come in about 1814, and few wanted or bought +recent verse. But Carlyle was converted. He spoke no more of a spoiled +guardsman. “If you knew what my relation has been to the thing called +‘English Poetry’ for many years back, you would think such a fact” (his +pleasure in the book) “surprising.” Carlyle had been living (as Mrs +Carlyle too well knew) in Oliver Cromwell, a hero who probably took no +delight in _Lycidas_ or _Comus_, in Lovelace or Carew. “I would give all +my poetry to have made one song like that,” said Tennyson of Lovelace’s +_Althea_. But Noll would have disregarded them all alike, and Carlyle +was full of the spirit of the Protector. To conquer him was indeed a +victory for Tennyson; while Dickens, not a reading man, expressed his +“earnest and sincere homage.” + +But Tennyson was not successful in the modern way. Nobody “interviewed” +him. His photograph, of course, with disquisitions on his pipes and +slippers, did not adorn the literary press. His literary income was not +magnified by penny-a-liners. He did not become a lion; he never would +roar and shake his mane in drawing-rooms. Lockhart held that Society was +the most agreeable form of the stage: the dresses and actresses +incomparably the prettiest. But Tennyson liked Society no better than +did General Gordon. He had friends enough, and no desire for new +acquaintances. Indeed, his fortune was shattered at this time by a +strange investment in wood-carving by machinery. Ruskin had only just +begun to write, and wood-carving by machinery was still deemed an +enterprise at once philanthropic and æsthetic. “My father’s worldly +goods were all gone,” says Lord Tennyson. The poet’s health suffered +extremely: he tried a fashionable “cure” at Cheltenham, where he saw +miracles of healing, but underwent none. In September 1845 Peel was +moved by Lord Houghton to recommend the poet for a pension (£200 +annually). “I have done nothing slavish to get it: I never even +solicited for it either by myself or others.” Like Dr Johnson, he +honourably accepted what was offered in honour. For some reason many +persons who write in the press are always maddened when such good +fortune, however small, however well merited, falls to a brother in +letters. They, of course, were “causelessly bitter.” “Let them rave!” + +If few of the rewards of literary success arrived, the penalties at once +began, and only ceased with the poet’s existence. “If you only knew what +a nuisance these volumes of verse are! Rascals send me theirs per post +from America, and I have more than once been knocked up out of bed to pay +three or four shillings for books of which I can’t get through one page, +for of all books the most insipid reading is second-rate verse.” + +Would that versifiers took the warning! Tennyson had not sent his little +firstlings to Coleridge and Wordsworth: they are only the hopeless +rhymers who bombard men of letters with their lyrics and tragedies. + +Mr Browning was a sufferer. To one young twitterer he replied in the +usual way. The bard wrote acknowledging the letter, but asking for a +definite criticism. “I do not think myself a Shakespeare or a Milton, +but I _know_ I am better than Mr Coventry Patmore or Mr Austin Dobson.” +Mr Browning tried to procrastinate: he was already deeply engaged with +earlier arrivals of volumes of song. The poet was hurt, not angry; he +had expected other things from Mr Browning: _he_ ought to know his duty +to youth. At the intercession of a relation Mr Browning now did his +best, and the minstrel, satisfied at last, repeated his conviction of his +superiority to the authors of _The Angel in the House_ and _Beau +Brocade_. Probably no man, not even Mr Gladstone, ever suffered so much +from minstrels as Tennyson. He did not suffer them gladly. + +In 1846 the Poems reached their fourth edition. Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton +(bitten by what fly who knows?) attacked Tennyson in _The New Timon_, a +forgotten satire. We do not understand the ways of that generation. The +cheap and spiteful _genre_ of satire, its forged morality, its sham +indignation, its appeal to the ape-like passions, has gone out. Lytton +had suffered many things (not in verse) from Jeames Yellowplush: I do not +know that he hit back at Thackeray, but he “passed it on” to Thackeray’s +old college companion. Tennyson, for once, replied (in _Punch_: the +verses were sent thither by John Forster); the answer was one of +magnificent contempt. But he soon decided that + + “The noblest answer unto such + Is perfect stillness when they brawl.” + +Long afterwards the poet dedicated a work to the son of Lord Lytton. He +replied to no more satirists. {50} Our difficulty, of course, is to +conceive such an attack coming from a man of Lytton’s position and +genius. He was no hungry hack, and could, and did, do infinitely better +things than “stand in a false following” of Pope. Probably Lytton had a +false idea that Tennyson was a rich man, a branch of his family being +affluent, and so resented the little pension. The poet was so far from +rich in 1846, and even after the publication of _The Princess_, that his +marriage had still to be deferred for four years. + +On reading _The Princess_ afresh one is impressed, despite old +familiarity, with the extraordinary influence of its beauty. Here are, +indeed, the best words best placed, and that curious felicity of style +which makes every line a marvel, and an eternal possession. It is as if +Tennyson had taken the advice which Keats gave to Shelley, “Load every +rift with ore.” To choose but one or two examples, how the purest and +freshest impression of nature is re-created in mind and memory by the +picture of Melissa with + + “All her thoughts as fair within her eyes, + As bottom agates seen to wave and float + In crystal currents of clear morning seas.” + +The lyric, “Tears, idle tears,” is far beyond praise: once read it seems +like a thing that has always existed in the world of poetic archetypes, +and has now been not so much composed as discovered and revealed. The +many pictures and similitudes in _The Princess_ have a magical +gorgeousness:— + + “From the illumined hall + Long lanes of splendour slanted o’er a press + Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes, + And rainbow robes, and gems and gem-like eyes, + And gold and golden heads; they to and fro + Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, some pale.” + +The “small sweet Idyll” from + + “A volume of the poets of her land” + +pure Theocritus. It has been admirably rendered into Greek by Mr Gilbert +Murray. The exquisite beauties of style are not less exquisitely blended +in the confusions of a dream, for a dream is the thing most akin to _The +Princess_. Time does not exist in the realm of Gama, or in the ideal +university of Ida. We have a bookless North, severed but by a frontier +pillar from a golden and learned South. The arts, from architecture to +miniature-painting, are in their highest perfection, while knights still +tourney in armour, and the quarrel of two nations is decided as in the +gentle and joyous passage of arms at Ashby de la Zouche. Such confusions +are purposefully dream-like: the vision being a composite thing, as +dreams are, haunted by the modern scene of the holiday in the park, the +“gallant glorious chronicle,” the Abbey, and that “old crusading knight +austere,” Sir Ralph. The seven narrators of the scheme are like the +“split personalities” of dreams, and the whole scheme is of great +technical skill. The earlier editions lacked the beautiful songs of the +ladies, and that additional trait of dream, the strange trance-like +seizures of the Prince: “fallings from us, vanishings,” in Wordsworthian +phrase; instances of “dissociation,” in modern psychological terminology. +Tennyson himself, like Shelley and Wordsworth, had experience of this +kind of dreaming awake which he attributes to his Prince, to strengthen +the shadowy yet brilliant character of his romance. It is a thing of +normal and natural _points de repère_; of daylight suggestion, touched as +with the magnifying and intensifying elements of haschish-begotten +phantasmagoria. In the same way opium raised into the region of +brilliant vision that passage of Purchas which Coleridge was reading +before he dreamed _Kubla Khan_. But in Tennyson the effects were +deliberately sought and secured. + +One might conjecture, though Lord Tennyson says nothing on the subject, +that among the suggestions for _The Princess_ was the opening of _Love’s +Labour’s Lost_. Here the King of Navarre devises the College of +Recluses, which is broken up by the arrival of the Princess of France, +Rosaline, and the other ladies:— + + _King_. Our Court shall be a little Academe, + Still and contemplative in living art. + You three, Biron, Domain, and Longaville, + Have sworn for three years’ term to live with me, + My fellow-scholars, and to keep those statutes. + + * * * * * + + _Biron_. That is, to live and study here three years. + But there are other strict observances; + As, not to see a woman in that term. + + * * * * * + + [_Reads_] ‘That no woman shalt come within a mile of my Court:’ Hath + this been proclaimed? + + _Long_. Four days ago. + + _Biron_. Let’s see the penalty. [_Reads_] ‘On pain of losing her + tongue.’ + +The Princess then arrives with her ladies, as the Prince does with Cyril +and Florian, as Charles did, with Buckingham, in Spain. The conclusion +of Shakespeare is Tennyson’s conclusion— + + “We cannot cross the cause why we are born.” + +The later poet reverses the attitude of the sexes in _Love’s Labour’s +Lost_: it is the women who make and break the vow; and the women in _The +Princess_ insist on the “grand, epic, homicidal” scenes, while the men +are debarred, more or less, from a sportive treatment of the subject. +The tavern catch of Cyril; the laughable pursuit of the Prince by the +feminine Proctors; the draggled appearance of the adventurers in female +garb, are concessions to the humour of the situation. Shakespeare would +certainly have given us the song of Cyril at the picnic, and comic enough +the effect would have been on the stage. It may be a gross employment, +but _The Princess_, with the pretty chorus of girl undergraduates, + + “In colours gayer than the morning mist,” + +went reasonably well in opera. Merely considered as a romantic fiction, +_The Princess_ presents higher proofs of original narrative genius than +any other such attempt by its author. + +The poem is far from being deficient in that human interest which Shelley +said that it was as vain to ask from _him_, as to seek to buy a leg of +mutton at a gin-shop. The characters, the protagonists, with Cyril, +Melissa, Lady Blanche, the child Aglaia, King Gama, the other king, Arac, +and the hero’s mother—beautifully studied from the mother of the poet—are +all sufficiently human. But they seem to waver in the magic air, “as all +the golden autumn woodland reels” athwart the fires of autumn leaves. +For these reasons, and because of the designed fantasy of the whole +composition, _The Princess_ is essentially a poem for the true lovers of +poetry, of Spenser and of Coleridge. The serious motive, the question of +Woman, her wrongs, her rights, her education, her capabilities, was not +“in the air” in 1847. To be sure it had often been “in the air.” The +Alexandrian Platonists, the Renaissance, even the age of Anne, had their +emancipated and learned ladies. Early Greece had Sappho, Corinna, and +Erinna, the first the chief of lyric poets, even in her fragments, the +two others applauded by all Hellas. The French Revolution had begotten +Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and her _Vindication of the Rights of Women_, +and in France George Sand was prominent and emancipated enough while the +poet wrote. But, the question of love apart, George Sand was “very, very +woman,” shining as a domestic character and fond of needlework. England +was not excited about the question which has since produced so many +disputants, inevitably shrill, and has not been greatly meddled with by +women of genius, George Eliot or Mrs Oliphant. The poem, in the public +indifference as to feminine education, came rather prematurely. We have +now ladies’ colleges, not in haunts remote from man, but by the sedged +banks of Cam and Cherwell. There have been no revolutionary results: no +boys have spied these chaste nests, with echoing romantic consequences. +The beauty and splendour of the Princess’s university have not arisen in +light and colour, and it is only at St Andrews that girls wear the +academic and becoming costume of the scarlet gown. The real is far below +the ideal, but the real in 1847 seemed eminently remote, or even +impossible. + +The learned Princess herself was not on our level as to knowledge and the +past of womankind. She knew not of their masterly position in the law of +ancient Egypt. Gynæocracy and matriarchy, the woman the head of the +savage or prehistoric group, were things hidden from her. She “glanced +at the Lycian custom,” but not at the Pictish, a custom which would have +suited George Sand to a marvel. She maligned the Hottentots. + + “The highest is the measure of the man, + And not the Kaffir, Hottentot, Malay.” + +The Hottentots had long ago anticipated the Princess and her shrill +modern sisterhood. If we take the Greeks, or even ourselves, we may say, +with Dampier (1689), “The Hodmadods, though a nasty people, yet are +gentlemen to these” as regards the position of women. Let us hear Mr +Hartland: “In every Hottentot’s house the wife is supreme. Her husband, +poor fellow, though he may wield wide power and influence out of doors, +at home dare not even take a mouthful of sour-milk out of the household +vat without her permission . . . The highest oath a man can take is to +swear by his eldest sister, and if he abuses this name he forfeits to her +his finest goods and sheep.” + +However, in 1847 England had not yet thought of imitating the Hodmadods. +Consequently, and by reason of the purely literary and elaborately +fantastical character of _The Princess_, it was not of a nature to +increase the poet’s fame and success. “My book is out, and I hate it, +and so no doubt will you,” Tennyson wrote to FitzGerald, who hated it and +said so. “Like Carlyle, I gave up all hopes of him after _The +Princess_,” indeed it was not apt to conciliate Carlyle. “None of the +songs had the old champagne flavour,” said Fitz; and Lord Tennyson adds, +“Nothing either by Thackeray or by my father met FitzGerald’s approbation +unless he had first seen it in manuscript.” This prejudice was very +human. Lord Tennyson remarks, as to the poet’s meaning in this work, +born too early, that “the sooner woman finds out, before the great +educational movement begins, that ‘woman is not undeveloped man, but +diverse,’ the better it will be for the progress of the world.” + +But probably the “educational movement” will not make much difference to +womankind on the whole. The old Platonic remark that woman “does the +same things as man, but not so well,” will eternally hold good, at least +in the arts, and in letters, except in rare cases of genius. A new +Jeanne d’Arc, the most signal example of absolute genius in history, will +not come again; and the ages have waited vainly for a new Sappho or a new +Jane Austen. Literature, poetry, painting, have always been fields open +to woman. But two names exhaust the roll of women of the highest rank in +letters—Sappho and Jane Austen. And “when did woman ever yet invent?” +In “arts of government” Elizabeth had courage, and just saving sense +enough to yield to Cecil at the eleventh hour, and escape the fate of +“her sister and her foe,” the beautiful unhappy queen who told her ladies +that she dared to look on whatever men dared to do, and herself would do +it if her strength so served her.” {58} “The foundress of the Babylonian +walls” is a myth; “the Rhodope that built the Pyramid” is not a +creditable myth; for exceptions to Knox’s “Monstrous Regiment of Women” +we must fall back on “The Palmyrene that fought Aurelian,” and the +revered name of the greatest of English queens, Victoria. Thus history +does not encourage the hope that a man-like education will raise many +women to the level of the highest of their sex in the past, or even that +the enormous majority of women will take advantage of the opportunity of +a man-like education. A glance at the numerous periodicals designed for +the reading of women depresses optimism, and the Princess’s prophecy of + + “Two plummets dropped for one to sound the abyss + Of science, and the secrets of the mind,” + +is not near fulfilment. Fortunately the sex does not “love the +Metaphysics,” and perhaps has not yet produced even a manual of Logic. +It must suffice man and woman to + + “Walk this world + Yoked in all exercise of noble end,” + +of a more practical character, while woman is at liberty + + “To live and learn and be + All that not harms distinctive womanhood.” + +This was the conclusion of the poet who had the most chivalrous reverence +for womanhood. This is the _eirenicon_ of that old strife between the +women and the men—that war in which both armies are captured. It may not +be acceptable to excited lady combatants, who think man their foe, when +the real enemy is (what Porson damned) the Nature of Things. + +A new poem like _The Princess_ would soon reach the public of our day, so +greatly increased are the uses of advertisement. But _The Princess_ +moved slowly from edition to revised and improved edition, bringing +neither money nor much increase of fame. The poet was living with his +family at Cheltenham, where among his new acquaintances were Sydney +Dobell, the poet of a few exquisite pieces, and F. W. Robertson, later so +popular as a preacher at Brighton. Meeting him for the first time, and +knowing Robertson’s “wish to pluck the heart from my mystery, from pure +nervousness I would only talk of beer.” This kind of shyness beset +Tennyson. A lady tells me that as a girl (and a very beautiful girl) she +and her sister, and a third, _nec diversa_, met the poet, and expected +high discourse. But his speech was all of that wingless insect which +“gets there, all the same,” according to an American lyrist; the insect +which fills Mrs Carlyle’s letters with bulletins of her success or +failure in domestic campaigns. + +Tennyson kept visiting London, where he saw Thackeray and the despair of +Carlyle, and at Bath House he was too modest to be introduced to the +great Duke whose requiem he was to sing so nobly. Oddly enough Douglas +Jerrold enthusiastically assured Tennyson, at a dinner of a Society of +Authors, that “you are the one who will live.” To that end, humanly +speaking, he placed himself under the celebrated Dr Gully and his +“water-cure,” a foible of that period. In 1848 he made a tour to King +Arthur’s Cornish bounds, and another to Scotland, where the Pass of +Brander disappointed him: perhaps he saw it on a fine day, and, like +Glencoe, it needs tempest and mist lit up by the white fires of many +waterfalls. By bonny Doon he “fell into a passion of tears,” for he had +all of Keats’s sentiment for Burns: “There never was immortal poet if he +be not one.” Of all English poets, the warmest in the praise of Burns +have been the two most unlike himself—Tennyson and Keats. It was the +songs that Tennyson preferred; Wordsworth liked the _Cottar’s Saturday +Night_. + + + + +V. +IN MEMORIAM. + + +IN May 1850 a few, copies of _In Memoriam_ were printed for friends, and +presently the poem was published without author’s name. The pieces had +been composed at intervals, from 1833 onwards. It is to be observed that +the “section about evolution” was written some years before 1844, when +the ingenious hypotheses of Robert Chambers, in _Vestiges of Creation_, +were given to the world, and caused a good deal of talk. Ten years, +again, after _In Memoriam_, came Darwin’s _Origin of Species_. These +dates are worth observing. The theory of evolution, of course in a rude +mythical shape, is at least as old as the theory of creation, and is +found among the speculations of the most backward savages. The Arunta of +Central Australia, a race remote from the polite, have a hypothesis of +evolution which postulates only a few rudimentary forms of life, a marine +environment, and the minimum of supernormal assistance in the way of +stimulating the primal forms in the direction of more highly +differentiated developments. “The rudimentary forms, _Inapertwa_, were +in reality stages in the transformation of various plants and animals +into human beings. . . . They had no distinct limbs or organs of sight, +hearing, or smell.” They existed in a kind of lumps, and were set free +from the cauls which enveloped them by two beings called Ungambikula, “a +word which means ‘out of nothing,’ or ‘self-existing.’ Men descend from +lower animals thus evolved.” {62} + +This example of the doctrine of evolution in an early shape is only +mentioned to prove that the idea has been familiar to the human mind from +the lowest known stage of culture. Not less familiar has been the theory +of creation by a kind of supreme being. The notion of creation, however, +up to 1860, held the foremost place in modern European belief. But +Lamarck, the elder Darwin, Monboddo, and others had submitted hypotheses +of evolution. Now it was part of the originality of Tennyson, as a +philosophic poet, that he had brooded from boyhood on these early +theories of evolution, in an age when they were practically unknown to +the literary, and were not patronised by the scientific, world. In +November 1844 he wrote to Mr Moxon, “I want you to get me a book which I +see advertised in the _Examiner_: it seems to contain many speculations +with which I have been familiar for years, and on which I have written +more than one poem.” This book was _Vestiges of Creation_. These poems +are the stanzas in _In Memoriam_ about “the greater ape,” and about +Nature as careless of the type: “all shall go.” The poetic and +philosophic originality of Tennyson thus faced the popular inferences as +to the effect of the doctrine of evolution upon religious beliefs long +before the world was moved in all its deeps by Darwin’s _Origin of +Species_. Thus the geological record is inconsistent, we learned, with +the record of the first chapters of Genesis. If man is a differentiated +monkey, and if a monkey has no soul, or future life (which is taken for +granted), where are man’s title-deeds to these possessions? With other +difficulties of an obvious kind, these presented themselves to the poet +with renewed force when his only chance of happiness depended on being +able to believe in a future life, and reunion with the beloved dead. +Unbelief had always existed. We hear of atheists in the _Rig Veda_. In +the early eighteenth century, in the age of Swift— + + “Men proved, as sure as God’s in Gloucester, + That Moses was a great impostor.” + +distrust of Moses increased with the increase of hypotheses of evolution. +But what English poet, before Tennyson, ever attempted “to lay the +spectres of the mind”; ever faced world-old problems in their most recent +aspects? I am not acquainted with any poet who attempted this task, and, +whatever we may think of Tennyson’s success, I do not see how we can deny +his originality. + +Mr Frederic Harrison, however, thinks that neither “the theology nor the +philosophy of _In Memoriam_ are new, original, with an independent force +and depth of their own.” “They are exquisitely graceful re-statements of +the theology of the Broad Churchman of the school of F. D. Maurice and +Jowett—a combination of Maurice’s somewhat illogical piety with Jowett’s +philosophy of mystification.” The piety of Maurice may be as illogical +as that of Positivism is logical, and the philosophy of the Master of +Balliol may be whatever Mr Harrison pleases to call it. But as Jowett’s +earliest work (except an essay on Etruscan religion) is of 1855, one does +not see how it could influence Tennyson before 1844. And what had the +Duke of Argyll written on these themes some years before 1844? The late +Duke, to whom Mr Harrison refers in this connection, was born in 1823. +His philosophic ideas, if they were to influence Tennyson’s _In +Memoriam_, must have been set forth by him at the tender age of +seventeen, or thereabouts. Mr Harrison’s sentence is, “But does _In +Memoriam_ teach anything, or transfigure any idea which was not about +that time” (the time of writing was mainly 1833–1840) “common form with +F. D. Maurice, with Jowett, C. Kingsley, F. Robertson, Stopford Brooke, +Mr Ruskin, and the Duke of Argyll, Bishops Westcott and Boyd Carpenter?” + +The dates answer Mr Harrison. Jowett did not publish anything till at +least fifteen years after Tennyson wrote his poems on evolution and +belief. Dr Boyd Carpenter’s works previous to 1840 are unknown to +bibliography. F. W. Robertson was a young parson at Cheltenham. Ruskin +had not published the first volume of _Modern Painters_. His Oxford +prize poem is of 1839. Mr Stopford Brooke was at school. The Duke of +Argyll was being privately educated: and so with the rest, except the +contemporary Maurice. How can Mr Harrison say that, in the time of _In +Memoriam_, Tennyson was “in touch with the ideas of Herschel, Owen, +Huxley, Darwin, and Tyndall”? {65} When Tennyson wrote the parts of _In +Memoriam_ which deal with science, nobody beyond their families and +friends had heard of Huxley, Darwin, and Tyndall. They had not +developed, much less had they published, their “general ideas.” Even in +his journal of the _Cruise of the Beagle_ Darwin’s ideas were religious, +and he naïvely admired the works of God. It is strange that Mr Harrison +has based his criticism, and his theory of Tennyson’s want of +originality, on what seems to be a historical error. He cites parts of +_In Memoriam_, and remarks, “No one can deny that all this is exquisitely +beautiful; that these eternal problems have never been clad in such +inimitable grace . . . But the train of thought is essentially that with +which ordinary English readers have been made familiar by F. D. Maurice, +Professor Jowett, _Ecce Homo_, _Hypatia_, and now by Arthur Balfour, Mr +Drummond, and many valiant companies of _Septem_ [why _Septem_?] _contra +Diabolum_.” One must keep repeating the historical verity that the ideas +of _In Memoriam_ could not have been “made familiar by” authors who had +not yet published anything, or by books yet undreamed of and unborn, such +as _Ecce Homo_ and Jowett’s work on some of St Paul’s Epistles. If these +books contain the ideas of _In Memoriam_, it is by dint of repetition and +borrowing from _In Memoriam_, or by coincidence. The originality was +Tennyson’s, for we cannot dispute the evidence of dates. + +When one speaks of “originality” one does not mean that Tennyson +discovered the existence of the ultimate problems. But at Cambridge +(1828–1830) he had voted “No” in answer to the question discussed by “the +Apostles,” “Is an intelligible [intelligent?] First Cause deducible from +the phenomena of the universe?” {66} He had also propounded the theory +that “the development of the human body might possibly be traced from the +radiated vermicular molluscous and vertebrate organisms,” thirty years +before Darwin published _The Origin of Species_. To be concerned so +early with such hypotheses, and to face, in poetry, the religious or +irreligious inferences which may be drawn from them, decidedly +constitutes part of the poetic originality of Tennyson. His attitude, as +a poet, towards religious doubt is only so far not original, as it is +part of the general reaction from the freethinking of the eighteenth +century. Men had then been freethinkers _avec délices_. It was a joyous +thing to be an atheist, or something very like one; at all events, it was +glorious to be “emancipated.” Many still find it glorious, as we read in +the tone of Mr Huxley, when he triumphs and tramples over pious dukes and +bishops. Shelley said that a certain schoolgirl “would make a dear +little atheist.” But by 1828–1830 men were less joyous in their escape +from all that had hitherto consoled and fortified humanity. Long before +he dreamed of _In Memoriam_, in the _Poems chiefly Lyrical_ of 1830 +Tennyson had written— + + “‘Yet,’ said I, in my morn of youth, + The unsunn’d freshness of my strength, + When I went forth in quest of truth, + ‘It is man’s privilege to doubt.’ . . . + Ay me! I fear + All may not doubt, but everywhere + Some must clasp Idols. Yet, my God, + Whom call I Idol? Let Thy dove + Shadow me over, and my sins + Be unremember’d, and Thy love + Enlighten me. Oh teach me yet + Somewhat before the heavy clod + Weighs on me, and the busy fret + Of that sharp-headed worm begins + In the gross blackness underneath. + + Oh weary life! oh weary death! + Oh spirit and heart made desolate! + Oh damnèd vacillating state!” + +Now the philosophy of _In Memoriam_ may be, indeed is, regarded by +robust, first-rate, and far from sensitive minds, as a “damnèd +vacillating state.” The poet is not so imbued with the spirit of popular +science as to be sure that he knows everything: knows that there is +nothing but atoms and ether, with no room for God or a soul. He is far +from that happy cock-certainty, and consequently is exposed to the +contempt of the cock-certain. The poem, says Mr Harrison, “has made +Tennyson the idol of the Anglican clergyman—the world in which he was +born and the world in which his life was ideally passed—the idol of all +cultured youth and of all æsthetic women. It is an honourable post to +fill”—that of idol. “The argument of _In Memoriam_ apparently is . . . +that we should faintly trust the larger hope.” That, I think, is not the +argument, not the conclusion of the poem, but is a casual expression of +one mood among many moods. + +The argument and conclusion of _In Memoriam_ are the argument and +conclusion of the life of Tennyson, and of the love of Tennyson, that +immortal passion which was a part of himself, and which, if aught of us +endure, is living yet, and must live eternally. From the record of his +Life by his son we know that his trust in “the larger hope” was not +“faint,” but strengthened with the years. There are said to have been +less hopeful intervals. + +His faith is, of course, no argument for others,—at least it ought not to +be. We are all the creatures of our bias, our environment, our +experience, our emotions. The experience of Tennyson was unlike the +experience of most men. It yielded him subjective grounds for belief. +He “opened a path unto many,” like Yama, the Vedic being who discovered +the way to death. But Tennyson’s path led not to death, but to life +spiritual, and to hope, and he did “give a new impulse to the thought of +his age,” as other great poets have done. Of course it may be an impulse +to wrong thought. As the philosophical Australian black said, “We shall +know when we are dead.” + +Mr Harrison argues as if, unlike Tennyson, Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, +and Burns produced “original ideas fresh from their own spirit, and not +derived from contemporary thinkers.” I do not know what original ideas +these great poets discovered and promulgated; their ideas seem to have +been “in the air.” These poets “made them current coin.” Shelley +thought that he owed many of his ideas to Godwin, a contemporary thinker. +Wordsworth has a debt to Plato, a thinker not contemporary. Burns’s +democratic independence was “in the air,” and had been, in Scotland, +since Elder remarked on it in a letter to Ingles in 1515. It is not the +ideas, it is the expression of the ideas, that marks the poet. +Tennyson’s ideas are relatively novel, though as old as Plotinus, for +they are applied to a novel, or at least an unfamiliar, mental situation. +Doubt was abroad, as it always is; but, for perhaps the first time since +Porphyry wrote his letter to Abammon, the doubters desired to believe, +and said, “Lord, help Thou my unbelief.” To robust, not sensitive minds, +very much in unity with themselves, the attitude seems contemptible, or +at best decently futile. Yet I cannot think it below the dignity of +mankind, conscious that it is not omniscient. The poet does fail in +logic (_In Memoriam_, cxx.) when he says— + + “Let him, the wiser man who springs + Hereafter, up from childhood shape + His action like the greater ape, + But I was _born_ to other things.” + +I am not well acquainted with the habits of the greater ape, but it would +probably be unwise, and perhaps indecent, to imitate him, even if “we +also are his offspring.” We might as well revert to polyandry and paint, +because our Celtic or Pictish ancestors, if we had any, practised the one +and wore the other. However, petulances like the verse on the greater +ape are rare in _In Memoriam_. To declare that “I would not stay” in +life if science proves us to be “cunning casts in clay,” is beneath the +courage of the Stoical philosophy. + +Theologically, the poem represents the struggle with doubts and hopes and +fears, which had been with Tennyson from his boyhood, as is proved by the +volume of 1830. But the doubts had exerted, probably, but little +influence on his happiness till the sudden stroke of loss made life for a +time seem almost unbearable unless the doubts were solved. They _were_ +solved, or stoically set aside, in the _Ulysses_, written in the +freshness of grief, with the conclusion that we must be + + “Strong in will + To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” + +But the gnawing of grief till it becomes a physical pain, the fever fits +of sorrow, the aching _desiderium_, bring back in many guises the old +questions. These require new attempts at answers, and are answered, “the +sad mechanic exercise” of verse allaying the pain. This is the genesis +of _In Memoriam_, not originally written for publication but produced at +last as a monument to friendship, and as a book of consolation. + +No books of consolation can console except by sympathy; and in _In +Memoriam_ sympathy and relief have been found, and will be found, by +many. Another, we feel, has trodden our dark and stony path, has been +shadowed by the shapes of dread which haunt our valley of tribulation: a +mind almost infinitely greater than ours has been our fellow-sufferer. +He has emerged from the darkness of the shadow of death into the light, +whither, as it seems to us, we can scarcely hope to come. It is the +sympathy and the example, I think, not the speculations, mystical or +scientific, which make _In Memoriam_, in more than name, a book of +consolation: even in hours of the sharpest distress, when its technical +beauties and wonderful pictures seem shadowy and unreal, like the yellow +sunshine and the woods of that autumn day when a man learned that his +friend was dead. No, it was not the speculations and arguments that +consoled or encouraged us. We did not listen to Tennyson as to Mr +Frederic Harrison’s glorified Anglican clergyman. We could not murmur, +like the Queen of the May— + + “That good man, the Laureate, has told us words of peace.” + +What we valued was the poet’s companionship. There was a young reader to +whom _All along the Valley_ came as a new poem in a time of recent +sorrow. + + “The two-and-thirty years were a mist that rolls away,” + +said the singer of _In Memoriam_, and in that hour it seemed as if none +could endure for two-and-thirty years the companionship of loss. But the +years have gone by, and have left + + “Ever young the face that dwells + With reason cloister’d in the brain.” {72} + +In this way to many _In Memoriam_ is almost a life-long companion: we +walk with Great-heart for our guide through the valley Perilous. + +In this respect _In Memoriam_ is unique, for neither to its praise nor +dispraise is it to be compared with the other famous elegies of the +world. These are brief outbursts of grief—real, as in the hopeless words +of Catullus over his brother’s tomb; or academic, like Milton’s +_Lycidas_. We are not to suppose that Milton was heart-broken by the +death of young Mr King, or that Shelley was greatly desolated by the +death of Keats, with whom his personal relations had been slight, and of +whose poetry he had spoken evil. He was nobly stirred as a poet by a +poet’s death—like Mr Swinburne by the death of Charles Baudelaire; but +neither Shelley nor Mr Swinburne was lamenting _dimidium animæ suæ_, or +mourning for a friend + + “Dear as the mother to the son, + More than my brothers are to me.” + +The passion of _In Memoriam_ is personal, is acute, is life-long, and +thus it differs from the other elegies. Moreover, it celebrates a noble +object, and thus is unlike the ambiguous affection, real or dramatic, +which informs the sonnets of Shakespeare. So the poem stands alone, +cloistered; not fiery with indignation, not breaking into actual +prophecy, like Shelley’s _Adonais_; not capable, by reason even of its +meditative metre, of the organ music of _Lycidas_. Yet it is not to be +reckoned inferior to these because its aim and plan are other than +theirs. + +It is far from my purpose to “class” Tennyson, or to dispute about his +relative greatness when compared with Wordsworth or Byron, Coleridge, +Shelley, or Burns. He rated one song of Lovelace above all his lyrics, +and, in fact, could no more have written the Cavalier’s _To Althea from +Prison_ than Lovelace could have written the _Morte d’Arthur_. “It is +not reasonable, it is not fair,” says Mr Harrison, after comparing _In +Memoriam_ with _Lycidas_, “to compare Tennyson with Milton,” and it is +not reasonable to compare Tennyson with any poet whatever. Criticism is +not the construction of a class list. But we may reasonably say that _In +Memoriam_ is a noble poem, an original poem, a poem which stands alone in +literature. The wonderful beauty, ever fresh, howsoever often read, of +many stanzas, is not denied by any critic. The marvel is that the same +serene certainty of art broods over even the stanzas which must have been +conceived while the sorrow was fresh. The second piece, + + “Old yew, which graspest at the stones,” + +must have been composed soon after the stroke fell. Yet it is as perfect +as the proem of 1849. As a rule, the poetical expression of strong +emotion appears usually to clothe the memory of passion when it has been +softened by time. But here already “the rhythm, phrasing, and +articulation are entirely faultless, exquisitely clear, melodious, and +rare.” {74} It were superfluous labour to point at special beauties, at +the exquisite rendering of nature; and copious commentaries exist to +explain the course of the argument, if a series of moods is to be called +an argument. One may note such a point as that (xiv.) where the poet +says that, were he to meet his friend in life, + + “I should not feel it to be strange.” + +It may have happened to many to mistake, for a section of a second, the +face of a stranger for the face seen only in dreams, and to find that the +recognition brings no surprise. + +Pieces of a character apart from the rest, and placed in a designed +sequence, are xcii., xciii., xcv. In the first the poet says— + + “If any vision should reveal + Thy likeness, I might count it vain + As but the canker of the brain; + Yea, tho’ it spake and made appeal + + To chances where our lots were cast + Together in the days behind, + I might but say, I hear a wind + Of memory murmuring the past. + + Yea, tho’ it spake and bared to view + A fact within the coming year; + And tho’ the months, revolving near, + Should prove the phantom-warning true, + + They might not seem thy prophecies, + But spiritual presentiments, + And such refraction of events + As often rises ere they rise.” + +The author thus shows himself _difficile_ as to recognising the personal +identity of a phantasm; nor is it easy to see what mode of proving his +identity would be left to a spirit. The poet, therefore, appeals to some +perhaps less satisfactory experience:— + + “Descend, and touch, and enter; hear + The wish too strong for words to name; + That in this blindness of the frame + My Ghost may feel that thine is near.” + +The third poem is the crown of _In Memoriam_, expressing almost such +things as are not given to man to utter:— + + And all at once it seem’d at last + The living soul was flash’d on mine, + + And mine in this was wound, and whirl’d + About empyreal heights of thought, + And came on that which is, and caught + The deep pulsations of the world, + + Æonian music measuring out + The steps of Time—the shocks of Chance— + The blows of Death. At length my trance + Was cancell’d, stricken thro’ with doubt. + + Vague words! but ah, how hard to frame + In matter-moulded forms of speech, + Or ev’n for intellect to reach + Thro’ memory that which I became.” + +Experiences like this, subjective, and not matter for argument, were +familiar to Tennyson. Jowett said, “He was one of those who, though not +an upholder of miracles, thought that the wonders of Heaven and Earth +were never far absent from us.” In _The Mystic_, Tennyson, when almost a +boy, had shown familiarity with strange psychological and psychical +conditions. Poems of much later life also deal with these, and, more or +less consciously, his philosophy was tinged, and his confidence that we +are more than “cunning casts in clay” was increased, by phenomena of +experience, which can only be evidence for the mystic himself, if even +for him. But this dim aspect of his philosophy, of course, is “to the +Greeks foolishness.” + +His was a philosophy of his own; not a philosophy for disciples, and +“those that eddy round and round.” It was the sum of his reflection on +the mass of his impressions. I have shown, by the aid of dates, that it +was not borrowed from Huxley, Mr Stopford Brooke, or the late Duke of +Argyll. But, no doubt, many of the ideas were “in the air,” and must +have presented themselves to minds at once of religious tendency, and +attracted by the evolutionary theories which had always existed as +floating speculations, till they were made current coin by the genius and +patient study of Darwin. That Tennyson’s opinions between 1830 and 1840 +were influenced by those of F. D. Maurice is reckoned probable by Canon +Ainger, author of the notice of the poet in _The Dictionary of National +Biography_. In the Life of Maurice, Tennyson does not appear till 1850, +and the two men were not at Cambridge together. But Maurice’s ideas, as +they then existed, may have reached Tennyson orally through Hallam and +other members of the Trinity set, who knew personally the author of +_Letters to a Quaker_. However, this is no question of scientific +priority: to myself it seems that Tennyson “beat his music out” for +himself, as perhaps most people do. Like his own Sir Percivale, “I know +not all he meant.” + +Among the opinions as to _In Memoriam_ current at the time of its +publication Lord Tennyson notices those of Maurice and Robertson. They +“thought that the poet had made a definite step towards the unification +of the highest religion and philosophy with the progressive science of +the day.” Neither science nor religion stands still; neither stands now +where it then did. Conceivably they are travelling on paths which will +ultimately coincide; but this opinion, of course, must seem foolishness +to most professors of science. Bishop Westcott was at Cambridge when the +book appeared: he is one of Mr Harrison’s possible sources of Tennyson’s +ideas. He recognised the poet’s “splendid faith (in the face of every +difficulty) in the growing purpose of the sum of life, and in the noble +destiny of the individual man.” Ten years later Professor Henry +Sidgwick, a mind sufficiently sceptical, found in some lines of _In +Memoriam_ “the indestructible and inalienable minimum of faith which +humanity cannot give up because it is necessary for life; and which I +know that I, at least so far as the man in me is deeper than the +methodical thinker, cannot give up.” But we know that many persons not +only do not find an irreducible minimum of faith “necessary for life,” +but are highly indignant and contemptuous if any one else ventures to +suggest the logical possibility of any faith at all. + +The mass of mankind will probably never be convinced unbelievers—nay, +probably the backward or forward swing of the pendulum will touch more +convinced belief. But there always have been, since the _Rishis_ of +India sang, superior persons who believe in nothing not material—whatever +the material may be. Tennyson was, it is said, “impatient” of these +_esprits forts_, and they are impatient of him. It is an error to be +impatient: we know not whither the _logos_ may lead us, or later +generations; and we ought not to be irritated with others because it +leads them into what we think the wrong path. It is unfortunate that a +work of art, like _In Memoriam_, should arouse theological or +anti-theological passions. The poet only shows us the paths by which his +mind travelled: they may not be the right paths, nor is it easy to trace +them on a philosophical chart. He escaped from Doubting Castle. Others +may “take that for a hermitage,” and be happy enough in the residence. +We are all determined by our bias: Tennyson’s is unconcealed. His poem +is not a tract: it does not aim at the conversion of people with the +contrary bias, it is irksome, in writing about a poet, to be obliged to +discuss a philosophy which, certainly, is not stated in the manner of +Spinoza, but is merely the equilibrium of contending forces in a single +mind. + +The most famous review of _In Memoriam_ is that which declared that +“these touching lines evidently come from the full heart of the widow of +a military man.” This is only equalled, if equalled, by a recent +critique which treated a fresh edition of _Jane Eyre_ as a new novel, +“not without power, in parts, and showing some knowledge of Yorkshire +local colour.” + + + + +VI. +AFTER _IN MEMORIAM_. + + +ON June 13 Tennyson married, at Shiplake, the object of his old, +long-tried, and constant affection. The marriage was still +“imprudent,”—eight years of then uncontested supremacy in English poetry +had not brought a golden harvest. Mr Moxon appears to have supplied £300 +“in advance of royalties.” The sum, so contemptible in the eyes of +first-rate modern novelists, was a competence to Tennyson, added to his +little pension and the _épaves_ of his patrimony. “The peace of God came +into my life when I married her,” he said in later days. The poet made a +charming copy of verses to his friend, the Rev. Mr Rawnsley, who tied the +knot, as he and his bride drove to the beautiful village of Pangbourne. +Thence they went to the stately Clevedon Court, the seat of Sir Abraham +Elton, hard by the church where Arthur Hallam sleeps. The place is very +ancient and beautiful, and was a favourite haunt of Thackeray. They +passed on to Lynton, and to Glastonbury, where a collateral ancestor of +Mrs Tennyson’s is buried beside King Arthur’s grave, in that green valley +of Avilion, among the apple-blossoms. They settled for a while at Tent +Lodge on Coniston Water, in a land of hospitable Marshalls. + +After their return to London, on the night of November 18, Tennyson +dreamed that Prince Albert came and kissed him, and that he himself said, +“Very kind, but very German,” which was very like him. Next day he +received from Windsor the offer of the Laureateship. He doubted, and +hesitated, but accepted. Since Wordsworth’s death there had, as usual, +been a good deal of banter about the probable new Laureate: examples of +competitive odes exist in _Bon Gaultier_. That by Tennyson is +Anacreontic, but he was not really set on kissing the Maids of Honour, as +he is made to sing. Rogers had declined, on the plea of extreme old age; +but it was worthy of the great and good Queen not to overlook the Nestor +of English poets. For the rest, the Queen looked for “a name bearing +such distinction in the literary world as to do credit to the +appointment.” In the previous century the great poets had rarely been +Laureates. But since Sir Walter Scott declined the bays in favour of +Southey, for whom, again, the tale of bricks in the way of Odes was +lightened, and when Wordsworth succeeded Southey, the office became +honourable. Tennyson gave it an increase of renown, while, though in +itself of merely nominal value, it served his poems, to speak profanely, +as an advertisement. New editions of his books were at once in demand; +while few readers had ever heard of Mr Browning, already his friend, and +already author of _Men and Women_. + +The Laureateship brought the poet acquainted with the Queen, who was to +be his debtor in later days for encouragement and consolation. To his +Laureateship we owe, among other good things, the stately and moving _Ode +on the Death of the Duke of Wellington_, a splendid heroic piece, +unappreciated at the moment. But Tennyson was, of course, no Birthday +poet. Since the exile of the House of Stuart our kings in England have +not maintained the old familiarity with many classes of their subjects. +Literature has not been fashionable at Court, and Tennyson could in no +age have been a courtier. We hear the complaint, every now and then, +that official honours are not conferred (except the Laureateship) on men +of letters. But most of them probably think it rather distinguished not +to be decorated, or to carry titles borne by many deserving persons +unvisited by the Muses. Even the appointment to the bays usually +provokes a great deal of jealous and spiteful feeling, which would only +be multiplied if official honours were distributed among men of the pen. +Perhaps Tennyson’s laurels were not for nothing in the chorus of +dispraise which greeted the _Ode on the Duke of Wellington_, and _Maud_. + +The year 1851 was chiefly notable for a tour to Italy, made immortal in +the beautiful poem of _The Daisy_, in a measure of the poet’s own +invention. The next year, following on the _Coup d’état_ and the rise of +the new French empire, produced patriotic appeals to Britons to “guard +their own,” which to a great extent former alien owners had been +unsuccessful in guarding from Britons. The Tennysons had lost their +first child at his birth: perhaps he is remembered in _The Grandmother_, +“the babe had fought for his life.” In August 1852 the present Lord +Tennyson was born, and Mr Maurice was asked to be godfather. The +Wellington Ode was of November, and was met by “the almost universal +depreciation of the press,”—why, except because, as I have just +suggested, Tennyson was Laureate, it is impossible to imagine. The +verses were worthy of the occasion: more they could not be. + +In the autumn of 1853 the poet visited Ardtornish on the Sound of Mull, a +beautiful place endeared to him who now writes by the earliest +associations. It chanced to him to pass his holidays there just when +Tennyson and Mr Palgrave had left—“Mr Tinsmith and Mr Pancake,” as Robert +the boatman, a very black Celt, called them. Being then nine years of +age, I heard of a poet’s visit, and asked, “A real poet, like Sir Walter +Scott?” with whom I then supposed that “the Muse had gone away.” “Oh, +not like Sir Walter Scott, of course,” my mother told me, with loyalty +unashamed. One can think of the poet as Mrs Sellar, his hostess, +describes him, beneath the limes of the avenue at Acharn, planted, Mrs +Sellar says, by a cousin of Flora Macdonald. I have been told that the +lady who planted the lilies, if not the limes, was the famed Jacobite, +Miss Jennie Cameron, mentioned in _Tom Jones_. An English engraving of +1746 shows the Prince between these two beauties, Flora and Jennie. + +“No one,” says Mrs Sellar, “could have been more easy, simple, and +delightful,” and indeed it is no marvel that in her society and that of +her husband, the Greek professor, and her cousin, Miss Cross, and in such +scenes, “he blossomed out in the most genial manner, making us all feel +as if he were an old friend.” + +In November Tennyson took a house at Farringford, “as it was beautiful +and far from the haunts of men.” There he settled to a country existence +in the society of his wife, his two children (the second, Lionel, being +in 1854 the baby), and there he composed _Maud_, while the sound of the +guns, in practice for the war of the Crimea, boomed from the coast. In +May Tennyson saw the artists, of schools oddly various, who illustrated +his poems. Millais, Rossetti, and Holman Hunt gave the tone to the art, +but Mr Horsley, Creswick, and Mulgrave were also engaged. While _Maud_ +was being composed Tennyson wrote _The Charge of the Light Brigade_; a +famous poem, not in a manner in which he was born to excel—at least in my +poor opinion. “Some one _had_ blundered,” and that line was the first +fashioned and the keynote of the poem; but, after all, “blundered” is not +an exquisite rhyme to “hundred.” The poem, in any case, was most welcome +to our army in the Crimea, and is a spirited piece for recitation. + +In January 1855 _Maud_ was finished; in April the poet copied it out for +the press, and refreshed himself by reading a very different poem, _The +Lady of the Lake_. The author, Sir Walter, had suffered, like the hero +of _Maud_, by an unhappy love affair, which just faintly colours _The +Lady of the Lake_ by a single allusion, in the description of +Fitz-James’s dreams:— + + “Then,—from my couch may heavenly might + Chase that worst phantom of the night!— + Again returned the scenes of youth, + Of confident undoubting truth; + Again his soul he interchanged + With friends whose hearts were long estranged. + They come, in dim procession led, + The cold, the faithless, and the dead; + As warm each hand, each brow as gay, + As if they parted yesterday. + And doubt distracts him at the view— + Oh, were his senses false or true? + Dreamed he of death, or broken vow, + Or is it all a vision now?” + +We learn from Lady Louisa Stuart, to whom Scott read these lines, that +they referred to his lost love. I cite the passage because the extreme +reticence of Scott, in his undying sorrow, is in contrast with what +Tennyson, after reading _The Lady of the Lake_, was putting into the +mouth of his complaining lover in _Maud_. + +We have no reason to suppose that Tennyson himself had ever to bewail a +faithless love. To be sure, the hero of _Locksley Hall_ is in this +attitude, but then _Locksley Hall_ is not autobiographical. Less +dramatic and impersonal in appearance are the stanzas— + + “Come not, when I am dead, + To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave;” + +and + + “Child, if it were thine error or thy crime + I care no longer, being all unblest.” + +No biographer tells us whether this was a personal complaint or a mere +set of verses on an imaginary occasion. In _In Memoriam_ Tennyson speaks +out concerning the loss of a friend. In _Maud_, as in _Locksley Hall_, +he makes his hero reveal the agony caused by the loss of a mistress. +There is no reason to suppose that the poet had ever any such mischance, +but many readers have taken _Locksley Hall_ and _Maud_ for +autobiographical revelations, like _In Memoriam_. They are, on the other +hand, imaginative and dramatic. They illustrate the pangs of +disappointed love of woman, pangs more complex and more rankling than +those inflicted by death. In each case, however, the poet, who has sung +so nobly the happiness of fortunate wedded loves, has chosen a hero with +whom we do not readily sympathise—a Hamlet in miniature, + + “With a heart of furious fancies,” + +as in the old mad song. This choice, thanks to the popular +misconception, did him some harm. As a “monodramatic Idyll,” a romance +in many rich lyric measures, _Maud_ was at first excessively unpopular. +“Tennyson’s _Maud_ is Tennyson’s Maudlin,” said a satirist, and “morbid,” +“mad,” “rampant,” and “rabid bloodthirstiness of soul,” were among the +amenities of criticism. Tennyson hated war, but his hero, at least, +hopes that national union in a national struggle will awake a nobler than +the commercial spirit. Into the rights and wrongs of our quarrel with +Russia we are not to go. Tennyson, rightly or wrongly, took the part of +his country, and must “thole the feud” of those high-souled citizens who +think their country always in the wrong—as perhaps it very frequently is. +We are not to expect a tranquil absence of bias in the midst of military +excitement, when very laudable sentiments are apt to misguide men in both +directions. In any case, political partisanship added to the enemies of +the poem, which was applauded by Henry Taylor, Ruskin, George Brimley, +and Jowett, while Mrs Browning sent consoling words from Italy. The poem +remained a favourite with the author, who chose passages from it often, +when persuaded to read aloud by friends; and modern criticism has not +failed to applaud the splendour of the verse and the subtlety of the mad +scenes, the passion of the love lyrics. + +These merits have ceased to be disputed, but, though a loyal Tennysonian, +I have never quite been able to reconcile myself to _Maud_ as a whole. +The hero is an unwholesome young man, and not of an original kind. He is +_un beau ténébreux_ of 1830. I suppose it has been observed that he is +merely The Master of Ravenswood in modern costume, and without Lady +Ashton. Her part is taken by Maud’s brother. The situations of the hero +and of the Master (whose acquaintance Thackeray never renewed after he +lost his hat in the Kelpie Flow) are nearly identical. The families and +fathers of both have been ruined by “the gray old wolf,” and by Sir +William Ashton, representing the house of Stair. Both heroes live +dawdling on, hard by their lost ancestral homes. Both fall in love with +the daughters of the enemies of their houses. The loves of both are +baffled, and end in tragedy. Both are concerned in a duel, though the +Master, on his way to the ground, “stables his steed in the Kelpie Flow,” +and the wooer in _Maud_ shoots Lucy Ashton’s brother,—I mean the brother +of Maud,—though duelling in England was out of date. Then comes an +interval of madness, and he recovers amid the patriotic emotions of the +ill-fated Crimean expedition. Both lovers are gloomy, though the Master +has better cause, for the Tennysonian hero is more comfortably provided +for than Edgar with his “man and maid,” his Caleb and Mysie. Finally, +both _The Bride of Lammermoor_, which affected Tennyson so potently in +boyhood + + (“_A merry merry bridal_, + _A merry merry day_”), + +and _Maud_, excel in passages rather than as wholes. + +The hero of _Maud_, with his clandestine wooing of a girl of sixteen, has +this apology, that the match had been, as it were, predestined, and +desired by the mother of the lady. Still, the brother did not ill to be +angry; and the peevishness of the hero against the brother and the +parvenu lord and rival strikes a jarring note. In England, at least, the +general sentiment is opposed to this moody, introspective kind of young +man, of whom Tennyson is not to be supposed to approve. We do not feel +certain that his man and maid were “ever ready to slander and steal.” +That seems to be part of his jaundiced way of looking at everything and +everybody. He has even a bad word for the “man-god” of modern days,— + + “The man of science himself is fonder of glory, and vain, + An eye well-practised in nature, a spirit bounded and poor.” + +_Rien n’est sacré_ for this cynic, who thinks himself a Stoic. Thus +_Maud_ was made to be unpopular with the author’s countrymen, who +conceived a prejudice against Maud’s lover, described by Tennyson as “a +morbid poetic soul, . . . an egotist with the makings of a cynic.” That +he is “raised to sanity” (still in Tennyson’s words) “by a pure and holy +love which elevates his whole nature,” the world failed to perceive, +especially as the sanity was only a brief lucid interval, tempered by +hanging about the garden to meet a girl of sixteen, unknown to her +relations. Tennyson added that “different phases of passion in one +person take the place of different characters,” to which critics replied +that they wanted different characters, if only by way of relief, and did +not care for any of the phases of passion. The learned Monsieur Janet +has maintained that love is a disease like another, and that nobody falls +in love when in perfect health of mind and body. This theory seems open +to exception, but the hero of Maud is unhealthy enough. At best and +last, he only helps to give a martial force a “send-off”:— + + “I stood on a giant deck and mixed my breath + With a loyal people shouting a battle-cry.” + +He did not go out as a volunteer, and probably the Crimean winters +brought him back to his original estate of cynical gloom—and very +naturally. + +The reconciliation with Life is not like the reconciliation of _In +Memoriam_. The poem took its rise in old lines, and most beautiful +lines, which Tennyson had contributed in 1837 to a miscellany:— + + “O that ’twere possible, + After long grief and pain, + To find the arms of my true love + Round me once again.” + +Thence the poet, working back to find the origin of the situation, +encountered the ideas and the persons of _Maud_. + +I have tried to state the sources, in the general mind, of the general +dislike of _Maud_. The public, “driving at practice,” disapproved of the +“criticism of life” in the poem; confused the suffering narrator with the +author, and neglected the poetry. “No modern poem,” said Jowett, +“contains more lines that ring in the ears of men. I do not know any +verse out of Shakespeare in which the ecstacy of love soars to such a +height.” With these comments we may agree, yet may fail to follow Jowett +when he says, “No poem since Shakespeare seems to show equal power of the +same kind, or equal knowledge of human nature.” Shakespeare could not in +a narrative poem have preferred the varying passions of one character to +the characters of many persons. + +Tennyson was “nettled at first,” his son says, “by these captious remarks +of the ‘indolent reviewers,’ but afterwards he would take no notice of +them except to speak of them in a half-pitiful, half-humorous, +half-mournful manner.” The besetting sin and error of the critics was, +of course, to confound Tennyson’s hero with himself, as if we confused +Dickens with Pip. + +Like _Aurora Leigh_, _Lucile_, and other works, _Maud_ is under the +disadvantage of being, practically, a novel of modern life in verse. +Criticised as a tale of modern life (and it was criticised in that +character), it could not be very highly esteemed. But the essence of +_Maud_, of course, lies in the poetical vehicle. Nobody can cavil at the +impressiveness of the opening stanzas— + + “I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood”; + +with the keynotes of colour and of desolation struck; the lips of the +hollow “dabbled with blood-red heath,” the “red-ribb’d ledges,” and “the +flying gold of the ruin’d woodlands”; and the contrast in the picture of +the child Maud— + + “Maud the delight of the village, the ringing joy of the Hall.” + +The poem abounds in lines which live in the memory, as in the vernal +description— + + “A million emeralds break from the ruby-budded lime”; + +and the voice heard in the garden singing + + “A passionate ballad gallant and gay,” + +as Lovelace’s _Althea_, and the lines on the far-off waving of a white +hand, “betwixt the cloud and the moon.” The lyric of + + “Birds in the high Hall-garden + When twilight was falling, + Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud, + They were crying and calling,” + +was a favourite of the poet. + +“What birds were these?” he is said to have asked a lady suddenly, when +reading to a silent company. + +“Nightingales,” suggested a listener, who did not probably remember any +other fowl that is vocal in the dusk. + +“No, they were rooks,” answered the poet. + +“Come into the Garden, Maud,” is as fine a love-song as Tennyson ever +wrote, with a triumphant ring, and a soaring exultant note. Then the +poem drops from its height, like a lark shot high in heaven; tragedy +comes, and remorse, and the beautiful interlude of the + + “lovely shell, + Small and pure as a pearl.” + +Then follows the exquisite + + “O that ’twere possible,” + +and the dull consciousness of the poem of madness, with its dumb gnawing +confusion of pain and wandering memory; the hero being finally left, in +the author’s words, “sane but shattered.” + +Tennyson’s letters of the time show that the critics succeeded in +wounding him: it was not a difficult thing to do. _Maud_ was threatened +with a broadside from “that pompholygous, broad-blown Apollodorus, the +gifted X.” People who have read Aytoun’s diverting _Firmilian_, where +Apollodorus plays his part, and who remember “gifted Gilfillan” in +_Waverley_, know who the gifted X. was. But X. was no great authority +south of Tay. + +Despite the almost unanimous condemnation by public critics, the success +of _Maud_ enabled Tennyson to buy Farringford, so he must have been +better appreciated and understood by the world than by the reviewers. + +In February 1850 Tennyson returned to his old Arthurian themes, “the only +big thing not done,” for Milton had merely glanced at Arthur, Dryden did +not + + “Raise the Table Round again,” + +and Blackmore has never been reckoned adequate. _Vivien_ was first +composed as _Merlin and Nimue_, and then _Geraint and Enid_ was adapted +from the _Mabinogion_, the Welsh collection of _Märchen_ and legends, +things of widely different ages, now rather Celtic, or Brythonic, now +amplifications made under the influence of mediæval French romance. +_Enid_ was finished in Wales in August, and Tennyson learned Welsh enough +to be able to read the _Mabinogion_, which is much more of Welsh than +many Arthurian critics possess. The two first Idylls were privately +printed in the summer of 1857, being very rare and much desired of +collectors in this embryonic shape. In July _Guinevere_ was begun, in +the middle, with Arthur’s valedictory address to his erring consort. In +autumn Tennyson visited the late Duke of Argyll at Inveraray: he was much +attached to the Duke—unlike Professor Huxley. Their love of nature, the +Duke being as keen-eyed as the poet was short-sighted, was one tie of +union. The Indian Mutiny, or at least the death of Havelock, was the +occasion of lines which the author was too wise to include in any of his +volumes: the poem on Lucknow was of later composition. + +_Guinevere_ was completed in March 1858; and Tennyson met Mr Swinburne, +then very young. “What I particularly admired in him was that he did not +press upon me any verses of his own.” Tennyson would have found more to +admire if he had pressed for a sight of the verses. Neither he nor Mr +Matthew Arnold was very encouraging to young poets: they had no sons in +Apollo, like Ben Jonson. But both were kept in a perpetual state of +apprehension by the army of versifiers who send volumes by post, to whom +that can only be said what Tennyson did say to one of them, “As an +amusement to yourself and your friends, the writing it” (verse) “is all +very well.” It is the friends who do not find it amusing, while the +stranger becomes the foe. The psychology of these pests of the Muses is +bewildering. They do not seem to read poetry, only to write it and +launch it at unoffending strangers. If they bought each other’s books, +all of them could afford to publish. + +The Master of Balliol, the most adviceful man, if one may use the term, +of his age, appears to have advised Tennyson to publish the _Idylls_ at +once. There had been years of silence since _Maud_, and the Master +suspected that “mosquitoes” (reviewers) were the cause. “There is a note +needed to show the good side of human nature and to condone its frailties +which Thackeray will never strike.” To others it seems that Thackeray +was eternally striking this note: at that time in General Lambert, his +wife, and daughters, not to speak of other characters in _The +Virginians_. Who does not condone the frailties of Captain Costigan, and +F. B., and the Chevalier Strong? In any case, Tennyson took his own +time, he was (1858) only beginning _Elaine_. There is no doubt that +Tennyson was easily pricked by unsympathetic criticism, even from the +most insignificant source, and, as he confessed, he received little +pleasure from praise. All authors, without exception, are sensitive. A +sturdier author wrote that he would sometimes have been glad to meet his +assailant “where the muir-cock was bailie.” We know how testily +Wordsworth replied in defence to the gentlest comments by Lamb. + +The Master of Balliol kept insisting, “As to the critics, their power is +not really great. . . . One drop of natural feeling in poetry or the +true statement of a single new fact is already felt to be of more value +than all the critics put together.” Yet even critics may be in the +right, and of all great poets, Tennyson listened most obediently to their +censures, as we have seen in the case of his early poems. His prolonged +silences after the attacks of 1833 and 1855 were occupied in work and +reflection: Achilles was not merely sulking in his tent, as some of his +friends seem to have supposed. An epic in a series of epic idylls cannot +be dashed off like a romantic novel in rhyme; and Tennyson’s method was +always one of waiting for maturity of conception and execution. + +Mrs Tennyson, doubtless by her lord’s desire, asked the Master (then +tutor of Balliol) to suggest themes. Old age was suggested, and is +treated in _The Grandmother_. Other topics were not handled. “I hold +most strongly,” said the Master, “that it is the duty of every one who +has the good fortune to know a man of genius to do any trifling service +they can to lighten his work.” To do every service in his power to every +man was the Master’s life-long practice. He was not much at home, his +letters show, with Burns, to whom he seems to have attributed _John +Anderson_, _my jo_, _John_, while he tells an anecdote of Burns composing +_Tam o’ Shanter_ with emotional tears, which, if true at all, is true of +the making of _To Mary in Heaven_. If Burns wept over _Tam o’ Shanter_, +the tears must have been tears of laughter. + +The first four _Idylls of the King_ were prepared for publication in the +spring of 1859; while Tennyson was at work also on _Pelleas and Ettarre_, +and the Tristram cycle. In autumn he went on a tour to Lisbon with Mr F. +T. Palgrave and Mr Craufurd Grove. Returning, he fell eagerly to reading +an early copy of Darwin’s _Origin of Species_, the crown of his own early +speculations on the theory of evolution. “Your theory does not make +against Christianity?” he asked Darwin later (1868), who replied, “No, +certainly not.” But Darwin has stated the waverings of his own mind in +contact with a topic too high for _a priori_ reasoning, and only to be +approached, if at all, on the strength of the scientific method applied +to facts which science, so far, neglects, or denies, or “explains away,” +rather than explains. + +The _Idylls_, unlike _Maud_, were well received by the press, better by +the public, and best of all by friends like Thackeray, the Duke of +Argyll, the Master of Balliol, and Clough, while Ruskin showed some +reserve. The letter from Thackeray I cannot deny myself the pleasure of +citing from the Biography: it was written “in an ardour of claret and +gratitude,” but posted some six weeks later:— + + FOLKESTONE, _September_. + 36 ONSLOW SQUARE, _October_. + + MY DEAR OLD ALFRED,—I owe you a letter of happiness and thanks. Sir, + about three weeks ago, when I was ill in bed, I read the Idylls of + the King, and I thought, “Oh, I must write to him now, for this + pleasure, this delight, this splendour of happiness which I have been + enjoying.” But I should have blotted the sheets, ’tis ill writing on + one’s back. The letter full of gratitude never went as far as the + post-office, and how comes it now? + + D’abord, a bottle of claret. (The landlord of the hotel asked me + down to the cellar and treated me.) Then afterwards sitting here, an + old magazine, Fraser’s Magazine, 1850, and I come on a poem out of + The Princess which says, “I hear the horns of Elfland blowing, + blowing,”—no, it’s “the horns of Elfland faintly blowing” (I have + been into my bedroom to fetch my pen and it has made that blot), and, + reading the lines, which only one man in the world could write, I + thought about the other horns of Elfland blowing in full strength, + and Arthur in gold armour, and Guinevere in gold hair, and all those + knights and heroes and beauties and purple landscapes and misty gray + lakes in which you have made me live. They seem like facts to me, + since about three weeks ago (three weeks or a month was it?) when I + read the book. It is on the table yonder, and I don’t like, somehow, + to disturb it, but the delight and gratitude! You have made me as + happy as I was as a child with the Arabian Nights,—every step I have + walked in Elfland has been a sort of Paradise to me. (The landlord + gave two bottles of his claret and I think I drank the most) and here + I have been lying back in the chair and thinking of those delightful + Idylls, my thoughts being turned to you: what could I do but be + grateful to that surprising genius which has made me so happy? Do + you understand that what I mean is all true, and that I should break + out were you sitting opposite with a pipe in your mouth? Gold and + purple and diamonds, I say, gentlemen, and glory and love and honour, + and if you haven’t given me all these why should I be in such an + ardour of gratitude? But I have had out of that dear book the + greatest delight that has ever come to me since I was a young man; to + write and think about it makes me almost young, and this I suppose is + what I’m doing, like an after-dinner speech. + + _P.S._—I thought the “Grandmother” quite as fine. How can you at 50 + be doing things as well as at 35? + + October 16th.—(I should think six weeks after the writing of the + above.) + + The rhapsody of gratitude was never sent, and for a peculiar reason: + just about the time of writing I came to an arrangement with Smith & + Elder to edit their new magazine, and to have a contribution from T. + was the publishers’ and editor’s highest ambition. But to ask a man + for a favour, and to praise and bow down before him in the same page, + seemed to be so like hypocrisy, that I held my hand, and left this + note in my desk, where it has been lying during a little + French-Italian-Swiss tour which my girls and their papa have been + making. + + Meanwhile S. E. & Co. have been making their own proposals to you, + and you have replied not favourably, I am sorry to hear; but now + there is no reason why you should not have my homages, and I am just + as thankful for the Idylls, and love and admire them just as much, as + I did two months ago when I began to write in that ardour of claret + and gratitude. If you can’t write for us you can’t. If you can by + chance some day, and help an old friend, how pleased and happy I + shall be! This however must be left to fate and your convenience: I + don’t intend to give up hope, but accept the good fortune if it + comes. I see one, two, three quarterlies advertised to-day, as all + bringing laurels to laureatus. He will not refuse the private + tribute of an old friend, will he? You don’t know how pleased the + girls were at Kensington t’other day to hear you quote their father’s + little verses, and he too I daresay was not disgusted. He sends you + and yours his very best regards in this most heartfelt and artless + + (note of admiration)! + Always yours, my dear Alfred, + W. M. THACKERAY. + +Naturally this letter gave Tennyson more pleasure than all the converted +critics with their favourable reviews. The Duke of Argyll announced the +conversion of Macaulay. The Master found _Elaine_ “the fairest, +sweetest, purest love poem in the English language.” As to the whole, +“The allegory in the distance _greatly strengthens_, _also elevates_, +_the meaning of the poem_.” + +Ruskin, like some other critics, felt “the art and finish in these poems +a little more than I like to feel it.” Yet _Guinevere_ and _Elaine_ had +been rapidly written and little corrected. I confess to the opinion that +what a man does most easily is, as a rule, what he does best. We know +that the “art and finish” of Shakespeare were spontaneous, and so were +those of Tennyson. Perfection in art is sometimes more sudden than we +think, but then “the long preparation for it,—that unseen germination, +_that_ is what we ignore and forget.” But he wisely kept his pieces by +him for a long time, restudying them with a fresh eye. The “unreality” +of the subject also failed to please Ruskin, as it is a stumbling-block +to others. He wanted poems on “the living present,” a theme not selected +by Homer, Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Virgil, or the Greek dramatists, +except (among surviving plays) in the _Persæ of_ Æschylus. The poet who +can transfigure the hot present is fortunate, but most, and the greatest, +have visited the cool quiet purlieus of the past. + + + + +VII. +THE IDYLLS OF THE KING. + + +THE Idylls may probably be best considered in their final shape: they are +not an epic, but a series of heroic _idyllia_ of the same genre as the +heroic _idyllia_ of Theocritus. He wrote long after the natural age of +national epic, the age of Homer. He saw the later literary epic rise in +the _Argonautica_ of Apollonius Rhodius, a poem with many beauties, if +rather an archaistic and elaborate revival as a whole. The time for long +narrative poems, Theocritus appears to have thought, was past, and he +only ventured on the heroic _idyllia_ of Heracles, and certain adventures +of the Argonauts. Tennyson, too, from the first believed that his pieces +ought to be short. Therefore, though he had a conception of his work as +a whole, a conception long mused on, and sketched in various lights, he +produced no epic, only a series of epic _idyllia_. He had a spiritual +conception, “an allegory in the distance,” an allegory not to be insisted +upon, though its presence was to be felt. No longer, as in youth, did +Tennyson intend Merlin to symbolise “the sceptical understanding” (as if +one were to “break into blank the gospel of” Herr Kant), or poor +Guinevere to stand for the Blessed Reformation, or the Table Round for +Liberal Institutions. Mercifully Tennyson never actually allegorised +Arthur in that fashion. Later he thought of a musical masque of Arthur, +and sketched a _scenario_. Finally Tennyson dropped both the allegory of +Liberal principles and the musical masque in favour of the series of +heroic idylls. There was only a “parabolic drift” in the intention. +“There is no single fact or incident in the Idylls, however seemingly +mystical, which cannot be explained without any mystery or allegory +whatever.” The Idylls ought to be read (and the right readers never +dream of doing anything else) as romantic poems, just like Browning’s +_Childe Roland_, in which the wrong readers (the members of the Browning +Society) sought for mystic mountains and marvels. Yet Tennyson had his +own interpretation, “a dream of man coming into practical life and ruined +by one sin.” That was his “interpretation,” or “allegory in the +distance.” + +People may be heard objecting to the suggestion of any spiritual +interpretation of the Arthur legends, and even to the existence of +elementary morality among the Arthurian knights and ladies. There seems +to be a notion that “bold bawdry and open manslaughter,” as Roger Ascham +said, are the staple of Tennyson’s sources, whether in the mediæval +French, the Welsh, or in Malory’s compilation, chiefly from French +sources. Tennyson is accused of “Bowdlerising” these, and of introducing +gentleness, courtesy, and conscience into a literature where such +qualities were unknown. I must confess myself ignorant of any early and +popular, or “primitive” literature, in which human virtues, and the human +conscience, do not play their part. Those who object to Tennyson’s +handling of the great Arthurian cycle, on the ground that he is too +refined and too moral, must either never have read or must long have +forgotten even Malory’s romance. Thus we read, in a recent novel, that +Lancelot was an _homme aux bonnes fortunes_, whereas Lancelot was the +most loyal of lovers. + +Among other critics, Mr Harrison has objected that the Arthurian world of +Tennyson “is not quite an ideal world. Therein lies the difficulty. The +scene, though not of course historic, has certain historic suggestions +and characters.” It is not apparent who the historic characters are, for +the real Arthur is but a historic phantasm. “But then, in the midst of +so much realism, the knights, from Arthur downwards, talk and act in ways +with which we are familiar in modern ethical and psychological novels, +but which are as impossible in real mediæval knights as a Bengal tiger or +a Polar bear would be in a drawing-room.” I confess to little +acquaintance with modern ethical novels; but real mediæval knights, and +still more the knights of mediæval romance, were capable of very ethical +actions. To halt an army for the protection and comfort of a laundress +was a highly ethical action. Perhaps Sir Redvers Buller would do it: +Bruce did. Mr Harrison accuses the ladies of the Idylls of +soul-bewildering casuistry, like that of women in _Middlemarch_ or +_Helbeck of Bannisdale_. Now I am not reminded by Guinevere, and Elaine, +and Enid, of ladies in these ethical novels. But the women of the +mediæval _Cours d’Amour_ (the originals from whom the old romancers drew) +were nothing if not casuists. “Spiritual delicacy” (as they understood +it) was their delight. + +Mr Harrison even argues that Malory’s men lived hot-blooded lives in +fierce times, “before an idea had arisen in the world of ‘reverencing +conscience,’ ‘leading sweet lives,’” and so on. But he admits that they +had “fantastic ideals of ‘honour’ and ‘love.’” As to “fantastic,” that +is a matter of opinion, but to have ideals and to live in accordance with +them is to “reverence conscience”, which the heroes of the romances are +said by Mr Harrison never to have had an idea of doing. They are denied +even “amiable words and courtliness.” Need one say that courtliness is +the dominant note of mediæval knights, in history as in romance? With +discourtesy Froissart would “head the count of crimes.” After a battle, +he says, Scots knights and English would thank each other for a good +fight, “not like the Germans.” “And now, I dare say,” said Malory’s Sir +Ector, “thou, Sir Lancelot, wast the curtiest knight that ever bare +shield, . . . and thou wast the meekest man and the gentlest that ever +ate in hall among ladies.” Observe Sir Lancelot in the difficult pass +where the Lily Maid offers her love: “Jesu defend me, for then I rewarded +your father and your brother full evil for their great goodness. . . . +But because, fair damsel, that ye love me as ye say ye do, I will, for +your good will and kindness, show you some goodness, . . . and always +while I live to be your true knight.” Here are “amiable words and +courtesy.” I cannot agree with Mr Harrison that Malory’s book is merely +“a fierce lusty epic.” That was not the opinion of its printer and +publisher, Caxton. He produced it as an example of “the gentle and +virtuous deeds that some knights used in these days, . . . noble and +renowned acts of humanity, gentleness, and chivalry. For herein may be +seen noble chivalry, courtesy, humanity, friendliness, love, cowardice, +murder, hate, virtue, and sin. Do after the good and leave the evil.” + +In reaction against the bold-faced heroines and sensual amours of some of +the old French romances, an ideal of exaggerated asceticism, of stainless +chastity, notoriously pervades the portion of Malory’s work which deals +with the Holy Grail. Lancelot is distraught when he finds that, by dint +of enchantment, he has been made false to Guinevere (Book XI. chap. +viii.) After his dreaming vision of the Holy Grail, with the reproachful +Voice, Sir Lancelot said, “My sin and my wickedness have brought me great +dishonour, . . . and now I see and understand that my old sin hindereth +and shameth me.” He was human, the Lancelot of Malory, and “fell to his +old love again,” with a heavy heart, and with long penance at the end. +How such good knights can be deemed conscienceless and void of courtesy +one knows not, except by a survival of the Puritanism of Ascham. But +Tennyson found in the book what is in the book—honour, conscience, +courtesy, and the hero— + + “Whose honour rooted in dishonour stood, + And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.” + +Malory’s book, which was Tennyson’s chief source, ends by being the +tragedy of the conscience of Lancelot. Arthur is dead, or “In Avalon he +groweth old.” The Queen and Lancelot might sing, as Lennox reports that +Queen Mary did after Darnley’s murder— + + “_Weel is me_ + _For I am free_.” + +“Why took they not their pastime?” Because conscience forbade, and +Guinevere sends her lover far from her, and both die in religion. Thus +Malory’s “fierce lusty epic” is neither so lusty nor so fierce but that +it gives Tennyson his keynote: the sin that breaks the fair +companionship, and is bitterly repented. + +“The knights are almost too polite to kill each other,” the critic urges. +In Malory they are sometimes quite too polite to kill each other. Sir +Darras has a blood-feud against Sir Tristram, and Sir Tristram is in his +dungeon. Sir Darras said, “Wit ye well that Sir Darras shall never +destroy such a noble knight as thou art in prison, howbeit that thou hast +slain three of my sons, whereby I was greatly aggrieved. But now shalt +thou go and thy fellows. . . . All that ye did,” said Sir Darras, “was +by force of knighthood, and that was the cause I would not put you to +death” (Book IX. chap. xl.) + +Tennyson is accused of “emasculating the fierce lusty epic into a moral +lesson, as if it were to be performed in a drawing-room by an academy of +young ladies”—presided over, I daresay, by “Anglican clergymen.” I know +not how any one who has read the _Morte d’Arthur_ can blame Tennyson in +the matter. Let Malory and his sources be blamed, if to be moral is to +be culpable. A few passages apart, there is no coarseness in Malory; +that there are conscience, courtesy, “sweet lives,” “keeping down the +base in man,” “amiable words,” and all that Tennyson gives, and, in Mr +Harrison’s theory, gives without authority in the romance, my quotations +from Malory demonstrate. They are chosen at a casual opening of his +book. That there “had not arisen in the world” “the idea of reverencing +conscience” before the close of the fifteenth century A.D. is an +extraordinary statement for a critic of history to offer. + +Mr Harrison makes his protest because “in the conspiracy of silence into +which Tennyson’s just fame has hypnotised the critics, it is bare honesty +to admit defects.” I think I am not hypnotised, and I do not regard the +Idylls as the crown of Tennyson’s work. But it is not his “defect” to +have introduced generosity, gentleness, conscience, and chastity where no +such things occur in his sources. Take Sir Darras: his position is that +of Priam when he meets Achilles, who slew his sons, except that Priam +comes as a suppliant; Sir Darras has Tristram in his hands, and may slay +him. He is “too polite,” as Mr Harrison says: he is too good a +Christian, or too good a gentleman. One would not have given a tripod +for the life of Achilles had he fallen into the hands of Priam. But +between 1200 B.C. (or so) and the date of Malory, new ideas about “living +sweet lives” had arisen. Where and when do they not arise? A British +patrol fired on certain Swazis in time of truce. Their lieutenant, who +had been absent when this occurred, rode alone to the stronghold of the +Swazi king, Sekukoeni, and gave himself up, expecting death by torture. +“Go, sir,” said the king; “we too are gentlemen.” The idea of a “sweet +life” of honour had dawned even on Sekukoeni: it lights up Malory’s +romance, and is reflected in Tennyson’s Idylls, doubtless with some +modernism of expression. + +That the Idylls represent no real world is certain. That Tennyson +modernises and moralises too much, I willingly admit; what I deny is that +he introduces gentleness, courtesy, and conscience where his sources have +none. Indeed this is not a matter of critical opinion, but of verifiable +fact. Any one can read Malory and judge for himself. But the world in +which the Idylls move could not be real. For more than a thousand years +different races, different ages, had taken hold of the ancient Celtic +legends and spiritualised them after their own manner, and moulded them +to their own ideals. There may have been a historical Arthur, _Comes +Britanniæ_, after the Roman withdrawal. _Ye Amherawdyr Arthur_, “the +Emperor Arthur,” may have lived and fought, and led the Brythons to +battle. But there may also have been a Brythonic deity, or culture hero, +of the same, or of a similar name, and myths about him may have been +assigned to a real Arthur. Again, the Arthur of the old Welsh legends +was by no means the blameless king—even in comparatively late French +romances he is not blameless. But the process of idealising him went on: +still incomplete in Malory’s compilation, where he is often rather otiose +and far from royal. Tennyson, for his purpose, completed the +idealisation. + +As to Guinevere, she was not idealised in the old Welsh rhyme— + + “Guinevere, Giant Ogurvan’s daughter, + Naughty young, more naughty later.” + +Of Lancelot, and her passion for him, the old Welsh has nothing to say. +Probably Chrétien de Troyes, by a happy blunder or misconception, gave +Lancelot his love and his pre-eminent part. Lancelot was confused with +Peredur, and Guinevere with the lady of whom Peredur was in quest. The +Elaine who becomes by Lancelot the mother of Galahad “was Lancelot’s +rightful consort, as one recognises in her name that of Elen, the +Empress, whom the story of Peredur” (Lancelot, by the confusion) “gives +that hero to wife.” The second Elaine, the maid of Astolat, is another +refraction from the original Elen. As to the Grail, it may be a +Christianised rendering of one or another of the magical and mystic +caldrons of Welsh or Irish legend. There is even an apparent Celtic +source of the mysterious fisher king of the Grail romance. {112} + +A sketch of the evolution of the Arthurian legends might run thus:— + + Sixth to eighth century, growth of myth about an Arthur, real, or + supposed to be real. + + Tenth century, the Duchies of Normandy and Brittany are in close + relations; by the eleventh century Normans know Celtic Arthurian + stories. + + After, 1066, Normans in contact with the Celtic peoples of this island + are in touch with the Arthur tales. + + 1130–1145, works on Arthurian matter by Geoffrey of Monmouth. + + 1155, Wace’s French translation of Geoffrey. + + 1150–1182, Chrétien de Troyes writes poems on Arthurian topics. + + French prose romances on Arthur, from, say, 1180 to 1250. Those + romances reach Wales, and modify, in translations, the original Welsh + legends, or, in part, supplant them. + + Amplifications and recastings are numerous. In 1485 Caxton publishes + Malory’s selections from French and English sources, the whole being + Tennyson’s main source, _Le Mort d’Arthur_. {113} + +Thus the Arthur stories, originally Celtic, originally a mass of +semi-pagan legend, myth, and _märchen_, have been retold and rehandled by +Norman, Englishman, and Frenchman, taking on new hues, expressing new +ideals—religious, chivalrous, and moral. Any poet may work his will on +them, and Tennyson’s will was to retain the chivalrous courtesy, +generosity, love, and asceticism, while dimly or brightly veiling or +illuminating them with his own ideals. After so many processes, from +folk-tale to modern idyll, the Arthurian world could not be real, and +real it is not. Camelot lies “out of space, out of time,” though the +colouring is mainly that of the later chivalry, and “the gleam” on the +hues is partly derived from Celtic fancy of various dates, and is partly +Tennysonian. + +As the Idylls were finally arranged, the first, _The Coming of Arthur_, +is a remarkable proof of Tennyson’s ingenuity in construction. Tales +about the birth of Arthur varied. In Malory, Uther Pendragon, the +Bretwalda (in later phrase) of Britain, besieges the Duke of Tintagil, +who has a fair wife, Ygerne, in another castle. Merlin magically puts on +Uther the shape of Ygerne’s husband, and as her husband she receives him. +On that night Arthur is begotten by Uther, and the Duke of Tintagil, his +mother’s husband, is slain in a sortie. Uther weds Ygerne; both +recognise Arthur as their child. However, by the Celtic custom of +fosterage the infant is intrusted to Sir Ector as his _dalt_, or +foster-child, and Uther falls in battle. Arthur is later approven king +by the adventure of drawing from the stone the magic sword that no other +king could move. This adventure answers to Sigmund’s drawing the sword +from the Branstock, in the Volsunga Saga, “Now men stand up, and none +would fain be the last to lay hand to the sword,” apparently stricken +into the pillar by Woden. “But none who came thereto might avail to pull +it out, for in nowise would it come away howsoever they tugged at it, but +now up comes Sigmund, King Volsung’s son, and sets hand to the sword, and +pulls it from the stock, even as if it lay loose before him.” The +incident in the Arthurian as in the Volsunga legend is on a par with the +Golden Bough, in the sixth book of the _Æneid_. Only the predestined +champion, such as Æneas, can pluck, or break, or cut the bough— + + “Ipse volens facilisque sequetu + Si te fata vocant.” + +All this ancient popular element in the Arthur story is disregarded by +Tennyson. He does not make Uther approach Ygerne in the semblance of her +lord, as Zeus approached Alcmena in the semblance of her husband, +Amphitryon. He neglects the other ancient test of the proving of Arthur +by his success in drawing the sword. The poet’s object is to enfold the +origin and birth of Arthur in a spiritual mystery. This is deftly +accomplished by aid of the various versions of the tale that reach King +Leodogran when Arthur seeks the hand of his daughter Guinevere, for +Arthur’s title to the crown is still disputed, so Leodogran makes +inquiries. The answers first leave it dubious whether Arthur is son of +Gorloïs, husband of Ygerne, or of Uther, who slew Gorloïs and married +her:— + + “Enforced she was to wed him in her tears.” + +The Celtic custom of fosterage is overlooked, and Merlin gives the child +to Anton, not as the customary _dalt_, but to preserve the babe from +danger. Queen Bellicent then tells Leodogran, from the evidence of +Bleys, Merlin’s master in necromancy, the story of Arthur’s miraculous +advent. + + “And down the wave and in the flame was borne + A naked babe, and rode to Merlin’s feet, + Who stoopt and caught the babe, and cried ‘The King! + Here is an heir for Uther!’” + +But Merlin, when asked by Bellicent to corroborate the statement of +Bleys, merely + + “Answer’d in riddling triplets of old time.” + +Finally, Leodogran’s faith is confirmed by a vision. Thus doubtfully, +amidst rumour and portent, cloud and spiritual light, comes Arthur: “from +the great deep” he comes, and in as strange fashion, at the end, “to the +great deep he goes”—a king to be accepted in faith or rejected by doubt. +Arthur and his ideal are objects of belief. All goes well while the +knights hold that + + “The King will follow Christ, and we the King, + In whom high God hath breathed a secret thing.” + +In history we find the same situation in the France of 1429— + + “The King will follow Jeanne, and we the King.” + +While this faith held, all went well; when the king ceased to follow, the +spell was broken,—the Maid was martyred. In this sense the poet +conceives the coming of Arthur, a sign to be spoken against, a test of +high purposes, a belief redeeming and ennobling till faith fails, and the +little rift within the lute, the love of Lancelot and Guinevere, makes +discord of the music. As matter of legend, it is to be understood that +Guinevere did not recognise Arthur when first he rode below her window— + + “Since he neither wore on helm or shield + The golden symbol of his kinglihood.” + +But Lancelot was sent to bring the bride— + + “And return’d + Among the flowers, in May, with Guinevere.” + +Then their long love may have begun, as in the story of Tristram sent to +bring Yseult to be the bride of King Mark. In Malory, however, Lancelot +does not come on the scene till after Arthur’s wedding and return from +his conquering expedition to Rome. Then Lancelot wins renown, “wherefore +Queen Guinevere had him in favour above all other knights; and in certain +he loved the Queen again above all other ladies damosels of his life.” +Lancelot, as we have seen, is practically a French creation, adopted to +illustrate the chivalrous theory of love, with its bitter fruit. Though +not of the original Celtic stock of legend, Sir Lancelot makes the +romance what it is, and draws down the tragedy that originally turned on +the sin of Arthur himself, the sin that gave birth to the traitor Modred. +But the mediæval romancers disguised that form of the story, and the +process of idealising Arthur reached such heights in the middle ages that +Tennyson thought himself at liberty to paint the _Flos Regum_, “the +blameless King.” He followed the _Brut ab Arthur_. “In short, God has +not made since Adam was, the man more perfect than Arthur.” This is +remote from the Arthur of the oldest Celtic legends, but justifies the +poet in adapting Arthur to the ideal hero of the Idylls:— + + “Ideal manhood closed in real man, + Rather than that grey king, whose name, a ghost, + Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain-peak, + And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still; or him + Of Geoffrey’s book, or him of Malleor’s, one + Touched by the adulterous finger of a time + That hovered between war and wantonness, + And crownings and dethronements.” + +The poetical beauties of _The Coming of Arthur_ excel those of _Gareth +and Lynette_. The sons of Lot and Bellicent seem to have been originally +regarded as the incestuous offspring of Arthur and his sister, the wife +of King Lot. Next it was represented that Arthur was ignorant of the +relationship. Mr Rhys supposes that the mythical scandal (still present +in Malory as a sin of ignorance) arose from blending the Celtic Arthur +(as Culture Hero) with an older divine personage, such as Zeus, who +marries his sister Hera. Marriages of brother and sister are familiar in +the Egyptian royal house, and that of the Incas. But the poet has a +perfect right to disregard a scandalous myth which, obviously +crystallised later about the figure of the mythical Celtic Arthur, was an +incongruous accretion to his legend. Gareth, therefore, is merely +Arthur’s nephew, not son, in the poem, as are Gawain and the traitor +Modred. The story seems to be rather mediæval French than Celtic—a +mingling of the spirit of _fabliau_ and popular fairy tale. The poet has +added to its lightness, almost frivolity, the description of the unreal +city of Camelot, built to music, as when + + “Ilion, like a mist, rose into towers.” + +He has also brought in the allegory of Death, which, when faced, proves +to be “a blooming boy” behind the mask. The courtesy and prowess of +Lancelot lead up to the later development of his character. + +In _The Marriage of Geraint_, a rumour has already risen about Lancelot +and the Queen, darkening the Court, and presaging + + “The world’s loud whisper breaking into storm.” + +For this reason Geraint removes Enid from Camelot to his own land—the +poet thus early leading up to the sin and the doom of Lancelot. But this +motive does not occur in the Welsh story of Enid and Geraint, which +Tennyson has otherwise followed with unwonted closeness. The tale occurs +in French romances in various forms, but it appears to have returned, by +way of France and coloured with French influences, to Wales, where it is +one of the later Mabinogion. The characters are Celtic, and Nud, father +of Edyrn, Geraint’s defeated antagonist, appears to be recognised by Mr +Rhys as “the Celtic Zeus.” The manners and the tournaments are French. +In the Welsh tale Geraint and Enid are bedded in Arthur’s own chamber, +which seems to be a symbolic commutation of the _jus primæ noctis_ a +custom of which the very existence is disputed. This unseemly +antiquarian detail, of course, is omitted in the Idyll. + +An abstract of the Welsh tale will show how closely Tennyson here follows +his original. News is brought into Arthur’s Court of the appearance of a +white stag. The king arranges a hunt, and Guinevere asks leave to go and +watch the sport. Next morning she cannot be wakened, though the tale +does not aver, like the Idyll, that she was + + “Lost in sweet dreams, and dreaming of her love + For Lancelot.” + +Guinevere wakes late, and rides through a ford of Usk to the hunt. +Geraint follows, “a golden-hilted sword was at his side, and a robe and a +surcoat of satin were upon him, and two shoes of leather upon his feet, +and around him was a scarf of blue purple, at each corner of which was a +golden apple”:— + + “But Guinevere lay late into the morn, + Lost in sweet dreams, and dreaming of her love + For Lancelot, and forgetful of the hunt; + But rose at last, a single maiden with her, + Took horse, and forded Usk, and gain’d the wood; + There, on a little knoll beside it, stay’d + Waiting to hear the hounds; but heard instead + A sudden sound of hoofs, for Prince Geraint, + Late also, wearing neither hunting-dress + Nor weapon, save a golden-hilted brand, + Came quickly flashing thro’ the shallow ford + Behind them, and so gallop’d up the knoll. + A purple scarf, at either end whereof + There swung an apple of the purest gold, + Sway’d round about him, as he gallop’d up + To join them, glancing like a dragon-fly + In summer suit and silks of holiday.” + +The encounter with the dwarf, the lady, and the knight follows. The +prose of the Mabinogi may be compared with the verse of Tennyson:— + + “Geraint,” said Gwenhwyvar, “knowest thou the name of that tall + knight yonder?” “I know him not,” said he, “and the strange armour + that he wears prevents my either seeing his face or his features.” + “Go, maiden,” said Gwenhwyvar, “and ask the dwarf who that knight + is.” Then the maiden went up to the dwarf; and the dwarf waited for + the maiden, when he saw her coming towards him. And the maiden + inquired of the dwarf who the knight was. “I will not tell thee,” he + answered. “Since thou art so churlish as not to tell me,” said she, + “I will ask him himself.” “Thou shalt not ask him, by my faith,” + said he. “Wherefore?” said she. “Because thou art not of honour + sufficient to befit thee to speak to my Lord.” Then the maiden + turned her horse’s head towards the knight, upon which the dwarf + struck her with the whip that was in his hand across the face and the + eyes, until the blood flowed forth. And the maiden, through the hurt + she received from the blow, returned to Gwenhwyvar, complaining of + the pain. “Very rudely has the dwarf treated thee,” said Geraint. + “I will go myself to know who the knight is.” “Go,” said Gwenhwyvar. + And Geraint went up to the dwarf. “Who is yonder knight?” said + Geraint. “I will not tell thee,” said the dwarf. “Then will I ask + him himself,” said he. “That wilt thou not, by my faith,” said the + dwarf; “thou art not honourable enough to speak with my Lord.” Said + Geraint, “I have spoken with men of equal rank with him.” And he + turned his horse’s head towards the knight; but the dwarf overtook + him, and struck him as he had done the maiden, so that the blood + coloured the scarf that Geraint wore. Then Geraint put his hand upon + the hilt of his sword, but he took counsel with himself, and + considered that it would be no vengeance for him to slay the dwarf, + and to be attacked unarmed by the armed knight, so he returned to + where Gwenhwyvar was. + + “And while they listen’d for the distant hunt, + And chiefly for the baying of Cavall, + King Arthur’s hound of deepest mouth, there rode + Full slowly by a knight, lady, and dwarf; + Whereof the dwarf lagg’d latest, and the knight + Had vizor up, and show’d a youthful face, + Imperious, and of haughtiest lineaments. + And Guinevere, not mindful of his face + In the King’s hall, desired his name, and sent + Her maiden to demand it of the dwarf; + Who being vicious, old and irritable, + And doubling all his master’s vice of pride, + Made answer sharply that she should not know. + ‘Then will I ask it of himself,’ she said. + ‘Nay, by my faith, thou shalt not,’ cried the dwarf; + ‘Thou art not worthy ev’n to speak of him’; + And when she put her horse toward the knight, + Struck at her with his whip, and she return’d + Indignant to the Queen; whereat Geraint + Exclaiming, ‘Surely I will learn the name,’ + Made sharply to the dwarf, and ask’d it of him, + Who answer’d as before; and when the Prince + Had put his horse in motion toward the knight, + Struck at him with his whip, and cut his cheek. + The Prince’s blood spirted upon the scarf, + Dyeing it; and his quick, instinctive hand + Caught at the hilt, as to abolish him: + But he, from his exceeding manfulness + And pure nobility of temperament, + Wroth to be wroth at such a worm, refrain’d + From ev’n a word.” + +The self-restraint of Geraint, who does not slay the dwarf, + + “From his exceeding manfulness + And pure nobility of temperament,” + +may appear “too polite,” and too much in accord with the still +undiscovered idea of “leading sweet lives.” However, the uninvented idea +does occur in the Welsh original: “Then Geraint put his hand upon the +hilt of his sword, but he took counsel with himself, and considered that +it would be no vengeance for him to slay the dwarf,” while he also +reflects that he would be “attacked unarmed by the armed knight.” +Perhaps Tennyson may be blamed for omitting this obvious motive for +self-restraint. Geraint therefore follows the knight in hope of finding +arms, and arrives at the town all busy with preparations for the +tournament of the sparrow-hawk. This was a challenge sparrow-hawk: the +knight had won it twice, and if he won it thrice it would be his to keep. +The rest, in the tale, is exactly followed in the Idyll. Geraint is +entertained by the ruined Yniol. The youth bears the “costrel” full of +“good purchased mead” (the ruined Earl not brewing for himself), and Enid +carries the manchet bread in her veil, “old, and beginning to be worn +out.” All Tennyson’s own is the beautiful passage— + + “And while he waited in the castle court, + The voice of Enid, Yniol’s daughter, rang + Clear thro’ the open casement of the hall, + Singing; and as the sweet voice of a bird, + Heard by the lander in a lonely isle, + Moves him to think what kind of bird it is + That sings so delicately clear, and make + Conjecture of the plumage and the form; + So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint; + And made him like a man abroad at morn + When first the liquid note beloved of men + Comes flying over many a windy wave + To Britain, and in April suddenly + Breaks from a coppice gemm’d with green and red, + And he suspends his converse with a friend, + Or it may be the labour of his hands, + To think or say, ‘There is the nightingale’; + So fared it with Geraint, who thought and said, + ‘Here, by God’s grace, is the one voice for me.’” + +Yniol frankly admits in the tale that he was in the wrong in the quarrel +with his nephew. The poet, however, gives him the right, as is natural. +The combat is exactly followed in the Idyll, as is Geraint’s insistence +in carrying his bride to Court in her faded silks. Geraint, however, +leaves Court with Enid, not because of the scandal about Lancelot, but to +do his duty in his own country. He becomes indolent and uxorious, and +Enid deplores his weakness, and awakes his suspicions, thus:— + + And one morning in the summer time they were upon their couch, and + Geraint lay upon the edge of it. And Enid was without sleep in the + apartment which had windows of glass. And the sun shone upon the + couch. And the clothes had slipped from off his arms and his breast, + and he was asleep. Then she gazed upon the marvellous beauty of his + appearance, and she said, “Alas, and am I the cause that these arms + and this breast have lost their glory and the warlike fame which they + once so richly enjoyed!” And as she said this, the tears dropped + from her eyes, and they fell upon his breast. And the tears she + shed, and the words she had spoken, awoke him; and another thing + contributed to awaken him, and that was the idea that it was not in + thinking of him that she spoke thus, but that it was because she + loved some other man more than him, and that she wished for other + society, and thereupon Geraint was troubled in his mind, and he + called his squire; and when he came to him, “Go quickly,” said he, + “and prepare my horse and my arms, and make them ready. And do thou + arise,” said he to Enid, “and apparel thyself; and cause thy horse to + be accoutred, and clothe thee in the worst riding-dress that thou + hast in thy possession. And evil betide me,” said he, “if thou + returnest here until thou knowest whether I have lost my strength so + completely as thou didst say. And if it be so, it will then be easy + for thee to seek the society thou didst wish for of him of whom thou + wast thinking.” So she arose, and clothed herself in her meanest + garments. “I know nothing, Lord,” said she, “of thy meaning.” + “Neither wilt thou know at this time,” said he. + + “At last, it chanced that on a summer morn + (They sleeping each by either) the new sun + Beat thro’ the blindless casement of the room, + And heated the strong warrior in his dreams; + Who, moving, cast the coverlet aside, + And bared the knotted column of his throat, + The massive square of his heroic breast, + And arms on which the standing muscle sloped, + As slopes a wild brook o’er a little stone, + Running too vehemently to break upon it. + And Enid woke and sat beside the couch, + Admiring him, and thought within herself, + Was ever man so grandly made as he? + Then, like a shadow, past the people’s talk + And accusation of uxoriousness + Across her mind, and bowing over him, + Low to her own heart piteously she said: + + ‘O noble breast and all-puissant arms, + Am I the cause, I the poor cause that men + Reproach you, saying all your force is gone? + I _am_ the cause, because I dare not speak + And tell him what I think and what they say. + And yet I hate that he should linger here; + I cannot love my lord and not his name. + Far liefer had I gird his harness on him, + And ride with him to battle and stand by, + And watch his mightful hand striking great blows + At caitiffs and at wrongers of the world. + Far better were I laid in the dark earth, + Not hearing any more his noble voice, + Not to be folded more in these dear arms, + And darken’d from the high light in his eyes, + Than that my lord thro’ me should suffer shame. + Am I so bold, and could I so stand by, + And see my dear lord wounded in the strife, + Or maybe pierced to death before mine eyes, + And yet not dare to tell him what I think, + And how men slur him, saying all his force + Is melted into mere effeminacy? + O me, I fear that I am no true wife.’ + + Half inwardly, half audibly she spoke, + And the strong passion in her made her weep + True tears upon his broad and naked breast, + And these awoke him, and by great mischance + He heard but fragments of her later words, + And that she fear’d she was not a true wife. + And then he thought, ‘In spite of all my care, + For all my pains, poor man, for all my pains, + She is not faithful to me, and I see her + Weeping for some gay knight in Arthur’s hall.’ + Then tho’ he loved and reverenced her too much + To dream she could be guilty of foul act, + Right thro’ his manful breast darted the pang + That makes a man, in the sweet face of her + Whom he loves most, lonely and miserable. + At this he hurl’d his huge limbs out of bed, + And shook his drowsy squire awake and cried, + ‘My charger and her palfrey’; then to her, + ‘I will ride forth into the wilderness; + For tho’ it seems my spurs are yet to win, + I have not fall’n so low as some would wish. + And thou, put on thy worst and meanest dress + And ride with me.’ And Enid ask’d, amazed, + ‘If Enid errs, let Enid learn her fault.’ + But he, ‘I charge thee, ask not, but obey.’ + Then she bethought her of a faded silk, + A faded mantle and a faded veil, + And moving toward a cedarn cabinet, + Wherein she kept them folded reverently + With sprigs of summer laid between the folds, + She took them, and array’d herself therein, + Remembering when first he came on her + Drest in that dress, and how he loved her in it, + And all her foolish fears about the dress, + And all his journey to her, as himself + Had told her, and their coming to the court.” + +Tennyson’s + + “Arms on which the standing muscle sloped, + As slopes a wild brook o’er a little stone, + Running too vehemently to break upon it,” + +is suggested perhaps by Theocritus—“The muscles on his brawny arms stood +out like rounded rocks that the winter torrent has rolled and worn +smooth, in the great swirling stream” (Idyll xxii.) + +The second part of the poem follows the original less closely. Thus +Limours, in the tale, is not an old suitor of Enid; Edyrn does not appear +to the rescue; certain cruel games, veiled in a magic mist, occur in the +tale, and are omitted by the poet; “Gwyffert petit, so called by the +Franks, whom the Cymry call the Little King,” in the tale, is not a +character in the Idyll, and, generally, the gross Celtic exaggerations of +Geraint’s feats are toned down by Tennyson. In other respects, as when +Geraint eats the mowers’ dinner, the tale supplies the materials. But it +does not dwell tenderly on the reconciliation. The tale is more or less +in the vein of “patient Grizel,” and he who told it is more concerned +with the fighting than with _amoris redintegratio_, and the sufferings of +Enid. The Idyll is enriched with many beautiful pictures from nature, +such as this:— + + “But at the flash and motion of the man + They vanish’d panic-stricken, like a shoal + Of darting fish, that on a summer morn + Adown the crystal dykes at Camelot + Come slipping o’er their shadows on the sand, + But if a man who stands upon the brink + But lift a shining hand against the sun, + There is not left the twinkle of a fin + Betwixt the cressy islets white in flower; + So, scared but at the motion of the man, + Fled all the boon companions of the Earl, + And left him lying in the public way.” + +In _Balin and Balan_ Tennyson displays great constructive power, and +remarkable skill in moulding the most recalcitrant materials. Balin or +Balyn, according to Mr Rhys, is the Belinus of Geoffrey of Monmouth, +“whose name represents the Celtic divinity described in Latin as Apollo +Belenus or Belinus.” {129a} In Geoffrey, Belinus, euphemerised, or +reduced from god to hero, has a brother, Brennius, the Celtic Brân, King +of Britain from Caithness to the Humber. Belinus drives Brân into exile. +“Thus it is seen that Belinus or Balyn was, mythologically speaking, the +natural enemy” (as Apollo Belinus, the radiant god) “of the dark divinity +Brân or Balan.” + +If this view be correct, the two brothers answer to the good and bad +principles of myths like that of the Huron Iouskeha the Sun, and +Anatensic the Moon, or rather Taouiscara and Iouskeha, the hostile +brothers, Black and White. {129b} These mythical brethren are, in +Malory, two knights of Northumberland, Balin the wild and Balan. Their +adventures are mixed up with a hostile Lady of the Lake, whom Balin slays +in Arthur’s presence, with a sword which none but Balin can draw from +sheath; and with an evil black-faced knight Garlon, invisible at will, +whom Balin slays in the castle of the knight’s brother, King Pellam. +Pursued from room to room by Pellam, Balin finds himself in a chamber +full of relics of Joseph of Arimathea. There he seizes a spear, the very +spear with which the Roman soldier pierced the side of the Crucified, and +wounds Pellam. The castle falls in ruins “through that dolorous stroke.” +Pellam becomes the maimed king, who can only be healed by the Holy Grail. +Apparently Celtic myths of obscure antiquity have been adapted in France, +and interwoven with fables about Joseph of Arimathea and Christian +mysteries. It is not possible here to go into the complicated learning +of the subject. In Malory, Balin, after dealing the dolorous stroke, +borrows a strange shield from a knight, and, thus accoutred, meets his +brother Balan, who does not recognise him. They fight, both die and are +buried in one tomb, and Galahad later achieves the adventure of winning +Balin’s sword. “Thus endeth the tale of Balyn and of Balan, two brethren +born in Northumberland, good knights,” says Malory, simply, and +unconscious of the strange mythological medley under the coat armour of +romance. + +The materials, then, seemed confused and obdurate, but Tennyson works +them into the course of the fatal love of Lancelot and Guinevere, and +into the spiritual texture of the Idylls. Balin has been expelled from +Court for the wildness that gives him his name, _Balin le Sauvage_. He +had buffeted a squire in hall. He and Balan await all challengers beside +a well. Arthur encounters and dismounts them. Balin devotes himself to +self-conquest. Then comes tidings that Pellam, of old leagued with Lot +against Arthur, has taken to religion, collects relics, claims descent +from Joseph of Arimathea, and owns the sacred spear that pierced the side +of Christ. But Garlon is with him, the knight invisible, who appears to +come from an Irish source, or at least has a parallel in Irish legend. +This Garlon has an unknightly way of killing men by viewless blows from +the rear. Balan goes to encounter Garlon. Balin remains, learning +courtesy, modelling himself on Lancelot, and gaining leave to bear +Guinevere’s Crown Matrimonial for his cognisance,—which, of course, Balan +does not know,— + + “As golden earnest of a better life.” + +But Balin sees reason to think that Lancelot and Guinevere love even too +well. + + “Then chanced, one morning, that Sir Balin sat + Close-bower’d in that garden nigh the hall. + A walk of roses ran from door to door; + A walk of lilies crost it to the bower: + And down that range of roses the great Queen + Came with slow steps, the morning on her face; + And all in shadow from the counter door + Sir Lancelot as to meet her, then at once, + As if he saw not, glanced aside, and paced + The long white walk of lilies toward the bower. + Follow’d the Queen; Sir Balin heard her ‘Prince, + Art thou so little loyal to thy Queen, + As pass without good morrow to thy Queen?’ + To whom Sir Lancelot with his eyes on earth, + ‘Fain would I still be loyal to the Queen.’ + ‘Yea so,’ she said, ‘but so to pass me by— + So loyal scarce is loyal to thyself, + Whom all men rate the king of courtesy. + Let be: ye stand, fair lord, as in a dream.’ + + Then Lancelot with his hand among the flowers, + ‘Yea—for a dream. Last night methought I saw + That maiden Saint who stands with lily in hand + In yonder shrine. All round her prest the dark, + And all the light upon her silver face + Flow’d from the spiritual lily that she held. + Lo! these her emblems drew mine eyes—away: + For see, how perfect-pure! As light a flush + As hardly tints the blossom of the quince + Would mar their charm of stainless maidenhood.’ + + ‘Sweeter to me,’ she said, ‘this garden rose + Deep-hued and many-folded sweeter still + The wild-wood hyacinth and the bloom of May. + Prince, we have ridd’n before among the flowers + In those fair days—not all as cool as these, + Tho’ season-earlier. Art thou sad? or sick? + Our noble King will send thee his own leech— + Sick? or for any matter anger’d at me?’ + + Then Lancelot lifted his large eyes; they dwelt + Deep-tranced on hers, and could not fall: her hue + Changed at his gaze: so turning side by side + They past, and Balin started from his bower. + + ‘Queen? subject? but I see not what I see. + Damsel and lover? hear not what I hear. + My father hath begotten me in his wrath. + I suffer from the things before me, know, + Learn nothing; am not worthy to be knight; + A churl, a clown!’ and in him gloom on gloom + Deepen’d: he sharply caught his lance and shield, + Nor stay’d to crave permission of the King, + But, mad for strange adventure, dash’d away.” + +Balin is “disillusioned,” his faith in the Ideal is shaken if not +shattered. He rides at adventure. Arriving at the half-ruined castle of +Pellam, that dubious devotee, he hears Garlon insult Guinevere, but +restrains himself. Next day, again insulted for bearing “the crown +scandalous” on his shield, he strikes Garlon down, is pursued, seizes the +sacred spear, and escapes. Vivien meets him in the woods, drops scandal +in his ears, and so maddens him that he defaces his shield with the crown +of Guinevere. Her song, and her words, + + “This fire of Heaven, + This old sun-worship, boy, will rise again, + And beat the cross to earth, and break the King + And all his Table,” + +might be forced into an allegory of the revived pride of life, at the +Renaissance and after. The maddened yells of Balin strike the ear of +Balan, who thinks he has met the foul knight Garlon, that + + “Tramples on the goodly shield to show + His loathing of our Order and the Queen.” + +They fight, fatally wound, and finally recognise each other: Balan trying +to restore Balin’s faith in Guinevere, who is merely slandered by Garlon +and Vivien. Balin acknowledges that his wildness has been their common +bane, and they die, “either locked in either’s arms.” + +There is nothing in Malory, nor in any other source, so far as I am +aware, which suggested to Tennyson the _clou_ of the situation—the use of +Guinevere’s crown as a cognisance by Balin. This device enables the poet +to weave the rather confused and unintelligible adventures of Balin and +Balan into the scheme, and to make it a stage in the progress of his +fable. That Balin was reckless and wild Malory bears witness, but his +endeavours to conquer himself and reach the ideal set by Lancelot are +Tennyson’s addition, with all the tragedy of Balin’s disenchantment and +despair. The strange fantastic house of Pellam, full of the most sacred +things, + + “In which he scarce could spy the Christ for Saints,” + +yet sheltering the human fiend Garlon, is supplied by Malory, whose +predecessors probably blended more than one myth of the old Cymry into +the romance, washed over with Christian colouring. As Malory tells this +part of the tale it is perhaps more strange and effective than in the +Idyll. The introduction of Vivien into this adventure is wholly due to +Tennyson: her appearance here leads up to her triumph in the poem which +follows, _Merlin and Vivien_. + +The nature and origin of Merlin are something of a mystery. Hints and +rumours of Merlin, as of Arthur, stream from hill and grave as far north +as Tweedside. If he was a historical person, myths of magic might +crystallise round him, as round Virgil in Italy. The process would be +the easier in a country where the practices of Druidry still lingered, +and revived after the retreat of the Romans. The mediæval romancers +invented a legend that Merlin was a virgin-born child of Satan. In +Tennyson he may be guessed to represent the fabled esoteric lore of old +religions, with their vague pantheisms, and such magic as the _tapas_ of +Brahmanic legends. He is wise with a riddling evasive wisdom: the +builder of Camelot, the prophet, a shadow of Druidry clinging to the +Christian king. His wisdom cannot avail him: if he beholds “his own +mischance with a glassy countenance,” he cannot avoid his shapen fate. +He becomes assotted of Vivien, and goes open-eyed to his doom. + +The enchantress, Vivien, is one of that dubious company of Ladies of the +Lake, now friendly, now treacherous. Probably these ladies are the +fairies of popular Celtic tradition, taken up into the more elaborate +poetry of Cymric literature and mediæval romance. Mr Rhys traces Vivien, +or Nimue, or Nyneue, back, through a series of palæographic changes and +errors, to Rhiannon, wife of Pwyll, a kind of lady of the lake he thinks, +but the identification is not very satisfactory. Vivien is certainly +“one of the damsels of the lake” in Malory, and the damsels of the lake +seem to be lake fairies, with all their beguilements and strange unstable +loves. “And always Merlin lay about the lady to have her maidenhood, and +she was ever passing weary of him, and fain would have been delivered of +him, for she was afraid of him because he was a devil’s son. . . . So by +her subtle working she made Merlin to go under that stone to let her wit +of the marvels there, but she wrought so there for him that he came never +out for all the craft he could do. And so she departed and left Merlin.” +The sympathy of Malory is not with the enchanter. In the Idylls, as +finally published, Vivien is born on a battlefield of death, with a +nature perverted, and an instinctive hatred of the good. Wherefore she +leaves the Court of King Mark to make mischief in Camelot. She is, in +fact, the ideal minx, a character not elsewhere treated by Tennyson:— + + “She hated all the knights, and heard in thought + Their lavish comment when her name was named. + For once, when Arthur walking all alone, + Vext at a rumour issued from herself + Of some corruption crept among his knights, + Had met her, Vivien, being greeted fair, + Would fain have wrought upon his cloudy mood + With reverent eyes mock-loyal, shaken voice, + And flutter’d adoration, and at last + With dark sweet hints of some who prized him more + Than who should prize him most; at which the King + Had gazed upon her blankly and gone by: + But one had watch’d, and had not held his peace: + It made the laughter of an afternoon + That Vivien should attempt the blameless King. + And after that, she set herself to gain + Him, the most famous man of all those times, + Merlin, who knew the range of all their arts, + Had built the King his havens, ships, and halls, + Was also Bard, and knew the starry heavens; + The people call’d him Wizard; whom at first + She play’d about with slight and sprightly talk, + And vivid smiles, and faintly-venom’d points + Of slander, glancing here and grazing there; + And yielding to his kindlier moods, the Seer + Would watch her at her petulance, and play, + Ev’n when they seem’d unloveable, and laugh + As those that watch a kitten; thus he grew + Tolerant of what he half disdain’d, and she, + Perceiving that she was but half disdain’d, + Began to break her sports with graver fits, + Turn red or pale, would often when they met + Sigh fully, or all-silent gaze upon him + With such a fixt devotion, that the old man, + Tho’ doubtful, felt the flattery, and at times + Would flatter his own wish in age for love, + And half believe her true: for thus at times + He waver’d; but that other clung to him, + Fixt in her will, and so the seasons went.” + +Vivien is modern enough—if any type of character is modern: at all events +there is no such Blanche Amory of a girl in the old legends and romances. +In these Merlin fatigues the lady by his love; she learns his arts, and +gets rid of him as she can. His forebodings in the Idyll contain a +magnificent image:— + + “There lay she all her length and kiss’d his feet, + As if in deepest reverence and in love. + A twist of gold was round her hair; a robe + Of samite without price, that more exprest + Than hid her, clung about her lissome limbs, + In colour like the satin-shining palm + On sallows in the windy gleams of March: + And while she kiss’d them, crying, ‘Trample me, + Dear feet, that I have follow’d thro’ the world, + And I will pay you worship; tread me down + And I will kiss you for it’; he was mute: + So dark a forethought roll’d about his brain, + As on a dull day in an Ocean cave + The blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall + In silence.” + +We think of the blinded Cyclops groping round his cave, like “the blind +wave feeling round his long sea-hall.” + +The richness, the many shining contrasts and immortal lines in _Vivien_, +seem almost too noble for a subject not easily redeemed, and the picture +of the ideal Court lying in full corruption. Next to _Elaine_, Jowett +wrote that he “admired _Vivien_ the most (the naughty one), which seems +to me a work of wonderful power and skill. It is most elegant and +fanciful. I am not surprised at your Delilah beguiling the wise man; she +is quite equal to it.” The dramatic versatility of Tennyson’s genius, +his power of creating the most various characters, is nowhere better +displayed than in the contrast between the _Vivien_ and the _Elaine_. +Vivien is a type, her adventure is of a nature, which he has not +elsewhere handled. Thackeray, who admired the Idylls so +enthusiastically, might have recognised in Vivien a character not unlike +some of his own, as dark as Becky Sharp, more terrible in her selfishness +than that Beatrix Esmond who is still a paragon, and, in her creator’s +despite, a queen of hearts. In Elaine, on the other hand, Tennyson has +drawn a girl so innocently passionate, and told a tale of love that never +found his earthly close, so delicately beautiful, that we may perhaps +place this Idyll the highest of his poems on love, and reckon it the gem +of the Idylls, the central diamond in the diamond crown. Reading +_Elaine_ once more, after an interval of years, one is captivated by its +grace, its pathos, its nobility. The poet had touched on some +unidentified form of the story, long before, in _The Lady of Shalott_. +That poem had the mystery of romance, but, in human interest, could not +compete with _Elaine_, if indeed any poem of Tennyson’s can be ranked +with this matchless Idyll. + +The mere invention, and, as we may say, _charpentage_, are of the first +order. The materials in Malory, though beautiful, are simple, and left a +field for the poet’s invention. {139} + +Arthur, with the Scots and Northern knights, means to encounter all +comers at a Whitsuntide tourney. Guinevere is ill, and cannot go to the +jousts, while Lancelot makes excuse that he is not healed of a wound. +“Wherefore the King was heavy and passing wroth, and so he departed +towards Winchester.” The Queen then blamed Lancelot: people will say +they deceive Arthur. “Madame,” said Sir Lancelot, “I allow your wit; it +is of late come that ye were wise.” In the Idyll Guinevere speaks as if +their early loves had been as conspicuous as, according to George +Buchanan, were those of Queen Mary and Bothwell. Lancelot will go to the +tourney, and, despite Guinevere’s warning, will take part against Arthur +and his own fierce Northern kinsmen. He rides to Astolat—“that is, +Gylford”—where Arthur sees him. He borrows the blank shield of “Sir +Torre,” and the company of his brother Sir Lavaine. Elaine “cast such a +love unto Sir Lancelot that she would never withdraw her love, wherefore +she died.” At her prayer, and for better disguise (as he had never worn +a lady’s favour), Lancelot carried her scarlet pearl-embroidered sleeve +in his helmet, and left his shield in Elaine’s keeping. The tourney +passes as in the poem, Gawain recognising Lancelot, but puzzled by the +favour he wears. The wounded Lancelot “thought to do what he might while +he might endure.” When he is offered the prize he is so sore hurt that +he “takes no force of no honour.” He rides into a wood, where Lavaine +draws forth the spear. Lavaine brings Lancelot to the hermit, once a +knight. “I have seen the day,” says the hermit, “I would have loved him +the worse, because he was against my lord, King Arthur, for some time. I +was one of the fellowship of the Round Table, but I thank God now I am +otherwise disposed.” Gawain, seeking the wounded knight, comes to +Astolat, where Elaine declares “he is the man in the world that I first +loved, and truly he is the last that ever I shall love.” Gawain, on +seeing the shield, tells Elaine that the wounded knight is Lancelot, and +she goes to seek him and Lavaine. Gawain does not pay court to Elaine, +nor does Arthur rebuke him, as in the poem. When Guinevere heard that +Lancelot bore another lady’s favour, “she was nigh out of her mind for +wrath,” and expressed her anger to Sir Bors, for Gawain had spoken of the +maid of Astolat. Bors tells this to Lancelot, who is tended by Elaine. +“‘But I well see,’ said Sir Bors, ‘by her diligence about you that she +loveth you entirely.’ ‘That me repenteth,’ said Sir Lancelot. Said Sir +Bors, ‘Sir, she is not the first that hath lost her pain upon you, and +that is the more pity.’” When Lancelot recovers, and returns to Astolat, +she declares her love with the frankness of ladies in mediæval romance. +“Have mercy upon me and suffer me not to die for thy love.” Lancelot +replies with the courtesy and the offers of service which became him. +“Of all this,” said the maiden, “I will none; for but if ye will wed me, +or be my paramour at the least, wit you well, Sir Lancelot, my good days +are done.” + +This was a difficult pass for the poet, living in other days of other +manners. His art appears in the turn which he gives to Elaine’s +declaration:— + + “But when Sir Lancelot’s deadly hurt was whole, + To Astolat returning rode the three. + There morn by morn, arraying her sweet self + In that wherein she deem’d she look’d her best, + She came before Sir Lancelot, for she thought + ‘If I be loved, these are my festal robes, + If not, the victim’s flowers before he fall.’ + And Lancelot ever prest upon the maid + That she should ask some goodly gift of him + For her own self or hers; ‘and do not shun + To speak the wish most near to your true heart; + Such service have ye done me, that I make + My will of yours, and Prince and Lord am I + In mine own land, and what I will I can.’ + Then like a ghost she lifted up her face, + But like a ghost without the power to speak. + And Lancelot saw that she withheld her wish, + And bode among them yet a little space + Till he should learn it; and one morn it chanced + He found her in among the garden yews, + And said, ‘Delay no longer, speak your wish, + Seeing I go to-day’: then out she brake: + ‘Going? and we shall never see you more. + And I must die for want of one bold word.’ + ‘Speak: that I live to hear,’ he said, ‘is yours.’ + Then suddenly and passionately she spoke: + ‘I have gone mad. I love you: let me die.’ + ‘Ah, sister,’ answer’d Lancelot, ‘what is this?’ + And innocently extending her white arms, + ‘Your love,’ she said, ‘your love—to be your wife.’ + And Lancelot answer’d, ‘Had I chosen to wed, + I had been wedded earlier, sweet Elaine: + But now there never will be wife of mine.’ + ‘No, no’ she cried, ‘I care not to be wife, + But to be with you still, to see your face, + To serve you, and to follow you thro’ the world.’ + And Lancelot answer’d, ‘Nay, the world, the world, + All ear and eye, with such a stupid heart + To interpret ear and eye, and such a tongue + To blare its own interpretation—nay, + Full ill then should I quit your brother’s love, + And your good father’s kindness.’ And she said, + ‘Not to be with you, not to see your face— + Alas for me then, my good days are done.’” + +So she dies, and is borne down Thames to London, the fairest corpse, “and +she lay as though she had smiled.” Her letter is read. “Ye might have +showed her,” said the Queen, “some courtesy and gentleness that might +have preserved her life;” and so the two are reconciled. + +Such, in brief, is the tender old tale of true love, with the shining +courtesy of Lavaine and the father of the maid, who speak no word of +anger against Lancelot. “For since first I saw my lord, Sir Lancelot,” +says Lavaine, “I could never depart from him, nor nought I will, if I may +follow him: she doth as I do.” To the simple and moving story Tennyson +adds, by way of ornament, the diamonds, the prize of the tourney, and the +manner of their finding:— + + “For Arthur, long before they crown’d him King, + Roving the trackless realms of Lyonnesse, + Had found a glen, gray boulder and black tarn. + A horror lived about the tarn, and clave + Like its own mists to all the mountain side: + For here two brothers, one a king, had met + And fought together; but their names were lost; + And each had slain his brother at a blow; + And down they fell and made the glen abhorr’d: + And there they lay till all their bones were bleach’d, + And lichen’d into colour with the crags: + And he, that once was king, had on a crown + Of diamonds, one in front, and four aside. + And Arthur came, and labouring up the pass, + All in a misty moonshine, unawares + Had trodden that crown’d skeleton, and the skull + Brake from the nape, and from the skull the crown + Roll’d into light, and turning on its rims + Fled like a glittering rivulet to the tarn: + And down the shingly scaur he plunged, and caught, + And set it on his head, and in his heart + Heard murmurs, ‘Lo, thou likewise shalt be King.’” + +The diamonds reappear in the scene of Guinevere’s jealousy:— + + “All in an oriel on the summer side, + Vine-clad, of Arthur’s palace toward the stream, + They met, and Lancelot kneeling utter’d, ‘Queen, + Lady, my liege, in whom I have my joy, + Take, what I had not won except for you, + These jewels, and make me happy, making them + An armlet for the roundest arm on earth, + Or necklace for a neck to which the swan’s + Is tawnier than her cygnet’s: these are words: + Your beauty is your beauty, and I sin + In speaking, yet O grant my worship of it + Words, as we grant grief tears. Such sin in words, + Perchance, we both can pardon: but, my Queen, + I hear of rumours flying thro’ your court. + Our bond, as not the bond of man and wife, + Should have in it an absoluter trust + To make up that defect: let rumours be: + When did not rumours fly? these, as I trust + That you trust me in your own nobleness, + I may not well believe that you believe.’ + + While thus he spoke, half turn’d away, the Queen + Brake from the vast oriel-embowering vine + Leaf after leaf, and tore, and cast them off, + Till all the place whereon she stood was green; + Then, when he ceased, in one cold passive hand + Received at once and laid aside the gems + There on a table near her, and replied: + + ‘It may be, I am quicker of belief + Than you believe me, Lancelot of the Lake. + Our bond is not the bond of man and wife. + This good is in it, whatsoe’er of ill, + It can be broken easier. I for you + This many a year have done despite and wrong + To one whom ever in my heart of hearts + I did acknowledge nobler. What are these? + Diamonds for me! they had been thrice their worth + Being your gift, had you not lost your own. + To loyal hearts the value of all gifts + Must vary as the giver’s. Not for me! + For her! for your new fancy. Only this + Grant me, I pray you: have your joys apart. + I doubt not that however changed, you keep + So much of what is graceful: and myself + Would shun to break those bounds of courtesy + In which as Arthur’s Queen I move and rule: + So cannot speak my mind. An end to this! + A strange one! yet I take it with Amen. + So pray you, add my diamonds to her pearls; + Deck her with these; tell her, she shines me down: + An armlet for an arm to which the Queen’s + Is haggard, or a necklace for a neck + O as much fairer—as a faith once fair + Was richer than these diamonds—hers not mine— + Nay, by the mother of our Lord himself, + Or hers or mine, mine now to work my will— + She shall not have them.’ + + Saying which she seized, + And, thro’ the casement standing wide for heat, + Flung them, and down they flash’d, and smote the stream. + Then from the smitten surface flash’d, as it were, + Diamonds to meet them, and they past away. + Then while Sir Lancelot leant, in half disdain + At love, life, all things, on the window ledge, + Close underneath his eyes, and right across + Where these had fallen, slowly past the barge + Whereon the lily maid of Astolat + Lay smiling, like a star in blackest night.” + +This affair of the diamonds is the chief addition to the old tale, in +which we already see the curse of lawless love, fallen upon the jealous +Queen and the long-enduring Lancelot. “This is not the first time,” said +Sir Lancelot, “that ye have been displeased with me causeless, but, +madame, ever I must suffer you, but what sorrow I endure I take no force” +(that is, “I disregard”). + +The romance, and the poet, in his own despite, cannot but make Lancelot +the man we love, not Arthur or another. Human nature perversely sides +with Guinevere against the Blameless King:— + + “She broke into a little scornful laugh: + ‘Arthur, my lord, Arthur, the faultless King, + That passionate perfection, my good lord— + But who can gaze upon the Sun in heaven? + He never spake word of reproach to me, + He never had a glimpse of mine untruth, + He cares not for me: only here to-day + There gleam’d a vague suspicion in his eyes: + Some meddling rogue has tamper’d with him—else + Rapt in this fancy of his Table Round, + And swearing men to vows impossible, + To make them like himself: but, friend, to me + He is all fault who hath no fault at all: + For who loves me must have a touch of earth; + The low sun makes the colour: I am yours, + Not Arthur’s, as ye know, save by the bond.” + +It is not the beautiful Queen who wins us, our hearts are with “the +innocence of love” in Elaine. But Lancelot has the charm that captivated +Lavaine; and Tennyson’s Arthur remains + + “The moral child without the craft to rule, + Else had he not lost me.” + +Indeed the romance of Malory makes Arthur deserve “the pretty popular +name such manhood earns” by his conduct as regards Guinevere when she is +accused by her enemies in the later chapters. Yet Malory does not +finally condone the sin which baffles Lancelot’s quest of the Holy Grail. + +Tennyson at first was in doubt as to writing on the Grail, for certain +respects of reverence. When he did approach the theme it was in a method +of extreme condensation. The romances on the Grail outrun the length +even of mediæval poetry and prose. They are exceedingly confused, as was +natural, if that hypothesis which regards the story as a Christianised +form of obscure Celtic myth be correct. Sir Percivale’s sister, in the +Idyll, has the first vision of the Grail:— + + “Sweet brother, I have seen the Holy Grail: + For, waked at dead of night, I heard a sound + As of a silver horn from o’er the hills + Blown, and I thought, ‘It is not Arthur’s use + To hunt by moonlight’; and the slender sound + As from a distance beyond distance grew + Coming upon me—O never harp nor horn, + Nor aught we blow with breath, or touch with hand, + Was like that music as it came; and then + Stream’d thro’ my cell a cold and silver beam, + And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail, + Rose-red with beatings in it, as if alive, + Till all the white walls of my cell were dyed + With rosy colours leaping on the wall; + And then the music faded, and the Grail + Past, and the beam decay’d, and from the walls + The rosy quiverings died into the night. + So now the Holy Thing is here again + Among us, brother, fast thou too and pray, + And tell thy brother knights to fast and pray, + That so perchance the vision may be seen + By thee and those, and all the world be heal’d.” + +Galahad, son of Lancelot and the first Elaine (who became Lancelot’s +mistress by art magic), then vows himself to the Quest, and, after the +vision in hall at Camelot, the knights, except Arthur, follow his +example, to Arthur’s grief. “Ye follow wandering fires!” Probably, or +perhaps, the poet indicates dislike of hasty spiritual enthusiasms, of +“seeking for a sign,” and of the mysticism which betokens want of faith. +The Middle Ages, more than many readers know, were ages of doubt. Men +desired the witness of the senses to the truth of what the Church taught, +they wished to see that naked child of the romance “smite himself into” +the wafer of the Sacrament. The author of the _Imitatio Christi_ +discourages such vain and too curious inquiries as helped to rend the +Church, and divided Christendom into hostile camps. The Quest of the +actual Grail was a knightly form of theological research into the +unsearchable; undertaken, often in a secular spirit of adventure, by +sinful men. The poet’s heart is rather with human things:— + + “‘O brother,’ ask’d Ambrosius,—‘for in sooth + These ancient books—and they would win thee—teem, + Only I find not there this Holy Grail, + With miracles and marvels like to these, + Not all unlike; which oftentime I read, + Who read but on my breviary with ease, + Till my head swims; and then go forth and pass + Down to the little thorpe that lies so close, + And almost plaster’d like a martin’s nest + To these old walls—and mingle with our folk; + And knowing every honest face of theirs + As well as ever shepherd knew his sheep, + And every homely secret in their hearts, + Delight myself with gossip and old wives, + And ills and aches, and teethings, lyings-in, + And mirthful sayings, children of the place, + That have no meaning half a league away: + Or lulling random squabbles when they rise, + Chafferings and chatterings at the market-cross, + Rejoice, small man, in this small world of mine, + Yea, even in their hens and in their eggs.”’ + +This appears to be Tennyson’s original reading of the Quest of the Grail. +His own mysticism, which did not strive, or cry, or seek after marvels, +though marvels might come unsought, is expressed in Arthur’s words:— + + “‘“And spake I not too truly, O my knights? + Was I too dark a prophet when I said + To those who went upon the Holy Quest, + That most of them would follow wandering fires, + Lost in the quagmire?—lost to me and gone, + And left me gazing at a barren board, + And a lean Order—scarce return’d a tithe— + And out of those to whom the vision came + My greatest hardly will believe he saw; + Another hath beheld it afar off, + And leaving human wrongs to right themselves, + Cares but to pass into the silent life. + And one hath had the vision face to face, + And now his chair desires him here in vain, + However they may crown him otherwhere. + + ‘“And some among you held, that if the King + Had seen the sight he would have sworn the vow: + Not easily, seeing that the King must guard + That which he rules, and is but as the hind + To whom a space of land is given to plow + Who may not wander from the allotted field + Before his work be done; but, being done, + Let visions of the night or of the day + Come, as they will; and many a time they come, + Until this earth he walks on seems not earth, + This light that strikes his eyeball is not light, + This air that smites his forehead is not air + But vision—yea, his very hand and foot— + In moments when he feels he cannot die, + And knows himself no vision to himself, + Nor the high God a vision, nor that One + Who rose again: ye have seen what ye have seen.” + + ‘So spake the King: I knew not all he meant.’” + +The closing lines declare, as far as the poet could declare them, these +subjective experiences of his which, in a manner rarely parallelled, +coloured and formed his thought on the highest things. He introduces +them even into this poem on a topic which, because of its sacred +associations, he for long did not venture to touch. + +In _Pelleas and Ettarre_—which deals with the sorrows of one of the young +knights who fill up the gaps left at the Round Table by the mischances of +the Quest—it would be difficult to trace a Celtic original. For Malory, +not Celtic legend, supplied Tennyson with the germinal idea of a poem +which, in the romance, has no bearing on the final catastrophe. Pelleas, +a King of the Isles, loves the beautiful Ettarre, “a great lady,” and for +her wins at a tourney the prize of the golden circlet. But she hates and +despises him, and Sir Gawain is a spectator when, as in the poem, the +felon knights of Ettarre bind and insult their conqueror, Pelleas. +Gawain promises to win the love of Ettarre for Pelleas, and, as in the +poem, borrows his arms and horse, and pretends to have slain him. But in +place of turning Ettarre’s heart towards Pelleas, Gawain becomes her +lover, and Pelleas, detecting them asleep, lays his naked sword on their +necks. He then rides home to die; but Nimue (Vivien), the Lady of the +Lake, restores him to health and sanity. His fever gone, he scorns +Ettarre, who, by Nimue’s enchantment, now loves him as much as she had +hated him. Pelleas weds Nimue, and Ettarre dies of a broken heart. +Tennyson, of course, could not make Nimue (his Vivien) do anything +benevolent. He therefore closes his poem by a repetition of the effect +in the case of Balin. Pelleas is driven desperate by the treachery of +Gawain, the reported infidelity of Guinevere, and the general corruption +of the ideal. A shadow falls on Lancelot and Guinevere, and Modred sees +that his hour is drawing nigh. In spite of beautiful passages this is +not one of the finest of the Idylls, save for the study of the fierce, +hateful, and beautiful _grande dame_, Ettarre. The narrative does little +to advance the general plot. In the original of Malory it has no +connection with the Lancelot cycle, except as far as it reveals the +treachery of Gawain, the gay and fair-spoken “light of love,” brother of +the traitor Modred. A simpler treatment of the theme may be read in Mr +Swinburne’s beautiful poem, _The Tale of Balen_. + +It is in _The Last Tournament_ that Modred finds the beginning of his +opportunity. The brief life of the Ideal has burned itself out, as the +year, in its vernal beauty when Arthur came, is burning out in autumn. +The poem is purposely autumnal, with the autumn, not of mellow +fruitfulness, but of the “flying gold of the ruined woodlands” and the +dank odours of decay. In that miserable season is held the Tourney of +the Dead Innocence, with the blood-red prize of rubies. With a wise +touch Tennyson has represented the Court as fallen not into vice only and +crime, but into positive vulgarity and bad taste. The Tournament is a +carnival of the “smart” and the third-rate. Courtesy is dead, even +Tristram is brutal, and in Iseult hatred of her husband is as powerful as +love of her lover. The satire strikes at England, where the world has +never been corrupt with a good grace. It is a passage of arms neither +gentle nor joyous that Lancelot presides over:— + + “The sudden trumpet sounded as in a dream + To ears but half-awaked, then one low roll + Of Autumn thunder, and the jousts began: + And ever the wind blew, and yellowing leaf + And gloom and gleam, and shower and shorn plume + Went down it. Sighing weariedly, as one + Who sits and gazes on a faded fire, + When all the goodlier guests are past away, + Sat their great umpire, looking o’er the lists. + He saw the laws that ruled the tournament + Broken, but spake not; once, a knight cast down + Before his throne of arbitration cursed + The dead babe and the follies of the King; + And once the laces of a helmet crack’d, + And show’d him, like a vermin in its hole, + Modred, a narrow face: anon he heard + The voice that billow’d round the barriers roar + An ocean-sounding welcome to one knight, + But newly-enter’d, taller than the rest, + And armour’d all in forest green, whereon + There tript a hundred tiny silver deer, + And wearing but a holly-spray for crest, + With ever-scattering berries, and on shield + A spear, a harp, a bugle—Tristram—late + From overseas in Brittany return’d, + And marriage with a princess of that realm, + Isolt the White—Sir Tristram of the Woods— + Whom Lancelot knew, had held sometime with pain + His own against him, and now yearn’d to shake + The burthen off his heart in one full shock + With Tristram ev’n to death: his strong hands gript + And dinted the gilt dragons right and left, + Until he groan’d for wrath—so many of those, + That ware their ladies’ colours on the casque, + Drew from before Sir Tristram to the bounds, + And there with gibes and flickering mockeries + Stood, while he mutter’d, ‘Craven crests! O shame! + What faith have these in whom they sware to love? + The glory of our Round Table is no more.’ + + So Tristram won, and Lancelot gave, the gems, + Not speaking other word than ‘Hast thou won? + Art thou the purest, brother? See, the hand + Wherewith thou takest this, is red!’ to whom + Tristram, half plagued by Lancelot’s languorous mood, + Made answer, ‘Ay, but wherefore toss me this + Like a dry bone cast to some hungry hound? + Let be thy fair Queen’s fantasy. Strength of heart + And might of limb, but mainly use and skill, + Are winners in this pastime of our King. + My hand—belike the lance hath dript upon it— + No blood of mine, I trow; but O chief knight, + Right arm of Arthur in the battlefield, + Great brother, thou nor I have made the world; + Be happy in thy fair Queen as I in mine.’ + + And Tristram round the gallery made his horse + Caracole; then bow’d his homage, bluntly saying, + ‘Fair damsels, each to him who worships each + Sole Queen of Beauty and of love, behold + This day my Queen of Beauty is not here.’ + And most of these were mute, some anger’d, one + Murmuring, ‘All courtesy is dead,’ and one, + ‘The glory of our Round Table is no more.’ + + Then fell thick rain, plume droopt and mantle clung, + And pettish cries awoke, and the wan day + Went glooming down in wet and weariness: + But under her black brows a swarthy one + Laugh’d shrilly, crying, ‘Praise the patient saints, + Our one white day of Innocence hath past, + Tho’ somewhat draggled at the skirt. So be it. + The snowdrop only, flowering thro’ the year, + Would make the world as blank as Winter-tide. + Come—let us gladden their sad eyes, our Queen’s + And Lancelot’s, at this night’s solemnity + With all the kindlier colours of the field.’” + +Arthur’s last victory over a robber knight is ingloriously squalid:— + + “He ended: Arthur knew the voice; the face + Wellnigh was helmet-hidden, and the name + Went wandering somewhere darkling in his mind. + And Arthur deign’d not use of word or sword, + But let the drunkard, as he stretch’d from horse + To strike him, overbalancing his bulk, + Down from the causeway heavily to the swamp + Fall, as the crest of some slow-arching wave, + Heard in dead night along that table-shore, + Drops flat, and after the great waters break + Whitening for half a league, and thin themselves, + Far over sands marbled with moon and cloud, + From less and less to nothing; thus he fell + Head-heavy; then the knights, who watch’d him, roar’d + And shouted and leapt down upon the fall’n; + There trampled out his face from being known, + And sank his head in mire, and slimed themselves: + Nor heard the King for their own cries, but sprang + Thro’ open doors, and swording right and left + Men, women, on their sodden faces, hurl’d + The tables over and the wines, and slew + Till all the rafters rang with woman-yells, + And all the pavement stream’d with massacre: + Then, echoing yell with yell, they fired the tower, + Which half that autumn night, like the live North, + Red-pulsing up thro’ Alioth and Alcor, + Made all above it, and a hundred meres + About it, as the water Moab saw + Come round by the East, and out beyond them flush’d + The long low dune, and lazy-plunging sea.” + +_Guinevere_ is one of the greatest of the Idylls. Malory makes Lancelot +more sympathetic; his fight, unarmed, in Guinevere’s chamber, against the +felon knights, is one of his most spirited scenes. Tennyson omits this, +and omits all the unpardonable behaviour of Arthur as narrated in Malory. +Critics have usually condemned the last parting of Guinevere and Arthur, +because the King doth preach too much to an unhappy woman who has no +reply. The position of Arthur is not easily redeemable: it is difficult +to conceive that a noble nature could be, or should be, blind so long. +He does rehabilitate his Queen in her own self-respect, perhaps, by +assuring her that he loves her still:— + + “Let no man dream but that I love thee still.” + +Had he said that one line and no more, we might have loved him better. +In the Idylls we have not Malory’s last meeting of Lancelot and +Guinevere, one of the scenes in which the wandering composite romance +ends as nobly as the _Iliad_. + +_The Passing of Arthur_, except for a new introductory passage of great +beauty and appropriateness, is the _Morte d’Arthur_, first published in +1842:— + + “So all day long the noise of battle roll’d + Among the mountains by the winter sea.” + +The year has run its course, spring, summer, gloomy autumn, and dies in +the mist of Arthur’s last wintry battle in the west— + + “And the new sun rose, bringing the new year.” + +The splendid and sombre procession has passed, leaving us to muse as to +how far the poet has fulfilled his own ideal. There could be no new +epic: he gave a chain of heroic Idylls. An epic there could not be, for +the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ have each a unity of theme, a narrative +compressed into a few days in the former, in the latter into forty days +of time. The tragedy of Arthur’s reign could not so be condensed; and +Tennyson chose the only feasible plan. He has left a work, not +absolutely perfect, indeed, but such as he conceived, after many +tentative essays, and such as he desired to achieve. His fame may not +rest chiefly on the Idylls, but they form one of the fairest jewels in +the crown that shines with unnumbered gems, each with its own glory. + + + + +VIII. +_ENOCH ARDEN_. THE DRAMAS. + + +THE success of the first volume of the Idylls recompensed the poet for +the slings and arrows that gave _Maud_ a hostile welcome. His next +publication was the beautiful _Tithonus_, a fit pendant to the _Ulysses_, +and composed about the same date (1833–35). “A quarter of a century +ago,” Tennyson dates it, writing in 1860 to the Duke of Argyll. He had +found it when “ferreting among my old books,” he said, in search of +something for Thackeray, who was establishing the _Cornhill Magazine_. +What must the wealth of the poet have been, who, possessing _Tithonus_ in +his portfolio, did not take the trouble to insert it in the volumes of +1842! Nobody knows how many poems of Tennyson’s never even saw pen and +ink, being composed unwritten, and forgotten. At this time we find him +recommending Mr Browning’s _Men and Women_ to the Duke, who, like many +Tennysonians, does not seem to have been a ready convert to his great +contemporary. The Duke and Duchess urged the Laureate to attempt the +topic of the Holy Grail, but he was not in the mood. Indeed the vision +of the Grail in the early _Sir Galahad_ is doubtless happier than the +allegorical handling of a theme so obscure, remote, and difficult, in the +Idylls. He wrote his _Boadicea_, a piece magnificent in itself, but of +difficult popular access, owing to the metrical experiment. + +In the autumn of 1860 he revisited Cornwall with F. T. Palgrave, Mr Val +Prinsep, and Mr Holman Hunt. They walked in the rain, saw Tintagel and +the Scilly Isles, and were fêted by an enthusiastic captain of a little +river steamer, who was more interested in “Mr Tinman and Mr Pancake” than +the Celtic boatman of Ardtornish. The winter was passed at Farringford, +and the _Northern Farmer_ was written there, a Lincolnshire reminiscence, +in the February of 1861. In autumn the Pyrenees were visited by Tennyson +in company with Arthur Clough and Mr Dakyns of Clifton College. At +Cauteretz in August, and among memories of the old tour with Arthur +Hallam, was written _All along the Valley_. The ways, however, in +Auvergne were “foul,” and the diet “unhappy.” The dedication of the +Idylls was written on the death of the Prince Consort in December, and in +January 1862 the Ode for the opening of an exhibition. The poet was busy +with his “Fisherman,” _Enoch Arden_. The volume was published in 1864, +and Lord Tennyson says it has been, next to _In Memoriam_, the most +popular of his father’s works. One would have expected the one volume +containing the poems up to 1842 to hold that place. The new book, +however, mainly dealt with English, contemporary, and domestic +themes—“the poetry of the affections.” An old woman, a district visitor +reported, regarded _Enoch Arden_ as “more beautiful” than the other +tracts which were read to her. It is indeed a tender and touching tale, +based on a folk-story which Tennyson found current in Brittany as well as +in England. Nor is the unseen and unknown landscape of the tropic isle +less happily created by the poet’s imagination than the familiar English +cliffs and hazel copses:— + + “The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns + And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven, + The slender coco’s drooping crown of plumes, + The lightning flash of insect and of bird, + The lustre of the long convolvuluses + That coil’d around the stately stems, and ran + Ev’n to the limit of the land, the glows + And glories of the broad belt of the world, + All these he saw; but what he fain had seen + He could not see, the kindly human face, + Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard + The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl, + The league-long roller thundering on the reef, + The moving whisper of huge trees that branch’d + And blossom’d in the zenith, or the sweep + Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave, + As down the shore he ranged, or all day long + Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge, + A shipwreck’d sailor, waiting for a sail: + No sail from day to day, but every day + The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts + Among the palms and ferns and precipices; + The blaze upon the waters to the east; + The blaze upon his island overhead; + The blaze upon the waters to the west; + Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven, + The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again + The scarlet shafts of sunrise—but no sail.” + +_Aylmer’s Field_ somewhat recalls the burden of _Maud_, the curse of +purse-proud wealth, but is too gloomy to be a fair specimen of Tennyson’s +art. In _Sea Dreams_ (first published in 1860) the awful vision of +crumbling faiths is somewhat out of harmony with its environment:— + + “But round the North, a light, + A belt, it seem’d, of luminous vapour, lay, + And ever in it a low musical note + Swell’d up and died; and, as it swell’d, a ridge + Of breaker issued from the belt, and still + Grew with the growing note, and when the note + Had reach’d a thunderous fulness, on those cliffs + Broke, mixt with awful light (the same as that + Living within the belt) whereby she saw + That all those lines of cliffs were cliffs no more, + But huge cathedral fronts of every age, + Grave, florid, stern, as far as eye could see, + One after one: and then the great ridge drew, + Lessening to the lessening music, back, + And past into the belt and swell’d again + Slowly to music: ever when it broke + The statues, king or saint or founder fell; + Then from the gaps and chasms of ruin left + Came men and women in dark clusters round, + Some crying, ‘Set them up! they shall not fall!’ + And others, ‘Let them lie, for they have fall’n.’ + And still they strove and wrangled: and she grieved + In her strange dream, she knew not why, to find + Their wildest wailings never out of tune + With that sweet note; and ever as their shrieks + Ran highest up the gamut, that great wave + Returning, while none mark’d it, on the crowd + Broke, mixt with awful light, and show’d their eyes + Glaring, and passionate looks, and swept away + The men of flesh and blood, and men of stone, + To the waste deeps together. + + ‘Then I fixt + My wistful eyes on two fair images, + Both crown’d with stars and high among the stars,— + The Virgin Mother standing with her child + High up on one of those dark minster-fronts— + Till she began to totter, and the child + Clung to the mother, and sent out a cry + Which mixt with little Margaret’s, and I woke, + And my dream awed me:—well—but what are dreams?” + +The passage is rather fitted for a despairing mood of Arthur, in the +Idylls, than for the wife of the city clerk ruined by a pious rogue. + +The _Lucretius_, later published, is beyond praise as a masterly study of +the great Roman sceptic, whose heart is at eternal odds with his +Epicurean creed. Nascent madness, or fever of the brain drugged by the +blundering love philtre, is not more cunningly treated in the mad scenes +of _Maud_. No prose commentary on the _De Rerum Natura_, however long +and learned, conveys so clearly as this concise study in verse the sense +of magnificent mingled ruin in the mind and poem of the Roman. + +The “Experiments in Quantity” were, perhaps, suggested by Mr Matthew +Arnold’s Lectures on the Translating of Homer. Mr Arnold believed in a +translation into English hexameters. His negative criticism of other +translators and translations was amusing and instructive: he had an easy +game to play with the Yankee-doodle metre of F. W. Newman, the ponderous +blank verse of Cowper, the tripping and clipping couplets of Pope, the +Elizabethan fantasies of Chapman. But Mr Arnold’s hexameters were +neither musical nor rapid: they only exhibited a new form of failure. As +the Prince of Abyssinia said to his tutor, “Enough; you have convinced me +that no man can be a poet,” so Mr Arnold went some way to prove that no +man can translate Homer. + +Tennyson had the lowest opinion of hexameters as an English metre for +serious purposes. + + “These lame hexameters the strong-wing’d music of Homer!” + +Lord Tennyson says, “German hexameters he disliked even more than +English.” Indeed there is not much room for preference. Tennyson’s +Alcaics (_Milton_) were intended to follow the Greek rather than the +Horatian model, and resulted, at all events, in a poem worthy of the +“mighty-mouth’d inventor of harmonies.” The specimen of the _Iliad_ in +blank verse, beautiful as it is, does not, somehow, reproduce the music +of Homer. It is entirely Tennysonian, as in + + “Roll’d the rich vapour far into the heaven.” + +The reader, in that one line, recognises the voice and trick of the +English poet, and is far away from the Chian:— + + “As when in heaven the stars about the moon + Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid, + And every height comes out, and jutting peak + And valley, and the immeasurable heavens + Break open to their highest, and all the stars + Shine, and the Shepherd gladdens in his heart: + So many a fire between the ships and stream + Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy, + A thousand on the plain; and close by each + Sat fifty in the blaze of burning fire; + And eating hoary grain and pulse the steeds, + Fixt by their cars, waited the golden dawn.” + +This is excellent, is poetry, escapes the conceits of Pope (who never +“wrote with his eye on the object”), but is pure Tennyson. We have not +yet, probably we never shall have, an adequate rendering of the _Iliad_ +into verse, and prose translations do not pretend to be adequate. When +parents and dominies have abolished the study of Greek, something, it +seems, will have been lost to the world,—something which even Tennyson +could not restore in English. He thought blank verse the proper +equivalent; but it is no equivalent. One even prefers his own prose:— + + Nor did Paris linger in his lofty halls, but when he had girt on his + gorgeous armour, all of varied bronze, then he rushed thro’ the city, + glorying in his airy feet. And as when a stall-kept horse, that is + barley-fed at the manger, breaketh his tether, and dasheth thro’ the + plain, spurning it, being wont to bathe himself in the fair-running + river, rioting, and reareth his head, and his mane flieth back on + either shoulder, and he glorieth in his beauty, and his knees bear + him at the gallop to the haunts and meadows of the mares; so ran the + son of Priam, Paris, from the height of Pergamus, all in arms, + glittering like the sun, laughing for light-heartedness, and his + swift feet bare him. + +In February 1865 Tennyson lost the mother whose portrait he drew in +_Isabel_,—“a thing enskied and sainted.” + +In the autumn of 1865 the Tennysons went on a Continental tour, and +visited Waterloo, Weimar, and Dresden; in September they entertained Emma +I., Queen of the Sandwich Islands. The months passed quietly at home or +in town. The poet had written his _Lucretius_, and, to please Sir George +Grove, wrote _The Song of the Wrens_, for music. Tennyson had not that +positive aversion to music which marked Dr Johnson, Victor Hugo, +Théophile Gautier, and some other poets. Nay, he liked Beethoven, which +places him higher in the musical scale than Scott, who did not rise above +a Border lilt or a Jacobite ditty. The Wren songs, entitled _The +Window_, were privately printed by Sir Ivor Guest in 1867, were set to +music by Sir Arthur Sullivan, and published by Strahan in December 1870. +“A puppet,” Tennyson called the song-book, “whose only merit is, perhaps, +that it can dance to Mr Sullivan’s instrument. I am sorry that my puppet +should have to dance at all in the dark shadow of these days” (the siege +of Paris), “but the music is now completed, and I am bound by my +promise.” The verses are described as “partly in the old style,” but the +true old style of the Elizabethan and cavalier days is lost. + +In the summer of 1867 the Tennysons moved to a farmhouse near Haslemere, +at that time not a centre of literary Londoners. “Sandy soil and +heather-scented air” allured them, and the result was the purchase of +land, and the building of Aldworth, Mr Knowles being the architect. In +autumn Tennyson visited Lyme Regis, and, like all other travellers +thither, made a pilgrimage to the Cobb, sacred to Louisa Musgrove. The +poet now began the study of Hebrew, having a mind to translate the Book +of Job, a vision unfulfilled. In 1868 he thought of publishing his +boyish piece, _The Lover’s Tale_, but delayed. An anonymously edited +piracy of this and other poems was perpetrated in 1875, limited, at least +nominally, to fifty copies. + +In July Longfellow visited Tennyson. “The Longfellows and he talked much +of spiritualism, for he was greatly interested in that subject, but he +suspended his judgment, and thought that, if in such manifestations there +is anything, ‘Pucks, not the spirits of dead men, reveal themselves.’” +This was Southey’s suggestion, as regards the celebrated disturbances in +the house of the Wesleys. “Wit might have much to say, wisdom, little,” +said Sam Wesley. Probably the talk about David Dunglas Home, the +“medium” then in vogue, led to the discussion of “spiritualism.” We do +not hear that Tennyson ever had the curiosity to see Home, whom Mr +Browning so firmly detested. + +In September _The Holy Grail_ was begun: it was finished “in about a +week. It came like a breath of inspiration.” The subject had for many +years been turned about in the poet’s mind, which, of course, was busy in +these years of apparent inactivity. At this time (August 1868) Tennyson +left his old publishers, the Moxons, for Mr Strahan, who endured till +1872. Then he was succeeded by Messrs H. S. King & Co., who gave place +(1879) to Messrs Kegan Paul & Co., while in 1884 Messrs Macmillan became, +and continue to be, the publishers. A few pieces, except _Lucretius_ +(_Macmillan’s Magazine_, May 1868) unimportant, appeared in serials. + +Very early in 1869 _The Coming of Arthur_ was composed, while Tennyson +was reading Browning’s _The Ring and the Book_. He and his great +contemporary were on terms of affectionate friendship, though Tennyson, +perhaps, appreciated less of Browning than Browning of Tennyson. +Meanwhile “Old Fitz” kept up a fire of unsympathetic growls at Browning +and all his works. “I have been trying in vain to read it” (_The Ring +and the Book_), “and yet the _Athenæum_ tells me it is wonderfully fine.” +FitzGerald’s ply had been taken long ago; he wanted verbal music in +poetry (no exorbitant desire), while, in Browning, _carmina desunt_. +Perhaps, too, a personal feeling, as if Browning was Tennyson’s rival, +affected the judgment of the author of _Omar Kháyyám_. We may almost +call him “the author.” + +_The Holy Grail_, with the smaller poems, such as _Lucretius_, was +published at the end of 1869. FitzGerald appears to have preferred _The +Northern Farmer_, “the substantial rough-spun nature I knew,” to all the +visionary knights in the airy Quest. To compare “—” (obviously Browning) +with Tennyson, was “to compare an old Jew’s curiosity shop with the +Phidian Marbles.” Tennyson’s poems “being clear to the bottom as well as +beautiful, do not seem to cockney eyes so deep as muddy waters.” + +In November 1870 _The Last Tournament_ was begun; it was finished in May +1871. Conceivably the vulgar scandals of the last days of the French +Imperial _régime_ may have influenced Tennyson’s picture of the +corruption of Arthur’s Court; but the Empire did not begin, like the +Round Table, with aspirations after the Ideal. In the autumn of the year +Tennyson entertained, and was entertained by, Mr Huxley. In their ideas +about ultimate things two men could not vary more widely, but each +delighted in the other’s society. In the spring of 1872 Tennyson visited +Paris and the ruins of the Louvre. He read Victor Hugo, and Alfred de +Musset, whose comedies he admired. The little that we hear of his +opinion of the other great poet runs to this effect, “Victor Hugo is an +unequal genius, sometimes sublime; he reminds one that there is but one +step between the sublime and the ridiculous,” but the example by which +Tennyson illustrated this was derived from one of the poet’s novels. In +these we meet not only the sublime and the ridiculous, but passages which +leave us in some perplexity as to their true category. One would have +expected Hugo’s lyrics to be Tennyson’s favourites, but only _Gastibelza_ +is mentioned in that character. At this time Tennyson was vexed by + + “Art with poisonous honey stolen from France,” + +a phrase which cannot apply to Hugo. Meanwhile _Gareth_ was being +written, and the knight’s song for _The Coming of Arthur_. _Gareth and +Lynette_, with minor pieces, appeared in 1872. _Balin and Balan_ was +composed later, to lead up to _Vivien_, to which, perhaps, _Balin and +Balan_ was introduction sufficient had it been the earlier written. But +the Idylls have already been discussed as arranged in sequence. The +completion of the Idylls, with the patriotic epilogue, was followed by +the offer of a baronetcy. Tennyson preferred that he and his wife +“should remain plain Mr and Mrs,” though “I hope that I have too much of +the old-world loyalty not to wear my lady’s favours against all comers, +should you think that it would be more agreeable to her Majesty that I +should do so.” + +The Idylls ended, Tennyson in 1874 began to contemplate a drama, choosing +the topic, perhaps neither popular nor in an Aristotelian sense tragic, +of Mary Tudor. This play was published, and put on the stage by Sir +Henry Irving in 1875. _Harold_ followed in 1876, _The Cup_ in 1881 (at +the Lyceum), _The Promise of May_ (at the Globe) in 1882, _Becket_ in +1884, with _The Foresters_ in 1892. It seems best to consider all the +dramatic period of Tennyson’s work, a period reached so strangely late in +his career, in the sequence of the Plays. The task is one from which I +shrink, as conscious of entire ignorance of the stage and of lack of +enthusiasm for the drama. Great dramatic authors have, almost +invariably, had long practical knowledge of the scenes and of what is +behind them. Shakespeare and his contemporaries, Molière and his +contemporaries, had lived their lives on the boards and in the _foyer_, +actors themselves, or in daily touch with actors and actresses. In the +present day successful playwrights appear to live much in the world of +the players. They have practical knowledge of the conventions and +conditions which the stage imposes. Neither Browning nor Mr Swinburne +(to take great names) has had, it seems, much of this practical and daily +experience; their dramas have been acted but rarely, if at all, and many +examples prove that neither poetical genius nor the genius for prose +fiction can enable men to produce plays which hold their own on the +boards. This may be the fault of public taste, or partly of public +taste, partly of defect in practical knowledge on the side of the +authors. Of the stage, by way of practice, Tennyson had known next to +nothing, yet his dramas were written to be acted, and acted some of them +were. “For himself, he was aware,” says his biographer, “that he wanted +intimate knowledge of the mechanical details necessary for the modern +stage, although in early and middle life he had been a constant playgoer, +and would keenly follow the action of a play, criticising the +characterisation, incidents, scenic effects, situations, language, and +dramatic points.” He was quite prepared to be “edited” for acting +purposes by the players. Miss Mary Anderson says that “he was ready to +sacrifice even his _most_ beautiful lines for the sake of a real dramatic +effect.” + +This proved unusual common-sense in a poet. Modern times and manners are +notoriously unfavourable to the serious drama. In the age of the Greek +tragedians, as in the days of “Eliza and our James,” reading was not very +common, and life was much more passed in public than among ourselves, +when people go to the play for light recreation, or to be shocked. So +various was the genius of Tennyson, that had he devoted himself early to +the stage, and had he been backed by a manager with the enterprise and +intelligence of Sir Henry Irving, it is impossible to say how much he +might have done to restore the serious drama. But we cannot regret that +he was occupied in his prime with other things, nor can we expect to find +his noblest and most enduring work in the dramatic experiments of his +latest years. It is notable that, in his opinion, “the conditions of the +dramatic art are much more complex than they were.” For example, we have +“the star system,” which tends to allot what is, or was, technically +styled “the fat,” to one or two popular players. Now, a poet like +Tennyson will inevitably distribute large quantities of what is most +excellent to many characters, and the consequent difficulties may be +appreciated by students of our fallen nature. The poet added that to be +a first-rate historical playwright means much more work than formerly, +seeing that “exact history” has taken the part of the “chance chronicle.” + +This is a misfortune. The dramas of the Attic stage, with one or two +exceptions, are based on myth and legend, not on history, and even in the +_Persæ_, grounded on contemporary events, Æschylus introduced the ghost +of Darius, not vouched for by “exact history.” Let us conceive +Shakespeare writing _Macbeth_ in an age of “exact history.” Hardly any +of the play would be left. Fleance and Banquo must go. Duncan becomes a +young man, and far from “gracious.” Macbeth appears as the defender of +the legitimist prince, Lulach, against Duncan, a usurper. Lady Macbeth +is a pattern to her sex, and her lord is a clement and sagacious ruler. +The witches are ruled out of the piece. Difficulties arise about the +English aid to Malcolm. History, in fact, declines to be dramatic. +Liberties must be taken. In his plays of the Mary Stuart cycle, Mr +Swinburne telescopes the affair of Darnley into that of Chastelard, which +was much earlier. He makes Mary Beaton (in love with Chastelard) a kind +of avenging fate, who will never leave the Queen till her head falls at +Fotheringay; though, in fact, after a flirtation with Randolph, Mary +Beaton married Ogilvy of Boyne (really in love with Lady Bothwell), and +not one of the four Maries was at Fotheringay. An artist ought to be +allowed to follow legend, of its essence dramatic, or to manipulate +history as he pleases. Our modern scrupulosity is pedantic. But +Tennyson read a long list of books for his _Queen Mary_, though it does +not appear that he made original researches in MSS. These labours +occupied 1874 and 1875. Yet it would be foolish to criticise his _Queen +Mary_ as if we were criticising “exact history.” “The play’s the thing.” + +The poet thought that “Bloody Mary” “had been harshly judged by the +verdict of popular tradition.” So have most characters to whom popular +dislike affixes the popular epithet—“Bloody Claverse,” “Bloody +Mackenzie,” “Bloody Balfour.” Mary had the courage of the Tudors. She +“edified all around her by her cheerfulness, her piety, and her +resignation to the will of Providence,” in her last days (Lingard). +Camden calls her “a queen never praised enough for the purity of her +morals, her charity to the poor” (she practised as a district visitor), +“and her liberality to the nobles and the clergy.” She was “pious, +merciful, pure, and ever to be praised, if we overlook her erroneous +opinions in religion,” says Godwin. She had been grievously wronged from +her youth upwards. In Elizabeth she had a sister and a rival, a constant +intriguer against her, and a kinswoman far from amiable. Despite “the +kindness and attention of Philip” (Lingard), affairs of State demanded +his absence from England. The disappointment as to her expected child +was cruel. She knew that she had become unpopular, and she could not +look for the success of her Church, to which she was sincerely attached. +M. Auguste Filon thought that _Queen Mary_ might secure dramatic rank for +Tennyson, “if a great actress arose who conceived a passion for the part +of Mary.” But that was not to be expected. Mary was middle-aged, plain, +and in aspect now terrible, now rueful. No great actress will throw +herself with passion into such an ungrateful part. “Throughout all +history,” Tennyson said, “there was nothing more mournful than the final +tragedy of this woman.” _Mournful_ it is, but not tragic. There is +nothing grand at the close, as when Mary Stuart conquers death and evil +fame, redeeming herself by her courage and her calm, and extending over +unborn generations that witchery which her enemies dreaded more than an +army with banners. + +Moreover, popular tradition can never forgive the fires of Smithfield. +It was Mary Tudor’s misfortune that she had the power to execute, on a +great scale, that faculty of persecution to the death for which her +Presbyterian and other Protestant opponents pined in vain. Mr Froude +says of her, “For the first and last time the true Ultramontane spirit +was dominant in England, the genuine conviction that, as the orthodox +prophets and sovereigns of Israel slew the worshippers of Baal, so were +Catholic rulers called upon, as their first duty, to extirpate heretics +as the enemies of God and man.” That was precisely the spirit of Knox +and other Presbyterian denouncers of death against “Idolaters” +(Catholics). But the Scottish preachers were always thwarted: Mary and +her advisers had their way, as, earlier, Latimer had preached against +sufferers at the stake. To the stake, which he feared so greatly, +Cranmer had sent persons not of his own fleeting shade of theological +opinion. These men had burned Anabaptists, but all that is lightly +forgotten by Protestant opinion. Under Mary (whoever may have been +primarily responsible) Cranmer and Latimer were treated as they had +treated others. Moreover, some two hundred poor men and women had dared +the fiery death. The persecution was on a scale never forgiven or +forgotten, since Mary began _cerdonibus esse timenda_. Mary was not +essentially inclement. Despite Renard, the agent of the Emperor, she +spared that lord of fluff and feather, Courtenay, and she spared +Elizabeth. Lady Jane she could not save, the girl who was a queen by +grace of God and of her own royal nature. But Mary will never be +pardoned by England. “Few men or women have lived less capable of doing +knowingly a wrong thing,” says Mr Froude, a great admirer of Tennyson’s +play. Yet, taking Mr Froude’s own view, Mary’s abject and superannuated +passion for Philip; her ecstasies during her supposed pregnancy; “the +forlorn hours when she would sit on the ground with her knees drawn to +her face,” with all her “symptoms of hysterical derangement, leave little +room, as we think of her, for other feelings than pity.” Unfortunately, +feelings of pity for a person so distraught, so sourly treated by +fortune, do not suffice for tragedy. When we contemplate Antigone or +Œdipus, it is not with a sentiment of pity struggling against abhorrence. + +For these reasons the play does not seem to have a good dramatic subject. +The unity is given by Mary herself and her fortunes, and these are +scarcely dramatic. History prevents the introduction of Philip till the +second scene of the third act. His entrance is _manqué_; he merely +accompanies Cardinal Pole, who takes command of the scene, and Philip +does not get in a word till after a long conversation between the Queen +and the Cardinal. Previously Philip had only crossed the stage in a +procession, yet when he does appear he is bereft of prominence. The +interest as regards him is indicated, in Act I. scene v., by Mary’s +kissing his miniature. Her blighted love for him is one main motive of +the tragedy, but his own part appears too subordinate in the play as +published. The interest is scattered among the vast crowd of characters; +and Mr R. H. Hutton remarked at the time that he “remains something of a +cold, cruel, and sensual shadow.” We are more interested in Wyatt, +Cranmer, Gardiner, and others; or at least their parts are more +interesting. Yet in no case does the interest of any character, except +of Mary and Elizabeth, remain continuous throughout the play. Tennyson +himself thought that “the real difficulty of the drama is to give +sufficient relief to its intense sadness. . . . Nothing less than the +holy calm of the meek and penitent Cranmer can be adequate artistic +relief.” But not much relief can be drawn from a man about to be burned +alive, and history does not tempt us to keen sympathy with the recanting +archbishop, at least if we agree with Macaulay rather than with Froude. + +I venture to think that historical tradition, as usual, offered a better +motive than exact history. Following tradition, we see in Mary a cloud +of hateful gloom, from which England escapes into the glorious dawn of +“the Gospel light,” and of Elizabeth, who might be made a triumphantly +sympathetic character. That is the natural and popular course which the +drama might take. But Tennyson’s history is almost critical and +scientific. Points of difficult and debated evidence (as to Elizabeth’s +part in Wyatt’s rebellion) are discussed. There is no contest of day and +darkness, of Truth and Error. The characters are in that perplexed +condition about creeds which was their actual state after the political +and social and religious chaos produced by Henry VIII. Gardiner is a +Catholic, but not an Ultramontane; Lord William Howard is a Catholic, but +not a fanatic; we find a truculent Anabaptist, or Socialist, and a +citizen whose pride is his moderation. The native uncritical tendency of +the drama is to throw up hats and halloo for Elizabeth and an open Bible. +In place of this, Cecil delivers a well-considered analysis of the +character of Elizabeth:— + + “_Eliz._ God guide me lest I lose the way. + + [_Exit Elizabeth_. + + _Cecil_. Many points weather’d, many perilous ones, + At last a harbour opens; but therein + Sunk rocks—they need fine steering—much it is + To be nor mad, nor bigot—have a mind— + Nor let Priests’ talk, or dream of worlds to be, + Miscolour things about her—sudden touches + For him, or him—sunk rocks; no passionate faith— + But—if let be—balance and compromise; + Brave, wary, sane to the heart of her—a Tudor + School’d by the shadow of death—a Boleyn, too, + Glancing across the Tudor—not so well.” + +This is excellent as historical criticism, in the favourable sense; but +the drama, by its nature, demands something not critical but triumphant +and one-sided. The character of Elizabeth is one of the best in the +play, as her soliloquy (Act III. scene v.) is one of the finest of the +speeches. We see her courage, her coquetry, her dissimulation, her +arrogance. But while this is the true Elizabeth, it is not the idealised +Elizabeth whom English loyalty created, lived for, and died for. Mr +Froude wrote, “You have given us the greatest of all your works,” an +opinion which the world can never accept. “You have reclaimed one more +section of English History from the wilderness, and given it a form in +which it will be fixed for ever. No one since Shakespeare has done +that.” But Mr Froude had done it, and Tennyson’s reading of “the +section” is mainly that of Mr Froude. Mr Gladstone found that Cranmer +and Gardiner “are still in a considerable degree mysteries to me.” A +mystery Cranmer must remain. Perhaps the “crowds” and “Voices” are not +the least excellent of the characters, Tennyson’s humour finding an +opportunity in them, and in Joan and Tib. His idyllic charm speaks in +the words of Lady Clarence to the fevered Queen; and there is dramatic +genius in her reply:— + + “_Mary_. What is the strange thing happiness? Sit down here: + Tell me thine happiest hour. + + _Lady Clarence_. I will, if that + May make your Grace forget yourself a little. + There runs a shallow brook across our field + For twenty miles, where the black crow flies five, + And doth so bound and babble all the way + As if itself were happy. It was May-time, + And I was walking with the man I loved. + I loved him, but I thought I was not loved. + And both were silent, letting the wild brook + Speak for us—till he stoop’d and gather’d one + From out a bed of thick forget-me-nots, + Look’d hard and sweet at me, and gave it me. + I took it, tho’ I did not know I took it, + And put it in my bosom, and all at once + I felt his arms about me, and his lips— + + _Mary_. O God! I have been too slack, too slack; + There are Hot Gospellers even among our guards— + Nobles we dared not touch. We have but burnt + The heretic priest, workmen, and women and children. + Wet, famine, ague, fever, storm, wreck, wrath,— + We have so play’d the coward; but by God’s grace, + We’ll follow Philip’s leading, and set up + The Holy Office here—garner the wheat, + And burn the tares with unquenchable fire!” + +The conclusion, in the acting edition, printed in the Biography, appears +to be an improvement on that in the text as originally published. +Unhappy as the drama essentially is, the welcome which Mr Browning gave +both to the published work and to the acted play—“a complete success”: +“conception, execution, the whole and the parts, I see nowhere the shadow +of a fault”—offers “relief” in actual human nature. “He is the +greatest-brained poet in England,” Tennyson said, on a later occasion. +“Violets fade, he has given me a crown of gold.” + +Before writing _Harold_ (1876) the poet “studied many recent plays,” and +re-read Æschylus and Sophocles. For history he went to the Bayeux +tapestry, the _Roman de Rou_, Lord Lytton, and Freeman. Students of a +recent controversy will observe that, following Freeman, he retains the +famous palisade, so grievously battered by the axe-strokes of Mr Horace +Round. _Harold_ is a piece more compressed, and much more in accordance +with the traditions of the drama, than _Queen Mary_. The topic is tragic +indeed: the sorrow being that of a great man, a great king, the bulwark +of a people that fell with his fall. Moreover, as the topic is treated, +the play is rich in the irony usually associated with the name of +Sophocles. Victory comes before a fall. Harold, like Antigone, is torn +between two duties—his oath and the claims of his country. His ruin +comes from what Aristotle would call his _ἁμαρτία_, his fault in swearing +the oath to William. The hero himself; recking little, after a +superstitious moment, of the concealed relics over which he swore, deems +his offence to lie in swearing a vow which he never meant to keep. The +persuasions which urge him to this course are admirably presented: +England, Edith, his brother’s freedom, were at stake. Casuistry, or even +law, would have absolved him easily; an oath taken under duresse is of no +avail. But Harold’s “honour rooted in dishonour stood,” and he cannot so +readily absolve himself. Bruce and the bishops who stood by Bruce had no +such scruples: they perjured themselves often, on the most sacred relics, +especially the bishops. But Harold rises above the mediæval and magical +conception of the oath, and goes to his doom conscious of a stain on his +honour, of which only a deeper stain, that of falseness to his country, +could make him clean. This is a truly tragic stroke of destiny. The +hero’s character is admirably noble, patient, and simple. The Confessor +also is as true in art as to history, and his vision of the fall and rise +of England is a noble passage. In Aldwyth we have something of Vivien, +with a grain of conscience, and the part of Edith Swan’s-neck has a +restrained and classic pathos in contrast with the melancholy of +Wulfnoth. The piece, as the poet said, is a “tragedy of doom,” of +deepening and darkening omens, as in the _Odyssey_ and _Njal’s Saga_. +The battle scene, with the choruses of the monks, makes a noble close. + +FitzGerald remained loyal, but it was to “a fairy Prince who came from +other skies than these rainy ones,” and “the wretched critics,” as G. H. +Lewes called them, seem to have been unfriendly. In fact (besides the +innate wretchedness of all critics), they grudged the time and labour +given to the drama, in an undramatic age. _Harold_ had not what +FitzGerald called “the old champagne flavour” of the vintage of 1842. + +_Becket_ was begun in 1876, printed in 1879, and published in 1884. +Before that date, in 1880, Tennyson produced one of the volumes of poetry +which was more welcome than a play to most of his admirers. The +intervening years passed in the Isle of Wight, at Aldworth, in town, and +in summer tours, were of no marked biographical interest. The poet was +close on three score and ten—he reached that limit in 1879. The days +darkened around him, as darken they must: in the spring of 1879 he lost +his favourite brother, himself a poet of original genius, Charles +Tennyson Turner. In May of the same year he published _The Lover’s +Tale_, which has been treated here among his earliest works. His hours, +and (to some extent) his meals, were regulated by Sir Andrew Clark. He +planted trees, walked, read, loitered in his garden, and kept up his old +friendships, while he made that of the great Gordon. Compliments passed +between him and Victor Hugo, who had entertained Lionel Tennyson in +Paris, and wrote: “Je lis avec émotion vos vers superbes; c’est un reflet +de gloire que vous m’envoyez.” Mr Matthew Arnold’s compliment was very +like Mr Arnold’s humour: “Your father has been our most popular poet for +over forty years, and I am of opinion that he fully deserves his +reputation”: such was “Mat’s sublime waggery.” Tennyson heaped coals of +fire on the other poet, bidding him, as he liked to be bidden, to write +more poetry, not “prose things.” Tennyson lived much in the society of +Browning and George Eliot, and made the acquaintance of Renan. In +December 1879 Mr and Mrs Kendal produced _The Falcon_, which ran for +sixty-seven nights; it is “an exquisite little poem in action,” as Fanny +Kemble said. During a Continental tour Tennyson visited Catullus’s +Sirmio: “here he made his _Frater Ave atque Vale_,” and the poet composed +his beautiful salutation to the + + “Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago.” + +In 1880 _Ballads and other Poems_ proved that, like Titian, the great +poet was not to be defeated by the years. _The First Quarrel_ was in his +most popular English style. _Rizpah_ deserved and received the splendid +panegyric of Mr Swinburne. _The Revenge_ is probably the finest of the +patriotic pieces, and keeps green the memory of an exploit the most +marvellous in the annals of English seamen. _The Village Wife_ is a +pendant worthy of _The Northern Farmer_. The poem _In the Children’s +Hospital_ caused some irritation at the moment, but there was only one +opinion as to the _Defence of Lucknow_ and the beautiful re-telling of +the Celtic _Voyage of Maeldune_. The fragment of Homeric translation was +equally fortunate in choice of subject and in rendering. + +In the end of 1880 the poet finished _The Cup_, which had been worked on +occasionally since he completed _The Falcon_ in 1880. The piece was read +by the author to Sir Henry Irving and his company, and it was found that +the manuscript copy needed few alterations to fit it for the stage. The +scenery and the acting of the protagonists are not easily to be +forgotten. The play ran for a hundred and thirty nights. Sir Henry +Irving had thought that _Becket_ (then unpublished) would prove too +expensive, and could only be a _succès d’estime_. Tennyson had found out +that “the worst of writing for the stage is, you must keep some actor +always in your mind.” To this necessity authors like Molière and +Shakespeare were, of course, resigned and familiar; they knew exactly how +to deal with all their means. But this part of the business of +play-writing must always be a cross to the poet who is not at one with +the world of the stage. + +In _The Cup_ Miss Ellen Terry made the strongest impression, her part +being noble and sympathetic, while Sir Henry Irving had the ungrateful +part of the villain. To be sure, he was a villain of much complexity; +and Tennyson thought that his subtle blend of Roman refinement and +intellectuality, and barbarian, self-satisfied sensuality, was not “hit +off.” Synorix is, in fact, half-Greek, half-Celt, with a Roman +education, and the “blend” is rather too remote for successful +representation. The traditional villain, from Iago downwards, is not apt +to utter such poetry as this:— + + “O Thou, that dost inspire the germ with life, + The child, a thread within the house of birth, + And give him limbs, then air, and send him forth + The glory of his father—Thou whose breath + Is balmy wind to robe our bills with grass, + And kindle all our vales with myrtle-blossom, + And roll the golden oceans of our grain, + And sway the long grape-bunches of our vines, + And fill all hearts with fatness and the lust + Of plenty—make me happy in my marriage!” + +The year 1881 brought the death of another of the old Cambridge friends, +James Spedding, the biographer of Bacon; and Carlyle also died, a true +friend, if rather intermittent in his appreciation of poetry. The real +Carlyle did appreciate it, but the Carlyle of attitude was too much of +the iron Covenanter to express what he felt. The poem _Despair_ +irritated the earnest and serious readers of “know-nothing books.” The +poem expressed, dramatically, a mood like another, a human mood not so +very uncommon. A man ruined in this world’s happiness curses the faith +of his youth, and the unfaith of his reading and reflection, and tries to +drown himself. This is one conclusion of the practical syllogism, and it +is a free country. However, there were freethinkers who did not think +that Tennyson’s kind of thinking ought to be free. Other earnest persons +objected to “First drink a health,” in the re-fashioned song of _Hands +all Round_. They might have remembered a royal health drunk in water an +hour before the drinkers swept Mackay down the Pass of Killiecrankie. +The poet did not specify the fluid in which the toast was to be carried, +and the cup might be that which “cheers but not inebriates.” “The common +cup,” as the remonstrants had to be informed, “has in all ages been the +sacred symbol of unity.” + +_The Promise of May_ was produced in November 1882, and the poet was once +more so unfortunate as to vex the susceptibilities of advanced thinkers. +The play is not a masterpiece, and yet neither the gallery gods nor the +Marquis of Queensberry need have felt their withers wrung. The hero, or +villain, Edgar, is a perfectly impossible person, and represents no kind +of political, social, or economical thinker. A man would give all other +bliss and all his worldly wealth for this, to waste his whole strength in +one kick upon this perfect prig. He employs the arguments of evolution +and so forth to justify the seduction of a little girl of fifteen, and +later, by way of making amends, proposes to commit incest by marrying her +sister. There have been evolutionists, to be sure, who believed in +promiscuity, like Mr Edgar, as preferable to monogamy. But this only +proves that an evolutionist may fail to understand evolution. There be +also such folk as Stevenson calls “squirradicals”—squires who say that +“the land is the people’s.” Probably no advocate of promiscuity, and no +squirradical, was present at the performances of _The Promise of May_. +But people of advanced minds had got it into their heads that their +doctrines were to be attacked, so they went and made a hubbub in the +sacred cause of freedom of thought and speech. The truth is, that +controversial topics, political topics, ought not to be brought into +plays, much less into sermons. Tennyson meant Edgar for “nothing +thorough, nothing sincere.” He is that venomous thing, the +prig-scoundrel: he does not suit the stage, and his place, if anywhere, +is in the novel. Advocates of marriage with a deceased wife’s sister +might have applauded Edgar for wishing to marry the sister of a mistress +assumed to be deceased, but no other party in the State wanted anything +except the punching of Edgar’s head by Farmer Dobson. + +In 1883 died Edward FitzGerald, the most kind, loyal, and, as he said, +crotchety of old and dear Cambridge friends. He did not live to see the +delightful poem which Tennyson had written for him. In almost his latest +letter he had remarked, superfluously, that when he called the task of +translating _The Agamemnon_ “work for a poet,” he “was not thinking of Mr +Browning.” + +In the autumn of 1883 Tennyson was taken, with Mr Gladstone, by Sir +Donald Currie, for a cruise round the west coast of Scotland, to the +Orkneys, and to Copenhagen. The people of Kirkwall conferred on the poet +and the statesman the freedom of the burgh, and Mr Gladstone, in an +interesting speech, compared the relative chances of posthumous fame of +the poet and the politician. Pericles is not less remembered than +Sophocles, though Shakespeare is more in men’s minds than Cecil. Much +depends, as far as the statesmen are considered, on contemporary +historians. It is Thucydides who immortalises Pericles. But it is +improbable that the things which Mr Gladstone did, and attempted, will be +forgotten more rapidly than the conduct and characters of, say, Burleigh +or Lethington. + +In 1884, after this voyage, with its royal functions and celebrations at +Copenhagen, a peerage was offered to the poet. He “did not want to alter +his plain Mr,” and he must have known that, whether he accepted or +refused, the chorus of blame would be louder than that of applause. +Scott had desired “such grinning honour as Sir Walter hath”; the title +went well with the old name, and pleased his love of old times. Tennyson +had been blamed “by literary men” for thrice evading a baronetcy, and he +did not think that a peerage would make smooth the lives of his +descendants. But he concluded, “Why should I be selfish and not suffer +an honour (as Gladstone says) to be done to literature in my name?” +Politically, he thought that the Upper House, while it lasts, partly +supplied the place of the American “referendum.” He voted in July 1884 +for the extension of the franchise, and in November stated his views to +Mr Gladstone in verse. In prose he wrote to Mr Gladstone, “I have a +strong conviction that the more simple the dealings of men with men, as +well as of man with man, are—the better,” a sentiment which, perhaps, did +not always prevail with his friend. The poet’s reflections on the horror +of Gordon’s death are not recorded. He introduced the idea of the Gordon +Home for Boys, and later supported it by a letter, “Have we forgotten +Gordon?” to the _Daily Telegraph_. They who cannot forget Gordon must +always be grateful to Tennyson for providing this opportunity of +honouring the greatest of an illustrious clan, and of helping, in their +degree, a scheme which was dear to the heroic leader. + +The poet, very naturally, was most averse to personal appearance in +public matters. Mankind is so fashioned that the advice of a poet is +always regarded as unpractical, and is even apt to injure the cause which +he advocates. Happily there cannot be two opinions about the right way +of honouring Gordon. Tennyson’s poem, _The Fleet_, was also in harmony +with the general sentiment. + +In the last month of 1884 _Becket_ was published. The theme of Fair +Rosamund had appealed to the poet in youth, and he had written part of a +lyric which he judiciously left unpublished. It is given in his +Biography. In 1877 he had visited Canterbury, and had traced the steps +of Becket to his place of slaughter in the Cathedral. The poem was +printed in 1879, but not published till seven years later. In 1879 Sir +Henry Irving had thought the play too costly to be produced with more +than a _succès d’estime_; but in 1891 he put it on the stage, where it +proved the most successful of modern poetic dramas. As published it is, +obviously, far too long for public performance. It is not easy to +understand why dramatic poets always make their works so much too long. +The drama seems, by its very nature, to have a limit almost as distinct +as the limit of the sonnet. It is easy to calculate how long a play for +the stage ought to be, and we might think that a poet would find the +natural limit serviceable to his art, for it inculcates selection, +conciseness, and concentration. But despite these advantages of the +natural form of the drama, modern poets, at least, constantly overflow +their banks. The author _ruit profusus_, and the manager has to reduce +the piece to feasible proportions, such as it ought to have assumed from +the first. + +_Becket_ has been highly praised by Sir Henry Irving himself, for its +“moments of passion and pathos, . . . which, when they exist, atone to an +audience for the endurance of long acts.” But why should the audience +have such long acts to endure? The reader, one fears, is apt to use his +privilege of skipping. The long speeches of Walter Map and the immense +period of Margery tempt the student to exercise his agility. A +“chronicle play” has the privilege of wandering, but _Becket_ wanders too +far and too long. The political details of the quarrel between Church +and State, with its domestic and international complexities, are apt to +fatigue the attention. Inevitable and insoluble as the situation was, +neither protagonist is entirely sympathetic, whether in the play or in +history. The struggle in Becket between his love of the king and his +duty to the Church (or what he takes to be his duty) is nobly presented, +and is truly dramatic, while there is grotesque and terrible relief in +the banquet of the Beggars. In the scene of the assassination the poet +“never stoops his wing,” and there are passages of tender pathos between +Henry and Rosamund, while Becket’s keen memories of his early days, just +before his death, are moving. + + “_Becket_. I once was out with Henry in the days + When Henry loved me, and we came upon + A wild-fowl sitting on her nest, so still + I reach’d my hand and touch’d; she did not stir; + The snow had frozen round her, and she sat + Stone-dead upon a heap of ice-cold eggs. + Look! how this love, this mother, runs thro’ all + The world God made—even the beast—the bird! + + _John of Salisbury_. Ay, still a lover of the beast and bird? + But these arm’d men—will you not hide yourself? + Perchance the fierce De Brocs from Saltwood Castle, + To assail our Holy Mother lest she brood + Too long o’er this hard egg, the world, and send + Her whole heart’s heat into it, till it break + Into young angels. Pray you, hide yourself. + + _Becket_. There was a little fair-hair’d Norman maid + Lived in my mother’s house: if Rosamund is + The world’s rose, as her name imports her—she + Was the world’s lily. + + _John of Salisbury_. Ay, and what of her? + + _Becket_. She died of leprosy.” + +But the part of Rosamund, her innocent ignorance especially, is not very +readily intelligible, not quite persuasive, and there is almost a touch +of the burlesque in her unexpected appearance as a monk. To weave that +old and famous story of love into the terribly complex political intrigue +was a task almost too great. The character of Eleanor is perhaps more +successfully drawn in the Prologue than in the scene where she offers the +choice of the dagger or the bowl, and is interrupted, in a startlingly +unexpected manner, by the Archbishop himself. The opportunities for +scenic effects are magnificent throughout, and must have contributed +greatly to the success on the stage. Still one cannot but regard the +published _Becket_ as rather the marble from which the statue may be hewn +than as the statue itself. There are fine scenes, powerful and masterly +drawing of character in Henry, Eleanor, and Becket, but there is a want +of concentration, due, perhaps, to the long period of time covered by the +action. So, at least, it seems to a reader who has admitted his sense of +incompetency in the dramatic region. The acuteness of the poet’s power +of historical intuition was attested by Mr J. R. Green and Mr Bryce. +“One cannot imagine,” said Mr Bryce, “a more vivid, a more perfectly +faithful picture than it gives both of Henry and Thomas.” Tennyson’s +portraits of these two “go beyond and perfect history.” The poet’s +sympathy ought, perhaps, to have been, if not with the false and +ruffianly Henry, at least with Henry’s side of the question. For +Tennyson had made Harold leave + + “To England + My legacy of war against the Pope + From child to child, from Pope to Pope, from age to age, + Till the sea wash her level with her shores, + Or till the Pope be Christ’s.” + + + + +IX. +LAST YEARS. + + +THE end of 1884 saw the publication of _Tiresias and other Poems_, +dedicated to “My good friend, Robert Browning,” and opening with the +beautiful verses to one who never was Mr Browning’s friend, Edward +FitzGerald. The volume is rich in the best examples of Tennyson’s later +work. _Tiresias_, the monologue of the aged seer, blinded by excess of +light when he beheld Athene unveiled, and under the curse of Cassandra, +is worthy of the author who, in youth, wrote _Œnone_ and _Ulysses_. +Possibly the verses reflect Tennyson’s own sense of public indifference +to the voice of the poet and the seer. But they are of much earlier date +than the year of publication:— + + “For when the crowd would roar + For blood, for war, whose issue was their doom, + To cast wise words among the multitude + Was flinging fruit to lions; nor, in hours + Of civil outbreak, when I knew the twain + Would each waste each, and bring on both the yoke + Of stronger states, was mine the voice to curb + The madness of our cities and their kings. + Who ever turn’d upon his heel to hear + My warning that the tyranny of one + Was prelude to the tyranny of all? + My counsel that the tyranny of all + Led backward to the tyranny of one? + This power hath work’d no good to aught that lives.” + +The conclusion was a favourite with the author, and his blank verse never +reached a higher strain:— + + “But for me, + I would that I were gather’d to my rest, + And mingled with the famous kings of old, + On whom about their ocean-islets flash + The faces of the Gods—the wise man’s word, + Here trampled by the populace underfoot, + There crown’d with worship—and these eyes will find + The men I knew, and watch the chariot whirl + About the goal again, and hunters race + The shadowy lion, and the warrior-kings, + In height and prowess more than human, strive + Again for glory, while the golden lyre + Is ever sounding in heroic ears + Heroic hymns, and every way the vales + Wind, clouded with the grateful incense-fume + Of those who mix all odour to the Gods + On one far height in one far-shining fire.” + +Then follows the pathetic piece on FitzGerald’s death, and the prayer, +not unfulfilled— + + “That, when I from hence + Shall fade with him into the unknown, + My close of earth’s experience + May prove as peaceful as his own.” + +_The Ancient Sage_, with its lyric interludes, is one of Tennyson’s +meditations on the mystery of the world and of existence. Like the poet +himself, the Sage finds a gleam of light and hope in his own subjective +experiences of some unspeakable condition, already recorded in _In +Memoriam_. The topic was one on which he seems to have spoken to his +friends with freedom:— + + “And more, my son! for more than once when I + Sat all alone, revolving in myself + The word that is the symbol of myself, + The mortal limit of the Self was loosed, + And past into the Nameless, as a cloud + Melts into Heaven. I touch’d my limbs, the limbs + Were strange not mine—and yet no shade of doubt, + But utter clearness, and thro’ loss of Self + The gain of such large life as match’d with ours + Were Sun to spark—unshadowable in words, + Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world.” + +The poet’s habit of + + “Revolving in myself + The word that is the symbol of myself”— + +that is, of dwelling on the sound of his own name, was familiar to the +Arabs. M. Lefébure has drawn my attention to a passage in the works of a +mediæval Arab philosopher, Ibn Khaldoun: {196} “To arrive at the highest +degree of inspiration of which he is capable, the diviner should have +recourse to the use of certain phrases marked by a peculiar cadence and +parallelism. Thus he emancipates his mind from the influence of the +senses, and is enabled to attain an imperfect contact with the spiritual +world.” Ibn Khaldoun regards the “contact” as extremely “imperfect.” He +describes similar efforts made by concentrating the gaze on a mirror, a +bowl of water, or the like. Tennyson was doubtless unaware that he had +stumbled accidentally on a method of “ancient sages.” Psychologists will +explain his experience by the word “dissociation.” It is not everybody, +however, who can thus dissociate himself. The temperament of genius has +often been subject to such influence, as M. Lefébure has shown in the +modern instances of George Sand and Alfred de Musset: we might add +Shelley, Goethe, and even Scott. + +The poet’s versatility was displayed in the appearance with these records +of “weird seizures”, of the Irish dialect piece _To-morrow_, the popular +_Spinster’s Sweet-Arts_, and the _Locksley Hall Sixty Years After_. The +old fire of the versification is unabated, but the hero has relapsed on +the gloom of the hero of _Maud_. He represents himself, of course, not +Tennyson, or only one of the moods of Tennyson, which were sometimes +black enough. A very different mood chants the _Charge of the Heavy +Brigade_, and speaks of + + “Green Sussex fading into blue + With one gray glimpse of sea.” + +The lines _To Virgil_ were written at the request of the Mantuans, by the +most Virgilian of all the successors of the + + “Wielder of the stateliest measure + ever moulded by the lips of man.” + +Never was Tennyson more Virgilian than in this unmatched panegyric, the +sum and flower of criticism of that + + “Golden branch amid the shadows, + kings and realms that pass to rise no more.” + +Hardly less admirable is the tribute to Catullus, and the old poet is +young again in the bird-song of _Early Spring_. The lines on _Poets and +their Bibliographies_, with _The Dead Prophet_, express Tennyson’s +lifelong abhorrence of the critics and biographers, whose joy is in the +futile and the unimportant, in personal gossip and the sweepings of the +studio, the salvage of the wastepaper basket. The _Prefatory Poem to my +Brother’s Sonnets_ is not only touching in itself, but proves that the +poet can “turn to favour and to prettiness” such an affliction as the +ruinous summer of 1879. + +The year 1880 brought deeper distress in the death of the poet’s son +Lionel, whose illness, begun in India, ended fatally in the Red Sea. The +interest of the following years was mainly domestic. The poet’s health, +hitherto robust, was somewhat impaired in 1888, but his vivid interest in +affairs and in letters was unabated. He consoled himself with Virgil, +Keats, Wordsworth, Gibbon, Euripides, and Mr Leaf’s speculations on the +composite nature of the _Iliad_, in which Coleridge, perhaps alone among +poets, believed. “You know,” said Tennyson to Mr Leaf; “I never liked +that theory of yours about the many poets.” It would be at least as easy +to prove that there were many authors of _Ivanhoe_, or perhaps it would +be a good deal more easy. However, he admitted that three lines which +occur both in the Eighth and the Sixteenth Books of the _Iliad_ are more +appropriate in the later book. Similar examples might be found in his +own poems. He still wrote, in the intervals of a malady which brought +him “as near death as a man could be without dying.” He was an example +of the great physical strength which, on the whole, seems usually to +accompany great mental power. The strength may be dissipated by passion, +or by undue labour, as in cases easily recalled to memory, but neither +cause had impaired the vigour of Tennyson. Like Goethe, he lived out all +his life; and his eightieth birthday was cheered both by public and +private expressions of reverence and affection. + +Of Tennyson’s last three years on earth we may think, in his own words, +that his + + “Life’s latest eve endured + Nor settled into hueless grey.” + +Nature was as dear to him and as inspiring as of old; men and affairs and +letters were not slurred by his intact and energetic mind. His _Demeter +and other Poems_, with the dedication to Lord Dufferin, appeared in the +December of the year. The dedication was the lament for the dead son and +the salutation to the Viceroy of India, a piece of resigned and manly +regret. The _Demeter and Persephone_ is a modern and tender study of the +theme of the most beautiful Homeric Hymn. The ancient poet had no such +thought of the restored Persephone as that which impels Tennyson to +describe her + + “Faint as a climate-changing bird that flies + All night across the darkness, and at dawn + Falls on the threshold of her native land.” + +The spring, the restored Persephone, comes more vigorous and joyous to +the shores of the Ægean than to ours. All Tennyson’s own is Demeter’s +awe of those “imperial disimpassioned eyes” of her daughter, come from +the bed and the throne of Hades, the Lord of many guests. The hymn, +happy in its ending, has no thought of the grey heads of the Fates, and +their answer to the goddess concerning “fate beyond the Fates,” and the +breaking of the bonds of Hades. The ballad of _Owd Roä_ is one of the +most spirited of the essays in dialect to which Tennyson had of late +years inclined. _Vastness_ merely expresses, in terms of poetry, +Tennyson’s conviction that, without immortality, life is a series of +worthless contrasts. An opposite opinion may be entertained, but a man +has a right to express his own, which, coming from so great a mind, is +not undeserving of attention; or, at least, is hardly deserving of +reproof. The poet’s idea is also stated thus in _The Ring_, in terms +which perhaps do not fall below the poetical; or, at least, do not drop +into “the utterly unpoetical”:— + + “The Ghost in Man, the Ghost that once was Man, + But cannot wholly free itself from Man, + Are calling to each other thro’ a dawn + Stranger than earth has ever seen; the veil + Is rending, and the Voices of the day + Are heard across the Voices of the dark. + No sudden heaven, nor sudden hell, for man, + But thro’ the Will of One who knows and rules— + And utter knowledge is but utter love— + Æonian Evolution, swift or slow, + Thro’ all the Spheres—an ever opening height, + An ever lessening earth.” + +_The Ring_ is, in fact, a ghost story based on a legend told by Mr Lowell +about a house near where he had once lived; one of those houses vexed by + + “A footstep, a low throbbing in the walls, + A noise of falling weights that never fell, + Weird whispers, bells that rang without a hand, + Door-handles turn’d when none was at the door, + And bolted doors that open’d of themselves.” + +These phenomena were doubtless caused by rats and water-pipes, but they +do not destroy the pity and the passion of the tale. The lines to Mary +Boyle are all of the normal world, and worthy of a poet’s youth and of +the spring. _Merlin and the Gleam_ is the spiritual allegory of the +poet’s own career:— + + “Arthur had vanish’d + I knew not whither, + The king who loved me, + And cannot die.” + +So at last + + “All but in Heaven + Hovers The Gleam,” + +whither the wayfarer was soon to follow. There is a marvellous hope and +pathos in the melancholy of these all but the latest songs, reminiscent +of youth and love, and even of the dim haunting memories and dreams of +infancy. No other English poet has thus rounded all his life with music. +Tennyson was in his eighty-first year, when there “came in a moment” the +crown of his work, the immortal lyric, _Crossing the Bar_. It is hardly +less majestic and musical in the perfect Greek rendering by his +brother-in-law, Mr Lushington. For once at least a poem has been “poured +from the golden to the silver cup” without the spilling of a drop. The +new book’s appearance was coincident with the death of Mr Browning, “so +loving and appreciative,” as Lady Tennyson wrote; a friend, not a rival, +however the partisans of either poet might strive to stir emulation +between two men of such lofty and such various genius. + + + + +X. +1890. + + +IN the year 1889 the poet’s health had permitted him to take long walks +on the sea-shore and along the cliffs, one of which, by reason of its +whiteness, he had named “Taliessin,” “the splendid brow.” His mind ran +on a poem founded on an Egyptian legend (of which the source is not +mentioned), telling how “despair and death came upon him who was mad +enough to try to probe the secret of the universe.” He also thought of a +drama on Tristram, who, in the Idylls, is treated with brevity, and not +with the sympathy of the old writer who cries, “God bless Tristram the +knight: he fought for England!” But early in 1890 Tennyson suffered from +a severe attack of influenza. In May Mr Watts painted his portrait, and + + “Divinely through all hindrance found the man.” + +Tennyson was a great admirer of Miss Austen’s novels: “The realism and +life-likeness of Miss Austen’s _Dramatis Personæ_ come nearest to those +of Shakespeare. Shakespeare, however, is a sun to which Jane Austen, +though a bright and true little world, is but an asteroid.” He was +therefore pleased to find apple-blossoms co-existing with ripe +strawberries on June 28, as Miss Austen has been blamed, by minute +philosophers, for introducing this combination in the garden party in +_Emma_. The poet, like most of the good and great, read novels eagerly, +and excited himself over the confirmation of an adult male in a story by +Miss Yonge. Of Scott, “the most chivalrous literary figure of the +century, and the author with the widest range since Shakespeare,” he +preferred _Old Mortality_, and it is a good choice. He hated “morbid and +introspective tales, with their oceans of sham philosophy.” At this +time, with catholic taste, he read Mr Stevenson and Mr Meredith, Miss +Braddon and Mr Henry James, Ouida and Mr Thomas Hardy; Mr Hall Caine and +Mr Anstey; Mrs Oliphant and Miss Edna Lyall. Not everybody can peruse +all of these very diverse authors with pleasure. He began his poem on +the Roman gladiatorial combats; indeed his years, fourscore and one, left +his intellectual eagerness as unimpaired as that of Goethe. “A crooked +share,” he said to the Princess Louise, “may make a straight furrow.” +“One afternoon he had a long waltz with M— in the ballroom.” Speaking of + + “All the charm of all the Muses + Often flowering in a lonely word” + +in Virgil, he adduced, rather strangely, the _cunctantem ramum_, said of +the Golden Bough, in the Sixth Æneid. The choice is odd, because the +Sibyl has just told Æneas that, if he be destined to pluck the branch of +gold, _ipse volens facilisque sequetur_, “it will come off of its own +accord,” like the sacred _ti_ branches of the Fijians, which bend down to +be plucked for the Fire rite. Yet, when the predestined Æneas tries to +pluck the bough of gold, it yields _reluctantly_ (_cunctantem_), contrary +to what the Sibyl has foretold. Mr Conington, therefore, thought the +phrase a slip on the part of Virgil. “People accused Virgil of +plagiarising,” he said, “but if a man made it his own there was no harm +in that (look at the great poets, Shakespeare included).” Tennyson, like +Virgil, made much that was ancient his own; his verses are often, and +purposefully, a mosaic of classical reminiscences. But he was vexed by +the hunters after remote and unconscious resemblances, and far-fetched +analogies between his lines and those of others. He complained that, if +he said that the sun went down, a parallel was at once cited from Homer, +or anybody else, and he used a very powerful phrase to condemn critics +who detected such repetitions. “The moanings of the homeless +sea,”—“moanings” from Horace, “homeless” from Shelley. “As if no one +else had ever heard the sea moan except Horace!” Tennyson’s mixture of +memory and forgetfulness was not so strange as that of Scott, and when he +adapted from the Greek, Latin, or Italian, it was of set purpose, just as +it was with Virgil. The beautiful lines comparing a girl’s eyes to +bottom agates that seem to + + “Wave and float + In crystal currents of clear running seas,” + +he invented while bathing in Wales. It was his habit, to note down in +verse such similes from nature, and to use them when he found occasion. +But the higher criticism, analysing the simile, detected elements from +Shakespeare and from Beaumont and Fletcher. + +In June 1891 the poet went on a tour in Devonshire, and began his +_Akbar_, and probably wrote _June Bracken and Heather_; or perhaps it was +composed when “we often sat on the top of Blackdown to watch the sunset.” +He wrote to Mr Kipling— + + “The oldest to the youngest singer + That England bore” + +(to alter Mr Swinburne’s lines to Landor), praising his _Flag of +England_. Mr Kipling replied as “the private to the general.” + +Early in 1892 _The Foresters_ was successfully produced at New York by +Miss Ada Rehan, the music by Sir Arthur Sullivan, and the scenery from +woodland designs by Whymper. Robin Hood (as we learn from Mark Twain) is +a favourite hero with the youth of America. Mr Tom Sawyer himself took, +in Mark Twain’s tale, the part of the bold outlaw. + +_The Death of Œnone_ was published in 1892, with the dedication to the +Master of Balliol— + + “Read a Grecian tale retold + Which, cast in later Grecian mould, + Quintus Calaber + Somewhat lazily handled of old.” + +Quintus Calaber, more usually called Quintus Smyrnæus, is a writer of +perhaps the fourth century of our era. About him nothing, or next to +nothing, is known. He told, in so late an age, the conclusion of the +Tale of Troy, and (in the writer’s opinion) has been unduly neglected and +disdained. His manner, I venture to think, is more Homeric than that of +the more famous and doubtless greater Alexandrian poet of the Argonautic +cycle, Apollonius Rhodius, his senior by five centuries. His materials +were probably the ancient and lost poems of the Epic Cycle, and the story +of the death of Œnone may be from the _Little Iliad_ of Lesches. +Possibly parts of his work may be textually derived from the Cyclics, but +the topic is very obscure. In Quintus, Paris, after encountering evil +omens on his way, makes a long speech, imploring the pardon of the +deserted Œnone. She replies, not with the Tennysonian brevity; she sends +him back to the helpless arms of her rival, Helen. Paris dies on the +hills; never did Helen see him returning. The wood-nymphs bewail Paris, +and a herdsman brings the bitter news to Helen, who chants her lament. +But remorse falls on Œnone. She does not go + + “Slowly down + By the long torrent’s ever-deepened roar,” + +but rushes “swift as the wind to seek and spring upon the pyre of her +lord.” Fate and Aphrodite drive her headlong, and in heaven Selene, +remembering Endymion, bewails the lot of her sister in sorrow. Œnone +reaches the funeral flame, and without a word or a cry leaps into her +husband’s arms, the wild Nymphs wondering. The lovers are mingled in one +heap of ashes, and these are bestowed in one vessel of gold and buried in +a howe. This is the story which the poet rehandled in his old age, +completing the work of his happy youth when he walked with Hallam in the +Pyrenean hills, that were to him as Ida. The romance of Œnone and her +death condone, as even Homer was apt to condone, the sins of beautiful +Paris, whom the nymphs lament, despite the evil that he has wrought. The +silence of the veiled Œnone, as she springs into her lover’s last +embrace, is perhaps more affecting and more natural than Tennyson’s + + “She lifted up a voice + Of shrill command, ‘Who burns upon the pyre?’” + +The _St Telemachus_ has the old splendour and vigour of verse, and, +though written so late in life, is worthy of the poet’s prime:— + + “Eve after eve that haggard anchorite + Would haunt the desolated fane, and there + Gaze at the ruin, often mutter low + ‘Vicisti Galilæe’; louder again, + Spurning a shatter’d fragment of the God, + ‘Vicisti Galilæe!’ but—when now + Bathed in that lurid crimson—ask’d ‘Is earth + On fire to the West? or is the Demon-god + Wroth at his fall?’ and heard an answer ‘Wake + Thou deedless dreamer, lazying out a life + Of self-suppression, not of selfless love.’ + And once a flight of shadowy fighters crost + The disk, and once, he thought, a shape with wings + Came sweeping by him, and pointed to the West, + And at his ear he heard a whisper ‘Rome,’ + And in his heart he cried ‘The call of God!’ + And call’d arose, and, slowly plunging down + Thro’ that disastrous glory, set his face + By waste and field and town of alien tongue, + Following a hundred sunsets, and the sphere + Of westward-wheeling stars; and every dawn + Struck from him his own shadow on to Rome. + Foot-sore, way-worn, at length he touch’d his goal, + The Christian city.” + +_Akbar’s Dream_ may be taken, more or less, to represent the poet’s own +theology of a race seeking after God, if perchance they may find Him, and +the closing Hymn was a favourite with Tennyson. He said, “It is a +magnificent metre”:— + + “HYMN. + + I. + + Once again thou flamest heavenward, once again we see thee rise. + Every morning is thy birthday gladdening human hearts and eyes. + Every morning here we greet it, bowing lowly down before thee, + Thee the Godlike, thee the changeless in thine ever-changing skies. + + II. + + Shadow-maker, shadow-slayer, arrowing light from clime to clime, + Hear thy myriad laureates hail thee monarch in their woodland rhyme. + Warble bird, and open flower, and, men, below the dome of azure + Kneel adoring Him the Timeless in the flame that measures Time!” + +In this final volume the poet cast his handful of incense on the altar of +Scott, versifying the tale of _Il Bizarro_, which the dying Sir Walter +records in his Journal in Italy. _The Churchwarden and the Curate_ is +not inferior to the earlier peasant poems in its expression of +shrewdness, humour, and superstition. A verse of _Poets and Critics_ may +be taken as the poet’s last word on the old futile quarrel:— + + “This thing, that thing is the rage, + Helter-skelter runs the age; + Minds on this round earth of ours + Vary like the leaves and flowers, + Fashion’d after certain laws; + Sing thou low or loud or sweet, + All at all points thou canst not meet, + Some will pass and some will pause. + + What is true at last will tell: + Few at first will place thee well; + Some too low would have thee shine, + Some too high—no fault of thine— + Hold thine own, and work thy will! + Year will graze the heel of year, + But seldom comes the poet here, + And the Critic’s rarer still.” + +Still the lines hold good— + + “Some too low would have thee shine, + Some too high—no fault of thine.” + +The end was now at hand. A sense of weakness was felt by the poet on +September 3, 1892: on the 28th his family sent for Sir Andrew Clark; but +the patient gradually faded out of life, and expired on Thursday, October +6, at 1.35 A.M. To the very last he had Shakespeare by him, and his +windows were open to the sun; on the last night they were flooded by the +moonlight. The description of the final scenes must be read in the +Biography by the poet’s son. “His patience and quiet strength had power +upon those who were nearest and dearest to him; we felt thankful for the +love and the utter peace of it all.” “The life after death,” Tennyson +had said just before his fatal illness, “is the cardinal point of +Christianity. I believe that God reveals Himself in every individual +soul; and my idea of Heaven is the perpetual ministry of one soul to +another.” He had lived the life of heaven upon earth, being in all his +work a minister of things honourable, lovely, consoling, and ennobling to +the souls of others, with a ministry which cannot die. His body sleeps +next to that of his friend and fellow-poet, Robert Browning, in front of +Chaucer’s monument in the Abbey. + + + + +XI. +LAST CHAPTER. + + +“O, THAT Press will get hold of me now,” Tennyson said when he knew that +his last hour was at hand. He had a horror of personal tattle, as even +his early poems declare— + + “For now the Poet cannot die, + Nor leave his music as of old, + But round him ere he scarce be cold + Begins the scandal and the cry.” + +But no “carrion-vulture” has waited + + “To tear his heart before the crowd.” + +About Tennyson, doubtless, there is much anecdotage: most of the +anecdotes turn on his shyness, his really exaggerated hatred of personal +notoriety, and the odd and brusque things which he would say when alarmed +by effusive strangers. It has not seemed worth while to repeat more than +one or two of these legends, nor have I sought outside the Biography by +his son for more than the biographer chose to tell. The readers who are +least interested in poetry are most interested in tattle about the poet. +It is the privilege of genius to retain the freshness and simplicity, +with some of the foibles, of the child. When Tennyson read his poems +aloud he was apt to be moved by them, and to express frankly his +approbation where he thought it deserved. Only very rudimentary +psychologists recognised conceit in this freedom; and only the same set +of persons mistook shyness for arrogance. Effusiveness of praise or +curiosity in a stranger is apt to produce bluntness of reply in a Briton. +“Don’t talk d—d nonsense, sir,” said the Duke of Wellington to the +gushing person who piloted him, in his old age, across Piccadilly. Of +Tennyson Mr Palgrave says, “I have known him silenced, almost frozen, +before the eager unintentional eyes of a girl of fifteen. And under the +stress of this nervous impulse compelled to contradict his inner self +(especially when under the terror of leonisation . . . ), he was +doubtless at times betrayed into an abrupt phrase, a cold unsympathetic +exterior; a moment’s ‘defect of the rose.’” Had he not been sensitive in +all things, he would have been less of a poet. The chief criticism +directed against his mode of life is that he _was_ sensitive and +reserved, but he could and did make himself pleasant in the society of +_les pauvres d’esprit_. Curiosity alarmed him, and drove him into his +shell: strangers who met him in that mood carried away false impressions, +which developed into myths. As the Master of Balliol has recorded, +despite his shyness “he was extremely hospitable, often inviting not only +his friends, but the friends of his friends, and giving them a hearty +welcome. For underneath a sensitive exterior he was thoroughly genial if +he was understood.” In these points he was unlike his great +contemporary, Browning; for instance, Tennyson never (I think) was the +Master’s guest at Balliol, mingling, like Browning, with the +undergraduates, to whom the Master’s hospitality was freely extended. +Yet, where he was familiar, Tennyson was a gay companion, not shunning +jest or even paradox. “As Dr Johnson says, every man may be judged of by +his laughter”: but no Boswell has chronicled the laughters of Tennyson. +“He never, or hardly ever, made puns or witticisms” (though one pun, at +least, endures in tradition), “but always lived in an attitude of +humour.” Mr Jowett writes (and no description of the poet is better than +his)— + + If I were to describe his outward appearance, I should say that he + was certainly unlike any one else whom I ever saw. A glance at some + of Watts’ portraits of him will give, better than any description + which can be expressed in words, a conception of his noble mien and + look. He was a magnificent man, who stood before you in his native + refinement and strength. The unconventionality of his manners was in + keeping with the originality of his figure. He would sometimes say + nothing, or a word or two only, to the stranger who approached him, + out of shyness. He would sometimes come into the drawing-room + reading a book. At other times, especially to ladies, he was + singularly gracious and benevolent. He would talk about the + accidents of his own life with an extraordinary freedom, as at the + moment they appeared to present themselves to his mind, the days of + his boyhood that were passed at Somersby, and the old school of + manners which he came across in his own neighbourhood: the days of + the “apostles” at Cambridge: the years which he spent in London; the + evenings enjoyed at the Cock Tavern, and elsewhere, when he saw + another side of life, not without a kindly and humorous sense of the + ridiculous in his fellow-creatures. His repertory of stories was + perfectly inexhaustible; they were often about slight matters that + would scarcely bear repetition, but were told with such lifelike + reality, that they convulsed his hearers with laughter. Like most + story-tellers, he often repeated his favourites; but, like children, + his audience liked hearing them again and again, and he enjoyed + telling them. It might be said of him that he told more stories than + any one, but was by no means the regular story-teller. In the + commonest conversation he showed himself a man of genius. + +To this description may be added another by Mr F. T. Palgrave:— + + Every one will have seen men, distinguished in some line of work, + whose conversation (to take the old figure) either “smelt too + strongly of the lamp,” or lay quite apart from their art or craft. + What, through all these years, struck me about Tennyson, was that + whilst he never deviated into poetical language as such, whether in + rhetoric or highly coloured phrase, yet throughout the substance of + his talk the same mode of thought, the same imaginative grasp of + nature, the same fineness and gentleness in his view of character, + the same forbearance and toleration, the _aurea mediocritas_ despised + by fools and fanatics, which are stamped on his poetry, were + constantly perceptible: whilst in the easy and as it were unsought + choiceness, the conscientious and truth-loving precision of his + words, the same personal identity revealed itself. What a strange + charm lay here, how deeply illuminating the whole character, as in + prolonged intercourse it gradually revealed itself! Artist and man, + Tennyson was invariably true to himself, or rather, in Wordsworth’s + phrase, he “moved altogether”; his nature and his poetry being + harmonious aspects of the same soul; as botanists tell us that flower + and fruit are but transformations of root and stem and leafage. We + read how, in mediæval days, conduits were made to flow with claret. + But this was on great occasions only. Tennyson’s fountain always ran + wine. + + Once more: In Mme. Récamier’s _salon_, I have read, at the time when + conversation was yet a fine art in Paris, guests famous for _esprit_ + would sit in the twilight round the stove, whilst each in turn let + fly some sparkling anecdote or bon-mot, which rose and shone and died + out into silence, till the next of the elect pyrotechnists was ready. + Good things of this kind, as I have said, were plentiful in + Tennyson’s repertory. But what, to pass from the materials to the + method of his conversation, eminently marked it was the continuity of + the electric current. He spoke, and was silent, and spoke again: but + the circuit was unbroken; there was no effort in taking up the + thread, no sense of disjunction. Often I thought, had he never + written a line of the poems so dear to us, his conversation alone + would have made him the most interesting companion known to me. From + this great and gracious student of humanity, what less, indeed, could + be expected? And if, as a converser, I were to compare him with + Socrates, as figured for us in the dialogues of his great disciple, I + think that I should have the assent of that eminently valued friend + of Tennyson’s, whose long labour of love has conferred English + citizenship upon Plato. + +We have called him shy and sensitive in daily intercourse with strangers, +and as to criticism, he freely confessed that a midge of dispraise could +sting, while applause gave him little pleasure. Yet no poet altered his +verses so much in obedience to censure unjustly or irritatingly stated, +yet in essence just. He readily rejected some of his “Juvenilia” on Mr +Palgrave’s suggestion. The same friend tells how well he took a rather +fierce attack on an unpublished piece, when Mr Palgrave “owned that he +could not find one good line in it.” Very few poets, or even versifiers +(fiercer they than poets are), would have continued to show their virgin +numbers to a friend so candid, as Tennyson did. Perhaps most of the +_genus irritabile_ will grant that spoken criticism, if unfavourable, +somehow annoys and stirs opposition in an author; probably because it +confirms his own suspicions about his work. Such criticism is almost +invariably just. But Campbell, when Rogers offered a correction, +“bounced out of the room, with a ‘Hang it! I should like to see the man +who would dare to correct me.’” + +Mr Jowett justly recognised in the life of Tennyson two circumstances +which made him other than, but for these, he would have been. He had +intended to do with the Arthurian subject what he never did, “in some way +or other to have represented in it the great religions of the world. . . . +It is a proof of Tennyson’s genius that he should have thus early +grasped the great historical aspect of religion.” His intention was +foiled, his early dream was broken, by the death of Arthur Hallam, and by +the coldness and contempt with which, at the same period, his early poems +were received. + +Mr Jowett (who had a firm belief in the “great work”) regretted the +change of plan as to the Arthurian topic, regretted it the more from his +own interest in the History of Religion. But we need not share the +regrets. The early plan for the Arthur (which Mr Jowett never saw) has +been published, and certainly the scheme could not have been executed on +these lines. {218} Moreover, as the Master observed, the work would have +been premature in Tennyson’s youth, and, indeed, it would still be +premature. The comparative science of religious evolution is even now +very tentative, and does not yield materials of sufficient stability for +an epic, even if such an epic could be forced into the mould of the +Arthur legends, a feat perhaps impossible, and certainly undesirable. A +truly fantastic allegory must have been the result, and it is fortunate +that the poet abandoned the idea in favour of more human themes. +Moreover, he recognised very early that his was not a Muse _de longue +haleine_; that he must be “short.” We may therefore feel certain that +his early sorrow and discouragement were salutary to him as a poet, and +as a man. He became more sympathetic, more tender, and was obliged to +put forth that stoical self-control, and strenuous courage and endurance, +through which alone his poetic career was rendered possible. “He had the +susceptibility of a child or a woman,” says his friend; “he had also” (it +was a strange combination) “the strength of a giant or of a god.” +Without these qualities he must have broken down between 1833 and 1842 +into a hypochondriac, or a morose, if majestic, failure. Poor, obscure, +and unhappy, he overcame the world, and passed from darkness into light. +The “poetic temperament” in another not gifted with his endurance and +persistent strength would have achieved ruin. + +Most of us remember Taine’s parallel between Tennyson and Alfred de +Musset. The French critic has no high approval of Tennyson’s +“respectability” and long peaceful life, as compared with the wrecked +life and genius of Musset, _l’enfant perdu_ of love, wine, and song. +This is a theory like another, and is perhaps attractive to the young. +The poet must have strong passions, or how can he sing of them: he must +be tossed and whirled in the stress of things, like Shelley’s autumn +leaves;— + + “Ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.” + +Looking at Burns, Byron, Musset, or even at Shelley’s earlier years, +youth sees in them the true poets, “sacred things,” but also “light,” as +Plato says, inspired to break their wings against the nature of +existence, and the _flammantia mænia mundi_. But this is almost a boyish +idea, this idea that the true poet is the slave of the passions, and that +the poet who dominates them has none, and is but a staid domestic animal, +an ass browsing the common, as somebody has written about Wordsworth. +Certainly Tennyson’s was no “passionless perfection.” He, like others, +was tempted to beat with ineffectual wings against the inscrutable nature +of life. He, too, had his dark hour, and was as subject to temptation as +they who yielded to the stress and died, or became unhappy waifs, “young +men with a splendid past.” He must have known, no less than Musset, the +attractions of many a _paradis artificiel_, with its bright visions, its +houris, its offers of oblivion of pain. “He had the look of one who had +suffered greatly,” Mr Palgrave writes in his record of their first +meeting in 1842. But he, like Goethe, Scott, and Victor Hugo, had +strength as well as passion and emotion; he came unscorched through the +fire that has burned away the wings of so many other great poets. This +was no less fortunate for the world than for himself. Of his prolonged +dark hour we know little in detail, but we have seen that from the first +he resisted the Tempter; _Ulysses_ is his _Retro Sathanas_! + +About “the mechanism of genius” in Tennyson Mr Palgrave has told us a +little; more appears incidentally in his biography. “It was his way that +when we had entered on some scene of special beauty or grandeur, after +enjoying it together, he should always withdraw wholly from sight, and +study the view, as it were, in a little artificial solitude.” + +Tennyson’s poems, Mr Palgrave says, often arose in a kind of _point de +repère_ (like those forms and landscapes which seem to spring from a +floating point of light, beheld with closed eyes just before we sleep). +“More than once he said that his poems sprang often from a ‘nucleus,’ +some one word, maybe, or brief melodious phrase, which had floated +through the brain, as it were, unbidden. And perhaps at once while +walking they were presently wrought into a little song. But if he did +not write it down at once the lyric fled from him irrecoverably.” He +believed himself thus to have lost poems as good as his best. It seems +probable that this is a common genesis of verses, good or bad, among all +who write. Like Dickens, and like most men of genius probably, he saw +all the scenes of his poems “in his mind’s eye.” Many authors do this, +without the power of making their readers share the vision; but probably +few can impart the vision who do not themselves “visualise” with +distinctness. We have seen, in the cases of _The Holy Grail_ and other +pieces, that Tennyson, after long meditating a subject, often wrote very +rapidly, and with little need of correction. He was born with “style”; +it was a gift of his genius rather than the result of conscious +elaboration. Yet he did use “the file,” of which much is now written, +especially for the purpose of polishing away the sibilants, so common in +our language. In the nine years of silence which followed the little +book of 1833 his poems matured, and henceforth it is probable that he +altered his verses little, if we except the modifications in _The +Princess_. Many slight verbal touches were made, or old readings were +restored, but important changes, in the way of omission or addition, +became rare. + +Of nature Tennyson was scrupulously observant till his very latest days, +eagerly noting, not only “effects,” as a painter does, but their causes, +botanical or geological. Had man been scientific from the beginning he +would probably have evolved no poetry at all; material things would not +have been endowed by him with life and passion; he would have told +himself no stories of the origins of stars and flowers, clouds and fire, +winds and rainbows. Modern poets have resented, like Keats and +Wordsworth, the destruction of the old prehistoric dreams by the +geologist and by other scientific characters. But it was part of +Tennyson’s poetic originality to see the beautiful things of nature at +once with the vision of early poetic men, and of moderns accustomed to +the microscope, telescope, spectrum analysis, and so forth. Thus +Tennyson received a double delight from the sensible universe, and it is +a double delight that he communicates to his readers. His intellect was +thus always active, even in apparent repose. His eyes rested not from +observing, or his mind from recording and comparing, the beautiful +familiar phenomena of earth and sky. In the matter of the study of books +we have seen how deeply versed he was in certain of the Greek, Roman, and +Italian classics. Mr Jowett writes: “He was what might be called a good +scholar in the university or public-school sense of the term, . . . yet I +seem to remember that he had his favourite classics, such as Homer, and +Pindar, and Theocritus. . . . He was also a lover of Greek fragments. +But I am not sure whether, in later life, he ever sat down to read +consecutively the greatest works of Æschylus and Sophocles, although he +used occasionally to dip into them.” The Greek dramatists, in fact, seem +to have affected Tennyson’s work but slightly, while he constantly +reminds us of Virgil, Homer, Theocritus, and even Persius and Horace. +Mediæval French, whether in poetry or prose, and the poetry of the +“Pleiad” seems to have occupied little of his attention. Into the +oriental literatures he dipped—pretty deeply for his _Akbar_; and even +his _Locksley Hall_ owed something to Sir William Jones’s version of “the +old Arabian _Moallakat_.” The debt appears to be infinitesimal. He +seems to have been less closely familiar with Elizabethan poetry than +might have been expected: a number of his _obiter dicta_ on all kinds of +literary points are recorded in the _Life_ by Mr Palgrave. “Sir Walter +Scott’s short tale, _My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror_ (how little known!), he +once spoke of as the finest of all ghost or magical stories.” Lord +Tennyson adds, “_The Tapestried Chamber_ also he greatly admired.” Both +are lost from modern view among the short pieces of the last volumes of +the _Waverley_ novels. Of the poet’s interest in and attitude towards +the more obscure pyschological and psychical problems—to popular science +foolishness—enough has been said, but the remarks of Professor Tyndall +have not been cited:— + + My special purpose in introducing this poem, however, was to call + your attention to a passage further on which greatly interested me. + The poem is, throughout, a discussion between a believer in + immortality and one who is unable to believe. The method pursued is + this. The Sage reads a portion of the scroll, which he has taken + from the hands of his follower, and then brings his own arguments to + bear upon that portion, with a view to neutralising the scepticism of + the younger man. Let me here remark that I read the whole series of + poems published under the title “Tiresias,” full of admiration for + their freshness and vigour. Seven years after I had first read them + your father died, and you, his son, asked me to contribute a chapter + to the book which you contemplate publishing. I knew that I had some + small store of references to my interview with your father carefully + written in ancient journals. On the receipt of your request, I + looked up the account of my first visit to Farringford, and there, to + my profound astonishment, I found described that experience of your + father’s which, in the mouth of the Ancient Sage, was made the ground + of an important argument against materialism and in favour of + personal immortality eight-and-twenty years afterwards. In no other + poem during all these years is, to my knowledge, this experience once + alluded to. I had completely forgotten it, but here it was recorded + in black and white. If you turn to your father’s account of the + wonderful state of consciousness superinduced by thinking of his own + name, and compare it with the argument of the Ancient Sage, you will + see that they refer to one and the same phenomenon. + + * * * * * + + And more, my son! for more than once when I + Sat all alone, revolving in myself + The word that is the symbol of myself, + The mortal limit of the Self was loosed, + And past into the Nameless, as a cloud + Melts into heaven. I touch’d my limbs, the limbs + Were strange, not mine—and yet no shade of doubt, + But utter clearness, and thro’ loss of Self + The gain of such large life as match’d with ours + Were Sun to spark—unshadowable in words, + Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world. + +Any words about Tennyson as a politician are apt to excite the sleepless +prejudice which haunts the political field. He probably, if forced to +“put a name to it,” would have called himself a Liberal. But he was not +a social agitator. He never set a rick on fire. “He held aloof, in a +somewhat detached position, from the great social seethings of his age” +(Mr Frederic Harrison). But in youth he helped to extinguish some +flaming ricks. He spoke of the “many-headed beast” (the reading public) +in terms borrowed from Plato. He had no higher esteem for mobs than +Shakespeare or John Knox professed, while his theory of tyrants (in the +case of Napoleon III. about 1852) was that of Liberals like Mr Swinburne +and Victor Hugo. Though to modern enlightenment Tennyson may seem as +great a Tory as Dr Johnson, yet he had spoken his word in 1852 for the +freedom of France, and for securing England against the supposed designs +of a usurper (now fallen). He really believed, obsolete as the faith may +be, in guarding our own, both on land and sea. Perhaps no Continental or +American critic has ever yet dispraised a poetical fellow-countryman +merely for urging the duties of national union and national defence. A +critic, however, writes thus of Tennyson: “When our poet descends into +the arena of party polemics, in such things as _Riflemen_, _Form_! +_Hands all Round_, . . . _The Fleet_, and other topical pieces dear to +the Jingo soul, it is not poetry but journalism.” I doubt whether the +desirableness of the existence of a volunteer force and of a fleet really +is within the arena of _party_ polemics. If any party thinks that we +ought to have no volunteers, and that it is our duty to starve the fleet, +what is that party’s name? Who cries, “Down with the Fleet! Down with +National Defence! Hooray for the Disintegration of the Empire!”? + +Tennyson was not a party man, but he certainly would have opposed any +such party. If to defend our homes and this England be “Jingoism,” +Tennyson, like Shakespeare, was a Jingo. But, alas! I do not know the +name of the party which opposes Tennyson, and which wishes the invader to +trample down England—any invader will do for so philanthropic a purpose. +Except when resisting this unnamed party, the poet seldom or never +entered “the arena of party polemics.” Tennyson could not have +exclaimed, like Squire Western, “Hurrah for old England! Twenty thousand +honest Frenchmen have landed in Kent!” He undeniably did write verses +(whether poetry or journalism) tending to make readers take an +unfavourable view of honest invaders. If to do that is to be a “Jingo,” +and if such conduct hurts the feelings of any great English party, then +Tennyson was a Jingo and a partisan, and was, so far, a rhymester, like +Mr Kipling. Indeed we know that Tennyson applauded Mr Kipling’s _The +English Flag_. So the worst is out, as we in England count the worst. +In America and on the continent of Europe, however, a poet may be proud +of his country’s flag without incurring rebuke from his countrymen. +Tennyson did not reckon himself a party man; he believed more in +political evolution than in political revolution, with cataclysms. He +was neither an Anarchist nor a Home Ruler, nor a politician so generous +as to wish England to be laid defenceless at the feet of her foes. + +If these sentiments deserve censure, in Tennyson, at least, they claim +our tolerance. He was not born in a generation late enough to be truly +Liberal. Old prejudices about “this England,” old words from _Henry V._ +and _King John_, haunted his memory and darkened his vision of the true +proportions of things. We draw in prejudice with our mother’s milk. The +mother of Tennyson had not been an Agnostic or a Comtist; his father had +not been a staunch true-blue anti-Englander. Thus he inherited a certain +bias in favour of faith and fatherland, a bias from which he could never +emancipate himself. But _tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner_. Had +Tennyson’s birth been later, we might find in him a more complete +realisation of our poetic ideal—might have detected less to blame or to +forgive. + +With that apology we must leave the fame of Tennyson as a politician to +the clement consideration of an enlightened posterity. I do not defend +his narrow insularities, his Jingoism, or the appreciable percentage of +faith which blushing analysis may detect in his honest doubt: these +things I may regret or condemn, but we ought not to let them obscure our +view of the Poet. He was led away by bad examples. Of all Jingoes +Shakespeare is the most unashamed, and next to him are Drayton, Scott, +and Wordsworth, with his + + “Oh, for one hour of that Dundee!” + +In the years which followed the untoward affair of Waterloo young +Tennyson fell much under the influence of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and +the other offenders, and these are extenuating circumstances. By a +curious practical paradox, where the realms of poetry and politics meet, +the Tory critics seem milder of mood and more Liberal than the Liberal +critics. Thus Mr William Morris was certainly a very advanced political +theorist; and in theology Mr Swinburne has written things not easily +reconcilable with orthodoxy. Yet we find Divine-Right Tories, who in +literature are fervent admirers of these two poets, and leave their +heterodoxies out of account. But many Liberal critics appear unable +quite to forgive Tennyson because he did not wish to starve the fleet, +and because he held certain very ancient, if obsolete, beliefs. Perhaps +a general amnesty ought to be passed, as far as poets are concerned, and +their politics and creeds should be left to silence, where “beyond these +voices there is peace.” + +One remark, I hope, can excite no prejudice. The greatest of the Gordons +was a soldier, and lived in religion. But the point at which Tennyson’s +memory is blended with that of Gordon is the point of sympathy with the +neglected poor. It is to his wise advice, and to affection for Gordon, +that we owe the Gordon training school for poor boys,—a good school, and +good boys come out of that academy. + +The question as to Tennyson’s precise rank in the glorious roll of the +Poets of England can never be determined by us, if in any case or at any +time such determinations can be made. We do not, or should not, ask +whether Virgil or Lucretius, whether Æschylus or Sophocles, is the +greater poet. The consent of mankind seems to place Homer and +Shakespeare and Dante high above all. For the rest no prize-list can be +settled. If influence among aliens is the test, Byron probably takes, +among our poets, the next rank after Shakespeare. But probably there is +no possible test. In certain respects Shelley, in many respects Milton, +in some Coleridge, in some Burns, in the opinion of a number of persons +Browning, are greater poets than Tennyson. But for exquisite variety and +varied exquisiteness Tennyson is not readily to be surpassed. At one +moment he pleases the uncritical mass of readers, in another mood he wins +the verdict of the _raffiné_. It is a success which scarce any English +poet but Shakespeare has excelled. His faults have rarely, if ever, been +those of flat-footed, “thick-ankled” dulness; of rhetoric, of +common-place; rather have his defects been the excess of his qualities. +A kind of John Bullishness may also be noted, especially in derogatory +references to France, which, true or untrue, are out of taste and +keeping. But these errors could be removed by the excision of +half-a-dozen lines. His later work (as the _Voyage of Maeldune_) shows a +just appreciation of ancient Celtic literature. A great critic, F. T. +Palgrave, has expressed perhaps the soundest appreciation of Tennyson:— + + It is for “the days that remain” to bear witness to his real place in + the great hierarchy, amongst whom Dante boldly yet justly ranked + himself. But if we look at Tennyson’s work in a twofold + aspect,—_Here_, on the exquisite art in which, throughout, his verse + is clothed, the lucid beauty of the form, the melody almost audible + as music, the mysterious skill by which the words used constantly + strike as the _inevitable_ words (and hence, unforgettable), the + subtle allusive touches, by which a secondary image is suggested to + enrich the leading thought, as the harmonic “partials” give richness + to the note struck upon the string; _There_, when we think of the + vast fertility in subject and treatment, united with happy selection + of motive, the wide range of character, the dramatic force of + impersonation, the pathos in every variety, the mastery over the + comic and the tragic alike, above all, perhaps, those phrases of + luminous insight which spring direct from imaginative observation of + Humanity, true for all time, coming from the heart to the heart,—his + work will probably be found to lie somewhere between that of Virgil + and Shakespeare: having its portion, if I may venture on the phrase, + in the inspiration of both. + +A professed enthusiast for Tennyson can add nothing to, and take nothing +from, these words of one who, though his friend, was too truly a critic +to entertain the admiration that goes beyond idolatry. + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + +{1} Macmillan & Co. + +{7} To the present writer, as to others, _The Lover’s Tale_ appeared to +be imitative of Shelley, but if Tennyson had never read Shelley, _cadit +quæstio_. + +{16} F. W. H. Myers, _Science and a Future Life_, p. 133. + +{39} The writer knew this edition before he knew Tennyson’s poems. + +{50} The author of the spiteful letters was an unpublished anonymous +person. + +{58} The Lennox MSS. + +{62} Spencer and Gillen, _Natives of Central Australia_, pp. 388, 389. + +{65} _Tennyson_, _Ruskin_, _and Mill_, pp. 11, 12. + +{66} _Life_, p. 37, 1899. + +{72} Poem omitted from _In Memoriam_. _Life_, p. 257, 1899. + +{74} Mr Harrison, _Tennyson_, _Ruskin_, _and Mill_, p. 5. + +{112} The English reader may consult Mr Rhys’s _The Arthurian Legend_, +Oxford, 1891, and Mr Nutt’s _Studies of the Legend of the Holy Grail_, +which will direct him to other authorities and sources. + +{113} I have summarised, with omissions, Miss Jessie L. Watson’s sketch +in _King Arthur and his Knights_. Nutt, 1899. The learning of the +subject is enormous; Dr Sommer’s _Le Mort d’Arthur_, the second volume +may be consulted. Nutt, 1899. + +{129a} Βέλενος and Βήληνος. He is referred to in inscriptions, _e.g._ +Berlin, _Corpus_, iii. 4774, V. 732, 733, 1829, 2143–46; xii. 405. See +also Ausonius (Leipsic, 1886, pp. 52, 59), cited by Rhys, _The Arthurian +Legend_ p. 159, note 4. + +{129b} Brebeuf; _Relations des Jésuites_, 1636, pp. 100–102. + +{139} Malory, xviii. 8 _et seq._ + +{196} Notices et Extraits des MSS. de la Bibliothèque Impériale, I. xix. +pp. 643–645. + +{218} See the _Life_, 1899, p. 521. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALFRED TENNYSON*** + + +******* This file should be named 3654-0.txt or 3654-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/6/5/3654 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: Alfred Tennyson + + +Author: Andrew Lang + + + +Release Date: September 24, 2014 [eBook #3654] +[This file was first posted on 3 July 2001] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALFRED TENNYSON*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from the 1901 William Blackwood and Sons edition +by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/coverb.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Book cover" +title= +"Book cover" + src="images/covers.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<h1>ALFRED TENNYSON</h1> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br +/> +ANDREW LANG</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS<br /> +EDINBURGH AND LONDON<br /> +MCMI</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<h2>INTRODUCTION.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">In</span> writing this brief sketch of the +Life of Tennyson, and this attempt to appreciate his work, I have +rested almost entirely on the Biography by Lord Tennyson (with +his kind permission) and on the text of the Poems. As to +the Life, doubtless current anecdotes, not given in the +Biography, are known to me, and to most people. But as they +must also be familiar to the author of the Biography, I have not +thought it desirable to include what he rejected. The works +of the “localisers” I have not read: Tennyson +disliked these researches, as a rule, and they appear to be +unessential, and often hazardous. The professed +commentators I have not consulted. It appeared better to +give one’s own impressions of the Poems, unaffected by the +impressions of others, except in one or two cases where matters +of fact rather than of taste seemed to be in question. Thus +on two or three points I have ventured to differ from a +distinguished living critic, and have given the reasons for my +dissent. Professor Bradley’s <i>Commentary on In +Memoriam</i> <a name="citation1"></a><a href="#footnote1" +class="citation">[1]</a> came out after this sketch was in +print. Many of the comments cited by Mr Bradley from his +predecessors appear to justify my neglect of these curious +inquirers. The “difficulties” which they raise +are not likely, as a rule, to present themselves to persons who +read poetry “for human pleasure.”</p> +<p>I have not often dwelt on parallels to be found in the works +of earlier poets. In many cases Tennyson deliberately +reproduced passages from Greek, Latin, and old Italian writers, +just as Virgil did in the case of Homer, Theocritus, Apollonius +Rhodius, and others. There are, doubtless, instances in +which a phrase is unconsciously reproduced by automatic memory, +from an English poet. But I am less inclined than Mr +Bradley to think that unconscious reminiscence is more common in +Tennyson than in the poets generally. I have not closely +examined Keats and Shelley, for example, to see how far they were +influenced by unconscious memory. But Scott, confessedly, +was apt to reproduce the phrases of others, and once unwittingly +borrowed from a poem by the valet of one of his friends! I +believe that many of the alleged borrowings in Tennyson are +either no true parallels at all or are the unavoidable +coincidences of expression which must inevitably occur. The +poet himself stated, in a lively phrase, his opinion of the +hunters after parallels, and I confess that I am much of his +mind. They often remind me of Mr Punch’s parody on an +unfriendly review of Alexander Smith—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Most <i>women</i> have <i>no character</i> +at all.”—<span class="smcap">Pope</span>.</p> +<p>“No <i>character</i> that servant <i>woman</i> +asked.”—<span class="smcap">Smith</span>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>I have to thank Mr Edmund Gosse and Mr Vernon Rendall for +their kindness in reading my proof-sheets. They have saved +me from some errors, but I may have occasionally retained matter +which, for one reason or another, did not recommend itself to +them. In no case are they responsible for the opinions +expressed, or for the critical estimates. They are those of +a Tennysonian, and, no doubt, would be other than they are if the +writer were younger than he is. It does not follow that +they would necessarily be more correct, though probably they +would be more in vogue. The point of view must shift with +each generation of readers, as ideas or beliefs go in or out of +fashion, are accepted, rejected, or rehabilitated. To one +age Tennyson may seem weakly superstitious; to another needlessly +sceptical. After all, what he must live by is, not his +opinions, but his poetry. The poetry of Milton survives his +ideas; whatever may be the fate of the ideas of Tennyson his +poetry must endure.</p> +<h2>CONTENTS.</h2> +<table> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"> </p> +</td> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">I.</p> +</td> +<td><p>BOYHOOD—CAMBRIDGE—EARLY POEMS.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page1">1</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">II.</p> +</td> +<td><p>POEMS OF 1831–1833.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page22">22</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">III.</p> +</td> +<td><p>1837–1842.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page35">35</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">IV.</p> +</td> +<td><p>1842–848—THE PRINCESS.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page46">46</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">V.</p> +</td> +<td><p>IN MEMORIAM.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page61">61</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">VI.</p> +</td> +<td><p>AFTER IN MEMORIAM.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page81">81</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">VII.</p> +</td> +<td><p>THE IDYLLS OF THE KING.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page103">103</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">VIII</p> +</td> +<td><p>ENOCH ARDEN. THE DRAMAS.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page158">158</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">IX.</p> +</td> +<td><p>LAST YEARS.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page194">194</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">X.</p> +</td> +<td><p>1890.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page203">203</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XI.</p> +</td> +<td><p>LAST CHAPTER.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page212">212</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +<h2><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 1</span>I<br /> +BOYHOOD—CAMBRIDGE—EARLY POEMS.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> life and work of Tennyson +present something like the normal type of what, in circumstances +as fortunate as mortals may expect, the life and work of a modern +poet ought to be. A modern poet, one says, because even +poetry is now affected by the division of labour. We do not +look to the poet for a large share in the practical activities of +existence: we do not expect him, like Æschylus and +Sophocles, Theognis and Alcæus, to take a conspicuous part +in politics and war; or even, as in the Age of Anne, to shine +among wits and in society. Life has become, perhaps, too +specialised for such multifarious activities. Indeed, even +in ancient days, as a Celtic proverb and as the picture of life +in the Homeric epics prove, the poet was already a man +apart—not foremost among statesmen and rather backward +among warriors. If we agree with a not unpopular opinion, +the poet ought to be a kind of “Titanic” force, +wrecking himself on his own passions and on the nature of things, +as did Byron, Burns, Marlowe, and Musset. But +Tennyson’s career followed lines really more normal, the +lines of the life of Wordsworth, wisdom and self-control +directing the course of a long, sane, sound, and fortunate +existence. The great physical strength which is commonly +the basis of great mental vigour was not ruined in Tennyson by +poverty and passion, as in the case of Burns, nor in forced +literary labour, as in those of Scott and Dickens. For long +he was poor, like Wordsworth and Southey, but never +destitute. He made his early effort: he had his time of +great sorrow, and trial, and apparent failure. With +practical wisdom he conquered circumstances; he became eminent; +he outlived reaction against his genius; he died in the fulness +of a happy age and of renown. This full-orbed life, with +not a few years of sorrow and stress, is what Nature seems to +intend for the career of a divine minstrel. If Tennyson +missed the “one crowded hour of glorious life,” he +had not to be content in “an age without a name.”</p> +<p>It was not Tennyson’s lot to illustrate any modern +theory of the origin of genius. Born in 1809 of a +Lincolnshire family, long connected with the soil but +inconspicuous in history, Tennyson had nothing Celtic in his +blood, as far as pedigrees prove. This is unfortunate for +one school of theorists. His mother (genius is presumed to +be derived from mothers) had a genius merely for moral excellence +and for religion. She is described in the poem of +<i>Isabel</i>, and was “a remarkable and saintly +woman.” In the male line, the family was not (as the +families of genius ought to be) brief of life and +unhealthy. “The Tennysons never die,” said the +sister who was betrothed to Arthur Hallam. The father, a +clergyman, was, says his grandson, “a man of great +ability,” and his “excellent library” was an +element in the education of his family. “My father +was a poet,” Tennyson said, “and could write regular +verse very skilfully.” In physical type the sons were +tall, strong, and unusually dark: Tennyson, when abroad, was not +taken for an Englishman; at home, strangers thought him +“foreign.” Most of the children had the +temperament, and several of the sons had some of the +accomplishments, of genius: whence derived by way of heredity is +a question beyond conjecture, for the father’s +accomplishment was not unusual. As Walton says of the poet +and the angler, they “were born to be so”: we know no +more.</p> +<p>The region in which the paternal hamlet of Somersby lies, +“a land of quiet villages, large fields, grey hillsides, +and noble tall-towered churches, on the lower slope of a +Lincolnshire wold,” does not appear to have been rich in +romantic legend and tradition. The folk-lore of +Lincolnshire, of which examples have been published, does seem to +have a peculiar poetry of its own, but it was rather the humorous +than the poetical aspect of the country-people that Tennyson +appears to have known. In brief, we have nothing to inform +us as to how genius came into that generation of Tennysons which +was born between 1807 and 1819. A source and a cause there +must have been, but these things are hidden, except from popular +science.</p> +<p>Precocity is not a sign of genius, but genius is perhaps +always accompanied by precocity. This is especially notable +in the cases of painting, music, and mathematics; but in the +matter of literature genius may chiefly show itself in +acquisition, as in Sir Walter Scott, who when a boy knew much, +but did little that would attract notice. As a child and a +boy young Tennyson was remarked both for acquisition and +performance. His own reminiscences of his childhood varied +somewhat in detail. In one place we learn that at the age +of eight he covered a slate with blank verse in the manner of +Jamie Thomson, the only poet with whom he was then +acquainted. In another passage he says, “The first +poetry that moved me was my own at five years old. When I +was eight I remember making a line I thought grander than +Campbell, or Byron, or Scott. I rolled it out, it was +this—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘With slaughterous sons of thunder rolled +the flood’—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>great nonsense, of course, but I thought it fine!”</p> +<p>It <i>was</i> fine, and was thoroughly Tennysonian. +Scott, Campbell, and Byron probably never produced a line with +the qualities of this nonsense verse. “Before I could +read I was in the habit on a stormy day of spreading my arms to +the wind and crying out, ‘I hear a voice that’s +speaking in the wind,’ and the words ‘far, far +away’ had always a strange charm for me.” A +late lyric has this overword, <i>Far</i>, <i>far away</i>!</p> +<p>A boy of eight who knew the contemporary poets was more or +less precocious. Tennyson also knew Pope, and wrote +hundreds of lines in Pope’s measure. At twelve the +boy produced an epic, in Scott’s manner, of some six +thousand lines. He “never felt himself more truly +inspired,” for the sense of “inspiration” (as +the late Mr Myers has argued in an essay on the “Mechanism +of Genius”) has little to do with the actual value of the +product. At fourteen Tennyson wrote a drama in blank +verse. A chorus from this play (as one guesses), a piece +from “an unpublished drama written very early,” is +published in the volume of 1830:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“The varied earth, the moving heaven,<br /> + The rapid waste of roving sea,<br /> +The fountain-pregnant mountains riven<br /> + To shapes of wildest anarchy,<br /> +By secret fire and midnight storms<br /> + That wander round their windy cones.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>These lines are already Tennysonian. There is the +classical transcript, “the varied earth,” +<i>dædala tellus</i>. There is the geological +interest in the forces that shape the hills. There is the +use of the favourite word “windy,” and later in the +piece—</p> +<blockquote><p>“The troublous autumn’s <i>sallow</i> +gloom.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The young poet from boyhood was original in his manner.</p> +<p>Byron made him <i>blasé</i> at fourteen. Then +Byron died, and Tennyson scratched on a rock “Byron is +dead,” on “a day when the whole world seemed darkened +for me.” Later he considered Byron’s poetry +“too much akin to rhetoric.” “Byron is +not an artist or a thinker, or a creator in the higher sense, but +a strong personality; he is endlessly clever, and is now unduly +depreciated.” He “did give the world another +heart and new pulses, and so we are kept going.” But +“he was dominated by Byron till he was seventeen, when he +put him away altogether.”</p> +<p>In his boyhood, despite the sufferings which he endured for a +while at school at Louth; despite bullying from big boys and +masters, Tennyson would “shout his verses to the +skies.” “Well, Arthur, I mean to be +famous,” he used to say to one of his brothers. He +observed nature very closely by the brook and the thundering +sea-shores: he was never a sportsman, and his angling was in the +manner of the lover of <i>The Miller’s Daughter</i>. +He was seventeen (1826) when <i>Poems by Two Brothers</i> +(himself and his brother Frederick) was published with the date +1827. These poems contain, as far as I have been able to +discover, nothing really Tennysonian. What he had done in +his own manner was omitted, “being thought too much out of +the common for the public taste.” The young poet had +already saving common-sense, and understood the public. +Fragments of the true gold are found in the volume of 1830, +others are preserved in the Biography. The ballad suggested +by <i>The Bride of Lammermoor</i> was not unworthy of Beddoes, +and that novel, one cannot but think, suggested the opening +situation in <i>Maud</i>, where the hero is a modern Master of +Ravenswood in his relation to the rich interloping family and the +beautiful daughter. To this point we shall return. It +does not appear that Tennyson was conscious in <i>Maud</i> of the +suggestion from Scott, and the coincidence may be merely +accidental.</p> +<p><i>The Lover’s Tale</i>, published in 1879, was mainly a +work of the poet’s nineteenth year. A few copies had +been printed for friends. One of these, with errors of the +press, and without the intended alterations, was pirated by an +unhappy man in 1875. In old age Tennyson brought out the +work of his boyhood. “It was written before I had +ever seen Shelley, though it is called Shelleyan,” he said; +and indeed he believed that his work had never been imitative, +after his earliest efforts in the manner of Thomson and of +Scott. The only things in <i>The Lover’s Tale</i> +which would suggest that the poet here followed Shelley are the +Italian scene of the story, the character of the versification, +and the extraordinary luxuriance and exuberance of the imagery. +<a name="citation7"></a><a href="#footnote7" +class="citation">[7]</a> As early as 1868 Tennyson heard +that written copies of <i>The Lover’s Tale</i> were in +circulation. He then remarked, as to the exuberance of the +piece: “Allowance must be made for abundance of +youth. It is rich and full, but there are mistakes in it. . +. . The poem is the breath of young love.”</p> +<p>How truly Tennysonian the manner is may be understood even +from the opening lines, full of the original cadences which were +to become so familiar:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Here far away, seen from the topmost +cliff,<br /> +Filling with purple gloom the vacancies<br /> +Between the tufted hills, the sloping seas<br /> +Hung in mid-heaven, and half way down rare sails,<br /> +White as white clouds, floated from sky to sky.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The narrative in parts one and two (which alone were written +in youth) is so choked with images and descriptions as to be +almost obscure. It is the story, practically, of a love +like that of Paul and Virginia, but the love is not returned by +the girl, who prefers the friend of the narrator. Like the +hero of <i>Maud</i>, the speaker has a period of madness and +illusion; while the third part, “The Golden +Supper”—suggested by a story of Boccaccio, and +written in maturity—is put in the mouth of another +narrator, and is in a different style. The discarded lover, +visiting the vault which contains the body of his lady, finds her +alive, and restores her to her husband. The whole finished +legend is necessarily not among the author’s +masterpieces. But perhaps not even Keats in his earliest +work displayed more of promise, and gave more assurance of +genius. Here and there come turns and phrases, “all +the charm of all the Muses,” which remind a reader of +things later well known in pieces more mature. Such lines +are—</p> +<blockquote><p> “Strange to me and +sweet,<br /> +Sweet through strange years,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Like to a low-hung and a fiery sky<br /> +Hung round with <i>ragged rims</i> and burning folds.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Like sounds without the twilight realm of +dreams,<br /> +Which wander round the bases of the hills.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>We also note close observation of nature in the curious +phrase—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Cries of the partridge like a rusty key<br +/> +Turned in a lock.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Of this kind was Tennyson’s adolescent vein, when he +left</p> +<blockquote><p> “The poplars four<br /> +That stood beside his father’s door,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>the Somersby brook, and the mills and granges, the seas of the +Lincolnshire coast, and the hills and dales among the wolds, for +Cambridge. He was well read in old and contemporary English +literature, and in the classics. Already he was acquainted +with the singular trance-like condition to which his poems +occasionally allude, a subject for comment later. He +matriculated at Trinity, with his brother Charles, on February +20, 1828, and had an interview of a not quite friendly sort with +a proctor before he wore the gown.</p> +<p>That Tennyson should go to Cambridge, not to Oxford, was part +of the nature of things, by which Cambridge educates the majority +of English poets, whereas Oxford has only “turned +out” a few—like Shelley. At that time, as in +Macaulay’s day, the path of university honours at Cambridge +lay through Mathematics, and, except for his prize poem in 1829, +Tennyson took no honours at all. His classical reading was +pursued as literature, not as a course of grammar and +philology. No English poet, at least since Milton, had been +better read in the classics; but Tennyson’s studies did not +aim at the gaining of academic distinction. His aspect was +such that Thompson, later Master of Trinity, on first seeing him +come into hall, said, “That man must be a +poet.” Like Byron, Shelley, and probably Coleridge, +Tennyson looked the poet that he was: “Six feet high, +broad-chested, strong-limbed, his face Shakespearian and with +deep eyelids, his forehead ample, crowned with dark wavy hair, +his head finely poised.”</p> +<p>Not much is recorded of Tennyson as an undergraduate. In +our days efforts would have been made to enlist so promising a +recruit in one of the college boats; but rowing was in its +infancy. It is a peculiarity of the universities that +little flocks of men of unusual ability come up at intervals +together, breaking the monotony of idlers, prize scholars, and +honours men. Such a group appeared at Balliol in Matthew +Arnold’s time, and rather later, at various colleges, in +the dawn of Pre-Raphaelitism. The Tennysons—Alfred, +Frederick, and Charles—were members of such a set. +There was Arthur Hallam, son of the historian, from Eton; there +was Spedding, the editor and biographer of Bacon; Milnes (Lord +Houghton), Blakesley (Dean of Lincoln), Thompson, Merivale, +Trench (a poet, and later, Archbishop of Dublin), Brookfield, +Buller, and, after Tennyson the greatest, Thackeray, a +contemporary if not an “Apostle.” Charles +Buller’s, like Hallam’s, was to be an +“unfulfilled renown.” Of Hallam, whose name is +for ever linked with his own, Tennyson said that he would have +been a great man, but not a great poet; “he was as near +perfection as mortal man could be.” His scanty +remains are chiefly notable for his divination of Tennyson as a +great poet; for the rest, we can only trust the author of <i>In +Memoriam</i> and the verdict of tradition.</p> +<p>The studies of the poet at this time included original +composition in Greek and Latin verse, history, and a theme that +he alone has made poetical, natural science. All poetry has +its roots in the age before natural science was more than a +series of nature-myths. The poets have usually, like Keats, +regretted the days when</p> +<blockquote><p>“There was an awful rainbow once in +heaven,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>when the hills and streams were not yet “dispeopled of +their dreams.” Tennyson, on the other hand, was +already finding material for poetry in the world as seen through +microscope and telescope, and as developed through +“æonian” processes of evolution. In a +notebook, mixed with Greek, is a poem on the Moon—not the +moon of Selene, “the orbed Maiden,” but of +astronomical science. <i>In Memoriam</i> recalls the +conversations on labour and politics, discussions of the age of +the Reform Bill, of rick-burning (expected to “make taters +cheaper”), and of Catholic emancipation; also the +emancipation of such negroes as had not yet tasted the blessings +of freedom. In politics Tennyson was what he remained, a +patriot, a friend of freedom, a foe of disorder. His +politics, he said, were those “of Shakespeare, Bacon, and +every sane man.” He was one of the Society of +Apostles, and characteristically contributed an essay on +Ghosts. Only the preface survives: it is not written in a +scientific style; but bids us “not assume that any vision +<i>is</i> baseless.” Perhaps the author went on to +discuss “veridical hallucinations,” but his ideas +about these things must be considered later.</p> +<p>It was by his father’s wish that Tennyson competed for +the English prize poem. The theme, Timbuctoo, was not +inspiring. Thackeray wrote a good parody of the ordinary +prize poem in Pope’s metre:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“I see her sons the hill of glory mount,<br +/> +And sell their sugars on their own account;<br /> +Prone to her feet the prostrate nations come,<br /> +Sue for her rice and barter for her rum.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Tennyson’s work was not much more serious: he merely +patched up an old piece, in blank verse, on the battle of +Armageddon. The poem is not destitute of Tennysonian +cadence, and ends, not inappropriately, with “All was +night.” Indeed, all <i>was</i> night.</p> +<p>An ingenious myth accounts for Tennyson’s success: At +Oxford, says Charles Wordsworth, the author was more likely to +have been rusticated than rewarded. But already (1829) +Arthur Hallam told Mr Gladstone that Tennyson “promised +fair to be the greatest poet of our generation, perhaps of our +century.”</p> +<p>In 1830 Tennyson published the first volume of which he was +sole author. Browning’s <i>Pauline</i> was of the +year 1833. It was the very dead hours of the Muses. +The great Mr Murray had ceased, as one despairing of song, to +publish poetry. Bulwer Lytton, in the preface to <i>Paul +Clifford</i> (1830), announced that poetry, with every other form +of literature except the Novel, was unremunerative and +unread. Coleridge and Scott were silent: indeed Sir Walter +was near his death; Wordsworth had shot his bolt, though an arrow +or two were left in the quiver. Keats, Shelley, and Byron +were dead; Milman’s brief vogue was departing. It +seemed as if novels alone could appeal to readers, so great a +change in taste had been wrought by the sixteen years of Waverley +romances. The slim volume of Tennyson was naturally +neglected, though Leigh Hunt reviewed it in the +<i>Tatler</i>. Hallam’s comments in the +<i>Englishman’s Magazine</i>, though enthusiastic (as was +right and natural), were judicious. “The author +imitates no one.” Coleridge did not read all the +book, but noted “things of a good deal of beauty. The +misfortune is that he has begun to write verses without very well +understanding what metre is.” As Tennyson said in +1890, “So I, an old man, who get a poem or poems every day, +might cast a casual glance at a book, and seeing something which +I could not scan or understand, might possibly decide against the +book without further consideration.” As a rule, the +said books are worthless. The number of versifiers makes it +hard, indeed, for the poet to win recognition. One little +new book of rhyme is so like another, and almost all are of so +little interest!</p> +<p>The rare book that differs from the rest has a +<i>bizarrerie</i> with its originality, and in the poems of 1830 +there was, assuredly, more than enough of the bizarre. +There were no hyphens in the double epithets, and words like +“tendriltwine” seemed provokingly affected. A +kind of lusciousness, like that of Keats when under the influence +of Leigh Hunt, may here and there be observed. Such faults +as these catch the indifferent eye when a new book is first +opened, and the volume of 1830 was probably condemned by almost +every reader of the previous generation who deigned to afford it +a glance. Out of fifty-six pieces only twenty-three were +reprinted in the two volumes of 1842, which won for Tennyson the +general recognition of the world of letters. Five or six of +the pieces then left out were added as <i>Juvenilia</i> in the +collected works of 1871, 1872. The whole mass deserves the +attention of students of the poet’s development.</p> +<p>This early volume may be said to contain, in the germ, all the +great original qualities of Tennyson, except the humour of his +rural studies and the elaboration of his Idylls. For +example, in <i>Mariana</i> we first note what may be called his +perfection and accomplishment. The very few alterations +made later are verbal. The moated grange of Mariana in +<i>Measure for Measure</i>, and her mood of desertion and +despair, are elaborated by a precision of truth and with a +perfection of harmony worthy of Shakespeare himself, and minutely +studied from the natural scenes in which the poet was born. +If these verses alone survived out of the wreck of Victorian +literature, they would demonstrate the greatness of the author as +clearly as do the fragments of Sappho. <i>Isabel</i> (a +study of the poet’s mother) is almost as remarkable in its +stately dignity; while <i>Recollections of the Arabian Nights</i> +attest the power of refined luxury in romantic description, and +herald the unmatched beauty of <i>The Lotos-Eaters</i>. +<i>The Poet</i>, again, is a picture of that which Tennyson +himself was to fulfil; and <i>Oriana</i> is a revival of romance, +and of the ballad, not limited to the ballad form as in its +prototype, <i>Helen of Kirkconnell</i>. Curious and +exquisite experiment in metre is indicated in the <i>Leonine +Elegiacs</i>, in <i>Claribel</i>, and several other poems. +Qualities which were not for long to find public expression, +speculative powers brooding, in various moods, on ultimate and +insoluble questions, were attested by <i>The Mystic</i>, and +<i>Supposed Confessions of a Second-rate Sensitive Mind not in +Unity with Itself</i>, an unlucky title of a remarkable +performance. “In this, the most agitated of all his +poems, we find the soul urging onward</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Thro’ utter dark a full-sail’d +skiff,<br /> +Unpiloted i’ the echoing dance<br /> +Of reboant whirlwinds;’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and to the question, ‘Why not believe, then?’ we +have as answer a simile of the sea, which cannot slumber like a +mountain tarn, or</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Draw down into his vexed pools<br /> +All that blue heaven which hues and paves’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>the tranquil inland mere.” <a name="citation16"></a><a +href="#footnote16" class="citation">[16]</a></p> +<p>The poet longs for the faith of his infant days and of his +mother—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Thy mild deep eyes upraised, that knew<br +/> +The beauty and repose of faith,<br /> +And the clear spirit shining thro’.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>That faith is already shaken, and the long struggle for belief +has already begun.</p> +<p>Tennyson, according to Matthew Arnold, was not <i>un esprit +puissant</i>. Other and younger critics, who have attained +to a cock-certain mood of negation, are apt to blame him because, +in fact, he did not finally agree with their opinions. If a +man is necessarily a weakling or a hypocrite because, after +trying all things, he is not an atheist or a materialist, then +the reproach of insincerity or of feebleness of mind must rest +upon Tennyson. But it is manifest that, almost in boyhood, +he had already faced the ideas which, to one of his character, +almost meant despair: he had not kept his eyes closed. To +his extremely self-satisfied accusers we might answer, in lines +from this earliest volume (<i>The Mystic</i>):—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Ye scorn him with an undiscerning scorn;<br +/> +Ye cannot read the marvel in his eye,<br /> +The still serene abstraction.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>He would behold</p> +<blockquote><p>“One shadow in the midst of a great +light,<br /> +One reflex from eternity on time,<br /> +One mighty countenance of perfect calm,<br /> +Awful with most invariable eyes.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>His mystic of these boyish years—</p> +<blockquote><p> “Often lying broad awake, +and yet<br /> +Remaining from the body, and apart<br /> +In intellect and power and will, hath heard<br /> +Time flowing in the middle of the night,<br /> +And all things creeping to a day of doom.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In this poem, never republished by the author, is an attempt +to express an experience which in later years he more than once +endeavoured to set forth in articulate speech, an experience +which was destined to colour his finial speculations on ultimate +problems of God and of the soul. We shall later have to +discuss the opinion of an eminent critic, Mr Frederic Harrison, +that Tennyson’s ideas, theological, evolutionary, and +generally speculative, “followed, rather than created, the +current ideas of his time.” “The train of +thought” (in <i>In Memoriam</i>), writes Mr Harrison, +“is essentially that with which ordinary English readers +had been made familiar by F. D. Maurice, Professor Jowett, Dr +Martineau, <i>Ecce Homo</i>, <i>Hypatia</i>.” Of +these influences only Maurice, and Maurice only orally, could +have reached the author of <i>The Mystic</i> and the <i>Supposed +Confessions</i>. <i>Ecce Homo</i>, <i>Hypatia</i>, Mr +Jowett, were all in the bosom of the future when <i>In +Memoriam</i> was written. Now, <i>The Mystic</i> and the +<i>Supposed Confessions</i> are prior to <i>In Memoriam</i>, +earlier than 1830. Yet they already contain the chief +speculative tendencies of <i>In Memoriam</i>; the growing doubts +caused by evolutionary ideas (then familiar to Tennyson, though +not to “ordinary English readers”), the longing for a +return to childlike faith, and the mystical experiences which +helped Tennyson to recover a faith that abode with him. In +these things he was original. Even as an undergraduate he +was not following “a train of thought made familiar” +by authors who had not yet written a line, and by books which had +not yet been published.</p> +<p>So much, then, of the poet that was to be and of the +philosopher existed in the little volume of the +undergraduate. In <i>The Mystic</i> we notice a phrase, two +words long, which was later to be made familiar, “Daughters +of time, divinely tall,” reproduced in the picture of +Helen:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“A daughter of the Gods, divinely tall,<br +/> + And most divinely fair.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The reflective pieces are certainly of more interest now +(though they seem to have satisfied the poet less) than the +gallery of airy fairy Lilians, Adelines, Rosalinds, and +Eleänores:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Daughters of dreams and of +stories,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>like</p> +<blockquote><p>“Faustine, Fragoletta, Dolores,<br /> +Félise, and Yolande, and Juliette.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Cambridge, which he was soon to leave, did not satisfy the +poet. Oxford did not satisfy Gibbon, or later, Shelley; and +young men of genius are not, in fact, usually content with +universities which, perhaps, are doing their best, but are +neither governed nor populated by minds of the highest and most +original class.</p> +<blockquote><p> “You that do profess to +teach<br /> +And teach us nothing, feeding not the heart.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The universities, in fact, teach a good deal of that which can +be learned, but the best things cannot be taught. The +universities give men leisure, books, and companionship, to learn +for themselves. All tutors cannot be, and at that time few +dreamed of being, men like Jowett and T. H. Green, Gamaliels at +whose feet undergraduates sat with enthusiasm, “did +<i>eagerly</i> frequent,” like Omar Khayyám. +In later years Tennyson found closer relations between dons and +undergraduates, and recorded his affection for his +university. She had supplied him with such companionship as +is rare, and permitted him to “catch the blossom of the +flying terms,” even if tutors and lecturers were creatures +of routine, <i>terriblement enfonces dans la matière</i>, +like the sire of Madelon and Cathos, that honourable citizen.</p> +<p>Tennyson just missed, by going down, a visit of Wordsworth to +Cambridge. The old enthusiast of revolution was justifying +passive obedience: thirty years had turned the almost Jacobin +into an almost Jacobite. Such is the triumph of time. +In the summer of 1830 Tennyson, with Hallam, visited the +Pyrenees. The purpose was political—to aid some +Spanish rebels. The fruit is seen in <i>Œnone</i> and +<i>Mariana in the South</i>.</p> +<p>In March 1831 Tennyson lost his father. “He slept +in the dead man’s bed, earnestly desiring to see his ghost, +but no ghost came.” “You see,” he said, +“ghosts do not generally come to imaginative people;” +a remark very true, though ghosts are attributed to +“imagination.” Whatever causes these phantasms, +it is not the kind of <i>phantasia</i> which is consciously +exercised by the poet. Coleridge had seen far too many +ghosts to believe in them; and Coleridge and Donne apart, with +the hallucinations of Goethe and Shelley, who met themselves, +what poet ever did “see a ghost”? One who saw +Tennyson as he wandered alone at this period called him “a +mysterious being, seemingly lifted high above other mortals, and +having a power of intercourse with the spirit world not granted +to others.” But it was the world of the poet, not of +the “medium.”</p> +<p>The Tennysons stayed on at the parsonage for six years. +But, anticipating their removal, Arthur Hallam in 1831 dealt in +prophecy about the identification in the district of places in +his friend’s poems—“critic after critic will +trace the wanderings of the brook,” as,—in fact, +critic after critic has done. Tennyson disliked—these +“localisers.” The poet’s walks were +shared by Arthur Hallam, then affianced to his sister Emily.</p> +<h2><a name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 22</span>II.<br +/> +POEMS OF 1831–1833.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">By</span> 1832 most of the poems of +Tennyson’s second volume were circulating in MS. among his +friends, and no poet ever had friends more encouraging. +Perhaps bards of to-day do not find an eagerness among their +acquaintance for effusions in manuscript, or in +proof-sheets. The charmed volume appeared at the end of the +year (dated 1833), and Hallam denounced as “infamous” +Lockhart’s review in the <i>Quarterly</i>. Infamous +or not, it is extremely diverting. How Lockhart could miss +the great and abundant poetry remains a marvel. Ten years +later the Scorpion repented, and invited Sterling to review any +book he pleased, for the purpose of enabling him to praise the +two volumes of 1842, which he did gladly. Lockhart hated +all affectation and “preciosity,” of which the new +book was not destitute. He had been among +Wordsworth’s most ardent admirers when Wordsworth had few, +but the memories of the war with the “Cockney School” +clung to him, the war with Leigh Hunt, and now he gave himself up +to satire. Probably he thought that the poet was a member +of a London clique. There is really no excuse for Lockhart, +except that he <i>did</i> repent, that much of his banter was +amusing, and that, above all, his censures were accepted by the +poet, who altered, later, many passages of a fine absurdity +criticised by the infamous reviewer. One could name great +prose-writers, historians, who never altered the wondrous errors +to which their attention was called by critics. +Prose-writers have been more sensitively attached to their +glaring blunders in verifiable facts than was this very sensitive +poet to his occasional lapses in taste.</p> +<p><i>The Lady of Shalott</i>, even in its early form, was more +than enough to give assurance of a poet. In effect it is +even more poetical, in a mysterious way, if infinitely less +human, than the later treatment of the same or a similar legend +in <i>Elaine</i>. It has the charm of Coleridge, and an +allegory of the fatal escape from the world of dreams and shadows +into that of realities may have been really present to the mind +of the young poet, aware that he was “living in +phantasy.” The alterations are usually for the +better. The daffodil is not an aquatic plant, as the poet +seems to assert in the first form—</p> +<blockquote><p>“The yellow-leavèd water-lily,<br /> +The green sheathed daffodilly,<br /> +Tremble in the water chilly,<br /> + Round about Shalott.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Nobody can prefer to keep</p> +<blockquote><p>“Though the squally east wind keenly<br /> +Blew, with folded arms serenely<br /> +By the water stood the queenly<br /> + Lady of Shalott.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>However stoical the Lady may have been, the reader is too +seriously sympathetic with her inevitable discomfort—</p> +<blockquote><p>“All raimented in snowy white<br /> +That loosely flew,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>as she was. The original conclusion was distressing; we +were dropped from the airs of mysterious romance:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“They crossed themselves, their stars they +blest,<br /> +Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire, and guest;<br /> +There lay a parchment on her breast,<br /> +That puzzled more than all the rest<br /> + The well-fed wits at Camelot.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Hitherto we have been “puzzled,” but as with the +sublime incoherences of a dream. Now we meet well-fed wits, +who say, “Bless my stars!” as perhaps we should also +have done in the circumstances—a dead lady arriving, in a +very cold east wind, alone in a boat, for “her blood was +frozen slowly,” as was natural, granting the weather and +the lady’s airy costume. It is certainly matter of +surprise that the young poet’s vision broke up in this +humorous manner. And, after all, it is less surprising that +the Scorpion, finding such matter in a new little book by a new +young man, was more sensitive to the absurdity than to the +romance. But no lover of poetry should have been blind to +the almost flawless excellence of <i>Mariana in the South</i>, +inspired by the landscape of the Provençal tour with +Arthur Hallam. In consequence of Lockhart’s censures, +or in deference to the maturer taste of the poet, <i>The +Miller’s Daughter</i> was greatly altered before +1842. It is one of the earliest, if not the very earliest, +of Tennyson’s domestic English idylls, poems with +conspicuous beauties, but not without sacrifices to that Muse of +the home affections on whom Sir Barnes Newcome delivered his +famous lecture. The seventh stanza perhaps hardly deserved +to be altered, as it is, so as to bring in “minnows” +where “fish” had been the reading, and where +“trout” would best recall an English chalk +stream. To the angler the rising trout, which left the poet +cold, is at least as welcome as the “reflex of a beauteous +form.” “Every woman seems an angel at the +water-side,” said “that good old angler, now with +God,” Thomas Todd Stoddart, and so “the long and +listless boy” found it to be. It is no wonder that +the mother was “<i>slowly</i> brought to yield consent to +my desire.” The domestic affections, in fact, do not +adapt themselves so well to poetry as the passion, unique in +Tennyson, of <i>Fatima</i>. The critics who hunt for +parallels or plagiarisms will note—</p> +<blockquote><p>“O Love, O fire! once he drew<br /> +With one long kiss my whole soul thro’<br /> +My lips,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and will observe Mr Browning’s</p> +<blockquote><p> “Once he kissed<br /> +My soul out in a fiery mist.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>As to <i>Œnone</i>, the scenery of that earliest of the +classical idylls is borrowed from the Pyrenees and the tour with +Hallam. “It is possible that the poem may have been +suggested by Beattie’s <i>Judgment of Paris</i>,” +says Mr Collins; it is also possible that the tale which</p> +<blockquote><p> “Quintus Calaber<br /> +Somewhat lazily handled of old”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>may have reached Tennyson’s mind from an older writer +than Beattie. He is at least as likely to have been +familiar with Greek myth as with the lamented +“Minstrel.” The form of 1833, greatly altered +in 1842, contained such unlucky phrases as “cedar +shadowy,” and “snowycoloured,” +“marblecold,” “violet-eyed”—easy +spoils of criticism. The alterations which converted a +beautiful but faulty into a beautiful and flawless poem perhaps +obscure the significance of Œnone’s “I will not +die alone,” which in the earlier volume directly refers to +the foreseen end of all as narrated in Tennyson’s late +piece, <i>The Death of Œnone</i>. The whole poem +brings to mind the glowing hues of Titian and the famous Homeric +lines on the divine wedlock of Zeus and Hera.</p> +<p>The allegory or moral of <i>The Palace of Art</i> does not +need explanation. Not many of the poems owe more to +revision. The early stanza about Isaiah, with fierce +Ezekiel, and “Eastern Confutzee,” did undeniably +remind the reader, as Lockhart said, of <i>The Groves of +Blarney</i>.</p> +<blockquote><p>“With statues gracing that noble place +in,<br /> + All haythen goddesses most rare,<br /> +Petrarch, Plato, and Nebuchadnezzar,<br /> + All standing naked in the open air.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In the early version the Soul, being too much “up to +date,”</p> +<blockquote><p>“Lit white streams of dazzling +gas,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>like Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Thus her intense, untold delight,<br /> +In deep or vivid colour, smell, and sound,<br /> + Was flattered day and night.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Lockhart was not fond of Sir Walter’s experiments in +gas, the “smell” gave him no “deep, untold +delight,” and his “infamous review” was biassed +by these circumstances.</p> +<p>The volume of 1833 was in nothing more remarkable than in its +proof of the many-sidedness of the author. He offered +mediæval romance, and classical perfection touched with the +romantic spirit, and domestic idyll, of which <i>The May +Queen</i> is probably the most popular example. The +“mysterious being,” conversant with “the +spiritual world,” might have been expected to disdain +topics well within the range of Eliza Cook. He did not +despise but elevated them, and thereby did more to introduce +himself to the wide English public than he could have done by a +century of <i>Fatimas</i> or <i>Lotos-Eaters</i>. On the +other hand, a taste more fastidious, or more perverse, will +scarcely be satisfied with pathos which in process of time has +come to seem “obvious.” The pathos of early +death in the prime of beauty is less obvious in Homer, where +Achilles is to be the victim, or in the laments of the Anthology, +where we only know that the dead bride or maiden was fair; but +the poor May Queen is of her nature rather commonplace.</p> +<blockquote><p>“That good man, the clergyman, has told me +words of peace,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>strikes a note rather resembling the Tennysonian parody of +Wordsworth—</p> +<blockquote><p>“A Mr Wilkinson, a clergyman.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><i>The Lotos-Eaters</i>, of course, is at the opposite pole of +the poet’s genius. A few plain verses of the +<i>Odyssey</i>, almost bald in their reticence, are the <i>point +de repère</i> of the most magical vision expressed in the +most musical verse. Here is the languid charm of Spenser, +enriched with many classical memories, and pictures of natural +beauty gorgeously yet delicately painted. After the +excision of some verses, rather fantastical, in 1842, the poem +became a flawless masterpiece,—one of the eternal +possessions of song.</p> +<p>On the other hand, the opening of <i>The Dream of Fair +Women</i> was marred in 1833 by the grotesque introductory verses +about “a man that sails in a balloon.” Young as +Tennyson was, these freakish passages are a psychological marvel +in the work of one who did not lack the saving sense of +humour. The poet, wafted on the wing and “pinion that +the Theban eagle bear,” cannot conceivably be likened to an +aeronaut waving flags out of a balloon—except in a spirit +of self-mockery which was not Tennyson’s. His +remarkable self-discipline in excising the fantastic and +superfluous, and reducing his work to its classical perfection of +thought and form, is nowhere more remarkable than in this +magnificent vision. It is probably by mere accidental +coincidence of thought that, in the verses <i>To J. S.</i> (James +Spedding), Tennyson reproduces the noble speech on the +warrior’s death which Sir Walter Scott places in the lips +of the great Dundee: “It is the memory which the soldier +leaves behind him, like the long train of light that follows the +sunken sun, <i>that</i> is all that is worth caring for,” +the light which lingers eternally on the hills of Atholl. +Tennyson’s lines are a close parallel:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“His memory long will live alone<br /> + In all our hearts, as mournful light<br /> +That broods above the fallen sun,<br /> + And dwells in heaven half the night.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Though Tennyson disliked the exhibition of “the chips of +the workshop,” we have commented on them, on the early +readings of the early volumes. They may be regarded more +properly as the sketches of a master than as “chips,” +and do more than merely engage the idle curiosity of the fanatics +of first editions. They prove that the poet was studious of +perfection, and wisely studious, for his alterations, unlike +those of some authors, were almost invariably for the better, the +saner, the more mature in taste. The early readings are +also worth notice, because they partially explain, by their +occasionally fantastic and humourless character, the lack of +early and general recognition of the poet’s genius. +The native prejudice of mankind is not in favour of a new +poet. Of new poets there are always so many, most of them +bad, that nature has protected mankind by an armour of +suspiciousness. The world, and Lockhart, easily found good +reasons for distrusting this new claimant of the ivy and the +bays: moreover, since about 1814 there had been a reaction +against new poetry. The market was glutted. Scott had +set everybody on reading, and too many on writing, novels. +The great reaction of the century against all forms of literature +except prose fiction had begun. Near the very date of +Tennyson’s first volume Bulwer Lytton, as we saw, had +frankly explained that he wrote novels because nobody would look +at anything else. Tennyson had to overcome this universal, +or all but universal, indifference to new poetry, and, after +being silent for ten years, overcome it he did—a remarkable +victory of art and of patient courage. Times were even +worse for poets than to-day. Three hundred copies of the +new volume were sold! But Tennyson’s friends were not +puffers in league with pushing publishers.</p> +<p>Meanwhile the poet in 1833 went on quietly and undefeated with +his work. He composed <i>The Gardener’s Daughter</i>, +and was at work on the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i>, suppressed +till the ninth year, on the Horatian plan. Many poems were +produced (and even written out, which a number of his pieces +never were), and were left in manuscript till they appeared in +the Biography. Most of these are so little worthy of the +author that the marvel is how he came to write them—in what +uninspired hours. Unlike Wordsworth, he could weed the +tares from his wheat. His studies were in Greek, German, +Italian, history (a little), and chemistry, botany, and +electricity—“cross-grained Muses,” these +last.</p> +<p>It was on September 15, 1833, that Arthur Hallam died. +Unheralded by sign or symptom of disease as it was, the news fell +like a thunderbolt from a serene sky. Tennyson’s and +Hallam’s love had been “passing the love of +women.” A blow like this drives a man on the rocks of +the ultimate, the insoluble problems of destiny. “Is +this the end?” Nourished as on the milk of lions, on +the elevating and strengthening doctrines of popular science, +trained from childhood to forego hope and attend evening +lectures, the young critics of our generation find Tennyson a +weakling because he had hopes and fears concerning the ultimate +renewal of what was more than half his life—his +friendship.</p> +<blockquote><p>“That faith I fain would keep,<br /> + That hope I’ll not forego:<br /> +Eternal be the sleep—<br /> + Unless to waken so,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>wrote Lockhart, and the verses echoed ceaselessly in the +widowed heart of Carlyle. These men, it is part of the duty +of critics later born to remember, were not children or cowards, +though they dreamed, and hoped, and feared. We ought to +make allowance for failings incident to an age not yet fully +enlightened by popular science, and still undivorced from +spiritual ideas that are as old as the human race, and perhaps +not likely to perish while that race exists. Now and then +even scientific men have been mistaken, especially when they have +declined to examine evidence, as in this problem of the +transcendental nature of the human spirit they usually do. +At all events Tennyson was unconvinced that death is the end, and +shortly after the fatal tidings arrived from Vienna he began to +write fragments in verse preluding to the poem of <i>In +Memoriam</i>. He also began, in a mood of great misery, +<i>The Two Voices</i>; <i>or</i>, <i>Thoughts of a +Suicide</i>. The poem seems to have been partly done by +September 1834, when Spedding commented on it, and on the +beautiful <i>Sir Galahad</i>, “intended for something of a +male counterpart to <i>St Agnes</i>.” The <i>Morte +d’Arthur</i> Tennyson then thought “the best thing I +have managed lately.” Very early in 1835 many stanzas +of <i>In Memoriam</i> had taken form. “I do not wish +to be dragged forward in any shape before the reading public at +present,” wrote the poet, when he heard that Mill desired +to write on him. His <i>Œnone</i> he had brought to +its new perfection, and did not desire comments on work now +several years old. He also wrote his <i>Ulysses</i> and his +<i>Tithonus</i>.</p> +<p>If ever the term “morbid” could have been applied +to Tennyson, it would have been in the years immediately +following the death of Arthur Hallam. But the application +would have been unjust. True, the poet was living out of +the world; he was unhappy, and he was, as people say, +“doing nothing.” He was so poor that he sold +his Chancellor’s prize gold medal, and he did not</p> +<blockquote><p> “Scan his whole horizon<br +/> +In quest of what he could clap eyes on,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>in the way of money-making, which another poet describes as +the normal attitude of all men as well as of pirates. A +careless observer would have thought that the poet was +dawdling. But he dwelt in no Castle of Indolence; he +studied, he composed, he corrected his verses: like Sir Walter in +Liddesdale, “he was making himsel’ a’ the +time.” He did not neglect the movements of the great +world in that dawn of discontent with the philosophy of +commercialism. But it was not his vocation to plunge into +the fray, and on to platforms.</p> +<p>It is a very rare thing anywhere, especially in England, for a +man deliberately to choose poetry as the duty of his life, and to +remain loyal, as a consequence, to the bride of St +Francis—Poverty. This loyalty Tennyson maintained, +even under the temptation to make money in recognised ways +presented by his new-born love for his future wife, Miss Emily +Sellwood. They had first met in 1830, when she, a girl of +seventeen, seemed to him like “a Dryad or an Oread +wandering here.” But admiration became the affection +of a lifetime when Tennyson met Miss Sellwood as bridesmaid to +her sister, the bride of his brother Charles, in 1836. The +poet could not afford to marry, and, like the hero of <i>Locksley +Hall</i>, he may have asked himself, “What is that which I +should do?” By 1840 he had done nothing tangible and +lucrative, and correspondence between the lovers was +forbidden. That neither dreamed of Tennyson’s +deserting poetry for a more normal profession proved of great +benefit to the world. The course is one which could only be +justified by the absolute certainty of possessing genius.</p> +<h2><a name="page35"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +35</span>III.<br /> +1837–1842.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">In</span> 1837 the Tennysons left the old +rectory; till 1840 they lived at High Beech in Epping Forest, and +after a brief stay at Tunbridge Wells went to Boxley, near +Maidstone.</p> +<p>It appears that at last the poet had “beat his music +out,” though his friends “still tried to cheer +him.” But the man who wrote <i>Ulysses</i> when his +grief was fresh could not be suspected of declining into a +hypochondriac. “If I mean to make my mark at all, it +must be by shortness,” he said at this time; “for the +men before me had been so diffuse, and most of the big things, +except <i>King Arthur</i>, had been done.” The age +had not <i>la tête épique</i>: Poe had announced the +paradox that there is no such thing as a long poem, and even in +dealing with Arthur, Tennyson followed the example of Theocritus +in writing, not an epic, but epic idylls. Long poems suit +an age of listeners, for which they were originally composed, or +of leisure and few books. At present epics are read for +duty’s sake, not for the only valid reason, “for +human pleasure,” in FitzGerald’s phrase.</p> +<p>Between 1838 and 1840 Tennyson made some brief tours in +England with FitzGerald, and, coming from Coventry, wrote +<i>Godiva</i>. His engagement with Miss Sellwood seemed to +be adjourned <i>sine die</i>, as they were forbidden to +correspond.</p> +<p>By 1841 Tennyson was living at Mablethorpe on the Lincolnshire +coast; working at his volumes of 1842, much urged by FitzGerald +and American admirers, who had heard of the poet through +Emerson. Moxon was to be the publisher, himself something +of a poet; but early in 1842 he had not yet received the +MS. Perhaps Emerson heard of Tennyson through Carlyle, who, +says Sterling, “said more in your praise than in any +one’s except Cromwell, and an American backwoodsman who has +killed thirty or forty people with a bowie-knife.” +Carlyle at this time was much attached to Lockhart, editor of the +<i>Quarterly Review</i>, and it may have been Carlyle who +converted Lockhart to admiration of his old victim. Carlyle +had very little more appreciation of Keats than had Byron, or (in +early days) Lockhart, and it was probably as much the man of +heroic physical mould, “a life-guardsman spoilt by making +poetry,” and the unaffected companion over a pipe, as the +poet, that attracted him in Tennyson. As we saw, when the +two triumphant volumes of 1842 did appear, Lockhart asked +Sterling to review whatever book he pleased (meaning the Poems) +in the <i>Quarterly</i>. The praise of Sterling may seem +lukewarm to us, especially when compared with that of Spedding in +the <i>Edinburgh</i>. But Sterling, and Lockhart too, were +obliged to “gang warily.” Lockhart had, to his +constant annoyance, “a partner, Mr Croker,” and I +have heard from the late Dean Boyle that Mr Croker was much +annoyed by even the mild applause yielded in the <i>Quarterly</i> +to the author of the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i>.</p> +<p>While preparing the volumes of 1842 at Boxley, +Tennyson’s life was divided between London and the society +of his brother-in-law, Mr Edmund Lushington, the great Greek +scholar and Professor of Greek at Glasgow University. There +was in Mr Lushington’s personal aspect, and noble +simplicity of manner and character, something that strongly +resembled Tennyson himself. Among their common friends were +Lord Houghton (Monckton Milnes), Mr Lear of the <i>Book of +Nonsense</i> (“with such a pencil, such a pen”), Mr +Venables (who at school modified the profile of Thackeray), and +Lord Kelvin. In town Tennyson met his friends at The Cock, +which he rendered classic; among them were Thackeray, Forster, +Maclise, and Dickens. The times were stirring: social +agitation, and “Carol philosophy” in Dickens, with +growls from Carlyle, marked the period. There was also a +kind of optimism in the air, a prophetic optimism, not yet +fulfilled.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Fly, happy happy sails, and bear the +Press!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>That mission no longer strikes us as exquisitely +felicitous. “The mission of the Cross,” and of +the missionaries, means international complications; and +“the markets of the Golden Year” are precisely the +most fruitful causes of wars and rumours of wars:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “Sea and air are dark<br +/> +With great contrivances of Power.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Tennyson’s was not an unmitigated optimism, and had no +special confidence in</p> +<blockquote><p>“The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings<br +/> + That every sophister can lime.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>His political poetry, in fact, was very unlike the socialist +chants of Mr William Morris, or <i>Songs before +Sunrise</i>. He had nothing to say about</p> +<blockquote><p>“The blood on the hands of the King,<br /> + And the lie on the lips of the Priest.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The hands of Presidents have not always been unstained; nor +are statements of a mythical nature confined to the lips of the +clergy. The poet was anxious that freedom should +“broaden down,” but “slowly,” not with +indelicate haste. Persons who are more in a hurry will +never care for the political poems, and it is certain that +Tennyson did not feel sympathetically inclined towards the +Iberian patriot who said that his darling desire was “to +cut the throats of all the <i>curés</i>,” like some +Covenanters of old. “Mais vous connaissez mon +cœur”—“and a pretty black one it +is,” thought young Tennyson. So cautious in youth, +during his Pyrenean tour with Hallam in 1830, Tennyson could not +become a convinced revolutionary later. We must accept him +with his limitations: nor must we confuse him with the hero of +his <i>Locksley Hall</i>, one of the most popular, and most +parodied, of the poems of 1842: full of beautiful images and +“confusions of a wasted youth,” a youth dramatically +conceived, and in no way autobiographical.</p> +<p>In so marvellous a treasure of precious things as the volumes +of 1842, perhaps none is more splendid, perfect, and perdurable +than the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i>. It had been written +seven years earlier, and pronounced by the poet “not +bad.” Tennyson was never, perhaps, a very deep +Arthurian student. A little cheap copy of Malory was his +companion. <a name="citation39"></a><a href="#footnote39" +class="citation">[39]</a> He does not appear to have gone +deeply into the French and German “literature of the +subject.” Malory’s compilation (1485) from +French and English sources, with the <i>Mabinogion</i> of Lady +Charlotte Guest, sufficed for him as materials. The whole +poem, enshrined in the memory of all lovers of verse, is richly +studded, as the hilt of Excalibur, with classical memories. +“A faint Homeric echo” it is not, nor a Virgilian +echo, but the absolute voice of old romance, a thing that might +have been chanted by</p> +<blockquote><p>“The lonely maiden of the Lake”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>when</p> +<blockquote><p>“Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the +deeps,<br /> +Upon the hidden bases of the hills.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Perhaps the most exquisite adaptation of all are the lines +from the <i>Odyssey</i>—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Where falls not hail nor rain, nor any +snow.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“Softly through the flutes of the Grecians” came +first these Elysian numbers, then through Lucretius, then through +Tennyson’s own <i>Lucretius</i>, then in Mr +Swinburne’s <i>Atalanta in Calydon</i>:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Lands indiscoverable in the unheard-of +west<br /> +Round which the strong stream of a sacred sea<br /> +Rolls without wind for ever, and the snow<br /> +There shows not her white wings and windy feet,<br /> +Nor thunder nor swift rain saith anything,<br /> +Nor the sun burns, but all things rest and thrive.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>So fortunate in their transmission through poets have been the +lines of “the Ionian father of the rest,” the +greatest of them all.</p> +<p>In the variety of excellences which marks Tennyson, the new +English idylls of 1842 hold their prominent place. Nothing +can be more exquisite and more English than the picture of +“the garden that I love.” Theocritus cannot be +surpassed; but the idyll matches to the seventh of his, where it +is most closely followed, and possesses such a picture of a girl +as the Sicilian never tried to paint.</p> +<p><i>Dora</i> is another idyll, resembling the work of a +Wordsworth in a clime softer than that of the Fells. The +lays of Edwin Morris and Edward Bull are not among the more +enduring of even the playful poems. The <i>St Simeon +Stylites</i> appears “made to the hand” of the author +of <i>Men and Women</i> rather than of Tennyson. The +grotesque vanity of the anchorite is so remote from us, that we +can scarcely judge of the truth of the picture, though the East +has still her parallels to St Simeon. From the almost, +perhaps quite, incredible ascetic the poet lightly turns to +“society verse” lifted up into the air of poetry, in +the charm of <i>The Talking Oak</i>, and the happy flitting +sketches of actual history; and thence to the strength and +passion of <i>Love and Duty</i>. Shall</p> + +<blockquote><p> “Sin +itself be found<br /> +The cloudy porch oft opening on the Sun?”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>That this is the province of sin is a pretty popular modern +moral. But Honour is the better part, and here was a poet +who had the courage to say so; though, to be sure, the words ring +strange in an age when highly respectable matrons assure us that +“passion,” like charity, covers a multitude of +sins. <i>Love and Duty</i>, we must admit, is “early +Victorian.”</p> +<p>The <i>Ulysses</i> is almost a rival to the <i>Morte +d’Arthur</i>. It is of an early date, after Arthur +Hallam’s death, and Thackeray speaks of the poet chanting +his</p> +<blockquote><p>“Great Achilles whom we knew,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>as if he thought that this was in Cambridge days. But it +is later than these. Tennyson said, “<i>Ulysses</i> +was written soon after Arthur Hallam’s death, and gave my +feeling about the need of going forward, and braving the struggle +of life, perhaps more simply than anything in <i>In +Memoriam</i>.” Assuredly the expression is more +simple, and more noble, and the personal emotion more dignified +for the classic veil. When the plaintive Pessimist +(“‘proud of the title,’ as the Living Skeleton +said when they showed him”) tells us that “not to +have been born is best,” we may answer with +Ulysses—</p> +<blockquote><p> “Life piled on life<br /> +Were all too little.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The Ulysses of Tennyson, of course, is Dante’s Ulysses, +not Homer’s Odysseus, who brought home to Ithaca not one of +his mariners. His last known adventure, the journey to the +land of men who knew not the savour of salt, Odysseus was to make +on foot and alone; so spake the ghost of Tiresias within the +poplar pale of Persephone.</p> +<p><i>The Two Voices</i> expresses the contest of doubts and +griefs with the spirit of endurance and joy which speaks alone in +<i>Ulysses</i>. The man who is unhappy, but does not want +to put an end to himself, has certainly the better of the +argument with the despairing Voice. The arguments of +“that barren Voice” are, indeed, remarkably deficient +in cogency and logic, if we can bring ourselves to strip the +discussion of its poetry. The original title, <i>Thoughts +of a Suicide</i>, was inappropriate. The suicidal +suggestions are promptly faced and confuted, and the mood of the +author is throughout that of one who thinks life worth +living:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Whatever crazy sorrow saith,<br /> +No life that breathes with human breath<br /> +Has ever truly long’d for death.</p> +<p>’Tis life whereof our nerves are scant,<br /> +Oh life, not death, for which we pant;<br /> +More life, and fuller, that I want.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This appears to be a satisfactory reply to the persons who eke +out a livelihood by publishing pessimistic books, and hooting, as +the great Alexandre Dumas says, at the great drama of Life.</p> +<p>With <i>The Day-Dream</i> (of The Sleeping Beauty) Tennyson +again displays his matchless range of powers. Verse of +Society rises into a charmed and musical fantasy, passing from +the Berlin-wool work of the period</p> +<blockquote><p>(“Take the broidery frame, and add<br /> +A crimson to the quaint Macaw”)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>into the enchanted land of the fable: princes immortal, +princesses eternally young and fair. The <i>St Agnes</i> +and <i>Sir Galahad</i>, companion pieces, contain the romance, as +<i>St Simeon Stylites</i> shows the repulsive side of asceticism; +for the saint and the knight are young, beautiful, and eager as +St Theresa in her childhood. It has been said, I do not +know on what authority, that the poet had no recollection of +composing <i>Sir Galahad</i>, any more than Scott remembered +composing <i>The Bride of Lammermoor</i>, or Thackeray parts of +<i>Pendennis</i>. The haunting of Tennyson’s mind by +the Arthurian legends prompted also the lovely fragment on the +Queen’s last Maying, <i>Sir Launcelot and Queen +Guinevere</i>, a thing of perfect charm and music. The +ballads of <i>Lady Clare</i> and <i>The Lord of Burleigh</i> are +not examples of the poet in his strength; for his power and +fantasy we must turn to <i>The Vision of Sin</i>, where the early +passages have the languid voluptuous music of <i>The +Lotos-Eaters</i>, with the ethical element superadded, while the +portion beginning—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Wrinkled ostler, grim and thin!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>is in parts reminiscent of Burns’s <i>Jolly +Beggars</i>. In <i>Break</i>, <i>Break</i>, <i>Break</i>, +we hear a note prelusive to <i>In Memoriam</i>, much of which was +already composed.</p> +<p>The Poems of 1842 are always vocal in the memories of all +readers of English verse. None are more familiar, at least +to men of the generations which immediately followed +Tennyson’s. FitzGerald was apt to think that the poet +never again attained the same level, and I venture to suppose +that he never rose above it. For FitzGerald’s +opinion, right or wrong, it is easy to account. He had seen +all the pieces in manuscript; they were his cherished possession +before the world knew them. <i>C’est mon homme</i>, +he might have said of Tennyson, as Boileau said of +Molière. Before the public awoke FitzGerald had +“discovered Tennyson,” and that at the age most open +to poetry and most enthusiastic in friendship. Again, the +Poems of 1842 were <i>short</i>, while <i>The Princess</i>, +<i>Maud</i>, and <i>The Idylls of the King</i> were relatively +long, and, with <i>In Memoriam</i>, possessed unity of +subject. They lacked the rich, the unexampled variety of +topic, treatment, and theme which marks the Poems of 1842. +These were all reasons why FitzGerald should think that the two +slim green volumes held the poet’s work at its highest +level. Perhaps he was not wrong, after all.</p> +<h2><a name="page46"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 46</span>IV.<br +/> +1842–848—THE PRINCESS.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> Poems, and such criticisms as +those of Spedding and Sterling, gave Tennyson his place. +All the world of letters heard of him. Dean Bradley tells +us how he took Oxford by storm in the days of the +undergraduateship of Clough and Matthew Arnold. Probably +both of these young writers did not share the undergraduate +enthusiasm. Mr Arnold, we know, did not reckon Tennyson +<i>un esprit puissant</i>. Like Wordsworth (who thought +Tennyson “decidedly the first of our living poets, . . . he +has expressed in the strongest terms his gratitude to my +writings”), Arnold was no fervent admirer of his +contemporaries. Besides, if Tennyson’s work is +“a criticism of Life,” the moral criticism, so far, +was hidden in flowers, like the sword of Aristogiton at the +feast. But, on the whole, Tennyson had won the young men +who cared for poetry, though Sir Robert Peel had never heard of +him: and to win the young, as Theocritus desired to do, is more +than half the battle. On September 8, 1842, the poet was +able to tell Mr Lushington that “500 of my books are sold; +according to Moxon’s brother, I have made a +sensation.” The sales were not like those of +<i>Childe Harold</i> or <i>Marmion</i>; but for some twenty years +new poetry had not sold at all. Novels had come in about +1814, and few wanted or bought recent verse. But Carlyle +was converted. He spoke no more of a spoiled +guardsman. “If you knew what my relation has been to +the thing called ‘English Poetry’ for many years +back, you would think such a fact” (his pleasure in the +book) “surprising.” Carlyle had been living (as +Mrs Carlyle too well knew) in Oliver Cromwell, a hero who +probably took no delight in <i>Lycidas</i> or <i>Comus</i>, in +Lovelace or Carew. “I would give all my poetry to +have made one song like that,” said Tennyson of +Lovelace’s <i>Althea</i>. But Noll would have +disregarded them all alike, and Carlyle was full of the spirit of +the Protector. To conquer him was indeed a victory for +Tennyson; while Dickens, not a reading man, expressed his +“earnest and sincere homage.”</p> +<p>But Tennyson was not successful in the modern way. +Nobody “interviewed” him. His photograph, of +course, with disquisitions on his pipes and slippers, did not +adorn the literary press. His literary income was not +magnified by penny-a-liners. He did not become a lion; he +never would roar and shake his mane in drawing-rooms. +Lockhart held that Society was the most agreeable form of the +stage: the dresses and actresses incomparably the +prettiest. But Tennyson liked Society no better than did +General Gordon. He had friends enough, and no desire for +new acquaintances. Indeed, his fortune was shattered at +this time by a strange investment in wood-carving by +machinery. Ruskin had only just begun to write, and +wood-carving by machinery was still deemed an enterprise at once +philanthropic and æsthetic. “My father’s +worldly goods were all gone,” says Lord Tennyson. The +poet’s health suffered extremely: he tried a fashionable +“cure” at Cheltenham, where he saw miracles of +healing, but underwent none. In September 1845 Peel was +moved by Lord Houghton to recommend the poet for a pension +(£200 annually). “I have done nothing slavish +to get it: I never even solicited for it either by myself or +others.” Like Dr Johnson, he honourably accepted what +was offered in honour. For some reason many persons who +write in the press are always maddened when such good fortune, +however small, however well merited, falls to a brother in +letters. They, of course, were “causelessly +bitter.” “Let them rave!”</p> +<p>If few of the rewards of literary success arrived, the +penalties at once began, and only ceased with the poet’s +existence. “If you only knew what a nuisance these +volumes of verse are! Rascals send me theirs per post from +America, and I have more than once been knocked up out of bed to +pay three or four shillings for books of which I can’t get +through one page, for of all books the most insipid reading is +second-rate verse.”</p> +<p>Would that versifiers took the warning! Tennyson had not +sent his little firstlings to Coleridge and Wordsworth: they are +only the hopeless rhymers who bombard men of letters with their +lyrics and tragedies.</p> +<p>Mr Browning was a sufferer. To one young twitterer he +replied in the usual way. The bard wrote acknowledging the +letter, but asking for a definite criticism. “I do +not think myself a Shakespeare or a Milton, but I <i>know</i> I +am better than Mr Coventry Patmore or Mr Austin +Dobson.” Mr Browning tried to procrastinate: he was +already deeply engaged with earlier arrivals of volumes of +song. The poet was hurt, not angry; he had expected other +things from Mr Browning: <i>he</i> ought to know his duty to +youth. At the intercession of a relation Mr Browning now +did his best, and the minstrel, satisfied at last, repeated his +conviction of his superiority to the authors of <i>The Angel in +the House</i> and <i>Beau Brocade</i>. Probably no man, not +even Mr Gladstone, ever suffered so much from minstrels as +Tennyson. He did not suffer them gladly.</p> +<p>In 1846 the Poems reached their fourth edition. Sir +Edward Bulwer Lytton (bitten by what fly who knows?) attacked +Tennyson in <i>The New Timon</i>, a forgotten satire. We do +not understand the ways of that generation. The cheap and +spiteful <i>genre</i> of satire, its forged morality, its sham +indignation, its appeal to the ape-like passions, has gone +out. Lytton had suffered many things (not in verse) from +Jeames Yellowplush: I do not know that he hit back at Thackeray, +but he “passed it on” to Thackeray’s old +college companion. Tennyson, for once, replied (in +<i>Punch</i>: the verses were sent thither by John Forster); the +answer was one of magnificent contempt. But he soon decided +that</p> +<blockquote><p>“The noblest answer unto such<br /> +Is perfect stillness when they brawl.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Long afterwards the poet dedicated a work to the son of Lord +Lytton. He replied to no more satirists. <a +name="citation50"></a><a href="#footnote50" +class="citation">[50]</a> Our difficulty, of course, is to +conceive such an attack coming from a man of Lytton’s +position and genius. He was no hungry hack, and could, and +did, do infinitely better things than “stand in a false +following” of Pope. Probably Lytton had a false idea +that Tennyson was a rich man, a branch of his family being +affluent, and so resented the little pension. The poet was +so far from rich in 1846, and even after the publication of +<i>The Princess</i>, that his marriage had still to be deferred +for four years.</p> +<p>On reading <i>The Princess</i> afresh one is impressed, +despite old familiarity, with the extraordinary influence of its +beauty. Here are, indeed, the best words best placed, and +that curious felicity of style which makes every line a marvel, +and an eternal possession. It is as if Tennyson had taken +the advice which Keats gave to Shelley, “Load every rift +with ore.” To choose but one or two examples, how the +purest and freshest impression of nature is re-created in mind +and memory by the picture of Melissa with</p> +<blockquote><p> “All her thoughts as fair +within her eyes,<br /> +As bottom agates seen to wave and float<br /> +In crystal currents of clear morning seas.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The lyric, “Tears, idle tears,” is far beyond +praise: once read it seems like a thing that has always existed +in the world of poetic archetypes, and has now been not so much +composed as discovered and revealed. The many pictures and +similitudes in <i>The Princess</i> have a magical +gorgeousness:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “From +the illumined hall<br /> +Long lanes of splendour slanted o’er a press<br /> +Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes,<br /> +And rainbow robes, and gems and gem-like eyes,<br /> +And gold and golden heads; they to and fro<br /> +Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, some pale.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The “small sweet Idyll” from</p> +<blockquote><p>“A volume of the poets of her +land”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>pure Theocritus. It has been admirably rendered into +Greek by Mr Gilbert Murray. The exquisite beauties of style +are not less exquisitely blended in the confusions of a dream, +for a dream is the thing most akin to <i>The Princess</i>. +Time does not exist in the realm of Gama, or in the ideal +university of Ida. We have a bookless North, severed but by +a frontier pillar from a golden and learned South. The +arts, from architecture to miniature-painting, are in their +highest perfection, while knights still tourney in armour, and +the quarrel of two nations is decided as in the gentle and joyous +passage of arms at Ashby de la Zouche. Such confusions are +purposefully dream-like: the vision being a composite thing, as +dreams are, haunted by the modern scene of the holiday in the +park, the “gallant glorious chronicle,” the Abbey, +and that “old crusading knight austere,” Sir +Ralph. The seven narrators of the scheme are like the +“split personalities” of dreams, and the whole scheme +is of great technical skill. The earlier editions lacked +the beautiful songs of the ladies, and that additional trait of +dream, the strange trance-like seizures of the Prince: +“fallings from us, vanishings,” in Wordsworthian +phrase; instances of “dissociation,” in modern +psychological terminology. Tennyson himself, like Shelley +and Wordsworth, had experience of this kind of dreaming awake +which he attributes to his Prince, to strengthen the shadowy yet +brilliant character of his romance. It is a thing of normal +and natural <i>points de repère</i>; of daylight +suggestion, touched as with the magnifying and intensifying +elements of haschish-begotten phantasmagoria. In the same +way opium raised into the region of brilliant vision that passage +of Purchas which Coleridge was reading before he dreamed <i>Kubla +Khan</i>. But in Tennyson the effects were deliberately +sought and secured.</p> +<p>One might conjecture, though Lord Tennyson says nothing on the +subject, that among the suggestions for <i>The Princess</i> was +the opening of <i>Love’s Labour’s Lost</i>. +Here the King of Navarre devises the College of Recluses, which +is broken up by the arrival of the Princess of France, Rosaline, +and the other ladies:—</p> +<blockquote><p><i>King</i>. Our Court shall be a little +Academe,<br /> +Still and contemplative in living art.<br /> +You three, Biron, Domain, and Longaville,<br /> +Have sworn for three years’ term to live with me,<br /> +My fellow-scholars, and to keep those statutes.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p><i>Biron</i>. That is, to live and study here three +years.<br /> +But there are other strict observances;<br /> +As, not to see a woman in that term.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p>[<i>Reads</i>] ‘That no woman shalt come within a +mile of my Court:’ Hath this been proclaimed?</p> +<p><i>Long</i>. Four days ago.</p> +<p><i>Biron</i>. Let’s see the penalty. +[<i>Reads</i>] ‘On pain of losing her +tongue.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The Princess then arrives with her ladies, as the Prince does +with Cyril and Florian, as Charles did, with Buckingham, in +Spain. The conclusion of Shakespeare is Tennyson’s +conclusion—</p> +<blockquote><p>“We cannot cross the cause why we are +born.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The later poet reverses the attitude of the sexes in +<i>Love’s Labour’s Lost</i>: it is the women who make +and break the vow; and the women in <i>The Princess</i> insist on +the “grand, epic, homicidal” scenes, while the men +are debarred, more or less, from a sportive treatment of the +subject. The tavern catch of Cyril; the laughable pursuit +of the Prince by the feminine Proctors; the draggled appearance +of the adventurers in female garb, are concessions to the humour +of the situation. Shakespeare would certainly have given us +the song of Cyril at the picnic, and comic enough the effect +would have been on the stage. It may be a gross employment, +but <i>The Princess</i>, with the pretty chorus of girl +undergraduates,</p> +<blockquote><p>“In colours gayer than the morning +mist,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>went reasonably well in opera. Merely considered as a +romantic fiction, <i>The Princess</i> presents higher proofs of +original narrative genius than any other such attempt by its +author.</p> +<p>The poem is far from being deficient in that human interest +which Shelley said that it was as vain to ask from <i>him</i>, as +to seek to buy a leg of mutton at a gin-shop. The +characters, the protagonists, with Cyril, Melissa, Lady Blanche, +the child Aglaia, King Gama, the other king, Arac, and the +hero’s mother—beautifully studied from the mother of +the poet—are all sufficiently human. But they seem to +waver in the magic air, “as all the golden autumn woodland +reels” athwart the fires of autumn leaves. For these +reasons, and because of the designed fantasy of the whole +composition, <i>The Princess</i> is essentially a poem for the +true lovers of poetry, of Spenser and of Coleridge. The +serious motive, the question of Woman, her wrongs, her rights, +her education, her capabilities, was not “in the air” +in 1847. To be sure it had often been “in the +air.” The Alexandrian Platonists, the Renaissance, +even the age of Anne, had their emancipated and learned +ladies. Early Greece had Sappho, Corinna, and Erinna, the +first the chief of lyric poets, even in her fragments, the two +others applauded by all Hellas. The French Revolution had +begotten Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and her <i>Vindication of the +Rights of Women</i>, and in France George Sand was prominent and +emancipated enough while the poet wrote. But, the question +of love apart, George Sand was “very, very woman,” +shining as a domestic character and fond of needlework. +England was not excited about the question which has since +produced so many disputants, inevitably shrill, and has not been +greatly meddled with by women of genius, George Eliot or Mrs +Oliphant. The poem, in the public indifference as to +feminine education, came rather prematurely. We have now +ladies’ colleges, not in haunts remote from man, but by the +sedged banks of Cam and Cherwell. There have been no +revolutionary results: no boys have spied these chaste nests, +with echoing romantic consequences. The beauty and +splendour of the Princess’s university have not arisen in +light and colour, and it is only at St Andrews that girls wear +the academic and becoming costume of the scarlet gown. The +real is far below the ideal, but the real in 1847 seemed +eminently remote, or even impossible.</p> +<p>The learned Princess herself was not on our level as to +knowledge and the past of womankind. She knew not of their +masterly position in the law of ancient Egypt. +Gynæocracy and matriarchy, the woman the head of the savage +or prehistoric group, were things hidden from her. She +“glanced at the Lycian custom,” but not at the +Pictish, a custom which would have suited George Sand to a +marvel. She maligned the Hottentots.</p> +<blockquote><p>“The highest is the measure of the man,<br +/> +And not the Kaffir, Hottentot, Malay.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The Hottentots had long ago anticipated the Princess and her +shrill modern sisterhood. If we take the Greeks, or even +ourselves, we may say, with Dampier (1689), “The Hodmadods, +though a nasty people, yet are gentlemen to these” as +regards the position of women. Let us hear Mr Hartland: +“In every Hottentot’s house the wife is +supreme. Her husband, poor fellow, though he may wield wide +power and influence out of doors, at home dare not even take a +mouthful of sour-milk out of the household vat without her +permission . . . The highest oath a man can take is to swear by +his eldest sister, and if he abuses this name he forfeits to her +his finest goods and sheep.”</p> +<p>However, in 1847 England had not yet thought of imitating the +Hodmadods. Consequently, and by reason of the purely +literary and elaborately fantastical character of <i>The +Princess</i>, it was not of a nature to increase the poet’s +fame and success. “My book is out, and I hate it, and +so no doubt will you,” Tennyson wrote to FitzGerald, who +hated it and said so. “Like Carlyle, I gave up all +hopes of him after <i>The Princess</i>,” indeed it was not +apt to conciliate Carlyle. “None of the songs had the +old champagne flavour,” said Fitz; and Lord Tennyson adds, +“Nothing either by Thackeray or by my father met +FitzGerald’s approbation unless he had first seen it in +manuscript.” This prejudice was very human. +Lord Tennyson remarks, as to the poet’s meaning in this +work, born too early, that “the sooner woman finds out, +before the great educational movement begins, that ‘woman +is not undeveloped man, but diverse,’ the better it will be +for the progress of the world.”</p> +<p>But probably the “educational movement” will not +make much difference to womankind on the whole. The old +Platonic remark that woman “does the same things as man, +but not so well,” will eternally hold good, at least in the +arts, and in letters, except in rare cases of genius. A new +Jeanne d’Arc, the most signal example of absolute genius in +history, will not come again; and the ages have waited vainly for +a new Sappho or a new Jane Austen. Literature, poetry, +painting, have always been fields open to woman. But two +names exhaust the roll of women of the highest rank in +letters—Sappho and Jane Austen. And “when did +woman ever yet invent?” In “arts of +government” Elizabeth had courage, and just saving sense +enough to yield to Cecil at the eleventh hour, and escape the +fate of “her sister and her foe,” the beautiful +unhappy queen who told her ladies that she dared to look on +whatever men dared to do, and herself would do it if her strength +so served her.” <a name="citation58"></a><a +href="#footnote58" class="citation">[58]</a> “The +foundress of the Babylonian walls” is a myth; “the +Rhodope that built the Pyramid” is not a creditable myth; +for exceptions to Knox’s “Monstrous Regiment of +Women” we must fall back on “The Palmyrene that +fought Aurelian,” and the revered name of the greatest of +English queens, Victoria. Thus history does not encourage +the hope that a man-like education will raise many women to the +level of the highest of their sex in the past, or even that the +enormous majority of women will take advantage of the opportunity +of a man-like education. A glance at the numerous +periodicals designed for the reading of women depresses optimism, +and the Princess’s prophecy of</p> +<blockquote><p>“Two plummets dropped for one to sound the +abyss<br /> +Of science, and the secrets of the mind,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>is not near fulfilment. Fortunately the sex does not +“love the Metaphysics,” and perhaps has not yet +produced even a manual of Logic. It must suffice man and +woman to</p> +<blockquote><p> “Walk this world<br /> +Yoked in all exercise of noble end,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>of a more practical character, while woman is at liberty</p> +<blockquote><p> “To live and learn and +be<br /> +All that not harms distinctive womanhood.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This was the conclusion of the poet who had the most +chivalrous reverence for womanhood. This is the +<i>eirenicon</i> of that old strife between the women and the +men—that war in which both armies are captured. It +may not be acceptable to excited lady combatants, who think man +their foe, when the real enemy is (what Porson damned) the Nature +of Things.</p> +<p>A new poem like <i>The Princess</i> would soon reach the +public of our day, so greatly increased are the uses of +advertisement. But <i>The Princess</i> moved slowly from +edition to revised and improved edition, bringing neither money +nor much increase of fame. The poet was living with his +family at Cheltenham, where among his new acquaintances were +Sydney Dobell, the poet of a few exquisite pieces, and F. W. +Robertson, later so popular as a preacher at Brighton. +Meeting him for the first time, and knowing Robertson’s +“wish to pluck the heart from my mystery, from pure +nervousness I would only talk of beer.” This kind of +shyness beset Tennyson. A lady tells me that as a girl (and +a very beautiful girl) she and her sister, and a third, <i>nec +diversa</i>, met the poet, and expected high discourse. But +his speech was all of that wingless insect which “gets +there, all the same,” according to an American lyrist; the +insect which fills Mrs Carlyle’s letters with bulletins of +her success or failure in domestic campaigns.</p> +<p>Tennyson kept visiting London, where he saw Thackeray and the +despair of Carlyle, and at Bath House he was too modest to be +introduced to the great Duke whose requiem he was to sing so +nobly. Oddly enough Douglas Jerrold enthusiastically +assured Tennyson, at a dinner of a Society of Authors, that +“you are the one who will live.” To that end, +humanly speaking, he placed himself under the celebrated Dr Gully +and his “water-cure,” a foible of that period. +In 1848 he made a tour to King Arthur’s Cornish bounds, and +another to Scotland, where the Pass of Brander disappointed him: +perhaps he saw it on a fine day, and, like Glencoe, it needs +tempest and mist lit up by the white fires of many +waterfalls. By bonny Doon he “fell into a passion of +tears,” for he had all of Keats’s sentiment for +Burns: “There never was immortal poet if he be not +one.” Of all English poets, the warmest in the praise +of Burns have been the two most unlike himself—Tennyson and +Keats. It was the songs that Tennyson preferred; Wordsworth +liked the <i>Cottar’s Saturday Night</i>.</p> +<h2><a name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 61</span>V.<br +/> +IN MEMORIAM.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">In</span> May 1850 a few, copies of <i>In +Memoriam</i> were printed for friends, and presently the poem was +published without author’s name. The pieces had been +composed at intervals, from 1833 onwards. It is to be +observed that the “section about evolution” was +written some years before 1844, when the ingenious hypotheses of +Robert Chambers, in <i>Vestiges of Creation</i>, were given to +the world, and caused a good deal of talk. Ten years, +again, after <i>In Memoriam</i>, came Darwin’s <i>Origin of +Species</i>. These dates are worth observing. The +theory of evolution, of course in a rude mythical shape, is at +least as old as the theory of creation, and is found among the +speculations of the most backward savages. The Arunta of +Central Australia, a race remote from the polite, have a +hypothesis of evolution which postulates only a few rudimentary +forms of life, a marine environment, and the minimum of +supernormal assistance in the way of stimulating the primal forms +in the direction of more highly differentiated +developments. “The rudimentary forms, +<i>Inapertwa</i>, were in reality stages in the transformation of +various plants and animals into human beings. . . . They +had no distinct limbs or organs of sight, hearing, or +smell.” They existed in a kind of lumps, and were set +free from the cauls which enveloped them by two beings called +Ungambikula, “a word which means ‘out of +nothing,’ or ‘self-existing.’ Men descend +from lower animals thus evolved.” <a +name="citation62"></a><a href="#footnote62" +class="citation">[62]</a></p> +<p>This example of the doctrine of evolution in an early shape is +only mentioned to prove that the idea has been familiar to the +human mind from the lowest known stage of culture. Not less +familiar has been the theory of creation by a kind of supreme +being. The notion of creation, however, up to 1860, held +the foremost place in modern European belief. But Lamarck, +the elder Darwin, Monboddo, and others had submitted hypotheses +of evolution. Now it was part of the originality of +Tennyson, as a philosophic poet, that he had brooded from boyhood +on these early theories of evolution, in an age when they were +practically unknown to the literary, and were not patronised by +the scientific, world. In November 1844 he wrote to Mr +Moxon, “I want you to get me a book which I see advertised +in the <i>Examiner</i>: it seems to contain many speculations +with which I have been familiar for years, and on which I have +written more than one poem.” This book was +<i>Vestiges of Creation</i>. These poems are the stanzas in +<i>In Memoriam</i> about “the greater ape,” and about +Nature as careless of the type: “all shall go.” +The poetic and philosophic originality of Tennyson thus faced the +popular inferences as to the effect of the doctrine of evolution +upon religious beliefs long before the world was moved in all its +deeps by Darwin’s <i>Origin of Species</i>. Thus the +geological record is inconsistent, we learned, with the record of +the first chapters of Genesis. If man is a differentiated +monkey, and if a monkey has no soul, or future life (which is +taken for granted), where are man’s title-deeds to these +possessions? With other difficulties of an obvious kind, +these presented themselves to the poet with renewed force when +his only chance of happiness depended on being able to believe in +a future life, and reunion with the beloved dead. Unbelief +had always existed. We hear of atheists in the <i>Rig +Veda</i>. In the early eighteenth century, in the age of +Swift—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Men proved, as sure as God’s in +Gloucester,<br /> +That Moses was a great impostor.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>distrust of Moses increased with the increase of hypotheses of +evolution. But what English poet, before Tennyson, ever +attempted “to lay the spectres of the mind”; ever +faced world-old problems in their most recent aspects? I am +not acquainted with any poet who attempted this task, and, +whatever we may think of Tennyson’s success, I do not see +how we can deny his originality.</p> +<p>Mr Frederic Harrison, however, thinks that neither “the +theology nor the philosophy of <i>In Memoriam</i> are new, +original, with an independent force and depth of their +own.” “They are exquisitely graceful +re-statements of the theology of the Broad Churchman of the +school of F. D. Maurice and Jowett—a combination of +Maurice’s somewhat illogical piety with Jowett’s +philosophy of mystification.” The piety of Maurice +may be as illogical as that of Positivism is logical, and the +philosophy of the Master of Balliol may be whatever Mr Harrison +pleases to call it. But as Jowett’s earliest work +(except an essay on Etruscan religion) is of 1855, one does not +see how it could influence Tennyson before 1844. And what +had the Duke of Argyll written on these themes some years before +1844? The late Duke, to whom Mr Harrison refers in this +connection, was born in 1823. His philosophic ideas, if +they were to influence Tennyson’s <i>In Memoriam</i>, must +have been set forth by him at the tender age of seventeen, or +thereabouts. Mr Harrison’s sentence is, “But +does <i>In Memoriam</i> teach anything, or transfigure any idea +which was not about that time” (the time of writing was +mainly 1833–1840) “common form with F. D. Maurice, +with Jowett, C. Kingsley, F. Robertson, Stopford Brooke, Mr +Ruskin, and the Duke of Argyll, Bishops Westcott and Boyd +Carpenter?”</p> +<p>The dates answer Mr Harrison. Jowett did not publish +anything till at least fifteen years after Tennyson wrote his +poems on evolution and belief. Dr Boyd Carpenter’s +works previous to 1840 are unknown to bibliography. F. W. +Robertson was a young parson at Cheltenham. Ruskin had not +published the first volume of <i>Modern Painters</i>. His +Oxford prize poem is of 1839. Mr Stopford Brooke was at +school. The Duke of Argyll was being privately educated: +and so with the rest, except the contemporary Maurice. How +can Mr Harrison say that, in the time of <i>In Memoriam</i>, +Tennyson was “in touch with the ideas of Herschel, Owen, +Huxley, Darwin, and Tyndall”? <a name="citation65"></a><a +href="#footnote65" class="citation">[65]</a> When Tennyson +wrote the parts of <i>In Memoriam</i> which deal with science, +nobody beyond their families and friends had heard of Huxley, +Darwin, and Tyndall. They had not developed, much less had +they published, their “general ideas.” Even in +his journal of the <i>Cruise of the Beagle</i> Darwin’s +ideas were religious, and he naïvely admired the works of +God. It is strange that Mr Harrison has based his +criticism, and his theory of Tennyson’s want of +originality, on what seems to be a historical error. He +cites parts of <i>In Memoriam</i>, and remarks, “No one can +deny that all this is exquisitely beautiful; that these eternal +problems have never been clad in such inimitable grace . . . But +the train of thought is essentially that with which ordinary +English readers have been made familiar by F. D. Maurice, +Professor Jowett, <i>Ecce Homo</i>, <i>Hypatia</i>, and now by +Arthur Balfour, Mr Drummond, and many valiant companies of +<i>Septem</i> [why <i>Septem</i>?] <i>contra +Diabolum</i>.” One must keep repeating the historical +verity that the ideas of <i>In Memoriam</i> could not have been +“made familiar by” authors who had not yet published +anything, or by books yet undreamed of and unborn, such as +<i>Ecce Homo</i> and Jowett’s work on some of St +Paul’s Epistles. If these books contain the ideas of +<i>In Memoriam</i>, it is by dint of repetition and borrowing +from <i>In Memoriam</i>, or by coincidence. The originality +was Tennyson’s, for we cannot dispute the evidence of +dates.</p> +<p>When one speaks of “originality” one does not mean +that Tennyson discovered the existence of the ultimate +problems. But at Cambridge (1828–1830) he had voted +“No” in answer to the question discussed by +“the Apostles,” “Is an intelligible +[intelligent?] First Cause deducible from the phenomena of the +universe?” <a name="citation66"></a><a href="#footnote66" +class="citation">[66]</a> He had also propounded the theory +that “the development of the human body might possibly be +traced from the radiated vermicular molluscous and vertebrate +organisms,” thirty years before Darwin published <i>The +Origin of Species</i>. To be concerned so early with such +hypotheses, and to face, in poetry, the religious or irreligious +inferences which may be drawn from them, decidedly constitutes +part of the poetic originality of Tennyson. His attitude, +as a poet, towards religious doubt is only so far not original, +as it is part of the general reaction from the freethinking of +the eighteenth century. Men had then been freethinkers +<i>avec délices</i>. It was a joyous thing to be an +atheist, or something very like one; at all events, it was +glorious to be “emancipated.” Many still find +it glorious, as we read in the tone of Mr Huxley, when he +triumphs and tramples over pious dukes and bishops. Shelley +said that a certain schoolgirl “would make a dear little +atheist.” But by 1828–1830 men were less joyous +in their escape from all that had hitherto consoled and fortified +humanity. Long before he dreamed of <i>In Memoriam</i>, in +the <i>Poems chiefly Lyrical</i> of 1830 Tennyson had +written—</p> +<blockquote><p>“‘Yet,’ said I, in my morn of +youth,<br /> +The unsunn’d freshness of my strength,<br /> +When I went forth in quest of truth,<br /> +‘It is man’s privilege to doubt.’ . . .<br /> + Ay me! I fear<br /> +All may not doubt, but everywhere<br /> +Some must clasp Idols. Yet, my God,<br /> +Whom call I Idol? Let Thy dove<br /> +Shadow me over, and my sins<br /> +Be unremember’d, and Thy love<br /> +Enlighten me. Oh teach me yet<br /> +Somewhat before the heavy clod<br /> +Weighs on me, and the busy fret<br /> +Of that sharp-headed worm begins<br /> +In the gross blackness underneath.</p> +<p>Oh weary life! oh weary death!<br /> +Oh spirit and heart made desolate!<br /> +Oh damnèd vacillating state!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Now the philosophy of <i>In Memoriam</i> may be, indeed is, +regarded by robust, first-rate, and far from sensitive minds, as +a “damnèd vacillating state.” The poet +is not so imbued with the spirit of popular science as to be sure +that he knows everything: knows that there is nothing but atoms +and ether, with no room for God or a soul. He is far from +that happy cock-certainty, and consequently is exposed to the +contempt of the cock-certain. The poem, says Mr Harrison, +“has made Tennyson the idol of the Anglican +clergyman—the world in which he was born and the world in +which his life was ideally passed—the idol of all cultured +youth and of all æsthetic women. It is an honourable +post to fill”—that of idol. “The argument +of <i>In Memoriam</i> apparently is . . . that we should faintly +trust the larger hope.” That, I think, is not the +argument, not the conclusion of the poem, but is a casual +expression of one mood among many moods.</p> +<p>The argument and conclusion of <i>In Memoriam</i> are the +argument and conclusion of the life of Tennyson, and of the love +of Tennyson, that immortal passion which was a part of himself, +and which, if aught of us endure, is living yet, and must live +eternally. From the record of his Life by his son we know +that his trust in “the larger hope” was not +“faint,” but strengthened with the years. There +are said to have been less hopeful intervals.</p> +<p>His faith is, of course, no argument for others,—at +least it ought not to be. We are all the creatures of our +bias, our environment, our experience, our emotions. The +experience of Tennyson was unlike the experience of most +men. It yielded him subjective grounds for belief. He +“opened a path unto many,” like Yama, the Vedic being +who discovered the way to death. But Tennyson’s path +led not to death, but to life spiritual, and to hope, and he did +“give a new impulse to the thought of his age,” as +other great poets have done. Of course it may be an impulse +to wrong thought. As the philosophical Australian black +said, “We shall know when we are dead.”</p> +<p>Mr Harrison argues as if, unlike Tennyson, Byron, Wordsworth, +Shelley, and Burns produced “original ideas fresh from +their own spirit, and not derived from contemporary +thinkers.” I do not know what original ideas these +great poets discovered and promulgated; their ideas seem to have +been “in the air.” These poets “made them +current coin.” Shelley thought that he owed many of +his ideas to Godwin, a contemporary thinker. Wordsworth has +a debt to Plato, a thinker not contemporary. Burns’s +democratic independence was “in the air,” and had +been, in Scotland, since Elder remarked on it in a letter to +Ingles in 1515. It is not the ideas, it is the expression +of the ideas, that marks the poet. Tennyson’s ideas +are relatively novel, though as old as Plotinus, for they are +applied to a novel, or at least an unfamiliar, mental +situation. Doubt was abroad, as it always is; but, for +perhaps the first time since Porphyry wrote his letter to +Abammon, the doubters desired to believe, and said, “Lord, +help Thou my unbelief.” To robust, not sensitive +minds, very much in unity with themselves, the attitude seems +contemptible, or at best decently futile. Yet I cannot +think it below the dignity of mankind, conscious that it is not +omniscient. The poet does fail in logic (<i>In +Memoriam</i>, cxx.) when he says—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Let him, the wiser man who springs<br /> + Hereafter, up from childhood shape<br /> + His action like the greater ape,<br /> +But I was <i>born</i> to other things.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>I am not well acquainted with the habits of the greater ape, +but it would probably be unwise, and perhaps indecent, to imitate +him, even if “we also are his offspring.” We +might as well revert to polyandry and paint, because our Celtic +or Pictish ancestors, if we had any, practised the one and wore +the other. However, petulances like the verse on the +greater ape are rare in <i>In Memoriam</i>. To declare that +“I would not stay” in life if science proves us to be +“cunning casts in clay,” is beneath the courage of +the Stoical philosophy.</p> +<p>Theologically, the poem represents the struggle with doubts +and hopes and fears, which had been with Tennyson from his +boyhood, as is proved by the volume of 1830. But the doubts +had exerted, probably, but little influence on his happiness till +the sudden stroke of loss made life for a time seem almost +unbearable unless the doubts were solved. They <i>were</i> +solved, or stoically set aside, in the <i>Ulysses</i>, written in +the freshness of grief, with the conclusion that we must be</p> +<blockquote><p> “Strong +in will<br /> +To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But the gnawing of grief till it becomes a physical pain, the +fever fits of sorrow, the aching <i>desiderium</i>, bring back in +many guises the old questions. These require new attempts +at answers, and are answered, “the sad mechanic +exercise” of verse allaying the pain. This is the +genesis of <i>In Memoriam</i>, not originally written for +publication but produced at last as a monument to friendship, and +as a book of consolation.</p> +<p>No books of consolation can console except by sympathy; and in +<i>In Memoriam</i> sympathy and relief have been found, and will +be found, by many. Another, we feel, has trodden our dark +and stony path, has been shadowed by the shapes of dread which +haunt our valley of tribulation: a mind almost infinitely greater +than ours has been our fellow-sufferer. He has emerged from +the darkness of the shadow of death into the light, whither, as +it seems to us, we can scarcely hope to come. It is the +sympathy and the example, I think, not the speculations, mystical +or scientific, which make <i>In Memoriam</i>, in more than name, +a book of consolation: even in hours of the sharpest distress, +when its technical beauties and wonderful pictures seem shadowy +and unreal, like the yellow sunshine and the woods of that autumn +day when a man learned that his friend was dead. No, it was +not the speculations and arguments that consoled or encouraged +us. We did not listen to Tennyson as to Mr Frederic +Harrison’s glorified Anglican clergyman. We could not +murmur, like the Queen of the May—</p> +<blockquote><p>“That good man, the Laureate, has told us +words of peace.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>What we valued was the poet’s companionship. There +was a young reader to whom <i>All along the Valley</i> came as a +new poem in a time of recent sorrow.</p> +<blockquote><p>“The two-and-thirty years were a mist that +rolls away,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>said the singer of <i>In Memoriam</i>, and in that hour it +seemed as if none could endure for two-and-thirty years the +companionship of loss. But the years have gone by, and have +left</p> +<blockquote><p> “Ever young the face that +dwells<br /> +With reason cloister’d in the brain.” <a +name="citation72"></a><a href="#footnote72" +class="citation">[72]</a></p> +</blockquote> +<p>In this way to many <i>In Memoriam</i> is almost a life-long +companion: we walk with Great-heart for our guide through the +valley Perilous.</p> +<p>In this respect <i>In Memoriam</i> is unique, for neither to +its praise nor dispraise is it to be compared with the other +famous elegies of the world. These are brief outbursts of +grief—real, as in the hopeless words of Catullus over his +brother’s tomb; or academic, like Milton’s +<i>Lycidas</i>. We are not to suppose that Milton was +heart-broken by the death of young Mr King, or that Shelley was +greatly desolated by the death of Keats, with whom his personal +relations had been slight, and of whose poetry he had spoken +evil. He was nobly stirred as a poet by a poet’s +death—like Mr Swinburne by the death of Charles Baudelaire; +but neither Shelley nor Mr Swinburne was lamenting <i>dimidium +animæ suæ</i>, or mourning for a friend</p> +<blockquote><p> “Dear as +the mother to the son,<br /> +More than my brothers are to me.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The passion of <i>In Memoriam</i> is personal, is acute, is +life-long, and thus it differs from the other elegies. +Moreover, it celebrates a noble object, and thus is unlike the +ambiguous affection, real or dramatic, which informs the sonnets +of Shakespeare. So the poem stands alone, cloistered; not +fiery with indignation, not breaking into actual prophecy, like +Shelley’s <i>Adonais</i>; not capable, by reason even of +its meditative metre, of the organ music of <i>Lycidas</i>. +Yet it is not to be reckoned inferior to these because its aim +and plan are other than theirs.</p> +<p>It is far from my purpose to “class” Tennyson, or +to dispute about his relative greatness when compared with +Wordsworth or Byron, Coleridge, Shelley, or Burns. He rated +one song of Lovelace above all his lyrics, and, in fact, could no +more have written the Cavalier’s <i>To Althea from +Prison</i> than Lovelace could have written the <i>Morte +d’Arthur</i>. “It is not reasonable, it is not +fair,” says Mr Harrison, after comparing <i>In Memoriam</i> +with <i>Lycidas</i>, “to compare Tennyson with +Milton,” and it is not reasonable to compare Tennyson with +any poet whatever. Criticism is not the construction of a +class list. But we may reasonably say that <i>In +Memoriam</i> is a noble poem, an original poem, a poem which +stands alone in literature. The wonderful beauty, ever +fresh, howsoever often read, of many stanzas, is not denied by +any critic. The marvel is that the same serene certainty of +art broods over even the stanzas which must have been conceived +while the sorrow was fresh. The second piece,</p> +<blockquote><p>“Old yew, which graspest at the +stones,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>must have been composed soon after the stroke fell. Yet +it is as perfect as the proem of 1849. As a rule, the +poetical expression of strong emotion appears usually to clothe +the memory of passion when it has been softened by time. +But here already “the rhythm, phrasing, and articulation +are entirely faultless, exquisitely clear, melodious, and +rare.” <a name="citation74"></a><a href="#footnote74" +class="citation">[74]</a> It were superfluous labour to +point at special beauties, at the exquisite rendering of nature; +and copious commentaries exist to explain the course of the +argument, if a series of moods is to be called an argument. +One may note such a point as that (xiv.) where the poet says +that, were he to meet his friend in life,</p> +<blockquote><p>“I should not feel it to be +strange.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It may have happened to many to mistake, for a section of a +second, the face of a stranger for the face seen only in dreams, +and to find that the recognition brings no surprise.</p> +<p>Pieces of a character apart from the rest, and placed in a +designed sequence, are xcii., xciii., xcv. In the first the +poet says—</p> +<blockquote><p>“If any vision should reveal<br /> + Thy likeness, I might count it vain<br /> + As but the canker of the brain;<br /> +Yea, tho’ it spake and made appeal</p> +<p>To chances where our lots were cast<br /> + Together in the days behind,<br /> + I might but say, I hear a wind<br /> +Of memory murmuring the past.</p> +<p>Yea, tho’ it spake and bared to view<br /> + A fact within the coming year;<br /> + And tho’ the months, revolving near,<br /> +Should prove the phantom-warning true,</p> +<p>They might not seem thy prophecies,<br /> + But spiritual presentiments,<br /> + And such refraction of events<br /> +As often rises ere they rise.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The author thus shows himself <i>difficile</i> as to +recognising the personal identity of a phantasm; nor is it easy +to see what mode of proving his identity would be left to a +spirit. The poet, therefore, appeals to some perhaps less +satisfactory experience:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Descend, and touch, and enter; hear<br /> + The wish too strong for words to name;<br /> + That in this blindness of the frame<br /> +My Ghost may feel that thine is near.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The third poem is the crown of <i>In Memoriam</i>, expressing +almost such things as are not given to man to utter:—</p> +<blockquote><p> And all at once it seem’d +at last<br /> +The living soul was flash’d on mine,</p> +<p>And mine in this was wound, and whirl’d<br /> + About empyreal heights of thought,<br /> + And came on that which is, and caught<br /> +The deep pulsations of the world,</p> +<p>Æonian music measuring out<br /> + The steps of Time—the shocks of +Chance—<br /> + The blows of Death. At length my trance<br /> +Was cancell’d, stricken thro’ with doubt.</p> +<p>Vague words! but ah, how hard to frame<br /> + In matter-moulded forms of speech,<br /> + Or ev’n for intellect to reach<br /> +Thro’ memory that which I became.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Experiences like this, subjective, and not matter for +argument, were familiar to Tennyson. Jowett said, “He +was one of those who, though not an upholder of miracles, thought +that the wonders of Heaven and Earth were never far absent from +us.” In <i>The Mystic</i>, Tennyson, when almost a +boy, had shown familiarity with strange psychological and +psychical conditions. Poems of much later life also deal +with these, and, more or less consciously, his philosophy was +tinged, and his confidence that we are more than “cunning +casts in clay” was increased, by phenomena of experience, +which can only be evidence for the mystic himself, if even for +him. But this dim aspect of his philosophy, of course, is +“to the Greeks foolishness.”</p> +<p>His was a philosophy of his own; not a philosophy for +disciples, and “those that eddy round and +round.” It was the sum of his reflection on the mass +of his impressions. I have shown, by the aid of dates, that +it was not borrowed from Huxley, Mr Stopford Brooke, or the late +Duke of Argyll. But, no doubt, many of the ideas were +“in the air,” and must have presented themselves to +minds at once of religious tendency, and attracted by the +evolutionary theories which had always existed as floating +speculations, till they were made current coin by the genius and +patient study of Darwin. That Tennyson’s opinions +between 1830 and 1840 were influenced by those of F. D. Maurice +is reckoned probable by Canon Ainger, author of the notice of the +poet in <i>The Dictionary of National Biography</i>. In the +Life of Maurice, Tennyson does not appear till 1850, and the two +men were not at Cambridge together. But Maurice’s +ideas, as they then existed, may have reached Tennyson orally +through Hallam and other members of the Trinity set, who knew +personally the author of <i>Letters to a Quaker</i>. +However, this is no question of scientific priority: to myself it +seems that Tennyson “beat his music out” for himself, +as perhaps most people do. Like his own Sir Percivale, +“I know not all he meant.”</p> +<p>Among the opinions as to <i>In Memoriam</i> current at the +time of its publication Lord Tennyson notices those of Maurice +and Robertson. They “thought that the poet had made a +definite step towards the unification of the highest religion and +philosophy with the progressive science of the day.” +Neither science nor religion stands still; neither stands now +where it then did. Conceivably they are travelling on paths +which will ultimately coincide; but this opinion, of course, must +seem foolishness to most professors of science. Bishop +Westcott was at Cambridge when the book appeared: he is one of Mr +Harrison’s possible sources of Tennyson’s +ideas. He recognised the poet’s “splendid faith +(in the face of every difficulty) in the growing purpose of the +sum of life, and in the noble destiny of the individual +man.” Ten years later Professor Henry Sidgwick, a +mind sufficiently sceptical, found in some lines of <i>In +Memoriam</i> “the indestructible and inalienable minimum of +faith which humanity cannot give up because it is necessary for +life; and which I know that I, at least so far as the man in me +is deeper than the methodical thinker, cannot give +up.” But we know that many persons not only do not +find an irreducible minimum of faith “necessary for +life,” but are highly indignant and contemptuous if any one +else ventures to suggest the logical possibility of any faith at +all.</p> +<p>The mass of mankind will probably never be convinced +unbelievers—nay, probably the backward or forward swing of +the pendulum will touch more convinced belief. But there +always have been, since the <i>Rishis</i> of India sang, superior +persons who believe in nothing not material—whatever the +material may be. Tennyson was, it is said, +“impatient” of these <i>esprits forts</i>, and they +are impatient of him. It is an error to be impatient: we +know not whither the <i>logos</i> may lead us, or later +generations; and we ought not to be irritated with others because +it leads them into what we think the wrong path. It is +unfortunate that a work of art, like <i>In Memoriam</i>, should +arouse theological or anti-theological passions. The poet +only shows us the paths by which his mind travelled: they may not +be the right paths, nor is it easy to trace them on a +philosophical chart. He escaped from Doubting Castle. +Others may “take that for a hermitage,” and be happy +enough in the residence. We are all determined by our bias: +Tennyson’s is unconcealed. His poem is not a tract: +it does not aim at the conversion of people with the contrary +bias, it is irksome, in writing about a poet, to be obliged to +discuss a philosophy which, certainly, is not stated in the +manner of Spinoza, but is merely the equilibrium of contending +forces in a single mind.</p> +<p>The most famous review of <i>In Memoriam</i> is that which +declared that “these touching lines evidently come from the +full heart of the widow of a military man.” This is +only equalled, if equalled, by a recent critique which treated a +fresh edition of <i>Jane Eyre</i> as a new novel, “not +without power, in parts, and showing some knowledge of Yorkshire +local colour.”</p> +<h2><a name="page81"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 81</span>VI.<br +/> +AFTER <i>IN MEMORIAM</i>.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">On</span> June 13 Tennyson married, at +Shiplake, the object of his old, long-tried, and constant +affection. The marriage was still +“imprudent,”—eight years of then uncontested +supremacy in English poetry had not brought a golden +harvest. Mr Moxon appears to have supplied £300 +“in advance of royalties.” The sum, so +contemptible in the eyes of first-rate modern novelists, was a +competence to Tennyson, added to his little pension and the +<i>épaves</i> of his patrimony. “The peace of +God came into my life when I married her,” he said in later +days. The poet made a charming copy of verses to his +friend, the Rev. Mr Rawnsley, who tied the knot, as he and his +bride drove to the beautiful village of Pangbourne. Thence +they went to the stately Clevedon Court, the seat of Sir Abraham +Elton, hard by the church where Arthur Hallam sleeps. The +place is very ancient and beautiful, and was a favourite haunt of +Thackeray. They passed on to Lynton, and to Glastonbury, +where a collateral ancestor of Mrs Tennyson’s is buried +beside King Arthur’s grave, in that green valley of +Avilion, among the apple-blossoms. They settled for a while +at Tent Lodge on Coniston Water, in a land of hospitable +Marshalls.</p> +<p>After their return to London, on the night of November 18, +Tennyson dreamed that Prince Albert came and kissed him, and that +he himself said, “Very kind, but very German,” which +was very like him. Next day he received from Windsor the +offer of the Laureateship. He doubted, and hesitated, but +accepted. Since Wordsworth’s death there had, as +usual, been a good deal of banter about the probable new +Laureate: examples of competitive odes exist in <i>Bon +Gaultier</i>. That by Tennyson is Anacreontic, but he was +not really set on kissing the Maids of Honour, as he is made to +sing. Rogers had declined, on the plea of extreme old age; +but it was worthy of the great and good Queen not to overlook the +Nestor of English poets. For the rest, the Queen looked for +“a name bearing such distinction in the literary world as +to do credit to the appointment.” In the previous +century the great poets had rarely been Laureates. But +since Sir Walter Scott declined the bays in favour of Southey, +for whom, again, the tale of bricks in the way of Odes was +lightened, and when Wordsworth succeeded Southey, the office +became honourable. Tennyson gave it an increase of renown, +while, though in itself of merely nominal value, it served his +poems, to speak profanely, as an advertisement. New +editions of his books were at once in demand; while few readers +had ever heard of Mr Browning, already his friend, and already +author of <i>Men and Women</i>.</p> +<p>The Laureateship brought the poet acquainted with the Queen, +who was to be his debtor in later days for encouragement and +consolation. To his Laureateship we owe, among other good +things, the stately and moving <i>Ode on the Death of the Duke of +Wellington</i>, a splendid heroic piece, unappreciated at the +moment. But Tennyson was, of course, no Birthday +poet. Since the exile of the House of Stuart our kings in +England have not maintained the old familiarity with many classes +of their subjects. Literature has not been fashionable at +Court, and Tennyson could in no age have been a courtier. +We hear the complaint, every now and then, that official honours +are not conferred (except the Laureateship) on men of +letters. But most of them probably think it rather +distinguished not to be decorated, or to carry titles borne by +many deserving persons unvisited by the Muses. Even the +appointment to the bays usually provokes a great deal of jealous +and spiteful feeling, which would only be multiplied if official +honours were distributed among men of the pen. Perhaps +Tennyson’s laurels were not for nothing in the chorus of +dispraise which greeted the <i>Ode on the Duke of Wellington</i>, +and <i>Maud</i>.</p> +<p>The year 1851 was chiefly notable for a tour to Italy, made +immortal in the beautiful poem of <i>The Daisy</i>, in a measure +of the poet’s own invention. The next year, following +on the <i>Coup d’état</i> and the rise of the new +French empire, produced patriotic appeals to Britons to +“guard their own,” which to a great extent former +alien owners had been unsuccessful in guarding from +Britons. The Tennysons had lost their first child at his +birth: perhaps he is remembered in <i>The Grandmother</i>, +“the babe had fought for his life.” In August +1852 the present Lord Tennyson was born, and Mr Maurice was asked +to be godfather. The Wellington Ode was of November, and +was met by “the almost universal depreciation of the +press,”—why, except because, as I have just +suggested, Tennyson was Laureate, it is impossible to +imagine. The verses were worthy of the occasion: more they +could not be.</p> +<p>In the autumn of 1853 the poet visited Ardtornish on the Sound +of Mull, a beautiful place endeared to him who now writes by the +earliest associations. It chanced to him to pass his +holidays there just when Tennyson and Mr Palgrave had +left—“Mr Tinsmith and Mr Pancake,” as Robert +the boatman, a very black Celt, called them. Being then +nine years of age, I heard of a poet’s visit, and asked, +“A real poet, like Sir Walter Scott?” with whom I +then supposed that “the Muse had gone away.” +“Oh, not like Sir Walter Scott, of course,” my mother +told me, with loyalty unashamed. One can think of the poet +as Mrs Sellar, his hostess, describes him, beneath the limes of +the avenue at Acharn, planted, Mrs Sellar says, by a cousin of +Flora Macdonald. I have been told that the lady who planted +the lilies, if not the limes, was the famed Jacobite, Miss Jennie +Cameron, mentioned in <i>Tom Jones</i>. An English +engraving of 1746 shows the Prince between these two beauties, +Flora and Jennie.</p> +<p>“No one,” says Mrs Sellar, “could have been +more easy, simple, and delightful,” and indeed it is no +marvel that in her society and that of her husband, the Greek +professor, and her cousin, Miss Cross, and in such scenes, +“he blossomed out in the most genial manner, making us all +feel as if he were an old friend.”</p> +<p>In November Tennyson took a house at Farringford, “as it +was beautiful and far from the haunts of men.” There +he settled to a country existence in the society of his wife, his +two children (the second, Lionel, being in 1854 the baby), and +there he composed <i>Maud</i>, while the sound of the guns, in +practice for the war of the Crimea, boomed from the coast. +In May Tennyson saw the artists, of schools oddly various, who +illustrated his poems. Millais, Rossetti, and Holman Hunt +gave the tone to the art, but Mr Horsley, Creswick, and Mulgrave +were also engaged. While <i>Maud</i> was being composed +Tennyson wrote <i>The Charge of the Light Brigade</i>; a famous +poem, not in a manner in which he was born to excel—at +least in my poor opinion. “Some one <i>had</i> +blundered,” and that line was the first fashioned and the +keynote of the poem; but, after all, “blundered” is +not an exquisite rhyme to “hundred.” The poem, +in any case, was most welcome to our army in the Crimea, and is a +spirited piece for recitation.</p> +<p>In January 1855 <i>Maud</i> was finished; in April the poet +copied it out for the press, and refreshed himself by reading a +very different poem, <i>The Lady of the Lake</i>. The +author, Sir Walter, had suffered, like the hero of <i>Maud</i>, +by an unhappy love affair, which just faintly colours <i>The Lady +of the Lake</i> by a single allusion, in the description of +Fitz-James’s dreams:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Then,—from my couch may heavenly +might<br /> +Chase that worst phantom of the night!—<br /> +Again returned the scenes of youth,<br /> +Of confident undoubting truth;<br /> +Again his soul he interchanged<br /> +With friends whose hearts were long estranged.<br /> +They come, in dim procession led,<br /> +The cold, the faithless, and the dead;<br /> +As warm each hand, each brow as gay,<br /> +As if they parted yesterday.<br /> +And doubt distracts him at the view—<br /> +Oh, were his senses false or true?<br /> +Dreamed he of death, or broken vow,<br /> +Or is it all a vision now?”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>We learn from Lady Louisa Stuart, to whom Scott read these +lines, that they referred to his lost love. I cite the +passage because the extreme reticence of Scott, in his undying +sorrow, is in contrast with what Tennyson, after reading <i>The +Lady of the Lake</i>, was putting into the mouth of his +complaining lover in <i>Maud</i>.</p> +<p>We have no reason to suppose that Tennyson himself had ever to +bewail a faithless love. To be sure, the hero of +<i>Locksley Hall</i> is in this attitude, but then <i>Locksley +Hall</i> is not autobiographical. Less dramatic and +impersonal in appearance are the stanzas—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Come not, when I am dead,<br /> + To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave;”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and</p> +<blockquote><p>“Child, if it were thine error or thy +crime<br /> + I care no longer, being all unblest.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>No biographer tells us whether this was a personal complaint +or a mere set of verses on an imaginary occasion. In <i>In +Memoriam</i> Tennyson speaks out concerning the loss of a +friend. In <i>Maud</i>, as in <i>Locksley Hall</i>, he +makes his hero reveal the agony caused by the loss of a +mistress. There is no reason to suppose that the poet had +ever any such mischance, but many readers have taken <i>Locksley +Hall</i> and <i>Maud</i> for autobiographical revelations, like +<i>In Memoriam</i>. They are, on the other hand, +imaginative and dramatic. They illustrate the pangs of +disappointed love of woman, pangs more complex and more rankling +than those inflicted by death. In each case, however, the +poet, who has sung so nobly the happiness of fortunate wedded +loves, has chosen a hero with whom we do not readily +sympathise—a Hamlet in miniature,</p> +<blockquote><p>“With a heart of furious fancies,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>as in the old mad song. This choice, thanks to the +popular misconception, did him some harm. As a +“monodramatic Idyll,” a romance in many rich lyric +measures, <i>Maud</i> was at first excessively unpopular. +“Tennyson’s <i>Maud</i> is Tennyson’s +Maudlin,” said a satirist, and “morbid,” +“mad,” “rampant,” and “rabid +bloodthirstiness of soul,” were among the amenities of +criticism. Tennyson hated war, but his hero, at least, +hopes that national union in a national struggle will awake a +nobler than the commercial spirit. Into the rights and +wrongs of our quarrel with Russia we are not to go. +Tennyson, rightly or wrongly, took the part of his country, and +must “thole the feud” of those high-souled citizens +who think their country always in the wrong—as perhaps it +very frequently is. We are not to expect a tranquil absence +of bias in the midst of military excitement, when very laudable +sentiments are apt to misguide men in both directions. In +any case, political partisanship added to the enemies of the +poem, which was applauded by Henry Taylor, Ruskin, George +Brimley, and Jowett, while Mrs Browning sent consoling words from +Italy. The poem remained a favourite with the author, who +chose passages from it often, when persuaded to read aloud by +friends; and modern criticism has not failed to applaud the +splendour of the verse and the subtlety of the mad scenes, the +passion of the love lyrics.</p> +<p>These merits have ceased to be disputed, but, though a loyal +Tennysonian, I have never quite been able to reconcile myself to +<i>Maud</i> as a whole. The hero is an unwholesome young +man, and not of an original kind. He is <i>un beau +ténébreux</i> of 1830. I suppose it has been +observed that he is merely The Master of Ravenswood in modern +costume, and without Lady Ashton. Her part is taken by +Maud’s brother. The situations of the hero and of the +Master (whose acquaintance Thackeray never renewed after he lost +his hat in the Kelpie Flow) are nearly identical. The +families and fathers of both have been ruined by “the gray +old wolf,” and by Sir William Ashton, representing the +house of Stair. Both heroes live dawdling on, hard by their +lost ancestral homes. Both fall in love with the daughters +of the enemies of their houses. The loves of both are +baffled, and end in tragedy. Both are concerned in a duel, +though the Master, on his way to the ground, “stables his +steed in the Kelpie Flow,” and the wooer in <i>Maud</i> +shoots Lucy Ashton’s brother,—I mean the brother of +Maud,—though duelling in England was out of date. +Then comes an interval of madness, and he recovers amid the +patriotic emotions of the ill-fated Crimean expedition. +Both lovers are gloomy, though the Master has better cause, for +the Tennysonian hero is more comfortably provided for than Edgar +with his “man and maid,” his Caleb and Mysie. +Finally, both <i>The Bride of Lammermoor</i>, which affected +Tennyson so potently in boyhood</p> +<blockquote><p>(“<i>A merry merry bridal</i>,<br /> +<i>A merry merry day</i>”),</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and <i>Maud</i>, excel in passages rather than as wholes.</p> +<p>The hero of <i>Maud</i>, with his clandestine wooing of a girl +of sixteen, has this apology, that the match had been, as it +were, predestined, and desired by the mother of the lady. +Still, the brother did not ill to be angry; and the peevishness +of the hero against the brother and the parvenu lord and rival +strikes a jarring note. In England, at least, the general +sentiment is opposed to this moody, introspective kind of young +man, of whom Tennyson is not to be supposed to approve. We +do not feel certain that his man and maid were “ever ready +to slander and steal.” That seems to be part of his +jaundiced way of looking at everything and everybody. He +has even a bad word for the “man-god” of modern +days,—</p> +<blockquote><p>“The man of science himself is fonder of +glory, and vain,<br /> +An eye well-practised in nature, a spirit bounded and +poor.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><i>Rien n’est sacré</i> for this cynic, who +thinks himself a Stoic. Thus <i>Maud</i> was made to be +unpopular with the author’s countrymen, who conceived a +prejudice against Maud’s lover, described by Tennyson as +“a morbid poetic soul, . . . an egotist with the makings of +a cynic.” That he is “raised to sanity” +(still in Tennyson’s words) “by a pure and holy love +which elevates his whole nature,” the world failed to +perceive, especially as the sanity was only a brief lucid +interval, tempered by hanging about the garden to meet a girl of +sixteen, unknown to her relations. Tennyson added that +“different phases of passion in one person take the place +of different characters,” to which critics replied that +they wanted different characters, if only by way of relief, and +did not care for any of the phases of passion. The learned +Monsieur Janet has maintained that love is a disease like +another, and that nobody falls in love when in perfect health of +mind and body. This theory seems open to exception, but the +hero of Maud is unhealthy enough. At best and last, he only +helps to give a martial force a +“send-off”:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“I stood on a giant deck and mixed my +breath<br /> +With a loyal people shouting a battle-cry.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>He did not go out as a volunteer, and probably the Crimean +winters brought him back to his original estate of cynical +gloom—and very naturally.</p> +<p>The reconciliation with Life is not like the reconciliation of +<i>In Memoriam</i>. The poem took its rise in old lines, +and most beautiful lines, which Tennyson had contributed in 1837 +to a miscellany:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“O that ’twere possible,<br /> + After long grief and pain,<br /> +To find the arms of my true love<br /> + Round me once again.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Thence the poet, working back to find the origin of the +situation, encountered the ideas and the persons of +<i>Maud</i>.</p> +<p>I have tried to state the sources, in the general mind, of the +general dislike of <i>Maud</i>. The public, “driving +at practice,” disapproved of the “criticism of +life” in the poem; confused the suffering narrator with the +author, and neglected the poetry. “No modern +poem,” said Jowett, “contains more lines that ring in +the ears of men. I do not know any verse out of Shakespeare +in which the ecstacy of love soars to such a height.” +With these comments we may agree, yet may fail to follow Jowett +when he says, “No poem since Shakespeare seems to show +equal power of the same kind, or equal knowledge of human +nature.” Shakespeare could not in a narrative poem +have preferred the varying passions of one character to the +characters of many persons.</p> +<p>Tennyson was “nettled at first,” his son says, +“by these captious remarks of the ‘indolent +reviewers,’ but afterwards he would take no notice of them +except to speak of them in a half-pitiful, half-humorous, +half-mournful manner.” The besetting sin and error of +the critics was, of course, to confound Tennyson’s hero +with himself, as if we confused Dickens with Pip.</p> +<p>Like <i>Aurora Leigh</i>, <i>Lucile</i>, and other works, +<i>Maud</i> is under the disadvantage of being, practically, a +novel of modern life in verse. Criticised as a tale of +modern life (and it was criticised in that character), it could +not be very highly esteemed. But the essence of +<i>Maud</i>, of course, lies in the poetical vehicle. +Nobody can cavil at the impressiveness of the opening +stanzas—</p> +<blockquote><p>“I hate the dreadful hollow behind the +little wood”;</p> +</blockquote> +<p>with the keynotes of colour and of desolation struck; the lips +of the hollow “dabbled with blood-red heath,” the +“red-ribb’d ledges,” and “the flying gold +of the ruin’d woodlands”; and the contrast in the +picture of the child Maud—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Maud the delight of the village, the +ringing joy of the Hall.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The poem abounds in lines which live in the memory, as in the +vernal description—</p> +<blockquote><p>“A million emeralds break from the +ruby-budded lime”;</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and the voice heard in the garden singing</p> +<blockquote><p>“A passionate ballad gallant and +gay,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>as Lovelace’s <i>Althea</i>, and the lines on the +far-off waving of a white hand, “betwixt the cloud and the +moon.” The lyric of</p> +<blockquote><p>“Birds in the high Hall-garden<br /> + When twilight was falling,<br /> +Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud,<br /> + They were crying and calling,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>was a favourite of the poet.</p> +<p>“What birds were these?” he is said to have asked +a lady suddenly, when reading to a silent company.</p> +<p>“Nightingales,” suggested a listener, who did not +probably remember any other fowl that is vocal in the dusk.</p> +<p>“No, they were rooks,” answered the poet.</p> +<p>“Come into the Garden, Maud,” is as fine a +love-song as Tennyson ever wrote, with a triumphant ring, and a +soaring exultant note. Then the poem drops from its height, +like a lark shot high in heaven; tragedy comes, and remorse, and +the beautiful interlude of the</p> +<blockquote><p> “lovely shell,<br /> +Small and pure as a pearl.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Then follows the exquisite</p> +<blockquote><p>“O that ’twere possible,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and the dull consciousness of the poem of madness, with its +dumb gnawing confusion of pain and wandering memory; the hero +being finally left, in the author’s words, “sane but +shattered.”</p> +<p>Tennyson’s letters of the time show that the critics +succeeded in wounding him: it was not a difficult thing to +do. <i>Maud</i> was threatened with a broadside from +“that pompholygous, broad-blown Apollodorus, the gifted +X.” People who have read Aytoun’s diverting +<i>Firmilian</i>, where Apollodorus plays his part, and who +remember “gifted Gilfillan” in <i>Waverley</i>, know +who the gifted X. was. But X. was no great authority south +of Tay.</p> +<p>Despite the almost unanimous condemnation by public critics, +the success of <i>Maud</i> enabled Tennyson to buy Farringford, +so he must have been better appreciated and understood by the +world than by the reviewers.</p> +<p>In February 1850 Tennyson returned to his old Arthurian +themes, “the only big thing not done,” for Milton had +merely glanced at Arthur, Dryden did not</p> +<blockquote><p>“Raise the Table Round again,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and Blackmore has never been reckoned adequate. +<i>Vivien</i> was first composed as <i>Merlin and Nimue</i>, and +then <i>Geraint and Enid</i> was adapted from the +<i>Mabinogion</i>, the Welsh collection of <i>Märchen</i> +and legends, things of widely different ages, now rather Celtic, +or Brythonic, now amplifications made under the influence of +mediæval French romance. <i>Enid</i> was finished in +Wales in August, and Tennyson learned Welsh enough to be able to +read the <i>Mabinogion</i>, which is much more of Welsh than many +Arthurian critics possess. The two first Idylls were +privately printed in the summer of 1857, being very rare and much +desired of collectors in this embryonic shape. In July +<i>Guinevere</i> was begun, in the middle, with Arthur’s +valedictory address to his erring consort. In autumn +Tennyson visited the late Duke of Argyll at Inveraray: he was +much attached to the Duke—unlike Professor Huxley. +Their love of nature, the Duke being as keen-eyed as the poet was +short-sighted, was one tie of union. The Indian Mutiny, or +at least the death of Havelock, was the occasion of lines which +the author was too wise to include in any of his volumes: the +poem on Lucknow was of later composition.</p> +<p><i>Guinevere</i> was completed in March 1858; and Tennyson met +Mr Swinburne, then very young. “What I particularly +admired in him was that he did not press upon me any verses of +his own.” Tennyson would have found more to admire if +he had pressed for a sight of the verses. Neither he nor Mr +Matthew Arnold was very encouraging to young poets: they had no +sons in Apollo, like Ben Jonson. But both were kept in a +perpetual state of apprehension by the army of versifiers who +send volumes by post, to whom that can only be said what Tennyson +did say to one of them, “As an amusement to yourself and +your friends, the writing it” (verse) “is all very +well.” It is the friends who do not find it amusing, +while the stranger becomes the foe. The psychology of these +pests of the Muses is bewildering. They do not seem to read +poetry, only to write it and launch it at unoffending +strangers. If they bought each other’s books, all of +them could afford to publish.</p> +<p>The Master of Balliol, the most adviceful man, if one may use +the term, of his age, appears to have advised Tennyson to publish +the <i>Idylls</i> at once. There had been years of silence +since <i>Maud</i>, and the Master suspected that +“mosquitoes” (reviewers) were the cause. +“There is a note needed to show the good side of human +nature and to condone its frailties which Thackeray will never +strike.” To others it seems that Thackeray was +eternally striking this note: at that time in General Lambert, +his wife, and daughters, not to speak of other characters in +<i>The Virginians</i>. Who does not condone the frailties +of Captain Costigan, and F. B., and the Chevalier Strong? +In any case, Tennyson took his own time, he was (1858) only +beginning <i>Elaine</i>. There is no doubt that Tennyson +was easily pricked by unsympathetic criticism, even from the most +insignificant source, and, as he confessed, he received little +pleasure from praise. All authors, without exception, are +sensitive. A sturdier author wrote that he would sometimes +have been glad to meet his assailant “where the muir-cock +was bailie.” We know how testily Wordsworth replied +in defence to the gentlest comments by Lamb.</p> +<p>The Master of Balliol kept insisting, “As to the +critics, their power is not really great. . . . One drop of +natural feeling in poetry or the true statement of a single new +fact is already felt to be of more value than all the critics put +together.” Yet even critics may be in the right, and +of all great poets, Tennyson listened most obediently to their +censures, as we have seen in the case of his early poems. +His prolonged silences after the attacks of 1833 and 1855 were +occupied in work and reflection: Achilles was not merely sulking +in his tent, as some of his friends seem to have supposed. +An epic in a series of epic idylls cannot be dashed off like a +romantic novel in rhyme; and Tennyson’s method was always +one of waiting for maturity of conception and execution.</p> +<p>Mrs Tennyson, doubtless by her lord’s desire, asked the +Master (then tutor of Balliol) to suggest themes. Old age +was suggested, and is treated in <i>The Grandmother</i>. +Other topics were not handled. “I hold most +strongly,” said the Master, “that it is the duty of +every one who has the good fortune to know a man of genius to do +any trifling service they can to lighten his work.” +To do every service in his power to every man was the +Master’s life-long practice. He was not much at home, +his letters show, with Burns, to whom he seems to have attributed +<i>John Anderson</i>, <i>my jo</i>, <i>John</i>, while he tells +an anecdote of Burns composing <i>Tam o’ Shanter</i> with +emotional tears, which, if true at all, is true of the making of +<i>To Mary in Heaven</i>. If Burns wept over <i>Tam +o’ Shanter</i>, the tears must have been tears of +laughter.</p> +<p>The first four <i>Idylls of the King</i> were prepared for +publication in the spring of 1859; while Tennyson was at work +also on <i>Pelleas and Ettarre</i>, and the Tristram cycle. +In autumn he went on a tour to Lisbon with Mr F. T. Palgrave and +Mr Craufurd Grove. Returning, he fell eagerly to reading an +early copy of Darwin’s <i>Origin of Species</i>, the crown +of his own early speculations on the theory of evolution. +“Your theory does not make against Christianity?” he +asked Darwin later (1868), who replied, “No, certainly +not.” But Darwin has stated the waverings of his own +mind in contact with a topic too high for <i>a priori</i> +reasoning, and only to be approached, if at all, on the strength +of the scientific method applied to facts which science, so far, +neglects, or denies, or “explains away,” rather than +explains.</p> +<p>The <i>Idylls</i>, unlike <i>Maud</i>, were well received by +the press, better by the public, and best of all by friends like +Thackeray, the Duke of Argyll, the Master of Balliol, and Clough, +while Ruskin showed some reserve. The letter from Thackeray +I cannot deny myself the pleasure of citing from the Biography: +it was written “in an ardour of claret and +gratitude,” but posted some six weeks later:—</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="smcap">Folkestone</span>, <i>September</i>.<br /> +36 <span class="smcap">Onslow Square</span>, <i>October</i>.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">My dear old Alfred</span>,—I owe you +a letter of happiness and thanks. Sir, about three weeks +ago, when I was ill in bed, I read the Idylls of the King, and I +thought, “Oh, I must write to him now, for this pleasure, +this delight, this splendour of happiness which I have been +enjoying.” But I should have blotted the sheets, +’tis ill writing on one’s back. The letter full +of gratitude never went as far as the post-office, and how comes +it now?</p> +<p>D’abord, a bottle of claret. (The landlord of the +hotel asked me down to the cellar and treated me.) Then +afterwards sitting here, an old magazine, Fraser’s +Magazine, 1850, and I come on a poem out of The Princess which +says, “I hear the horns of Elfland blowing, +blowing,”—no, it’s “the horns of Elfland +faintly blowing” (I have been into my bedroom to fetch my +pen and it has made that blot), and, reading the lines, which +only one man in the world could write, I thought about the other +horns of Elfland blowing in full strength, and Arthur in gold +armour, and Guinevere in gold hair, and all those knights and +heroes and beauties and purple landscapes and misty gray lakes in +which you have made me live. They seem like facts to me, +since about three weeks ago (three weeks or a month was it?) when +I read the book. It is on the table yonder, and I +don’t like, somehow, to disturb it, but the delight and +gratitude! You have made me as happy as I was as a child +with the Arabian Nights,—every step I have walked in +Elfland has been a sort of Paradise to me. (The landlord +gave two bottles of his claret and I think I drank the most) and +here I have been lying back in the chair and thinking of those +delightful Idylls, my thoughts being turned to you: what could I +do but be grateful to that surprising genius which has made me so +happy? Do you understand that what I mean is all true, and +that I should break out were you sitting opposite with a pipe in +your mouth? Gold and purple and diamonds, I say, gentlemen, +and glory and love and honour, and if you haven’t given me +all these why should I be in such an ardour of gratitude? +But I have had out of that dear book the greatest delight that +has ever come to me since I was a young man; to write and think +about it makes me almost young, and this I suppose is what +I’m doing, like an after-dinner speech.</p> +<p><i>P.S.</i>—I thought the “Grandmother” +quite as fine. How can you at 50 be doing things as well as +at 35?</p> +<p>October 16th.—(I should think six weeks after the +writing of the above.)</p> +<p>The rhapsody of gratitude was never sent, and for a peculiar +reason: just about the time of writing I came to an arrangement +with Smith & Elder to edit their new magazine, and to have a +contribution from T. was the publishers’ and editor’s +highest ambition. But to ask a man for a favour, and to +praise and bow down before him in the same page, seemed to be so +like hypocrisy, that I held my hand, and left this note in my +desk, where it has been lying during a little +French-Italian-Swiss tour which my girls and their papa have been +making.</p> +<p>Meanwhile S. E. & Co. have been making their own proposals +to you, and you have replied not favourably, I am sorry to hear; +but now there is no reason why you should not have my homages, +and I am just as thankful for the Idylls, and love and admire +them just as much, as I did two months ago when I began to write +in that ardour of claret and gratitude. If you can’t +write for us you can’t. If you can by chance some +day, and help an old friend, how pleased and happy I shall +be! This however must be left to fate and your convenience: +I don’t intend to give up hope, but accept the good fortune +if it comes. I see one, two, three quarterlies advertised +to-day, as all bringing laurels to laureatus. He will not +refuse the private tribute of an old friend, will he? You +don’t know how pleased the girls were at Kensington +t’other day to hear you quote their father’s little +verses, and he too I daresay was not disgusted. He sends +you and yours his very best regards in this most heartfelt and +artless</p> +<p style="text-align: right">(note of admiration)!<br /> +Always yours, my dear Alfred,<br /> +W. M. <span class="smcap">Thackeray</span>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Naturally this letter gave Tennyson more pleasure than all the +converted critics with their favourable reviews. The Duke +of Argyll announced the conversion of Macaulay. The Master +found <i>Elaine</i> “the fairest, sweetest, purest love +poem in the English language.” As to the whole, +“The allegory in the distance <i>greatly strengthens</i>, +<i>also elevates</i>, <i>the meaning of the poem</i>.”</p> +<p>Ruskin, like some other critics, felt “the art and +finish in these poems a little more than I like to feel +it.” Yet <i>Guinevere</i> and <i>Elaine</i> had been +rapidly written and little corrected. I confess to the +opinion that what a man does most easily is, as a rule, what he +does best. We know that the “art and finish” of +Shakespeare were spontaneous, and so were those of +Tennyson. Perfection in art is sometimes more sudden than +we think, but then “the long preparation for it,—that +unseen germination, <i>that</i> is what we ignore and +forget.” But he wisely kept his pieces by him for a +long time, restudying them with a fresh eye. The +“unreality” of the subject also failed to please +Ruskin, as it is a stumbling-block to others. He wanted +poems on “the living present,” a theme not selected +by Homer, Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Virgil, or the Greek +dramatists, except (among surviving plays) in the <i>Persæ +of</i> Æschylus. The poet who can transfigure the hot +present is fortunate, but most, and the greatest, have visited +the cool quiet purlieus of the past.</p> +<h2><a name="page103"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +103</span>VII.<br /> +THE IDYLLS OF THE KING.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> Idylls may probably be best +considered in their final shape: they are not an epic, but a +series of heroic <i>idyllia</i> of the same genre as the heroic +<i>idyllia</i> of Theocritus. He wrote long after the +natural age of national epic, the age of Homer. He saw the +later literary epic rise in the <i>Argonautica</i> of Apollonius +Rhodius, a poem with many beauties, if rather an archaistic and +elaborate revival as a whole. The time for long narrative +poems, Theocritus appears to have thought, was past, and he only +ventured on the heroic <i>idyllia</i> of Heracles, and certain +adventures of the Argonauts. Tennyson, too, from the first +believed that his pieces ought to be short. Therefore, +though he had a conception of his work as a whole, a conception +long mused on, and sketched in various lights, he produced no +epic, only a series of epic <i>idyllia</i>. He had a +spiritual conception, “an allegory in the distance,” +an allegory not to be insisted upon, though its presence was to +be felt. No longer, as in youth, did Tennyson intend Merlin +to symbolise “the sceptical understanding” (as if one +were to “break into blank the gospel of” Herr Kant), +or poor Guinevere to stand for the Blessed Reformation, or the +Table Round for Liberal Institutions. Mercifully Tennyson +never actually allegorised Arthur in that fashion. Later he +thought of a musical masque of Arthur, and sketched a +<i>scenario</i>. Finally Tennyson dropped both the allegory +of Liberal principles and the musical masque in favour of the +series of heroic idylls. There was only a “parabolic +drift” in the intention. “There is no single +fact or incident in the Idylls, however seemingly mystical, which +cannot be explained without any mystery or allegory +whatever.” The Idylls ought to be read (and the right +readers never dream of doing anything else) as romantic poems, +just like Browning’s <i>Childe Roland</i>, in which the +wrong readers (the members of the Browning Society) sought for +mystic mountains and marvels. Yet Tennyson had his own +interpretation, “a dream of man coming into practical life +and ruined by one sin.” That was his +“interpretation,” or “allegory in the +distance.”</p> +<p>People may be heard objecting to the suggestion of any +spiritual interpretation of the Arthur legends, and even to the +existence of elementary morality among the Arthurian knights and +ladies. There seems to be a notion that “bold bawdry +and open manslaughter,” as Roger Ascham said, are the +staple of Tennyson’s sources, whether in the mediæval +French, the Welsh, or in Malory’s compilation, chiefly from +French sources. Tennyson is accused of +“Bowdlerising” these, and of introducing gentleness, +courtesy, and conscience into a literature where such qualities +were unknown. I must confess myself ignorant of any early +and popular, or “primitive” literature, in which +human virtues, and the human conscience, do not play their +part. Those who object to Tennyson’s handling of the +great Arthurian cycle, on the ground that he is too refined and +too moral, must either never have read or must long have +forgotten even Malory’s romance. Thus we read, in a +recent novel, that Lancelot was an <i>homme aux bonnes +fortunes</i>, whereas Lancelot was the most loyal of lovers.</p> +<p>Among other critics, Mr Harrison has objected that the +Arthurian world of Tennyson “is not quite an ideal +world. Therein lies the difficulty. The scene, though +not of course historic, has certain historic suggestions and +characters.” It is not apparent who the historic +characters are, for the real Arthur is but a historic +phantasm. “But then, in the midst of so much realism, +the knights, from Arthur downwards, talk and act in ways with +which we are familiar in modern ethical and psychological novels, +but which are as impossible in real mediæval knights as a +Bengal tiger or a Polar bear would be in a +drawing-room.” I confess to little acquaintance with +modern ethical novels; but real mediæval knights, and still +more the knights of mediæval romance, were capable of very +ethical actions. To halt an army for the protection and +comfort of a laundress was a highly ethical action. Perhaps +Sir Redvers Buller would do it: Bruce did. Mr Harrison +accuses the ladies of the Idylls of soul-bewildering casuistry, +like that of women in <i>Middlemarch</i> or <i>Helbeck of +Bannisdale</i>. Now I am not reminded by Guinevere, and +Elaine, and Enid, of ladies in these ethical novels. But +the women of the mediæval <i>Cours d’Amour</i> (the +originals from whom the old romancers drew) were nothing if not +casuists. “Spiritual delicacy” (as they +understood it) was their delight.</p> +<p>Mr Harrison even argues that Malory’s men lived +hot-blooded lives in fierce times, “before an idea had +arisen in the world of ‘reverencing conscience,’ +‘leading sweet lives,’” and so on. But he +admits that they had “fantastic ideals of +‘honour’ and ‘love.’” As to +“fantastic,” that is a matter of opinion, but to have +ideals and to live in accordance with them is to “reverence +conscience”, which the heroes of the romances are said by +Mr Harrison never to have had an idea of doing. They are +denied even “amiable words and courtliness.” +Need one say that courtliness is the dominant note of +mediæval knights, in history as in romance? With +discourtesy Froissart would “head the count of +crimes.” After a battle, he says, Scots knights and +English would thank each other for a good fight, “not like +the Germans.” “And now, I dare say,” said +Malory’s Sir Ector, “thou, Sir Lancelot, wast the +curtiest knight that ever bare shield, . . . and thou wast the +meekest man and the gentlest that ever ate in hall among +ladies.” Observe Sir Lancelot in the difficult pass +where the Lily Maid offers her love: “Jesu defend me, for +then I rewarded your father and your brother full evil for their +great goodness. . . . But because, fair damsel, that ye +love me as ye say ye do, I will, for your good will and kindness, +show you some goodness, . . . and always while I live to be your +true knight.” Here are “amiable words and +courtesy.” I cannot agree with Mr Harrison that +Malory’s book is merely “a fierce lusty +epic.” That was not the opinion of its printer and +publisher, Caxton. He produced it as an example of +“the gentle and virtuous deeds that some knights used in +these days, . . . noble and renowned acts of humanity, +gentleness, and chivalry. For herein may be seen noble +chivalry, courtesy, humanity, friendliness, love, cowardice, +murder, hate, virtue, and sin. Do after the good and leave +the evil.”</p> +<p>In reaction against the bold-faced heroines and sensual amours +of some of the old French romances, an ideal of exaggerated +asceticism, of stainless chastity, notoriously pervades the +portion of Malory’s work which deals with the Holy +Grail. Lancelot is distraught when he finds that, by dint +of enchantment, he has been made false to Guinevere (Book XI. +chap. viii.) After his dreaming vision of the Holy Grail, +with the reproachful Voice, Sir Lancelot said, “My sin and +my wickedness have brought me great dishonour, . . . and now I +see and understand that my old sin hindereth and shameth +me.” He was human, the Lancelot of Malory, and +“fell to his old love again,” with a heavy heart, and +with long penance at the end. How such good knights can be +deemed conscienceless and void of courtesy one knows not, except +by a survival of the Puritanism of Ascham. But Tennyson +found in the book what is in the book—honour, conscience, +courtesy, and the hero—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Whose honour rooted in dishonour stood,<br +/> +And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Malory’s book, which was Tennyson’s chief source, +ends by being the tragedy of the conscience of Lancelot. +Arthur is dead, or “In Avalon he groweth old.” +The Queen and Lancelot might sing, as Lennox reports that Queen +Mary did after Darnley’s murder—</p> +<blockquote><p>“<i>Weel is me</i><br /> +<i>For I am free</i>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“Why took they not their pastime?” Because +conscience forbade, and Guinevere sends her lover far from her, +and both die in religion. Thus Malory’s “fierce +lusty epic” is neither so lusty nor so fierce but that it +gives Tennyson his keynote: the sin that breaks the fair +companionship, and is bitterly repented.</p> +<p>“The knights are almost too polite to kill each +other,” the critic urges. In Malory they are +sometimes quite too polite to kill each other. Sir Darras +has a blood-feud against Sir Tristram, and Sir Tristram is in his +dungeon. Sir Darras said, “Wit ye well that Sir +Darras shall never destroy such a noble knight as thou art in +prison, howbeit that thou hast slain three of my sons, whereby I +was greatly aggrieved. But now shalt thou go and thy +fellows. . . . All that ye did,” said Sir Darras, +“was by force of knighthood, and that was the cause I would +not put you to death” (Book IX. chap. xl.)</p> +<p>Tennyson is accused of “emasculating the fierce lusty +epic into a moral lesson, as if it were to be performed in a +drawing-room by an academy of young ladies”—presided +over, I daresay, by “Anglican clergymen.” I +know not how any one who has read the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i> +can blame Tennyson in the matter. Let Malory and his +sources be blamed, if to be moral is to be culpable. A few +passages apart, there is no coarseness in Malory; that there are +conscience, courtesy, “sweet lives,” “keeping +down the base in man,” “amiable words,” and all +that Tennyson gives, and, in Mr Harrison’s theory, gives +without authority in the romance, my quotations from Malory +demonstrate. They are chosen at a casual opening of his +book. That there “had not arisen in the world” +“the idea of reverencing conscience” before the close +of the fifteenth century <span class="GutSmall">A.D.</span> is an +extraordinary statement for a critic of history to offer.</p> +<p>Mr Harrison makes his protest because “in the conspiracy +of silence into which Tennyson’s just fame has hypnotised +the critics, it is bare honesty to admit defects.” I +think I am not hypnotised, and I do not regard the Idylls as the +crown of Tennyson’s work. But it is not his +“defect” to have introduced generosity, gentleness, +conscience, and chastity where no such things occur in his +sources. Take Sir Darras: his position is that of Priam +when he meets Achilles, who slew his sons, except that Priam +comes as a suppliant; Sir Darras has Tristram in his hands, and +may slay him. He is “too polite,” as Mr +Harrison says: he is too good a Christian, or too good a +gentleman. One would not have given a tripod for the life +of Achilles had he fallen into the hands of Priam. But +between 1200 <span class="GutSmall">B.C.</span> (or so) and the +date of Malory, new ideas about “living sweet lives” +had arisen. Where and when do they not arise? A +British patrol fired on certain Swazis in time of truce. +Their lieutenant, who had been absent when this occurred, rode +alone to the stronghold of the Swazi king, Sekukoeni, and gave +himself up, expecting death by torture. “Go, +sir,” said the king; “we too are +gentlemen.” The idea of a “sweet life” of +honour had dawned even on Sekukoeni: it lights up Malory’s +romance, and is reflected in Tennyson’s Idylls, doubtless +with some modernism of expression.</p> +<p>That the Idylls represent no real world is certain. That +Tennyson modernises and moralises too much, I willingly admit; +what I deny is that he introduces gentleness, courtesy, and +conscience where his sources have none. Indeed this is not +a matter of critical opinion, but of verifiable fact. Any +one can read Malory and judge for himself. But the world in +which the Idylls move could not be real. For more than a +thousand years different races, different ages, had taken hold of +the ancient Celtic legends and spiritualised them after their own +manner, and moulded them to their own ideals. There may +have been a historical Arthur, <i>Comes Britanniæ</i>, +after the Roman withdrawal. <i>Ye Amherawdyr Arthur</i>, +“the Emperor Arthur,” may have lived and fought, and +led the Brythons to battle. But there may also have been a +Brythonic deity, or culture hero, of the same, or of a similar +name, and myths about him may have been assigned to a real +Arthur. Again, the Arthur of the old Welsh legends was by +no means the blameless king—even in comparatively late +French romances he is not blameless. But the process of +idealising him went on: still incomplete in Malory’s +compilation, where he is often rather otiose and far from +royal. Tennyson, for his purpose, completed the +idealisation.</p> +<p>As to Guinevere, she was not idealised in the old Welsh +rhyme—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Guinevere, Giant Ogurvan’s +daughter,<br /> +Naughty young, more naughty later.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Of Lancelot, and her passion for him, the old Welsh has +nothing to say. Probably Chrétien de Troyes, by a +happy blunder or misconception, gave Lancelot his love and his +pre-eminent part. Lancelot was confused with Peredur, and +Guinevere with the lady of whom Peredur was in quest. The +Elaine who becomes by Lancelot the mother of Galahad “was +Lancelot’s rightful consort, as one recognises in her name +that of Elen, the Empress, whom the story of Peredur” +(Lancelot, by the confusion) “gives that hero to +wife.” The second Elaine, the maid of Astolat, is +another refraction from the original Elen. As to the Grail, +it may be a Christianised rendering of one or another of the +magical and mystic caldrons of Welsh or Irish legend. There +is even an apparent Celtic source of the mysterious fisher king +of the Grail romance. <a name="citation112"></a><a +href="#footnote112" class="citation">[112]</a></p> +<p>A sketch of the evolution of the Arthurian legends might run +thus:—</p> +<p class="gutindent">Sixth to eighth century, growth of myth +about an Arthur, real, or supposed to be real.</p> +<p class="gutindent">Tenth century, the Duchies of Normandy and +Brittany are in close relations; by the eleventh century Normans +know Celtic Arthurian stories.</p> +<p class="gutindent">After, 1066, Normans in contact with the +Celtic peoples of this island are in touch with the Arthur +tales.</p> +<p class="gutindent">1130–1145, works on Arthurian matter +by Geoffrey of Monmouth.</p> +<p class="gutindent">1155, Wace’s French translation of +Geoffrey.</p> +<p class="gutindent">1150–1182, Chrétien de Troyes +writes poems on Arthurian topics.</p> +<p class="gutindent">French prose romances on Arthur, from, say, +1180 to 1250. Those romances reach Wales, and modify, in +translations, the original Welsh legends, or, in part, supplant +them.</p> +<p class="gutindent">Amplifications and recastings are +numerous. In 1485 Caxton publishes Malory’s +selections from French and English sources, the whole being +Tennyson’s main source, <i>Le Mort d’Arthur</i>. <a +name="citation113"></a><a href="#footnote113" +class="citation">[113]</a></p> +<p>Thus the Arthur stories, originally Celtic, originally a mass +of semi-pagan legend, myth, and <i>märchen</i>, have been +retold and rehandled by Norman, Englishman, and Frenchman, taking +on new hues, expressing new ideals—religious, chivalrous, +and moral. Any poet may work his will on them, and +Tennyson’s will was to retain the chivalrous courtesy, +generosity, love, and asceticism, while dimly or brightly veiling +or illuminating them with his own ideals. After so many +processes, from folk-tale to modern idyll, the Arthurian world +could not be real, and real it is not. Camelot lies +“out of space, out of time,” though the colouring is +mainly that of the later chivalry, and “the gleam” on +the hues is partly derived from Celtic fancy of various dates, +and is partly Tennysonian.</p> +<p>As the Idylls were finally arranged, the first, <i>The Coming +of Arthur</i>, is a remarkable proof of Tennyson’s +ingenuity in construction. Tales about the birth of Arthur +varied. In Malory, Uther Pendragon, the Bretwalda (in later +phrase) of Britain, besieges the Duke of Tintagil, who has a fair +wife, Ygerne, in another castle. Merlin magically puts on +Uther the shape of Ygerne’s husband, and as her husband she +receives him. On that night Arthur is begotten by Uther, +and the Duke of Tintagil, his mother’s husband, is slain in +a sortie. Uther weds Ygerne; both recognise Arthur as their +child. However, by the Celtic custom of fosterage the +infant is intrusted to Sir Ector as his <i>dalt</i>, or +foster-child, and Uther falls in battle. Arthur is later +approven king by the adventure of drawing from the stone the +magic sword that no other king could move. This adventure +answers to Sigmund’s drawing the sword from the Branstock, +in the Volsunga Saga, “Now men stand up, and none would +fain be the last to lay hand to the sword,” apparently +stricken into the pillar by Woden. “But none who came +thereto might avail to pull it out, for in nowise would it come +away howsoever they tugged at it, but now up comes Sigmund, King +Volsung’s son, and sets hand to the sword, and pulls it +from the stock, even as if it lay loose before him.” +The incident in the Arthurian as in the Volsunga legend is on a +par with the Golden Bough, in the sixth book of the +<i>Æneid</i>. Only the predestined champion, such as +Æneas, can pluck, or break, or cut the bough—</p> +<blockquote><p> “Ipse volens facilisque +sequetu<br /> +Si te fata vocant.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>All this ancient popular element in the Arthur story is +disregarded by Tennyson. He does not make Uther approach +Ygerne in the semblance of her lord, as Zeus approached Alcmena +in the semblance of her husband, Amphitryon. He neglects +the other ancient test of the proving of Arthur by his success in +drawing the sword. The poet’s object is to enfold the +origin and birth of Arthur in a spiritual mystery. This is +deftly accomplished by aid of the various versions of the tale +that reach King Leodogran when Arthur seeks the hand of his +daughter Guinevere, for Arthur’s title to the crown is +still disputed, so Leodogran makes inquiries. The answers +first leave it dubious whether Arthur is son of Gorloïs, +husband of Ygerne, or of Uther, who slew Gorloïs and married +her:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Enforced she was to wed him in her +tears.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The Celtic custom of fosterage is overlooked, and Merlin gives +the child to Anton, not as the customary <i>dalt</i>, but to +preserve the babe from danger. Queen Bellicent then tells +Leodogran, from the evidence of Bleys, Merlin’s master in +necromancy, the story of Arthur’s miraculous advent.</p> +<blockquote><p>“And down the wave and in the flame was +borne<br /> +A naked babe, and rode to Merlin’s feet,<br /> +Who stoopt and caught the babe, and cried ‘The King!<br /> +Here is an heir for Uther!’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But Merlin, when asked by Bellicent to corroborate the +statement of Bleys, merely</p> +<blockquote><p>“Answer’d in riddling triplets of old +time.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Finally, Leodogran’s faith is confirmed by a +vision. Thus doubtfully, amidst rumour and portent, cloud +and spiritual light, comes Arthur: “from the great +deep” he comes, and in as strange fashion, at the end, +“to the great deep he goes”—a king to be +accepted in faith or rejected by doubt. Arthur and his +ideal are objects of belief. All goes well while the +knights hold that</p> +<blockquote><p>“The King will follow Christ, and we the +King,<br /> +In whom high God hath breathed a secret thing.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In history we find the same situation in the France of +1429—</p> +<blockquote><p>“The King will follow Jeanne, and we the +King.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>While this faith held, all went well; when the king ceased to +follow, the spell was broken,—the Maid was martyred. +In this sense the poet conceives the coming of Arthur, a sign to +be spoken against, a test of high purposes, a belief redeeming +and ennobling till faith fails, and the little rift within the +lute, the love of Lancelot and Guinevere, makes discord of the +music. As matter of legend, it is to be understood that +Guinevere did not recognise Arthur when first he rode below her +window—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Since he neither wore on helm or shield<br +/> +The golden symbol of his kinglihood.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But Lancelot was sent to bring the bride—</p> +<blockquote><p> “And return’d<br /> +Among the flowers, in May, with Guinevere.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Then their long love may have begun, as in the story of +Tristram sent to bring Yseult to be the bride of King Mark. +In Malory, however, Lancelot does not come on the scene till +after Arthur’s wedding and return from his conquering +expedition to Rome. Then Lancelot wins renown, +“wherefore Queen Guinevere had him in favour above all +other knights; and in certain he loved the Queen again above all +other ladies damosels of his life.” Lancelot, as we +have seen, is practically a French creation, adopted to +illustrate the chivalrous theory of love, with its bitter +fruit. Though not of the original Celtic stock of legend, +Sir Lancelot makes the romance what it is, and draws down the +tragedy that originally turned on the sin of Arthur himself, the +sin that gave birth to the traitor Modred. But the +mediæval romancers disguised that form of the story, and +the process of idealising Arthur reached such heights in the +middle ages that Tennyson thought himself at liberty to paint the +<i>Flos Regum</i>, “the blameless King.” He +followed the <i>Brut ab Arthur</i>. “In short, God +has not made since Adam was, the man more perfect than +Arthur.” This is remote from the Arthur of the oldest +Celtic legends, but justifies the poet in adapting Arthur to the +ideal hero of the Idylls:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Ideal manhood closed in real man,<br /> +Rather than that grey king, whose name, a ghost,<br /> +Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain-peak,<br /> +And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still; or him<br /> +Of Geoffrey’s book, or him of Malleor’s, one<br /> +Touched by the adulterous finger of a time<br /> +That hovered between war and wantonness,<br /> +And crownings and dethronements.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The poetical beauties of <i>The Coming of Arthur</i> excel +those of <i>Gareth and Lynette</i>. The sons of Lot and +Bellicent seem to have been originally regarded as the incestuous +offspring of Arthur and his sister, the wife of King Lot. +Next it was represented that Arthur was ignorant of the +relationship. Mr Rhys supposes that the mythical scandal +(still present in Malory as a sin of ignorance) arose from +blending the Celtic Arthur (as Culture Hero) with an older divine +personage, such as Zeus, who marries his sister Hera. +Marriages of brother and sister are familiar in the Egyptian +royal house, and that of the Incas. But the poet has a +perfect right to disregard a scandalous myth which, obviously +crystallised later about the figure of the mythical Celtic +Arthur, was an incongruous accretion to his legend. Gareth, +therefore, is merely Arthur’s nephew, not son, in the poem, +as are Gawain and the traitor Modred. The story seems to be +rather mediæval French than Celtic—a mingling of the +spirit of <i>fabliau</i> and popular fairy tale. The poet +has added to its lightness, almost frivolity, the description of +the unreal city of Camelot, built to music, as when</p> +<blockquote><p>“Ilion, like a mist, rose into +towers.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>He has also brought in the allegory of Death, which, when +faced, proves to be “a blooming boy” behind the +mask. The courtesy and prowess of Lancelot lead up to the +later development of his character.</p> +<p>In <i>The Marriage of Geraint</i>, a rumour has already risen +about Lancelot and the Queen, darkening the Court, and +presaging</p> +<blockquote><p>“The world’s loud whisper breaking +into storm.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>For this reason Geraint removes Enid from Camelot to his own +land—the poet thus early leading up to the sin and the doom +of Lancelot. But this motive does not occur in the Welsh +story of Enid and Geraint, which Tennyson has otherwise followed +with unwonted closeness. The tale occurs in French romances +in various forms, but it appears to have returned, by way of +France and coloured with French influences, to Wales, where it is +one of the later Mabinogion. The characters are Celtic, and +Nud, father of Edyrn, Geraint’s defeated antagonist, +appears to be recognised by Mr Rhys as “the Celtic +Zeus.” The manners and the tournaments are +French. In the Welsh tale Geraint and Enid are bedded in +Arthur’s own chamber, which seems to be a symbolic +commutation of the <i>jus primæ noctis</i> a custom of +which the very existence is disputed. This unseemly +antiquarian detail, of course, is omitted in the Idyll.</p> +<p>An abstract of the Welsh tale will show how closely Tennyson +here follows his original. News is brought into +Arthur’s Court of the appearance of a white stag. The +king arranges a hunt, and Guinevere asks leave to go and watch +the sport. Next morning she cannot be wakened, though the +tale does not aver, like the Idyll, that she was</p> +<blockquote><p>“Lost in sweet dreams, and dreaming of her +love<br /> +For Lancelot.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Guinevere wakes late, and rides through a ford of Usk to the +hunt. Geraint follows, “a golden-hilted sword was at +his side, and a robe and a surcoat of satin were upon him, and +two shoes of leather upon his feet, and around him was a scarf of +blue purple, at each corner of which was a golden +apple”:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“But Guinevere lay late into the morn,<br /> +Lost in sweet dreams, and dreaming of her love<br /> +For Lancelot, and forgetful of the hunt;<br /> +But rose at last, a single maiden with her,<br /> +Took horse, and forded Usk, and gain’d the wood;<br /> +There, on a little knoll beside it, stay’d<br /> +Waiting to hear the hounds; but heard instead<br /> +A sudden sound of hoofs, for Prince Geraint,<br /> +Late also, wearing neither hunting-dress<br /> +Nor weapon, save a golden-hilted brand,<br /> +Came quickly flashing thro’ the shallow ford<br /> +Behind them, and so gallop’d up the knoll.<br /> +A purple scarf, at either end whereof<br /> +There swung an apple of the purest gold,<br /> +Sway’d round about him, as he gallop’d up<br /> +To join them, glancing like a dragon-fly<br /> +In summer suit and silks of holiday.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The encounter with the dwarf, the lady, and the knight +follows. The prose of the Mabinogi may be compared with the +verse of Tennyson:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Geraint,” said Gwenhwyvar, +“knowest thou the name of that tall knight +yonder?” “I know him not,” said he, +“and the strange armour that he wears prevents my either +seeing his face or his features.” “Go, +maiden,” said Gwenhwyvar, “and ask the dwarf who that +knight is.” Then the maiden went up to the dwarf; and +the dwarf waited for the maiden, when he saw her coming towards +him. And the maiden inquired of the dwarf who the knight +was. “I will not tell thee,” he answered. +“Since thou art so churlish as not to tell me,” said +she, “I will ask him himself.” “Thou +shalt not ask him, by my faith,” said he. +“Wherefore?” said she. “Because thou art +not of honour sufficient to befit thee to speak to my +Lord.” Then the maiden turned her horse’s head +towards the knight, upon which the dwarf struck her with the whip +that was in his hand across the face and the eyes, until the +blood flowed forth. And the maiden, through the hurt she +received from the blow, returned to Gwenhwyvar, complaining of +the pain. “Very rudely has the dwarf treated +thee,” said Geraint. “I will go myself to know +who the knight is.” “Go,” said +Gwenhwyvar. And Geraint went up to the dwarf. +“Who is yonder knight?” said Geraint. “I +will not tell thee,” said the dwarf. “Then will +I ask him himself,” said he. “That wilt thou +not, by my faith,” said the dwarf; “thou art not +honourable enough to speak with my Lord.” Said +Geraint, “I have spoken with men of equal rank with +him.” And he turned his horse’s head towards +the knight; but the dwarf overtook him, and struck him as he had +done the maiden, so that the blood coloured the scarf that +Geraint wore. Then Geraint put his hand upon the hilt of +his sword, but he took counsel with himself, and considered that +it would be no vengeance for him to slay the dwarf, and to be +attacked unarmed by the armed knight, so he returned to where +Gwenhwyvar was.</p> +<p> “And while they listen’d for the +distant hunt,<br /> +And chiefly for the baying of Cavall,<br /> +King Arthur’s hound of deepest mouth, there rode<br /> +Full slowly by a knight, lady, and dwarf;<br /> +Whereof the dwarf lagg’d latest, and the knight<br /> +Had vizor up, and show’d a youthful face,<br /> +Imperious, and of haughtiest lineaments.<br /> +And Guinevere, not mindful of his face<br /> +In the King’s hall, desired his name, and sent<br /> +Her maiden to demand it of the dwarf;<br /> +Who being vicious, old and irritable,<br /> +And doubling all his master’s vice of pride,<br /> +Made answer sharply that she should not know.<br /> +‘Then will I ask it of himself,’ she said.<br /> +‘Nay, by my faith, thou shalt not,’ cried the +dwarf;<br /> +‘Thou art not worthy ev’n to speak of him’;<br +/> +And when she put her horse toward the knight,<br /> +Struck at her with his whip, and she return’d<br /> +Indignant to the Queen; whereat Geraint<br /> +Exclaiming, ‘Surely I will learn the name,’<br /> +Made sharply to the dwarf, and ask’d it of him,<br /> +Who answer’d as before; and when the Prince<br /> +Had put his horse in motion toward the knight,<br /> +Struck at him with his whip, and cut his cheek.<br /> +The Prince’s blood spirted upon the scarf,<br /> +Dyeing it; and his quick, instinctive hand<br /> +Caught at the hilt, as to abolish him:<br /> +But he, from his exceeding manfulness<br /> +And pure nobility of temperament,<br /> +Wroth to be wroth at such a worm, refrain’d<br /> +From ev’n a word.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The self-restraint of Geraint, who does not slay the +dwarf,</p> +<blockquote><p> “From his exceeding +manfulness<br /> +And pure nobility of temperament,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>may appear “too polite,” and too much in accord +with the still undiscovered idea of “leading sweet +lives.” However, the uninvented idea does occur in +the Welsh original: “Then Geraint put his hand upon the +hilt of his sword, but he took counsel with himself, and +considered that it would be no vengeance for him to slay the +dwarf,” while he also reflects that he would be +“attacked unarmed by the armed knight.” Perhaps +Tennyson may be blamed for omitting this obvious motive for +self-restraint. Geraint therefore follows the knight in +hope of finding arms, and arrives at the town all busy with +preparations for the tournament of the sparrow-hawk. This +was a challenge sparrow-hawk: the knight had won it twice, and if +he won it thrice it would be his to keep. The rest, in the +tale, is exactly followed in the Idyll. Geraint is +entertained by the ruined Yniol. The youth bears the +“costrel” full of “good purchased mead” +(the ruined Earl not brewing for himself), and Enid carries the +manchet bread in her veil, “old, and beginning to be worn +out.” All Tennyson’s own is the beautiful +passage—</p> +<blockquote><p> “And while he waited in +the castle court,<br /> +The voice of Enid, Yniol’s daughter, rang<br /> +Clear thro’ the open casement of the hall,<br /> +Singing; and as the sweet voice of a bird,<br /> +Heard by the lander in a lonely isle,<br /> +Moves him to think what kind of bird it is<br /> +That sings so delicately clear, and make<br /> +Conjecture of the plumage and the form;<br /> +So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint;<br /> +And made him like a man abroad at morn<br /> +When first the liquid note beloved of men<br /> +Comes flying over many a windy wave<br /> +To Britain, and in April suddenly<br /> +Breaks from a coppice gemm’d with green and red,<br /> +And he suspends his converse with a friend,<br /> +Or it may be the labour of his hands,<br /> +To think or say, ‘There is the nightingale’;<br /> +So fared it with Geraint, who thought and said,<br /> +‘Here, by God’s grace, is the one voice for +me.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Yniol frankly admits in the tale that he was in the wrong in +the quarrel with his nephew. The poet, however, gives him +the right, as is natural. The combat is exactly followed in +the Idyll, as is Geraint’s insistence in carrying his bride +to Court in her faded silks. Geraint, however, leaves Court +with Enid, not because of the scandal about Lancelot, but to do +his duty in his own country. He becomes indolent and +uxorious, and Enid deplores his weakness, and awakes his +suspicions, thus:—</p> +<blockquote><p>And one morning in the summer time they were upon +their couch, and Geraint lay upon the edge of it. And Enid +was without sleep in the apartment which had windows of +glass. And the sun shone upon the couch. And the +clothes had slipped from off his arms and his breast, and he was +asleep. Then she gazed upon the marvellous beauty of his +appearance, and she said, “Alas, and am I the cause that +these arms and this breast have lost their glory and the warlike +fame which they once so richly enjoyed!” And as she +said this, the tears dropped from her eyes, and they fell upon +his breast. And the tears she shed, and the words she had +spoken, awoke him; and another thing contributed to awaken him, +and that was the idea that it was not in thinking of him that she +spoke thus, but that it was because she loved some other man more +than him, and that she wished for other society, and thereupon +Geraint was troubled in his mind, and he called his squire; and +when he came to him, “Go quickly,” said he, +“and prepare my horse and my arms, and make them +ready. And do thou arise,” said he to Enid, +“and apparel thyself; and cause thy horse to be accoutred, +and clothe thee in the worst riding-dress that thou hast in thy +possession. And evil betide me,” said he, “if +thou returnest here until thou knowest whether I have lost my +strength so completely as thou didst say. And if it be so, +it will then be easy for thee to seek the society thou didst wish +for of him of whom thou wast thinking.” So she arose, +and clothed herself in her meanest garments. “I know +nothing, Lord,” said she, “of thy +meaning.” “Neither wilt thou know at this +time,” said he.</p> +<p> “At last, it chanced that on a summer +morn<br /> +(They sleeping each by either) the new sun<br /> +Beat thro’ the blindless casement of the room,<br /> +And heated the strong warrior in his dreams;<br /> +Who, moving, cast the coverlet aside,<br /> +And bared the knotted column of his throat,<br /> +The massive square of his heroic breast,<br /> +And arms on which the standing muscle sloped,<br /> +As slopes a wild brook o’er a little stone,<br /> +Running too vehemently to break upon it.<br /> +And Enid woke and sat beside the couch,<br /> +Admiring him, and thought within herself,<br /> +Was ever man so grandly made as he?<br /> +Then, like a shadow, past the people’s talk<br /> +And accusation of uxoriousness<br /> +Across her mind, and bowing over him,<br /> +Low to her own heart piteously she said:</p> +<p> ‘O noble breast and all-puissant +arms,<br /> +Am I the cause, I the poor cause that men<br /> +Reproach you, saying all your force is gone?<br /> +I <i>am</i> the cause, because I dare not speak<br /> +And tell him what I think and what they say.<br /> +And yet I hate that he should linger here;<br /> +I cannot love my lord and not his name.<br /> +Far liefer had I gird his harness on him,<br /> +And ride with him to battle and stand by,<br /> +And watch his mightful hand striking great blows<br /> +At caitiffs and at wrongers of the world.<br /> +Far better were I laid in the dark earth,<br /> +Not hearing any more his noble voice,<br /> +Not to be folded more in these dear arms,<br /> +And darken’d from the high light in his eyes,<br /> +Than that my lord thro’ me should suffer shame.<br /> +Am I so bold, and could I so stand by,<br /> +And see my dear lord wounded in the strife,<br /> +Or maybe pierced to death before mine eyes,<br /> +And yet not dare to tell him what I think,<br /> +And how men slur him, saying all his force<br /> +Is melted into mere effeminacy?<br /> +O me, I fear that I am no true wife.’</p> +<p> Half inwardly, half audibly she spoke,<br /> +And the strong passion in her made her weep<br /> +True tears upon his broad and naked breast,<br /> +And these awoke him, and by great mischance<br /> +He heard but fragments of her later words,<br /> +And that she fear’d she was not a true wife.<br /> +And then he thought, ‘In spite of all my care,<br /> +For all my pains, poor man, for all my pains,<br /> +She is not faithful to me, and I see her<br /> +Weeping for some gay knight in Arthur’s hall.’<br /> +Then tho’ he loved and reverenced her too much<br /> +To dream she could be guilty of foul act,<br /> +Right thro’ his manful breast darted the pang<br /> +That makes a man, in the sweet face of her<br /> +Whom he loves most, lonely and miserable.<br /> +At this he hurl’d his huge limbs out of bed,<br /> +And shook his drowsy squire awake and cried,<br /> +‘My charger and her palfrey’; then to her,<br /> +‘I will ride forth into the wilderness;<br /> +For tho’ it seems my spurs are yet to win,<br /> +I have not fall’n so low as some would wish.<br /> +And thou, put on thy worst and meanest dress<br /> +And ride with me.’ And Enid ask’d, amazed,<br +/> +‘If Enid errs, let Enid learn her fault.’<br /> +But he, ‘I charge thee, ask not, but obey.’<br /> +Then she bethought her of a faded silk,<br /> +A faded mantle and a faded veil,<br /> +And moving toward a cedarn cabinet,<br /> +Wherein she kept them folded reverently<br /> +With sprigs of summer laid between the folds,<br /> +She took them, and array’d herself therein,<br /> +Remembering when first he came on her<br /> +Drest in that dress, and how he loved her in it,<br /> +And all her foolish fears about the dress,<br /> +And all his journey to her, as himself<br /> +Had told her, and their coming to the court.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Tennyson’s</p> +<blockquote><p>“Arms on which the standing muscle +sloped,<br /> +As slopes a wild brook o’er a little stone,<br /> +Running too vehemently to break upon it,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>is suggested perhaps by Theocritus—“The muscles on +his brawny arms stood out like rounded rocks that the winter +torrent has rolled and worn smooth, in the great swirling +stream” (Idyll xxii.)</p> +<p>The second part of the poem follows the original less +closely. Thus Limours, in the tale, is not an old suitor of +Enid; Edyrn does not appear to the rescue; certain cruel games, +veiled in a magic mist, occur in the tale, and are omitted by the +poet; “Gwyffert petit, so called by the Franks, whom the +Cymry call the Little King,” in the tale, is not a +character in the Idyll, and, generally, the gross Celtic +exaggerations of Geraint’s feats are toned down by +Tennyson. In other respects, as when Geraint eats the +mowers’ dinner, the tale supplies the materials. But +it does not dwell tenderly on the reconciliation. The tale +is more or less in the vein of “patient Grizel,” and +he who told it is more concerned with the fighting than with +<i>amoris redintegratio</i>, and the sufferings of Enid. +The Idyll is enriched with many beautiful pictures from nature, +such as this:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“But at the flash and motion of the man<br +/> +They vanish’d panic-stricken, like a shoal<br /> +Of darting fish, that on a summer morn<br /> +Adown the crystal dykes at Camelot<br /> +Come slipping o’er their shadows on the sand,<br /> +But if a man who stands upon the brink<br /> +But lift a shining hand against the sun,<br /> +There is not left the twinkle of a fin<br /> +Betwixt the cressy islets white in flower;<br /> +So, scared but at the motion of the man,<br /> +Fled all the boon companions of the Earl,<br /> +And left him lying in the public way.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In <i>Balin and Balan</i> Tennyson displays great constructive +power, and remarkable skill in moulding the most recalcitrant +materials. Balin or Balyn, according to Mr Rhys, is the +Belinus of Geoffrey of Monmouth, “whose name represents the +Celtic divinity described in Latin as Apollo Belenus or +Belinus.” <a name="citation129a"></a><a +href="#footnote129a" class="citation">[129a]</a> In +Geoffrey, Belinus, euphemerised, or reduced from god to hero, has +a brother, Brennius, the Celtic Brân, King of Britain from +Caithness to the Humber. Belinus drives Brân into +exile. “Thus it is seen that Belinus or Balyn was, +mythologically speaking, the natural enemy” (as Apollo +Belinus, the radiant god) “of the dark divinity Brân +or Balan.”</p> +<p>If this view be correct, the two brothers answer to the good +and bad principles of myths like that of the Huron Iouskeha the +Sun, and Anatensic the Moon, or rather Taouiscara and Iouskeha, +the hostile brothers, Black and White. <a +name="citation129b"></a><a href="#footnote129b" +class="citation">[129b]</a> These mythical brethren are, in +Malory, two knights of Northumberland, Balin the wild and +Balan. Their adventures are mixed up with a hostile Lady of +the Lake, whom Balin slays in Arthur’s presence, with a +sword which none but Balin can draw from sheath; and with an evil +black-faced knight Garlon, invisible at will, whom Balin slays in +the castle of the knight’s brother, King Pellam. +Pursued from room to room by Pellam, Balin finds himself in a +chamber full of relics of Joseph of Arimathea. There he +seizes a spear, the very spear with which the Roman soldier +pierced the side of the Crucified, and wounds Pellam. The +castle falls in ruins “through that dolorous +stroke.” Pellam becomes the maimed king, who can only +be healed by the Holy Grail. Apparently Celtic myths of +obscure antiquity have been adapted in France, and interwoven +with fables about Joseph of Arimathea and Christian +mysteries. It is not possible here to go into the +complicated learning of the subject. In Malory, Balin, +after dealing the dolorous stroke, borrows a strange shield from +a knight, and, thus accoutred, meets his brother Balan, who does +not recognise him. They fight, both die and are buried in +one tomb, and Galahad later achieves the adventure of winning +Balin’s sword. “Thus endeth the tale of Balyn +and of Balan, two brethren born in Northumberland, good +knights,” says Malory, simply, and unconscious of the +strange mythological medley under the coat armour of romance.</p> +<p>The materials, then, seemed confused and obdurate, but +Tennyson works them into the course of the fatal love of Lancelot +and Guinevere, and into the spiritual texture of the +Idylls. Balin has been expelled from Court for the wildness +that gives him his name, <i>Balin le Sauvage</i>. He had +buffeted a squire in hall. He and Balan await all +challengers beside a well. Arthur encounters and dismounts +them. Balin devotes himself to self-conquest. Then +comes tidings that Pellam, of old leagued with Lot against +Arthur, has taken to religion, collects relics, claims descent +from Joseph of Arimathea, and owns the sacred spear that pierced +the side of Christ. But Garlon is with him, the knight +invisible, who appears to come from an Irish source, or at least +has a parallel in Irish legend. This Garlon has an +unknightly way of killing men by viewless blows from the +rear. Balan goes to encounter Garlon. Balin remains, +learning courtesy, modelling himself on Lancelot, and gaining +leave to bear Guinevere’s Crown Matrimonial for his +cognisance,—which, of course, Balan does not +know,—</p> +<blockquote><p>“As golden earnest of a better +life.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But Balin sees reason to think that Lancelot and Guinevere +love even too well.</p> +<blockquote><p> “Then chanced, one +morning, that Sir Balin sat<br /> +Close-bower’d in that garden nigh the hall.<br /> +A walk of roses ran from door to door;<br /> +A walk of lilies crost it to the bower:<br /> +And down that range of roses the great Queen<br /> +Came with slow steps, the morning on her face;<br /> +And all in shadow from the counter door<br /> +Sir Lancelot as to meet her, then at once,<br /> +As if he saw not, glanced aside, and paced<br /> +The long white walk of lilies toward the bower.<br /> +Follow’d the Queen; Sir Balin heard her ‘Prince,<br +/> +Art thou so little loyal to thy Queen,<br /> +As pass without good morrow to thy Queen?’<br /> +To whom Sir Lancelot with his eyes on earth,<br /> +‘Fain would I still be loyal to the Queen.’<br /> +‘Yea so,’ she said, ‘but so to pass me +by—<br /> +So loyal scarce is loyal to thyself,<br /> +Whom all men rate the king of courtesy.<br /> +Let be: ye stand, fair lord, as in a dream.’</p> +<p> Then Lancelot with his hand among the +flowers,<br /> +‘Yea—for a dream. Last night methought I saw<br +/> +That maiden Saint who stands with lily in hand<br /> +In yonder shrine. All round her prest the dark,<br /> +And all the light upon her silver face<br /> +Flow’d from the spiritual lily that she held.<br /> +Lo! these her emblems drew mine eyes—away:<br /> +For see, how perfect-pure! As light a flush<br /> +As hardly tints the blossom of the quince<br /> +Would mar their charm of stainless maidenhood.’</p> +<p> ‘Sweeter to me,’ she said, +‘this garden rose<br /> +Deep-hued and many-folded sweeter still<br /> +The wild-wood hyacinth and the bloom of May.<br /> +Prince, we have ridd’n before among the flowers<br /> +In those fair days—not all as cool as these,<br /> +Tho’ season-earlier. Art thou sad? or sick?<br /> +Our noble King will send thee his own leech—<br /> +Sick? or for any matter anger’d at me?’</p> +<p> Then Lancelot lifted his large eyes; they +dwelt<br /> +Deep-tranced on hers, and could not fall: her hue<br /> +Changed at his gaze: so turning side by side<br /> +They past, and Balin started from his bower.</p> +<p> ‘Queen? subject? but I see not what I +see.<br /> +Damsel and lover? hear not what I hear.<br /> +My father hath begotten me in his wrath.<br /> +I suffer from the things before me, know,<br /> +Learn nothing; am not worthy to be knight;<br /> +A churl, a clown!’ and in him gloom on gloom<br /> +Deepen’d: he sharply caught his lance and shield,<br /> +Nor stay’d to crave permission of the King,<br /> +But, mad for strange adventure, dash’d away.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Balin is “disillusioned,” his faith in the Ideal +is shaken if not shattered. He rides at adventure. +Arriving at the half-ruined castle of Pellam, that dubious +devotee, he hears Garlon insult Guinevere, but restrains +himself. Next day, again insulted for bearing “the +crown scandalous” on his shield, he strikes Garlon down, is +pursued, seizes the sacred spear, and escapes. Vivien meets +him in the woods, drops scandal in his ears, and so maddens him +that he defaces his shield with the crown of Guinevere. Her +song, and her words,</p> +<blockquote><p> “This +fire of Heaven,<br /> +This old sun-worship, boy, will rise again,<br /> +And beat the cross to earth, and break the King<br /> +And all his Table,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>might be forced into an allegory of the revived pride of life, +at the Renaissance and after. The maddened yells of Balin +strike the ear of Balan, who thinks he has met the foul knight +Garlon, that</p> +<blockquote><p>“Tramples on the goodly shield to show<br /> +His loathing of our Order and the Queen.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>They fight, fatally wound, and finally recognise each other: +Balan trying to restore Balin’s faith in Guinevere, who is +merely slandered by Garlon and Vivien. Balin acknowledges +that his wildness has been their common bane, and they die, +“either locked in either’s arms.”</p> +<p>There is nothing in Malory, nor in any other source, so far as +I am aware, which suggested to Tennyson the <i>clou</i> of the +situation—the use of Guinevere’s crown as a +cognisance by Balin. This device enables the poet to weave +the rather confused and unintelligible adventures of Balin and +Balan into the scheme, and to make it a stage in the progress of +his fable. That Balin was reckless and wild Malory bears +witness, but his endeavours to conquer himself and reach the +ideal set by Lancelot are Tennyson’s addition, with all the +tragedy of Balin’s disenchantment and despair. The +strange fantastic house of Pellam, full of the most sacred +things,</p> +<blockquote><p>“In which he scarce could spy the Christ for +Saints,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>yet sheltering the human fiend Garlon, is supplied by Malory, +whose predecessors probably blended more than one myth of the old +Cymry into the romance, washed over with Christian +colouring. As Malory tells this part of the tale it is +perhaps more strange and effective than in the Idyll. The +introduction of Vivien into this adventure is wholly due to +Tennyson: her appearance here leads up to her triumph in the poem +which follows, <i>Merlin and Vivien</i>.</p> +<p>The nature and origin of Merlin are something of a +mystery. Hints and rumours of Merlin, as of Arthur, stream +from hill and grave as far north as Tweedside. If he was a +historical person, myths of magic might crystallise round him, as +round Virgil in Italy. The process would be the easier in a +country where the practices of Druidry still lingered, and +revived after the retreat of the Romans. The mediæval +romancers invented a legend that Merlin was a virgin-born child +of Satan. In Tennyson he may be guessed to represent the +fabled esoteric lore of old religions, with their vague +pantheisms, and such magic as the <i>tapas</i> of Brahmanic +legends. He is wise with a riddling evasive wisdom: the +builder of Camelot, the prophet, a shadow of Druidry clinging to +the Christian king. His wisdom cannot avail him: if he +beholds “his own mischance with a glassy +countenance,” he cannot avoid his shapen fate. He +becomes assotted of Vivien, and goes open-eyed to his doom.</p> +<p>The enchantress, Vivien, is one of that dubious company of +Ladies of the Lake, now friendly, now treacherous. Probably +these ladies are the fairies of popular Celtic tradition, taken +up into the more elaborate poetry of Cymric literature and +mediæval romance. Mr Rhys traces Vivien, or Nimue, or +Nyneue, back, through a series of palæographic changes and +errors, to Rhiannon, wife of Pwyll, a kind of lady of the lake he +thinks, but the identification is not very satisfactory. +Vivien is certainly “one of the damsels of the lake” +in Malory, and the damsels of the lake seem to be lake fairies, +with all their beguilements and strange unstable loves. +“And always Merlin lay about the lady to have her +maidenhood, and she was ever passing weary of him, and fain would +have been delivered of him, for she was afraid of him because he +was a devil’s son. . . . So by her subtle working she +made Merlin to go under that stone to let her wit of the marvels +there, but she wrought so there for him that he came never out +for all the craft he could do. And so she departed and left +Merlin.” The sympathy of Malory is not with the +enchanter. In the Idylls, as finally published, Vivien is +born on a battlefield of death, with a nature perverted, and an +instinctive hatred of the good. Wherefore she leaves the +Court of King Mark to make mischief in Camelot. She is, in +fact, the ideal minx, a character not elsewhere treated by +Tennyson:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “She hated all the +knights, and heard in thought<br /> +Their lavish comment when her name was named.<br /> +For once, when Arthur walking all alone,<br /> +Vext at a rumour issued from herself<br /> +Of some corruption crept among his knights,<br /> +Had met her, Vivien, being greeted fair,<br /> +Would fain have wrought upon his cloudy mood<br /> +With reverent eyes mock-loyal, shaken voice,<br /> +And flutter’d adoration, and at last<br /> +With dark sweet hints of some who prized him more<br /> +Than who should prize him most; at which the King<br /> +Had gazed upon her blankly and gone by:<br /> +But one had watch’d, and had not held his peace:<br /> +It made the laughter of an afternoon<br /> +That Vivien should attempt the blameless King.<br /> +And after that, she set herself to gain<br /> +Him, the most famous man of all those times,<br /> +Merlin, who knew the range of all their arts,<br /> +Had built the King his havens, ships, and halls,<br /> +Was also Bard, and knew the starry heavens;<br /> +The people call’d him Wizard; whom at first<br /> +She play’d about with slight and sprightly talk,<br /> +And vivid smiles, and faintly-venom’d points<br /> +Of slander, glancing here and grazing there;<br /> +And yielding to his kindlier moods, the Seer<br /> +Would watch her at her petulance, and play,<br /> +Ev’n when they seem’d unloveable, and laugh<br /> +As those that watch a kitten; thus he grew<br /> +Tolerant of what he half disdain’d, and she,<br /> +Perceiving that she was but half disdain’d,<br /> +Began to break her sports with graver fits,<br /> +Turn red or pale, would often when they met<br /> +Sigh fully, or all-silent gaze upon him<br /> +With such a fixt devotion, that the old man,<br /> +Tho’ doubtful, felt the flattery, and at times<br /> +Would flatter his own wish in age for love,<br /> +And half believe her true: for thus at times<br /> +He waver’d; but that other clung to him,<br /> +Fixt in her will, and so the seasons went.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Vivien is modern enough—if any type of character is +modern: at all events there is no such Blanche Amory of a girl in +the old legends and romances. In these Merlin fatigues the +lady by his love; she learns his arts, and gets rid of him as she +can. His forebodings in the Idyll contain a magnificent +image:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “There lay she all her +length and kiss’d his feet,<br /> +As if in deepest reverence and in love.<br /> +A twist of gold was round her hair; a robe<br /> +Of samite without price, that more exprest<br /> +Than hid her, clung about her lissome limbs,<br /> +In colour like the satin-shining palm<br /> +On sallows in the windy gleams of March:<br /> +And while she kiss’d them, crying, ‘Trample me,<br /> +Dear feet, that I have follow’d thro’ the world,<br +/> +And I will pay you worship; tread me down<br /> +And I will kiss you for it’; he was mute:<br /> +So dark a forethought roll’d about his brain,<br /> +As on a dull day in an Ocean cave<br /> +The blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall<br /> +In silence.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>We think of the blinded Cyclops groping round his cave, like +“the blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall.”</p> +<p>The richness, the many shining contrasts and immortal lines in +<i>Vivien</i>, seem almost too noble for a subject not easily +redeemed, and the picture of the ideal Court lying in full +corruption. Next to <i>Elaine</i>, Jowett wrote that he +“admired <i>Vivien</i> the most (the naughty one), which +seems to me a work of wonderful power and skill. It is most +elegant and fanciful. I am not surprised at your Delilah +beguiling the wise man; she is quite equal to it.” +The dramatic versatility of Tennyson’s genius, his power of +creating the most various characters, is nowhere better displayed +than in the contrast between the <i>Vivien</i> and the +<i>Elaine</i>. Vivien is a type, her adventure is of a +nature, which he has not elsewhere handled. Thackeray, who +admired the Idylls so enthusiastically, might have recognised in +Vivien a character not unlike some of his own, as dark as Becky +Sharp, more terrible in her selfishness than that Beatrix Esmond +who is still a paragon, and, in her creator’s despite, a +queen of hearts. In Elaine, on the other hand, Tennyson has +drawn a girl so innocently passionate, and told a tale of love +that never found his earthly close, so delicately beautiful, that +we may perhaps place this Idyll the highest of his poems on love, +and reckon it the gem of the Idylls, the central diamond in the +diamond crown. Reading <i>Elaine</i> once more, after an +interval of years, one is captivated by its grace, its pathos, +its nobility. The poet had touched on some unidentified +form of the story, long before, in <i>The Lady of +Shalott</i>. That poem had the mystery of romance, but, in +human interest, could not compete with <i>Elaine</i>, if indeed +any poem of Tennyson’s can be ranked with this matchless +Idyll.</p> +<p>The mere invention, and, as we may say, <i>charpentage</i>, +are of the first order. The materials in Malory, though +beautiful, are simple, and left a field for the poet’s +invention. <a name="citation139"></a><a href="#footnote139" +class="citation">[139]</a></p> +<p>Arthur, with the Scots and Northern knights, means to +encounter all comers at a Whitsuntide tourney. Guinevere is +ill, and cannot go to the jousts, while Lancelot makes excuse +that he is not healed of a wound. “Wherefore the King +was heavy and passing wroth, and so he departed towards +Winchester.” The Queen then blamed Lancelot: people +will say they deceive Arthur. “Madame,” said +Sir Lancelot, “I allow your wit; it is of late come that ye +were wise.” In the Idyll Guinevere speaks as if their +early loves had been as conspicuous as, according to George +Buchanan, were those of Queen Mary and Bothwell. Lancelot +will go to the tourney, and, despite Guinevere’s warning, +will take part against Arthur and his own fierce Northern +kinsmen. He rides to Astolat—“that is, +Gylford”—where Arthur sees him. He borrows the +blank shield of “Sir Torre,” and the company of his +brother Sir Lavaine. Elaine “cast such a love unto +Sir Lancelot that she would never withdraw her love, wherefore +she died.” At her prayer, and for better disguise (as +he had never worn a lady’s favour), Lancelot carried her +scarlet pearl-embroidered sleeve in his helmet, and left his +shield in Elaine’s keeping. The tourney passes as in +the poem, Gawain recognising Lancelot, but puzzled by the favour +he wears. The wounded Lancelot “thought to do what he +might while he might endure.” When he is offered the +prize he is so sore hurt that he “takes no force of no +honour.” He rides into a wood, where Lavaine draws +forth the spear. Lavaine brings Lancelot to the hermit, +once a knight. “I have seen the day,” says the +hermit, “I would have loved him the worse, because he was +against my lord, King Arthur, for some time. I was one of +the fellowship of the Round Table, but I thank God now I am +otherwise disposed.” Gawain, seeking the wounded +knight, comes to Astolat, where Elaine declares “he is the +man in the world that I first loved, and truly he is the last +that ever I shall love.” Gawain, on seeing the +shield, tells Elaine that the wounded knight is Lancelot, and she +goes to seek him and Lavaine. Gawain does not pay court to +Elaine, nor does Arthur rebuke him, as in the poem. When +Guinevere heard that Lancelot bore another lady’s favour, +“she was nigh out of her mind for wrath,” and +expressed her anger to Sir Bors, for Gawain had spoken of the +maid of Astolat. Bors tells this to Lancelot, who is tended +by Elaine. “‘But I well see,’ said Sir +Bors, ‘by her diligence about you that she loveth you +entirely.’ ‘That me repenteth,’ said Sir +Lancelot. Said Sir Bors, ‘Sir, she is not the first +that hath lost her pain upon you, and that is the more +pity.’” When Lancelot recovers, and returns to +Astolat, she declares her love with the frankness of ladies in +mediæval romance. “Have mercy upon me and +suffer me not to die for thy love.” Lancelot replies +with the courtesy and the offers of service which became +him. “Of all this,” said the maiden, “I +will none; for but if ye will wed me, or be my paramour at the +least, wit you well, Sir Lancelot, my good days are +done.”</p> +<p>This was a difficult pass for the poet, living in other days +of other manners. His art appears in the turn which he +gives to Elaine’s declaration:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “But when Sir +Lancelot’s deadly hurt was whole,<br /> +To Astolat returning rode the three.<br /> +There morn by morn, arraying her sweet self<br /> +In that wherein she deem’d she look’d her best,<br /> +She came before Sir Lancelot, for she thought<br /> +‘If I be loved, these are my festal robes,<br /> +If not, the victim’s flowers before he fall.’<br /> +And Lancelot ever prest upon the maid<br /> +That she should ask some goodly gift of him<br /> +For her own self or hers; ‘and do not shun<br /> +To speak the wish most near to your true heart;<br /> +Such service have ye done me, that I make<br /> +My will of yours, and Prince and Lord am I<br /> +In mine own land, and what I will I can.’<br /> +Then like a ghost she lifted up her face,<br /> +But like a ghost without the power to speak.<br /> +And Lancelot saw that she withheld her wish,<br /> +And bode among them yet a little space<br /> +Till he should learn it; and one morn it chanced<br /> +He found her in among the garden yews,<br /> +And said, ‘Delay no longer, speak your wish,<br /> +Seeing I go to-day’: then out she brake:<br /> +‘Going? and we shall never see you more.<br /> +And I must die for want of one bold word.’<br /> +‘Speak: that I live to hear,’ he said, ‘is +yours.’<br /> +Then suddenly and passionately she spoke:<br /> +‘I have gone mad. I love you: let me die.’<br +/> +‘Ah, sister,’ answer’d Lancelot, ‘what is +this?’<br /> +And innocently extending her white arms,<br /> +‘Your love,’ she said, ‘your love—to be +your wife.’<br /> +And Lancelot answer’d, ‘Had I chosen to wed,<br /> +I had been wedded earlier, sweet Elaine:<br /> +But now there never will be wife of mine.’<br /> +‘No, no’ she cried, ‘I care not to be wife,<br +/> +But to be with you still, to see your face,<br /> +To serve you, and to follow you thro’ the world.’<br +/> +And Lancelot answer’d, ‘Nay, the world, the world,<br +/> +All ear and eye, with such a stupid heart<br /> +To interpret ear and eye, and such a tongue<br /> +To blare its own interpretation—nay,<br /> +Full ill then should I quit your brother’s love,<br /> +And your good father’s kindness.’ And she +said,<br /> +‘Not to be with you, not to see your face—<br /> +Alas for me then, my good days are done.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>So she dies, and is borne down Thames to London, the fairest +corpse, “and she lay as though she had smiled.” +Her letter is read. “Ye might have showed her,” +said the Queen, “some courtesy and gentleness that might +have preserved her life;” and so the two are +reconciled.</p> +<p>Such, in brief, is the tender old tale of true love, with the +shining courtesy of Lavaine and the father of the maid, who speak +no word of anger against Lancelot. “For since first I +saw my lord, Sir Lancelot,” says Lavaine, “I could +never depart from him, nor nought I will, if I may follow him: +she doth as I do.” To the simple and moving story +Tennyson adds, by way of ornament, the diamonds, the prize of the +tourney, and the manner of their finding:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “For Arthur, long before +they crown’d him King,<br /> +Roving the trackless realms of Lyonnesse,<br /> +Had found a glen, gray boulder and black tarn.<br /> +A horror lived about the tarn, and clave<br /> +Like its own mists to all the mountain side:<br /> +For here two brothers, one a king, had met<br /> +And fought together; but their names were lost;<br /> +And each had slain his brother at a blow;<br /> +And down they fell and made the glen abhorr’d:<br /> +And there they lay till all their bones were bleach’d,<br +/> +And lichen’d into colour with the crags:<br /> +And he, that once was king, had on a crown<br /> +Of diamonds, one in front, and four aside.<br /> +And Arthur came, and labouring up the pass,<br /> +All in a misty moonshine, unawares<br /> +Had trodden that crown’d skeleton, and the skull<br /> +Brake from the nape, and from the skull the crown<br /> +Roll’d into light, and turning on its rims<br /> +Fled like a glittering rivulet to the tarn:<br /> +And down the shingly scaur he plunged, and caught,<br /> +And set it on his head, and in his heart<br /> +Heard murmurs, ‘Lo, thou likewise shalt be +King.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The diamonds reappear in the scene of Guinevere’s +jealousy:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “All in an oriel on the +summer side,<br /> +Vine-clad, of Arthur’s palace toward the stream,<br /> +They met, and Lancelot kneeling utter’d, ‘Queen,<br +/> +Lady, my liege, in whom I have my joy,<br /> +Take, what I had not won except for you,<br /> +These jewels, and make me happy, making them<br /> +An armlet for the roundest arm on earth,<br /> +Or necklace for a neck to which the swan’s<br /> +Is tawnier than her cygnet’s: these are words:<br /> +Your beauty is your beauty, and I sin<br /> +In speaking, yet O grant my worship of it<br /> +Words, as we grant grief tears. Such sin in words,<br /> +Perchance, we both can pardon: but, my Queen,<br /> +I hear of rumours flying thro’ your court.<br /> +Our bond, as not the bond of man and wife,<br /> +Should have in it an absoluter trust<br /> +To make up that defect: let rumours be:<br /> +When did not rumours fly? these, as I trust<br /> +That you trust me in your own nobleness,<br /> +I may not well believe that you believe.’</p> +<p> While thus he spoke, half turn’d away, +the Queen<br /> +Brake from the vast oriel-embowering vine<br /> +Leaf after leaf, and tore, and cast them off,<br /> +Till all the place whereon she stood was green;<br /> +Then, when he ceased, in one cold passive hand<br /> +Received at once and laid aside the gems<br /> +There on a table near her, and replied:</p> +<p> ‘It may be, I am quicker of belief<br +/> +Than you believe me, Lancelot of the Lake.<br /> +Our bond is not the bond of man and wife.<br /> +This good is in it, whatsoe’er of ill,<br /> +It can be broken easier. I for you<br /> +This many a year have done despite and wrong<br /> +To one whom ever in my heart of hearts<br /> +I did acknowledge nobler. What are these?<br /> +Diamonds for me! they had been thrice their worth<br /> +Being your gift, had you not lost your own.<br /> +To loyal hearts the value of all gifts<br /> +Must vary as the giver’s. Not for me!<br /> +For her! for your new fancy. Only this<br /> +Grant me, I pray you: have your joys apart.<br /> +I doubt not that however changed, you keep<br /> +So much of what is graceful: and myself<br /> +Would shun to break those bounds of courtesy<br /> +In which as Arthur’s Queen I move and rule:<br /> +So cannot speak my mind. An end to this!<br /> +A strange one! yet I take it with Amen.<br /> +So pray you, add my diamonds to her pearls;<br /> +Deck her with these; tell her, she shines me down:<br /> +An armlet for an arm to which the Queen’s<br /> +Is haggard, or a necklace for a neck<br /> +O as much fairer—as a faith once fair<br /> +Was richer than these diamonds—hers not mine—<br /> +Nay, by the mother of our Lord himself,<br /> +Or hers or mine, mine now to work my will—<br /> +She shall not have them.’</p> +<p> Saying which she +seized,<br /> +And, thro’ the casement standing wide for heat,<br /> +Flung them, and down they flash’d, and smote the stream.<br +/> +Then from the smitten surface flash’d, as it were,<br /> +Diamonds to meet them, and they past away.<br /> +Then while Sir Lancelot leant, in half disdain<br /> +At love, life, all things, on the window ledge,<br /> +Close underneath his eyes, and right across<br /> +Where these had fallen, slowly past the barge<br /> +Whereon the lily maid of Astolat<br /> +Lay smiling, like a star in blackest night.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This affair of the diamonds is the chief addition to the old +tale, in which we already see the curse of lawless love, fallen +upon the jealous Queen and the long-enduring Lancelot. +“This is not the first time,” said Sir Lancelot, +“that ye have been displeased with me causeless, but, +madame, ever I must suffer you, but what sorrow I endure I take +no force” (that is, “I disregard”).</p> +<p>The romance, and the poet, in his own despite, cannot but make +Lancelot the man we love, not Arthur or another. Human +nature perversely sides with Guinevere against the Blameless +King:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “She broke into a little +scornful laugh:<br /> +‘Arthur, my lord, Arthur, the faultless King,<br /> +That passionate perfection, my good lord—<br /> +But who can gaze upon the Sun in heaven?<br /> +He never spake word of reproach to me,<br /> +He never had a glimpse of mine untruth,<br /> +He cares not for me: only here to-day<br /> +There gleam’d a vague suspicion in his eyes:<br /> +Some meddling rogue has tamper’d with him—else<br /> +Rapt in this fancy of his Table Round,<br /> +And swearing men to vows impossible,<br /> +To make them like himself: but, friend, to me<br /> +He is all fault who hath no fault at all:<br /> +For who loves me must have a touch of earth;<br /> +The low sun makes the colour: I am yours,<br /> +Not Arthur’s, as ye know, save by the bond.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It is not the beautiful Queen who wins us, our hearts are with +“the innocence of love” in Elaine. But Lancelot +has the charm that captivated Lavaine; and Tennyson’s +Arthur remains</p> +<blockquote><p>“The moral child without the craft to +rule,<br /> +Else had he not lost me.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Indeed the romance of Malory makes Arthur deserve “the +pretty popular name such manhood earns” by his conduct as +regards Guinevere when she is accused by her enemies in the later +chapters. Yet Malory does not finally condone the sin which +baffles Lancelot’s quest of the Holy Grail.</p> +<p>Tennyson at first was in doubt as to writing on the Grail, for +certain respects of reverence. When he did approach the +theme it was in a method of extreme condensation. The +romances on the Grail outrun the length even of mediæval +poetry and prose. They are exceedingly confused, as was +natural, if that hypothesis which regards the story as a +Christianised form of obscure Celtic myth be correct. Sir +Percivale’s sister, in the Idyll, has the first vision of +the Grail:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Sweet brother, I have seen the Holy +Grail:<br /> +For, waked at dead of night, I heard a sound<br /> +As of a silver horn from o’er the hills<br /> +Blown, and I thought, ‘It is not Arthur’s use<br /> +To hunt by moonlight’; and the slender sound<br /> +As from a distance beyond distance grew<br /> +Coming upon me—O never harp nor horn,<br /> +Nor aught we blow with breath, or touch with hand,<br /> +Was like that music as it came; and then<br /> +Stream’d thro’ my cell a cold and silver beam,<br /> +And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail,<br /> +Rose-red with beatings in it, as if alive,<br /> +Till all the white walls of my cell were dyed<br /> +With rosy colours leaping on the wall;<br /> +And then the music faded, and the Grail<br /> +Past, and the beam decay’d, and from the walls<br /> +The rosy quiverings died into the night.<br /> +So now the Holy Thing is here again<br /> +Among us, brother, fast thou too and pray,<br /> +And tell thy brother knights to fast and pray,<br /> +That so perchance the vision may be seen<br /> +By thee and those, and all the world be heal’d.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Galahad, son of Lancelot and the first Elaine (who became +Lancelot’s mistress by art magic), then vows himself to the +Quest, and, after the vision in hall at Camelot, the knights, +except Arthur, follow his example, to Arthur’s grief. +“Ye follow wandering fires!” Probably, or +perhaps, the poet indicates dislike of hasty spiritual +enthusiasms, of “seeking for a sign,” and of the +mysticism which betokens want of faith. The Middle Ages, +more than many readers know, were ages of doubt. Men +desired the witness of the senses to the truth of what the Church +taught, they wished to see that naked child of the romance +“smite himself into” the wafer of the +Sacrament. The author of the <i>Imitatio Christi</i> +discourages such vain and too curious inquiries as helped to rend +the Church, and divided Christendom into hostile camps. The +Quest of the actual Grail was a knightly form of theological +research into the unsearchable; undertaken, often in a secular +spirit of adventure, by sinful men. The poet’s heart +is rather with human things:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “‘O brother,’ +ask’d Ambrosius,—‘for in sooth<br /> +These ancient books—and they would win thee—teem,<br +/> +Only I find not there this Holy Grail,<br /> +With miracles and marvels like to these,<br /> +Not all unlike; which oftentime I read,<br /> +Who read but on my breviary with ease,<br /> +Till my head swims; and then go forth and pass<br /> +Down to the little thorpe that lies so close,<br /> +And almost plaster’d like a martin’s nest<br /> +To these old walls—and mingle with our folk;<br /> +And knowing every honest face of theirs<br /> +As well as ever shepherd knew his sheep,<br /> +And every homely secret in their hearts,<br /> +Delight myself with gossip and old wives,<br /> +And ills and aches, and teethings, lyings-in,<br /> +And mirthful sayings, children of the place,<br /> +That have no meaning half a league away:<br /> +Or lulling random squabbles when they rise,<br /> +Chafferings and chatterings at the market-cross,<br /> +Rejoice, small man, in this small world of mine,<br /> +Yea, even in their hens and in their eggs.”’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This appears to be Tennyson’s original reading of the +Quest of the Grail. His own mysticism, which did not +strive, or cry, or seek after marvels, though marvels might come +unsought, is expressed in Arthur’s words:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “‘“And spake I +not too truly, O my knights?<br /> +Was I too dark a prophet when I said<br /> +To those who went upon the Holy Quest,<br /> +That most of them would follow wandering fires,<br /> +Lost in the quagmire?—lost to me and gone,<br /> +And left me gazing at a barren board,<br /> +And a lean Order—scarce return’d a tithe—<br /> +And out of those to whom the vision came<br /> +My greatest hardly will believe he saw;<br /> +Another hath beheld it afar off,<br /> +And leaving human wrongs to right themselves,<br /> +Cares but to pass into the silent life.<br /> +And one hath had the vision face to face,<br /> +And now his chair desires him here in vain,<br /> +However they may crown him otherwhere.</p> +<p> ‘“And some among you held, that +if the King<br /> +Had seen the sight he would have sworn the vow:<br /> +Not easily, seeing that the King must guard<br /> +That which he rules, and is but as the hind<br /> +To whom a space of land is given to plow<br /> +Who may not wander from the allotted field<br /> +Before his work be done; but, being done,<br /> +Let visions of the night or of the day<br /> +Come, as they will; and many a time they come,<br /> +Until this earth he walks on seems not earth,<br /> +This light that strikes his eyeball is not light,<br /> +This air that smites his forehead is not air<br /> +But vision—yea, his very hand and foot—<br /> +In moments when he feels he cannot die,<br /> +And knows himself no vision to himself,<br /> +Nor the high God a vision, nor that One<br /> +Who rose again: ye have seen what ye have seen.”</p> +<p> ‘So spake the King: I knew not all he +meant.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The closing lines declare, as far as the poet could declare +them, these subjective experiences of his which, in a manner +rarely parallelled, coloured and formed his thought on the +highest things. He introduces them even into this poem on a +topic which, because of its sacred associations, he for long did +not venture to touch.</p> +<p>In <i>Pelleas and Ettarre</i>—which deals with the +sorrows of one of the young knights who fill up the gaps left at +the Round Table by the mischances of the Quest—it would be +difficult to trace a Celtic original. For Malory, not +Celtic legend, supplied Tennyson with the germinal idea of a poem +which, in the romance, has no bearing on the final +catastrophe. Pelleas, a King of the Isles, loves the +beautiful Ettarre, “a great lady,” and for her wins +at a tourney the prize of the golden circlet. But she hates +and despises him, and Sir Gawain is a spectator when, as in the +poem, the felon knights of Ettarre bind and insult their +conqueror, Pelleas. Gawain promises to win the love of +Ettarre for Pelleas, and, as in the poem, borrows his arms and +horse, and pretends to have slain him. But in place of +turning Ettarre’s heart towards Pelleas, Gawain becomes her +lover, and Pelleas, detecting them asleep, lays his naked sword +on their necks. He then rides home to die; but Nimue +(Vivien), the Lady of the Lake, restores him to health and +sanity. His fever gone, he scorns Ettarre, who, by +Nimue’s enchantment, now loves him as much as she had hated +him. Pelleas weds Nimue, and Ettarre dies of a broken +heart. Tennyson, of course, could not make Nimue (his +Vivien) do anything benevolent. He therefore closes his +poem by a repetition of the effect in the case of Balin. +Pelleas is driven desperate by the treachery of Gawain, the +reported infidelity of Guinevere, and the general corruption of +the ideal. A shadow falls on Lancelot and Guinevere, and +Modred sees that his hour is drawing nigh. In spite of +beautiful passages this is not one of the finest of the Idylls, +save for the study of the fierce, hateful, and beautiful +<i>grande dame</i>, Ettarre. The narrative does little to +advance the general plot. In the original of Malory it has +no connection with the Lancelot cycle, except as far as it +reveals the treachery of Gawain, the gay and fair-spoken +“light of love,” brother of the traitor Modred. +A simpler treatment of the theme may be read in Mr +Swinburne’s beautiful poem, <i>The Tale of Balen</i>.</p> +<p>It is in <i>The Last Tournament</i> that Modred finds the +beginning of his opportunity. The brief life of the Ideal +has burned itself out, as the year, in its vernal beauty when +Arthur came, is burning out in autumn. The poem is +purposely autumnal, with the autumn, not of mellow fruitfulness, +but of the “flying gold of the ruined woodlands” and +the dank odours of decay. In that miserable season is held +the Tourney of the Dead Innocence, with the blood-red prize of +rubies. With a wise touch Tennyson has represented the +Court as fallen not into vice only and crime, but into positive +vulgarity and bad taste. The Tournament is a carnival of +the “smart” and the third-rate. Courtesy is +dead, even Tristram is brutal, and in Iseult hatred of her +husband is as powerful as love of her lover. The satire +strikes at England, where the world has never been corrupt with a +good grace. It is a passage of arms neither gentle nor +joyous that Lancelot presides over:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “The sudden trumpet +sounded as in a dream<br /> +To ears but half-awaked, then one low roll<br /> +Of Autumn thunder, and the jousts began:<br /> +And ever the wind blew, and yellowing leaf<br /> +And gloom and gleam, and shower and shorn plume<br /> +Went down it. Sighing weariedly, as one<br /> +Who sits and gazes on a faded fire,<br /> +When all the goodlier guests are past away,<br /> +Sat their great umpire, looking o’er the lists.<br /> +He saw the laws that ruled the tournament<br /> +Broken, but spake not; once, a knight cast down<br /> +Before his throne of arbitration cursed<br /> +The dead babe and the follies of the King;<br /> +And once the laces of a helmet crack’d,<br /> +And show’d him, like a vermin in its hole,<br /> +Modred, a narrow face: anon he heard<br /> +The voice that billow’d round the barriers roar<br /> +An ocean-sounding welcome to one knight,<br /> +But newly-enter’d, taller than the rest,<br /> +And armour’d all in forest green, whereon<br /> +There tript a hundred tiny silver deer,<br /> +And wearing but a holly-spray for crest,<br /> +With ever-scattering berries, and on shield<br /> +A spear, a harp, a bugle—Tristram—late<br /> +From overseas in Brittany return’d,<br /> +And marriage with a princess of that realm,<br /> +Isolt the White—Sir Tristram of the Woods—<br /> +Whom Lancelot knew, had held sometime with pain<br /> +His own against him, and now yearn’d to shake<br /> +The burthen off his heart in one full shock<br /> +With Tristram ev’n to death: his strong hands gript<br /> +And dinted the gilt dragons right and left,<br /> +Until he groan’d for wrath—so many of those,<br /> +That ware their ladies’ colours on the casque,<br /> +Drew from before Sir Tristram to the bounds,<br /> +And there with gibes and flickering mockeries<br /> +Stood, while he mutter’d, ‘Craven crests! O +shame!<br /> +What faith have these in whom they sware to love?<br /> +The glory of our Round Table is no more.’</p> +<p> So Tristram won, and Lancelot gave, the +gems,<br /> +Not speaking other word than ‘Hast thou won?<br /> +Art thou the purest, brother? See, the hand<br /> +Wherewith thou takest this, is red!’ to whom<br /> +Tristram, half plagued by Lancelot’s languorous mood,<br /> +Made answer, ‘Ay, but wherefore toss me this<br /> +Like a dry bone cast to some hungry hound?<br /> +Let be thy fair Queen’s fantasy. Strength of heart<br +/> +And might of limb, but mainly use and skill,<br /> +Are winners in this pastime of our King.<br /> +My hand—belike the lance hath dript upon it—<br /> +No blood of mine, I trow; but O chief knight,<br /> +Right arm of Arthur in the battlefield,<br /> +Great brother, thou nor I have made the world;<br /> +Be happy in thy fair Queen as I in mine.’</p> +<p> And Tristram round the gallery made his +horse<br /> +Caracole; then bow’d his homage, bluntly saying,<br /> +‘Fair damsels, each to him who worships each<br /> +Sole Queen of Beauty and of love, behold<br /> +This day my Queen of Beauty is not here.’<br /> +And most of these were mute, some anger’d, one<br /> +Murmuring, ‘All courtesy is dead,’ and one,<br /> +‘The glory of our Round Table is no more.’</p> +<p> Then fell thick rain, plume droopt and +mantle clung,<br /> +And pettish cries awoke, and the wan day<br /> +Went glooming down in wet and weariness:<br /> +But under her black brows a swarthy one<br /> +Laugh’d shrilly, crying, ‘Praise the patient +saints,<br /> +Our one white day of Innocence hath past,<br /> +Tho’ somewhat draggled at the skirt. So be it.<br /> +The snowdrop only, flowering thro’ the year,<br /> +Would make the world as blank as Winter-tide.<br /> +Come—let us gladden their sad eyes, our Queen’s<br /> +And Lancelot’s, at this night’s solemnity<br /> +With all the kindlier colours of the field.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Arthur’s last victory over a robber knight is +ingloriously squalid:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “He ended: Arthur knew the +voice; the face<br /> +Wellnigh was helmet-hidden, and the name<br /> +Went wandering somewhere darkling in his mind.<br /> +And Arthur deign’d not use of word or sword,<br /> +But let the drunkard, as he stretch’d from horse<br /> +To strike him, overbalancing his bulk,<br /> +Down from the causeway heavily to the swamp<br /> +Fall, as the crest of some slow-arching wave,<br /> +Heard in dead night along that table-shore,<br /> +Drops flat, and after the great waters break<br /> +Whitening for half a league, and thin themselves,<br /> +Far over sands marbled with moon and cloud,<br /> +From less and less to nothing; thus he fell<br /> +Head-heavy; then the knights, who watch’d him, +roar’d<br /> +And shouted and leapt down upon the fall’n;<br /> +There trampled out his face from being known,<br /> +And sank his head in mire, and slimed themselves:<br /> +Nor heard the King for their own cries, but sprang<br /> +Thro’ open doors, and swording right and left<br /> +Men, women, on their sodden faces, hurl’d<br /> +The tables over and the wines, and slew<br /> +Till all the rafters rang with woman-yells,<br /> +And all the pavement stream’d with massacre:<br /> +Then, echoing yell with yell, they fired the tower,<br /> +Which half that autumn night, like the live North,<br /> +Red-pulsing up thro’ Alioth and Alcor,<br /> +Made all above it, and a hundred meres<br /> +About it, as the water Moab saw<br /> +Come round by the East, and out beyond them flush’d<br /> +The long low dune, and lazy-plunging sea.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><i>Guinevere</i> is one of the greatest of the Idylls. +Malory makes Lancelot more sympathetic; his fight, unarmed, in +Guinevere’s chamber, against the felon knights, is one of +his most spirited scenes. Tennyson omits this, and omits +all the unpardonable behaviour of Arthur as narrated in +Malory. Critics have usually condemned the last parting of +Guinevere and Arthur, because the King doth preach too much to an +unhappy woman who has no reply. The position of Arthur is +not easily redeemable: it is difficult to conceive that a noble +nature could be, or should be, blind so long. He does +rehabilitate his Queen in her own self-respect, perhaps, by +assuring her that he loves her still:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Let no man dream but that I love thee +still.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Had he said that one line and no more, we might have loved him +better. In the Idylls we have not Malory’s last +meeting of Lancelot and Guinevere, one of the scenes in which the +wandering composite romance ends as nobly as the +<i>Iliad</i>.</p> +<p><i>The Passing of Arthur</i>, except for a new introductory +passage of great beauty and appropriateness, is the <i>Morte +d’Arthur</i>, first published in 1842:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“So all day long the noise of battle +roll’d<br /> +Among the mountains by the winter sea.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The year has run its course, spring, summer, gloomy autumn, +and dies in the mist of Arthur’s last wintry battle in the +west—</p> +<blockquote><p>“And the new sun rose, bringing the new +year.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The splendid and sombre procession has passed, leaving us to +muse as to how far the poet has fulfilled his own ideal. +There could be no new epic: he gave a chain of heroic +Idylls. An epic there could not be, for the <i>Iliad</i> +and <i>Odyssey</i> have each a unity of theme, a narrative +compressed into a few days in the former, in the latter into +forty days of time. The tragedy of Arthur’s reign +could not so be condensed; and Tennyson chose the only feasible +plan. He has left a work, not absolutely perfect, indeed, +but such as he conceived, after many tentative essays, and such +as he desired to achieve. His fame may not rest chiefly on +the Idylls, but they form one of the fairest jewels in the crown +that shines with unnumbered gems, each with its own glory.</p> +<h2><a name="page158"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +158</span>VIII.<br /> +<i>ENOCH ARDEN</i>. THE DRAMAS.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> success of the first volume of +the Idylls recompensed the poet for the slings and arrows that +gave <i>Maud</i> a hostile welcome. His next publication +was the beautiful <i>Tithonus</i>, a fit pendant to the +<i>Ulysses</i>, and composed about the same date +(1833–35). “A quarter of a century ago,” +Tennyson dates it, writing in 1860 to the Duke of Argyll. +He had found it when “ferreting among my old books,” +he said, in search of something for Thackeray, who was +establishing the <i>Cornhill Magazine</i>. What must the +wealth of the poet have been, who, possessing <i>Tithonus</i> in +his portfolio, did not take the trouble to insert it in the +volumes of 1842! Nobody knows how many poems of +Tennyson’s never even saw pen and ink, being composed +unwritten, and forgotten. At this time we find him +recommending Mr Browning’s <i>Men and Women</i> to the +Duke, who, like many Tennysonians, does not seem to have been a +ready convert to his great contemporary. The Duke and +Duchess urged the Laureate to attempt the topic of the Holy +Grail, but he was not in the mood. Indeed the vision of the +Grail in the early <i>Sir Galahad</i> is doubtless happier than +the allegorical handling of a theme so obscure, remote, and +difficult, in the Idylls. He wrote his <i>Boadicea</i>, a +piece magnificent in itself, but of difficult popular access, +owing to the metrical experiment.</p> +<p>In the autumn of 1860 he revisited Cornwall with F. T. +Palgrave, Mr Val Prinsep, and Mr Holman Hunt. They walked +in the rain, saw Tintagel and the Scilly Isles, and were +fêted by an enthusiastic captain of a little river steamer, +who was more interested in “Mr Tinman and Mr Pancake” +than the Celtic boatman of Ardtornish. The winter was +passed at Farringford, and the <i>Northern Farmer</i> was written +there, a Lincolnshire reminiscence, in the February of +1861. In autumn the Pyrenees were visited by Tennyson in +company with Arthur Clough and Mr Dakyns of Clifton +College. At Cauteretz in August, and among memories of the +old tour with Arthur Hallam, was written <i>All along the +Valley</i>. The ways, however, in Auvergne were +“foul,” and the diet “unhappy.” The +dedication of the Idylls was written on the death of the Prince +Consort in December, and in January 1862 the Ode for the opening +of an exhibition. The poet was busy with his +“Fisherman,” <i>Enoch Arden</i>. The volume was +published in 1864, and Lord Tennyson says it has been, next to +<i>In Memoriam</i>, the most popular of his father’s +works. One would have expected the one volume containing +the poems up to 1842 to hold that place. The new book, +however, mainly dealt with English, contemporary, and domestic +themes—“the poetry of the affections.” An +old woman, a district visitor reported, regarded <i>Enoch +Arden</i> as “more beautiful” than the other tracts +which were read to her. It is indeed a tender and touching +tale, based on a folk-story which Tennyson found current in +Brittany as well as in England. Nor is the unseen and +unknown landscape of the tropic isle less happily created by the +poet’s imagination than the familiar English cliffs and +hazel copses:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “The mountain wooded to +the peak, the lawns<br /> +And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven,<br /> +The slender coco’s drooping crown of plumes,<br /> +The lightning flash of insect and of bird,<br /> +The lustre of the long convolvuluses<br /> +That coil’d around the stately stems, and ran<br /> +Ev’n to the limit of the land, the glows<br /> +And glories of the broad belt of the world,<br /> +All these he saw; but what he fain had seen<br /> +He could not see, the kindly human face,<br /> +Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard<br /> +The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl,<br /> +The league-long roller thundering on the reef,<br /> +The moving whisper of huge trees that branch’d<br /> +And blossom’d in the zenith, or the sweep<br /> +Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave,<br /> +As down the shore he ranged, or all day long<br /> +Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge,<br /> +A shipwreck’d sailor, waiting for a sail:<br /> +No sail from day to day, but every day<br /> +The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts<br /> +Among the palms and ferns and precipices;<br /> +The blaze upon the waters to the east;<br /> +The blaze upon his island overhead;<br /> +The blaze upon the waters to the west;<br /> +Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven,<br /> +The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again<br /> +The scarlet shafts of sunrise—but no sail.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><i>Aylmer’s Field</i> somewhat recalls the burden of +<i>Maud</i>, the curse of purse-proud wealth, but is too gloomy +to be a fair specimen of Tennyson’s art. In <i>Sea +Dreams</i> (first published in 1860) the awful vision of +crumbling faiths is somewhat out of harmony with its +environment:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “But round the North, a +light,<br /> +A belt, it seem’d, of luminous vapour, lay,<br /> +And ever in it a low musical note<br /> +Swell’d up and died; and, as it swell’d, a ridge<br +/> +Of breaker issued from the belt, and still<br /> +Grew with the growing note, and when the note<br /> +Had reach’d a thunderous fulness, on those cliffs<br /> +Broke, mixt with awful light (the same as that<br /> +Living within the belt) whereby she saw<br /> +That all those lines of cliffs were cliffs no more,<br /> +But huge cathedral fronts of every age,<br /> +Grave, florid, stern, as far as eye could see,<br /> +One after one: and then the great ridge drew,<br /> +Lessening to the lessening music, back,<br /> +And past into the belt and swell’d again<br /> +Slowly to music: ever when it broke<br /> +The statues, king or saint or founder fell;<br /> +Then from the gaps and chasms of ruin left<br /> +Came men and women in dark clusters round,<br /> +Some crying, ‘Set them up! they shall not fall!’<br +/> +And others, ‘Let them lie, for they have +fall’n.’<br /> +And still they strove and wrangled: and she grieved<br /> +In her strange dream, she knew not why, to find<br /> +Their wildest wailings never out of tune<br /> +With that sweet note; and ever as their shrieks<br /> +Ran highest up the gamut, that great wave<br /> +Returning, while none mark’d it, on the crowd<br /> +Broke, mixt with awful light, and show’d their eyes<br /> +Glaring, and passionate looks, and swept away<br /> +The men of flesh and blood, and men of stone,<br /> +To the waste deeps together.</p> +<p> ‘Then I fixt<br /> +My wistful eyes on two fair images,<br /> +Both crown’d with stars and high among the stars,—<br +/> +The Virgin Mother standing with her child<br /> +High up on one of those dark minster-fronts—<br /> +Till she began to totter, and the child<br /> +Clung to the mother, and sent out a cry<br /> +Which mixt with little Margaret’s, and I woke,<br /> +And my dream awed me:—well—but what are +dreams?”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The passage is rather fitted for a despairing mood of Arthur, +in the Idylls, than for the wife of the city clerk ruined by a +pious rogue.</p> +<p>The <i>Lucretius</i>, later published, is beyond praise as a +masterly study of the great Roman sceptic, whose heart is at +eternal odds with his Epicurean creed. Nascent madness, or +fever of the brain drugged by the blundering love philtre, is not +more cunningly treated in the mad scenes of <i>Maud</i>. No +prose commentary on the <i>De Rerum Natura</i>, however long and +learned, conveys so clearly as this concise study in verse the +sense of magnificent mingled ruin in the mind and poem of the +Roman.</p> +<p>The “Experiments in Quantity” were, perhaps, +suggested by Mr Matthew Arnold’s Lectures on the +Translating of Homer. Mr Arnold believed in a translation +into English hexameters. His negative criticism of other +translators and translations was amusing and instructive: he had +an easy game to play with the Yankee-doodle metre of F. W. +Newman, the ponderous blank verse of Cowper, the tripping and +clipping couplets of Pope, the Elizabethan fantasies of +Chapman. But Mr Arnold’s hexameters were neither +musical nor rapid: they only exhibited a new form of +failure. As the Prince of Abyssinia said to his tutor, +“Enough; you have convinced me that no man can be a +poet,” so Mr Arnold went some way to prove that no man can +translate Homer.</p> +<p>Tennyson had the lowest opinion of hexameters as an English +metre for serious purposes.</p> +<blockquote><p>“These lame hexameters the +strong-wing’d music of Homer!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Lord Tennyson says, “German hexameters he disliked even +more than English.” Indeed there is not much room for +preference. Tennyson’s Alcaics (<i>Milton</i>) were +intended to follow the Greek rather than the Horatian model, and +resulted, at all events, in a poem worthy of the +“mighty-mouth’d inventor of harmonies.” +The specimen of the <i>Iliad</i> in blank verse, beautiful as it +is, does not, somehow, reproduce the music of Homer. It is +entirely Tennysonian, as in</p> +<blockquote><p>“Roll’d the rich vapour far into the +heaven.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The reader, in that one line, recognises the voice and trick +of the English poet, and is far away from the Chian:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“As when in heaven the stars about the +moon<br /> +Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,<br /> +And every height comes out, and jutting peak<br /> +And valley, and the immeasurable heavens<br /> +Break open to their highest, and all the stars<br /> +Shine, and the Shepherd gladdens in his heart:<br /> +So many a fire between the ships and stream<br /> +Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy,<br /> +A thousand on the plain; and close by each<br /> +Sat fifty in the blaze of burning fire;<br /> +And eating hoary grain and pulse the steeds,<br /> +Fixt by their cars, waited the golden dawn.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This is excellent, is poetry, escapes the conceits of Pope +(who never “wrote with his eye on the object”), but +is pure Tennyson. We have not yet, probably we never shall +have, an adequate rendering of the <i>Iliad</i> into verse, and +prose translations do not pretend to be adequate. When +parents and dominies have abolished the study of Greek, +something, it seems, will have been lost to the +world,—something which even Tennyson could not restore in +English. He thought blank verse the proper equivalent; but +it is no equivalent. One even prefers his own +prose:—</p> +<blockquote><p>Nor did Paris linger in his lofty halls, but when +he had girt on his gorgeous armour, all of varied bronze, then he +rushed thro’ the city, glorying in his airy feet. And +as when a stall-kept horse, that is barley-fed at the manger, +breaketh his tether, and dasheth thro’ the plain, spurning +it, being wont to bathe himself in the fair-running river, +rioting, and reareth his head, and his mane flieth back on either +shoulder, and he glorieth in his beauty, and his knees bear him +at the gallop to the haunts and meadows of the mares; so ran the +son of Priam, Paris, from the height of Pergamus, all in arms, +glittering like the sun, laughing for light-heartedness, and his +swift feet bare him.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In February 1865 Tennyson lost the mother whose portrait he +drew in <i>Isabel</i>,—“a thing enskied and +sainted.”</p> +<p>In the autumn of 1865 the Tennysons went on a Continental +tour, and visited Waterloo, Weimar, and Dresden; in September +they entertained Emma I., Queen of the Sandwich Islands. +The months passed quietly at home or in town. The poet had +written his <i>Lucretius</i>, and, to please Sir George Grove, +wrote <i>The Song of the Wrens</i>, for music. Tennyson had +not that positive aversion to music which marked Dr Johnson, +Victor Hugo, Théophile Gautier, and some other +poets. Nay, he liked Beethoven, which places him higher in +the musical scale than Scott, who did not rise above a Border +lilt or a Jacobite ditty. The Wren songs, entitled <i>The +Window</i>, were privately printed by Sir Ivor Guest in 1867, +were set to music by Sir Arthur Sullivan, and published by +Strahan in December 1870. “A puppet,” Tennyson +called the song-book, “whose only merit is, perhaps, that +it can dance to Mr Sullivan’s instrument. I am sorry +that my puppet should have to dance at all in the dark shadow of +these days” (the siege of Paris), “but the music is +now completed, and I am bound by my promise.” The +verses are described as “partly in the old style,” +but the true old style of the Elizabethan and cavalier days is +lost.</p> +<p>In the summer of 1867 the Tennysons moved to a farmhouse near +Haslemere, at that time not a centre of literary Londoners. +“Sandy soil and heather-scented air” allured them, +and the result was the purchase of land, and the building of +Aldworth, Mr Knowles being the architect. In autumn +Tennyson visited Lyme Regis, and, like all other travellers +thither, made a pilgrimage to the Cobb, sacred to Louisa +Musgrove. The poet now began the study of Hebrew, having a +mind to translate the Book of Job, a vision unfulfilled. In +1868 he thought of publishing his boyish piece, <i>The +Lover’s Tale</i>, but delayed. An anonymously edited +piracy of this and other poems was perpetrated in 1875, limited, +at least nominally, to fifty copies.</p> +<p>In July Longfellow visited Tennyson. “The +Longfellows and he talked much of spiritualism, for he was +greatly interested in that subject, but he suspended his +judgment, and thought that, if in such manifestations there is +anything, ‘Pucks, not the spirits of dead men, reveal +themselves.’” This was Southey’s +suggestion, as regards the celebrated disturbances in the house +of the Wesleys. “Wit might have much to say, wisdom, +little,” said Sam Wesley. Probably the talk about +David Dunglas Home, the “medium” then in vogue, led +to the discussion of “spiritualism.” We do not +hear that Tennyson ever had the curiosity to see Home, whom Mr +Browning so firmly detested.</p> +<p>In September <i>The Holy Grail</i> was begun: it was finished +“in about a week. It came like a breath of +inspiration.” The subject had for many years been +turned about in the poet’s mind, which, of course, was busy +in these years of apparent inactivity. At this time (August +1868) Tennyson left his old publishers, the Moxons, for Mr +Strahan, who endured till 1872. Then he was succeeded by +Messrs H. S. King & Co., who gave place (1879) to Messrs +Kegan Paul & Co., while in 1884 Messrs Macmillan became, and +continue to be, the publishers. A few pieces, except +<i>Lucretius</i> (<i>Macmillan’s Magazine</i>, May 1868) +unimportant, appeared in serials.</p> +<p>Very early in 1869 <i>The Coming of Arthur</i> was composed, +while Tennyson was reading Browning’s <i>The Ring and the +Book</i>. He and his great contemporary were on terms of +affectionate friendship, though Tennyson, perhaps, appreciated +less of Browning than Browning of Tennyson. Meanwhile +“Old Fitz” kept up a fire of unsympathetic growls at +Browning and all his works. “I have been trying in +vain to read it” (<i>The Ring and the Book</i>), “and +yet the <i>Athenæum</i> tells me it is wonderfully +fine.” FitzGerald’s ply had been taken long +ago; he wanted verbal music in poetry (no exorbitant desire), +while, in Browning, <i>carmina desunt</i>. Perhaps, too, a +personal feeling, as if Browning was Tennyson’s rival, +affected the judgment of the author of <i>Omar +Kháyyám</i>. We may almost call him +“the author.”</p> +<p><i>The Holy Grail</i>, with the smaller poems, such as +<i>Lucretius</i>, was published at the end of 1869. +FitzGerald appears to have preferred <i>The Northern Farmer</i>, +“the substantial rough-spun nature I knew,” to all +the visionary knights in the airy Quest. To compare +“—” (obviously Browning) with Tennyson, was +“to compare an old Jew’s curiosity shop with the +Phidian Marbles.” Tennyson’s poems “being +clear to the bottom as well as beautiful, do not seem to cockney +eyes so deep as muddy waters.”</p> +<p>In November 1870 <i>The Last Tournament</i> was begun; it was +finished in May 1871. Conceivably the vulgar scandals of +the last days of the French Imperial <i>régime</i> may +have influenced Tennyson’s picture of the corruption of +Arthur’s Court; but the Empire did not begin, like the +Round Table, with aspirations after the Ideal. In the +autumn of the year Tennyson entertained, and was entertained by, +Mr Huxley. In their ideas about ultimate things two men +could not vary more widely, but each delighted in the +other’s society. In the spring of 1872 Tennyson +visited Paris and the ruins of the Louvre. He read Victor +Hugo, and Alfred de Musset, whose comedies he admired. The +little that we hear of his opinion of the other great poet runs +to this effect, “Victor Hugo is an unequal genius, +sometimes sublime; he reminds one that there is but one step +between the sublime and the ridiculous,” but the example by +which Tennyson illustrated this was derived from one of the +poet’s novels. In these we meet not only the sublime +and the ridiculous, but passages which leave us in some +perplexity as to their true category. One would have +expected Hugo’s lyrics to be Tennyson’s favourites, +but only <i>Gastibelza</i> is mentioned in that character. +At this time Tennyson was vexed by</p> +<blockquote><p>“Art with poisonous honey stolen from +France,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>a phrase which cannot apply to Hugo. Meanwhile +<i>Gareth</i> was being written, and the knight’s song for +<i>The Coming of Arthur</i>. <i>Gareth and Lynette</i>, +with minor pieces, appeared in 1872. <i>Balin and Balan</i> +was composed later, to lead up to <i>Vivien</i>, to which, +perhaps, <i>Balin and Balan</i> was introduction sufficient had +it been the earlier written. But the Idylls have already +been discussed as arranged in sequence. The completion of +the Idylls, with the patriotic epilogue, was followed by the +offer of a baronetcy. Tennyson preferred that he and his +wife “should remain plain Mr and Mrs,” though +“I hope that I have too much of the old-world loyalty not +to wear my lady’s favours against all comers, should you +think that it would be more agreeable to her Majesty that I +should do so.”</p> +<p>The Idylls ended, Tennyson in 1874 began to contemplate a +drama, choosing the topic, perhaps neither popular nor in an +Aristotelian sense tragic, of Mary Tudor. This play was +published, and put on the stage by Sir Henry Irving in +1875. <i>Harold</i> followed in 1876, <i>The Cup</i> in +1881 (at the Lyceum), <i>The Promise of May</i> (at the Globe) in +1882, <i>Becket</i> in 1884, with <i>The Foresters</i> in +1892. It seems best to consider all the dramatic period of +Tennyson’s work, a period reached so strangely late in his +career, in the sequence of the Plays. The task is one from +which I shrink, as conscious of entire ignorance of the stage and +of lack of enthusiasm for the drama. Great dramatic authors +have, almost invariably, had long practical knowledge of the +scenes and of what is behind them. Shakespeare and his +contemporaries, Molière and his contemporaries, had lived +their lives on the boards and in the <i>foyer</i>, actors +themselves, or in daily touch with actors and actresses. In +the present day successful playwrights appear to live much in the +world of the players. They have practical knowledge of the +conventions and conditions which the stage imposes. Neither +Browning nor Mr Swinburne (to take great names) has had, it +seems, much of this practical and daily experience; their dramas +have been acted but rarely, if at all, and many examples prove +that neither poetical genius nor the genius for prose fiction can +enable men to produce plays which hold their own on the +boards. This may be the fault of public taste, or partly of +public taste, partly of defect in practical knowledge on the side +of the authors. Of the stage, by way of practice, Tennyson +had known next to nothing, yet his dramas were written to be +acted, and acted some of them were. “For himself, he +was aware,” says his biographer, “that he wanted +intimate knowledge of the mechanical details necessary for the +modern stage, although in early and middle life he had been a +constant playgoer, and would keenly follow the action of a play, +criticising the characterisation, incidents, scenic effects, +situations, language, and dramatic points.” He was +quite prepared to be “edited” for acting purposes by +the players. Miss Mary Anderson says that “he was +ready to sacrifice even his <i>most</i> beautiful lines for the +sake of a real dramatic effect.”</p> +<p>This proved unusual common-sense in a poet. Modern times +and manners are notoriously unfavourable to the serious +drama. In the age of the Greek tragedians, as in the days +of “Eliza and our James,” reading was not very +common, and life was much more passed in public than among +ourselves, when people go to the play for light recreation, or to +be shocked. So various was the genius of Tennyson, that had +he devoted himself early to the stage, and had he been backed by +a manager with the enterprise and intelligence of Sir Henry +Irving, it is impossible to say how much he might have done to +restore the serious drama. But we cannot regret that he was +occupied in his prime with other things, nor can we expect to +find his noblest and most enduring work in the dramatic +experiments of his latest years. It is notable that, in his +opinion, “the conditions of the dramatic art are much more +complex than they were.” For example, we have +“the star system,” which tends to allot what is, or +was, technically styled “the fat,” to one or two +popular players. Now, a poet like Tennyson will inevitably +distribute large quantities of what is most excellent to many +characters, and the consequent difficulties may be appreciated by +students of our fallen nature. The poet added that to be a +first-rate historical playwright means much more work than +formerly, seeing that “exact history” has taken the +part of the “chance chronicle.”</p> +<p>This is a misfortune. The dramas of the Attic stage, +with one or two exceptions, are based on myth and legend, not on +history, and even in the <i>Persæ</i>, grounded on +contemporary events, Æschylus introduced the ghost of +Darius, not vouched for by “exact history.” Let +us conceive Shakespeare writing <i>Macbeth</i> in an age of +“exact history.” Hardly any of the play would +be left. Fleance and Banquo must go. Duncan becomes a +young man, and far from “gracious.” Macbeth +appears as the defender of the legitimist prince, Lulach, against +Duncan, a usurper. Lady Macbeth is a pattern to her sex, +and her lord is a clement and sagacious ruler. The witches +are ruled out of the piece. Difficulties arise about the +English aid to Malcolm. History, in fact, declines to be +dramatic. Liberties must be taken. In his plays of +the Mary Stuart cycle, Mr Swinburne telescopes the affair of +Darnley into that of Chastelard, which was much earlier. He +makes Mary Beaton (in love with Chastelard) a kind of avenging +fate, who will never leave the Queen till her head falls at +Fotheringay; though, in fact, after a flirtation with Randolph, +Mary Beaton married Ogilvy of Boyne (really in love with Lady +Bothwell), and not one of the four Maries was at +Fotheringay. An artist ought to be allowed to follow +legend, of its essence dramatic, or to manipulate history as he +pleases. Our modern scrupulosity is pedantic. But +Tennyson read a long list of books for his <i>Queen Mary</i>, +though it does not appear that he made original researches in +MSS. These labours occupied 1874 and 1875. Yet it +would be foolish to criticise his <i>Queen Mary</i> as if we were +criticising “exact history.” “The +play’s the thing.”</p> +<p>The poet thought that “Bloody Mary” “had +been harshly judged by the verdict of popular +tradition.” So have most characters to whom popular +dislike affixes the popular epithet—“Bloody +Claverse,” “Bloody Mackenzie,” “Bloody +Balfour.” Mary had the courage of the Tudors. +She “edified all around her by her cheerfulness, her piety, +and her resignation to the will of Providence,” in her last +days (Lingard). Camden calls her “a queen never +praised enough for the purity of her morals, her charity to the +poor” (she practised as a district visitor), “and her +liberality to the nobles and the clergy.” She was +“pious, merciful, pure, and ever to be praised, if we +overlook her erroneous opinions in religion,” says +Godwin. She had been grievously wronged from her youth +upwards. In Elizabeth she had a sister and a rival, a +constant intriguer against her, and a kinswoman far from +amiable. Despite “the kindness and attention of +Philip” (Lingard), affairs of State demanded his absence +from England. The disappointment as to her expected child +was cruel. She knew that she had become unpopular, and she +could not look for the success of her Church, to which she was +sincerely attached. M. Auguste Filon thought that <i>Queen +Mary</i> might secure dramatic rank for Tennyson, “if a +great actress arose who conceived a passion for the part of +Mary.” But that was not to be expected. Mary +was middle-aged, plain, and in aspect now terrible, now +rueful. No great actress will throw herself with passion +into such an ungrateful part. “Throughout all +history,” Tennyson said, “there was nothing more +mournful than the final tragedy of this woman.” +<i>Mournful</i> it is, but not tragic. There is nothing +grand at the close, as when Mary Stuart conquers death and evil +fame, redeeming herself by her courage and her calm, and +extending over unborn generations that witchery which her enemies +dreaded more than an army with banners.</p> +<p>Moreover, popular tradition can never forgive the fires of +Smithfield. It was Mary Tudor’s misfortune that she +had the power to execute, on a great scale, that faculty of +persecution to the death for which her Presbyterian and other +Protestant opponents pined in vain. Mr Froude says of her, +“For the first and last time the true Ultramontane spirit +was dominant in England, the genuine conviction that, as the +orthodox prophets and sovereigns of Israel slew the worshippers +of Baal, so were Catholic rulers called upon, as their first +duty, to extirpate heretics as the enemies of God and +man.” That was precisely the spirit of Knox and other +Presbyterian denouncers of death against “Idolaters” +(Catholics). But the Scottish preachers were always +thwarted: Mary and her advisers had their way, as, earlier, +Latimer had preached against sufferers at the stake. To the +stake, which he feared so greatly, Cranmer had sent persons not +of his own fleeting shade of theological opinion. These men +had burned Anabaptists, but all that is lightly forgotten by +Protestant opinion. Under Mary (whoever may have been +primarily responsible) Cranmer and Latimer were treated as they +had treated others. Moreover, some two hundred poor men and +women had dared the fiery death. The persecution was on a +scale never forgiven or forgotten, since Mary began <i>cerdonibus +esse timenda</i>. Mary was not essentially inclement. +Despite Renard, the agent of the Emperor, she spared that lord of +fluff and feather, Courtenay, and she spared Elizabeth. +Lady Jane she could not save, the girl who was a queen by grace +of God and of her own royal nature. But Mary will never be +pardoned by England. “Few men or women have lived +less capable of doing knowingly a wrong thing,” says Mr +Froude, a great admirer of Tennyson’s play. Yet, +taking Mr Froude’s own view, Mary’s abject and +superannuated passion for Philip; her ecstasies during her +supposed pregnancy; “the forlorn hours when she would sit +on the ground with her knees drawn to her face,” with all +her “symptoms of hysterical derangement, leave little room, +as we think of her, for other feelings than pity.” +Unfortunately, feelings of pity for a person so distraught, so +sourly treated by fortune, do not suffice for tragedy. When +we contemplate Antigone or Œdipus, it is not with a +sentiment of pity struggling against abhorrence.</p> +<p>For these reasons the play does not seem to have a good +dramatic subject. The unity is given by Mary herself and +her fortunes, and these are scarcely dramatic. History +prevents the introduction of Philip till the second scene of the +third act. His entrance is <i>manqué</i>; he merely +accompanies Cardinal Pole, who takes command of the scene, and +Philip does not get in a word till after a long conversation +between the Queen and the Cardinal. Previously Philip had +only crossed the stage in a procession, yet when he does appear +he is bereft of prominence. The interest as regards him is +indicated, in Act I. scene v., by Mary’s kissing his +miniature. Her blighted love for him is one main motive of +the tragedy, but his own part appears too subordinate in the play +as published. The interest is scattered among the vast +crowd of characters; and Mr R. H. Hutton remarked at the time +that he “remains something of a cold, cruel, and sensual +shadow.” We are more interested in Wyatt, Cranmer, +Gardiner, and others; or at least their parts are more +interesting. Yet in no case does the interest of any +character, except of Mary and Elizabeth, remain continuous +throughout the play. Tennyson himself thought that +“the real difficulty of the drama is to give sufficient +relief to its intense sadness. . . . Nothing less than the holy +calm of the meek and penitent Cranmer can be adequate artistic +relief.” But not much relief can be drawn from a man +about to be burned alive, and history does not tempt us to keen +sympathy with the recanting archbishop, at least if we agree with +Macaulay rather than with Froude.</p> +<p>I venture to think that historical tradition, as usual, +offered a better motive than exact history. Following +tradition, we see in Mary a cloud of hateful gloom, from which +England escapes into the glorious dawn of “the Gospel +light,” and of Elizabeth, who might be made a triumphantly +sympathetic character. That is the natural and popular +course which the drama might take. But Tennyson’s +history is almost critical and scientific. Points of +difficult and debated evidence (as to Elizabeth’s part in +Wyatt’s rebellion) are discussed. There is no contest +of day and darkness, of Truth and Error. The characters are +in that perplexed condition about creeds which was their actual +state after the political and social and religious chaos produced +by Henry VIII. Gardiner is a Catholic, but not an +Ultramontane; Lord William Howard is a Catholic, but not a +fanatic; we find a truculent Anabaptist, or Socialist, and a +citizen whose pride is his moderation. The native +uncritical tendency of the drama is to throw up hats and halloo +for Elizabeth and an open Bible. In place of this, Cecil +delivers a well-considered analysis of the character of +Elizabeth:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “<i>Eliz.</i> God +guide me lest I lose the way.</p> +<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Exit Elizabeth</i>.</p> +<p> <i>Cecil</i>. Many points +weather’d, many perilous ones,<br /> +At last a harbour opens; but therein<br /> +Sunk rocks—they need fine steering—much it is<br /> +To be nor mad, nor bigot—have a mind—<br /> +Nor let Priests’ talk, or dream of worlds to be,<br /> +Miscolour things about her—sudden touches<br /> +For him, or him—sunk rocks; no passionate faith—<br +/> +But—if let be—balance and compromise;<br /> +Brave, wary, sane to the heart of her—a Tudor<br /> +School’d by the shadow of death—a Boleyn, too,<br /> +Glancing across the Tudor—not so well.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This is excellent as historical criticism, in the favourable +sense; but the drama, by its nature, demands something not +critical but triumphant and one-sided. The character of +Elizabeth is one of the best in the play, as her soliloquy (Act +III. scene v.) is one of the finest of the speeches. We see +her courage, her coquetry, her dissimulation, her +arrogance. But while this is the true Elizabeth, it is not +the idealised Elizabeth whom English loyalty created, lived for, +and died for. Mr Froude wrote, “You have given us the +greatest of all your works,” an opinion which the world can +never accept. “You have reclaimed one more section of +English History from the wilderness, and given it a form in which +it will be fixed for ever. No one since Shakespeare has +done that.” But Mr Froude had done it, and +Tennyson’s reading of “the section” is mainly +that of Mr Froude. Mr Gladstone found that Cranmer and +Gardiner “are still in a considerable degree mysteries to +me.” A mystery Cranmer must remain. Perhaps the +“crowds” and “Voices” are not the least +excellent of the characters, Tennyson’s humour finding an +opportunity in them, and in Joan and Tib. His idyllic charm +speaks in the words of Lady Clarence to the fevered Queen; and +there is dramatic genius in her reply:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “<i>Mary</i>. What +is the strange thing happiness? Sit down here:<br /> +Tell me thine happiest hour.</p> +<p> <i>Lady Clarence</i>. I will, if +that<br /> +May make your Grace forget yourself a little.<br /> +There runs a shallow brook across our field<br /> +For twenty miles, where the black crow flies five,<br /> +And doth so bound and babble all the way<br /> +As if itself were happy. It was May-time,<br /> +And I was walking with the man I loved.<br /> +I loved him, but I thought I was not loved.<br /> +And both were silent, letting the wild brook<br /> +Speak for us—till he stoop’d and gather’d +one<br /> +From out a bed of thick forget-me-nots,<br /> +Look’d hard and sweet at me, and gave it me.<br /> +I took it, tho’ I did not know I took it,<br /> +And put it in my bosom, and all at once<br /> +I felt his arms about me, and his lips—</p> +<p> <i>Mary</i>. O God! I have been +too slack, too slack;<br /> +There are Hot Gospellers even among our guards—<br /> +Nobles we dared not touch. We have but burnt<br /> +The heretic priest, workmen, and women and children.<br /> +Wet, famine, ague, fever, storm, wreck, wrath,—<br /> +We have so play’d the coward; but by God’s grace,<br +/> +We’ll follow Philip’s leading, and set up<br /> +The Holy Office here—garner the wheat,<br /> +And burn the tares with unquenchable fire!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The conclusion, in the acting edition, printed in the +Biography, appears to be an improvement on that in the text as +originally published. Unhappy as the drama essentially is, +the welcome which Mr Browning gave both to the published work and +to the acted play—“a complete success”: +“conception, execution, the whole and the parts, I see +nowhere the shadow of a fault”—offers +“relief” in actual human nature. “He is +the greatest-brained poet in England,” Tennyson said, on a +later occasion. “Violets fade, he has given me a +crown of gold.”</p> +<p>Before writing <i>Harold</i> (1876) the poet “studied +many recent plays,” and re-read Æschylus and +Sophocles. For history he went to the Bayeux tapestry, the +<i>Roman de Rou</i>, Lord Lytton, and Freeman. Students of +a recent controversy will observe that, following Freeman, he +retains the famous palisade, so grievously battered by the +axe-strokes of Mr Horace Round. <i>Harold</i> is a piece +more compressed, and much more in accordance with the traditions +of the drama, than <i>Queen Mary</i>. The topic is tragic +indeed: the sorrow being that of a great man, a great king, the +bulwark of a people that fell with his fall. Moreover, as +the topic is treated, the play is rich in the irony usually +associated with the name of Sophocles. Victory comes before +a fall. Harold, like Antigone, is torn between two +duties—his oath and the claims of his country. His +ruin comes from what Aristotle would call his +<i>ἁμαρτία</i>, his fault in +swearing the oath to William. The hero himself; recking +little, after a superstitious moment, of the concealed relics +over which he swore, deems his offence to lie in swearing a vow +which he never meant to keep. The persuasions which urge +him to this course are admirably presented: England, Edith, his +brother’s freedom, were at stake. Casuistry, or even +law, would have absolved him easily; an oath taken under duresse +is of no avail. But Harold’s “honour rooted in +dishonour stood,” and he cannot so readily absolve +himself. Bruce and the bishops who stood by Bruce had no +such scruples: they perjured themselves often, on the most sacred +relics, especially the bishops. But Harold rises above the +mediæval and magical conception of the oath, and goes to +his doom conscious of a stain on his honour, of which only a +deeper stain, that of falseness to his country, could make him +clean. This is a truly tragic stroke of destiny. The +hero’s character is admirably noble, patient, and +simple. The Confessor also is as true in art as to history, +and his vision of the fall and rise of England is a noble +passage. In Aldwyth we have something of Vivien, with a +grain of conscience, and the part of Edith Swan’s-neck has +a restrained and classic pathos in contrast with the melancholy +of Wulfnoth. The piece, as the poet said, is a +“tragedy of doom,” of deepening and darkening omens, +as in the <i>Odyssey</i> and <i>Njal’s Saga</i>. The +battle scene, with the choruses of the monks, makes a noble +close.</p> +<p>FitzGerald remained loyal, but it was to “a fairy Prince +who came from other skies than these rainy ones,” and +“the wretched critics,” as G. H. Lewes called them, +seem to have been unfriendly. In fact (besides the innate +wretchedness of all critics), they grudged the time and labour +given to the drama, in an undramatic age. <i>Harold</i> had +not what FitzGerald called “the old champagne +flavour” of the vintage of 1842.</p> +<p><i>Becket</i> was begun in 1876, printed in 1879, and +published in 1884. Before that date, in 1880, Tennyson +produced one of the volumes of poetry which was more welcome than +a play to most of his admirers. The intervening years +passed in the Isle of Wight, at Aldworth, in town, and in summer +tours, were of no marked biographical interest. The poet +was close on three score and ten—he reached that limit in +1879. The days darkened around him, as darken they must: in +the spring of 1879 he lost his favourite brother, himself a poet +of original genius, Charles Tennyson Turner. In May of the +same year he published <i>The Lover’s Tale</i>, which has +been treated here among his earliest works. His hours, and +(to some extent) his meals, were regulated by Sir Andrew +Clark. He planted trees, walked, read, loitered in his +garden, and kept up his old friendships, while he made that of +the great Gordon. Compliments passed between him and Victor +Hugo, who had entertained Lionel Tennyson in Paris, and wrote: +“Je lis avec émotion vos vers superbes; c’est +un reflet de gloire que vous m’envoyez.” Mr +Matthew Arnold’s compliment was very like Mr Arnold’s +humour: “Your father has been our most popular poet for +over forty years, and I am of opinion that he fully deserves his +reputation”: such was “Mat’s sublime +waggery.” Tennyson heaped coals of fire on the other +poet, bidding him, as he liked to be bidden, to write more +poetry, not “prose things.” Tennyson lived much +in the society of Browning and George Eliot, and made the +acquaintance of Renan. In December 1879 Mr and Mrs Kendal +produced <i>The Falcon</i>, which ran for sixty-seven nights; it +is “an exquisite little poem in action,” as Fanny +Kemble said. During a Continental tour Tennyson visited +Catullus’s Sirmio: “here he made his <i>Frater Ave +atque Vale</i>,” and the poet composed his beautiful +salutation to the</p> +<blockquote><p>“Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred +years ago.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In 1880 <i>Ballads and other Poems</i> proved that, like +Titian, the great poet was not to be defeated by the years. +<i>The First Quarrel</i> was in his most popular English +style. <i>Rizpah</i> deserved and received the splendid +panegyric of Mr Swinburne. <i>The Revenge</i> is probably +the finest of the patriotic pieces, and keeps green the memory of +an exploit the most marvellous in the annals of English +seamen. <i>The Village Wife</i> is a pendant worthy of +<i>The Northern Farmer</i>. The poem <i>In the +Children’s Hospital</i> caused some irritation at the +moment, but there was only one opinion as to the <i>Defence of +Lucknow</i> and the beautiful re-telling of the Celtic <i>Voyage +of Maeldune</i>. The fragment of Homeric translation was +equally fortunate in choice of subject and in rendering.</p> +<p>In the end of 1880 the poet finished <i>The Cup</i>, which had +been worked on occasionally since he completed <i>The Falcon</i> +in 1880. The piece was read by the author to Sir Henry +Irving and his company, and it was found that the manuscript copy +needed few alterations to fit it for the stage. The scenery +and the acting of the protagonists are not easily to be +forgotten. The play ran for a hundred and thirty +nights. Sir Henry Irving had thought that <i>Becket</i> +(then unpublished) would prove too expensive, and could only be a +<i>succès d’estime</i>. Tennyson had found out +that “the worst of writing for the stage is, you must keep +some actor always in your mind.” To this necessity +authors like Molière and Shakespeare were, of course, +resigned and familiar; they knew exactly how to deal with all +their means. But this part of the business of play-writing +must always be a cross to the poet who is not at one with the +world of the stage.</p> +<p>In <i>The Cup</i> Miss Ellen Terry made the strongest +impression, her part being noble and sympathetic, while Sir Henry +Irving had the ungrateful part of the villain. To be sure, +he was a villain of much complexity; and Tennyson thought that +his subtle blend of Roman refinement and intellectuality, and +barbarian, self-satisfied sensuality, was not “hit +off.” Synorix is, in fact, half-Greek, half-Celt, +with a Roman education, and the “blend” is rather too +remote for successful representation. The traditional +villain, from Iago downwards, is not apt to utter such poetry as +this:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“O Thou, that dost inspire the germ with +life,<br /> +The child, a thread within the house of birth,<br /> +And give him limbs, then air, and send him forth<br /> +The glory of his father—Thou whose breath<br /> +Is balmy wind to robe our bills with grass,<br /> +And kindle all our vales with myrtle-blossom,<br /> +And roll the golden oceans of our grain,<br /> +And sway the long grape-bunches of our vines,<br /> +And fill all hearts with fatness and the lust<br /> +Of plenty—make me happy in my marriage!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The year 1881 brought the death of another of the old +Cambridge friends, James Spedding, the biographer of Bacon; and +Carlyle also died, a true friend, if rather intermittent in his +appreciation of poetry. The real Carlyle did appreciate it, +but the Carlyle of attitude was too much of the iron Covenanter +to express what he felt. The poem <i>Despair</i> irritated +the earnest and serious readers of “know-nothing +books.” The poem expressed, dramatically, a mood like +another, a human mood not so very uncommon. A man ruined in +this world’s happiness curses the faith of his youth, and +the unfaith of his reading and reflection, and tries to drown +himself. This is one conclusion of the practical syllogism, +and it is a free country. However, there were freethinkers +who did not think that Tennyson’s kind of thinking ought to +be free. Other earnest persons objected to “First +drink a health,” in the re-fashioned song of <i>Hands all +Round</i>. They might have remembered a royal health drunk +in water an hour before the drinkers swept Mackay down the Pass +of Killiecrankie. The poet did not specify the fluid in +which the toast was to be carried, and the cup might be that +which “cheers but not inebriates.” “The +common cup,” as the remonstrants had to be informed, +“has in all ages been the sacred symbol of +unity.”</p> +<p><i>The Promise of May</i> was produced in November 1882, and +the poet was once more so unfortunate as to vex the +susceptibilities of advanced thinkers. The play is not a +masterpiece, and yet neither the gallery gods nor the Marquis of +Queensberry need have felt their withers wrung. The hero, +or villain, Edgar, is a perfectly impossible person, and +represents no kind of political, social, or economical +thinker. A man would give all other bliss and all his +worldly wealth for this, to waste his whole strength in one kick +upon this perfect prig. He employs the arguments of +evolution and so forth to justify the seduction of a little girl +of fifteen, and later, by way of making amends, proposes to +commit incest by marrying her sister. There have been +evolutionists, to be sure, who believed in promiscuity, like Mr +Edgar, as preferable to monogamy. But this only proves that +an evolutionist may fail to understand evolution. There be +also such folk as Stevenson calls +“squirradicals”—squires who say that “the +land is the people’s.” Probably no advocate of +promiscuity, and no squirradical, was present at the performances +of <i>The Promise of May</i>. But people of advanced minds +had got it into their heads that their doctrines were to be +attacked, so they went and made a hubbub in the sacred cause of +freedom of thought and speech. The truth is, that +controversial topics, political topics, ought not to be brought +into plays, much less into sermons. Tennyson meant Edgar +for “nothing thorough, nothing sincere.” He is +that venomous thing, the prig-scoundrel: he does not suit the +stage, and his place, if anywhere, is in the novel. +Advocates of marriage with a deceased wife’s sister might +have applauded Edgar for wishing to marry the sister of a +mistress assumed to be deceased, but no other party in the State +wanted anything except the punching of Edgar’s head by +Farmer Dobson.</p> +<p>In 1883 died Edward FitzGerald, the most kind, loyal, and, as +he said, crotchety of old and dear Cambridge friends. He +did not live to see the delightful poem which Tennyson had +written for him. In almost his latest letter he had +remarked, superfluously, that when he called the task of +translating <i>The Agamemnon</i> “work for a poet,” +he “was not thinking of Mr Browning.”</p> +<p>In the autumn of 1883 Tennyson was taken, with Mr Gladstone, +by Sir Donald Currie, for a cruise round the west coast of +Scotland, to the Orkneys, and to Copenhagen. The people of +Kirkwall conferred on the poet and the statesman the freedom of +the burgh, and Mr Gladstone, in an interesting speech, compared +the relative chances of posthumous fame of the poet and the +politician. Pericles is not less remembered than Sophocles, +though Shakespeare is more in men’s minds than Cecil. +Much depends, as far as the statesmen are considered, on +contemporary historians. It is Thucydides who immortalises +Pericles. But it is improbable that the things which Mr +Gladstone did, and attempted, will be forgotten more rapidly than +the conduct and characters of, say, Burleigh or Lethington.</p> +<p>In 1884, after this voyage, with its royal functions and +celebrations at Copenhagen, a peerage was offered to the +poet. He “did not want to alter his plain Mr,” +and he must have known that, whether he accepted or refused, the +chorus of blame would be louder than that of applause. +Scott had desired “such grinning honour as Sir Walter +hath”; the title went well with the old name, and pleased +his love of old times. Tennyson had been blamed “by +literary men” for thrice evading a baronetcy, and he did +not think that a peerage would make smooth the lives of his +descendants. But he concluded, “Why should I be +selfish and not suffer an honour (as Gladstone says) to be done +to literature in my name?” Politically, he thought +that the Upper House, while it lasts, partly supplied the place +of the American “referendum.” He voted in July +1884 for the extension of the franchise, and in November stated +his views to Mr Gladstone in verse. In prose he wrote to Mr +Gladstone, “I have a strong conviction that the more simple +the dealings of men with men, as well as of man with man, +are—the better,” a sentiment which, perhaps, did not +always prevail with his friend. The poet’s +reflections on the horror of Gordon’s death are not +recorded. He introduced the idea of the Gordon Home for +Boys, and later supported it by a letter, “Have we +forgotten Gordon?” to the <i>Daily Telegraph</i>. +They who cannot forget Gordon must always be grateful to Tennyson +for providing this opportunity of honouring the greatest of an +illustrious clan, and of helping, in their degree, a scheme which +was dear to the heroic leader.</p> +<p>The poet, very naturally, was most averse to personal +appearance in public matters. Mankind is so fashioned that +the advice of a poet is always regarded as unpractical, and is +even apt to injure the cause which he advocates. Happily +there cannot be two opinions about the right way of honouring +Gordon. Tennyson’s poem, <i>The Fleet</i>, was also +in harmony with the general sentiment.</p> +<p>In the last month of 1884 <i>Becket</i> was published. +The theme of Fair Rosamund had appealed to the poet in youth, and +he had written part of a lyric which he judiciously left +unpublished. It is given in his Biography. In 1877 he +had visited Canterbury, and had traced the steps of Becket to his +place of slaughter in the Cathedral. The poem was printed +in 1879, but not published till seven years later. In 1879 +Sir Henry Irving had thought the play too costly to be produced +with more than a <i>succès d’estime</i>; but in 1891 +he put it on the stage, where it proved the most successful of +modern poetic dramas. As published it is, obviously, far +too long for public performance. It is not easy to +understand why dramatic poets always make their works so much too +long. The drama seems, by its very nature, to have a limit +almost as distinct as the limit of the sonnet. It is easy +to calculate how long a play for the stage ought to be, and we +might think that a poet would find the natural limit serviceable +to his art, for it inculcates selection, conciseness, and +concentration. But despite these advantages of the natural +form of the drama, modern poets, at least, constantly overflow +their banks. The author <i>ruit profusus</i>, and the +manager has to reduce the piece to feasible proportions, such as +it ought to have assumed from the first.</p> +<p><i>Becket</i> has been highly praised by Sir Henry Irving +himself, for its “moments of passion and pathos, . . . +which, when they exist, atone to an audience for the endurance of +long acts.” But why should the audience have such +long acts to endure? The reader, one fears, is apt to use +his privilege of skipping. The long speeches of Walter Map +and the immense period of Margery tempt the student to exercise +his agility. A “chronicle play” has the +privilege of wandering, but <i>Becket</i> wanders too far and too +long. The political details of the quarrel between Church +and State, with its domestic and international complexities, are +apt to fatigue the attention. Inevitable and insoluble as +the situation was, neither protagonist is entirely sympathetic, +whether in the play or in history. The struggle in Becket +between his love of the king and his duty to the Church (or what +he takes to be his duty) is nobly presented, and is truly +dramatic, while there is grotesque and terrible relief in the +banquet of the Beggars. In the scene of the assassination +the poet “never stoops his wing,” and there are +passages of tender pathos between Henry and Rosamund, while +Becket’s keen memories of his early days, just before his +death, are moving.</p> +<blockquote><p> “<i>Becket</i>. I +once was out with Henry in the days<br /> +When Henry loved me, and we came upon<br /> +A wild-fowl sitting on her nest, so still<br /> +I reach’d my hand and touch’d; she did not stir;<br +/> +The snow had frozen round her, and she sat<br /> +Stone-dead upon a heap of ice-cold eggs.<br /> +Look! how this love, this mother, runs thro’ all<br /> +The world God made—even the beast—the bird!</p> +<p> <i>John of Salisbury</i>. Ay, still a +lover of the beast and bird?<br /> +But these arm’d men—will you not hide yourself?<br /> +Perchance the fierce De Brocs from Saltwood Castle,<br /> +To assail our Holy Mother lest she brood<br /> +Too long o’er this hard egg, the world, and send<br /> +Her whole heart’s heat into it, till it break<br /> +Into young angels. Pray you, hide yourself.</p> +<p> <i>Becket</i>. There was a little +fair-hair’d Norman maid<br /> +Lived in my mother’s house: if Rosamund is<br /> +The world’s rose, as her name imports her—she<br /> +Was the world’s lily.</p> +<p> <i>John of Salisbury</i>. Ay, and what +of her?</p> +<p> <i>Becket</i>. She died of +leprosy.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But the part of Rosamund, her innocent ignorance especially, +is not very readily intelligible, not quite persuasive, and there +is almost a touch of the burlesque in her unexpected appearance +as a monk. To weave that old and famous story of love into +the terribly complex political intrigue was a task almost too +great. The character of Eleanor is perhaps more +successfully drawn in the Prologue than in the scene where she +offers the choice of the dagger or the bowl, and is interrupted, +in a startlingly unexpected manner, by the Archbishop +himself. The opportunities for scenic effects are +magnificent throughout, and must have contributed greatly to the +success on the stage. Still one cannot but regard the +published <i>Becket</i> as rather the marble from which the +statue may be hewn than as the statue itself. There are +fine scenes, powerful and masterly drawing of character in Henry, +Eleanor, and Becket, but there is a want of concentration, due, +perhaps, to the long period of time covered by the action. +So, at least, it seems to a reader who has admitted his sense of +incompetency in the dramatic region. The acuteness of the +poet’s power of historical intuition was attested by Mr J. +R. Green and Mr Bryce. “One cannot imagine,” +said Mr Bryce, “a more vivid, a more perfectly faithful +picture than it gives both of Henry and Thomas.” +Tennyson’s portraits of these two “go beyond and +perfect history.” The poet’s sympathy ought, +perhaps, to have been, if not with the false and ruffianly Henry, +at least with Henry’s side of the question. For +Tennyson had made Harold leave</p> +<blockquote><p> “To England<br /> +My legacy of war against the Pope<br /> +From child to child, from Pope to Pope, from age to age,<br /> +Till the sea wash her level with her shores,<br /> +Or till the Pope be Christ’s.”</p> +</blockquote> +<h2><a name="page194"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +194</span>IX.<br /> +LAST YEARS.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> end of 1884 saw the publication +of <i>Tiresias and other Poems</i>, dedicated to “My good +friend, Robert Browning,” and opening with the beautiful +verses to one who never was Mr Browning’s friend, Edward +FitzGerald. The volume is rich in the best examples of +Tennyson’s later work. <i>Tiresias</i>, the monologue +of the aged seer, blinded by excess of light when he beheld +Athene unveiled, and under the curse of Cassandra, is worthy of +the author who, in youth, wrote <i>Œnone</i> and +<i>Ulysses</i>. Possibly the verses reflect +Tennyson’s own sense of public indifference to the voice of +the poet and the seer. But they are of much earlier date +than the year of publication:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “For when the crowd would +roar<br /> +For blood, for war, whose issue was their doom,<br /> +To cast wise words among the multitude<br /> +Was flinging fruit to lions; nor, in hours<br /> +Of civil outbreak, when I knew the twain<br /> +Would each waste each, and bring on both the yoke<br /> +Of stronger states, was mine the voice to curb<br /> +The madness of our cities and their kings.<br /> + Who ever turn’d upon his heel to hear<br /> +My warning that the tyranny of one<br /> +Was prelude to the tyranny of all?<br /> +My counsel that the tyranny of all<br /> +Led backward to the tyranny of one?<br /> + This power hath work’d no good to aught that +lives.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The conclusion was a favourite with the author, and his blank +verse never reached a higher strain:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “But for +me,<br /> +I would that I were gather’d to my rest,<br /> +And mingled with the famous kings of old,<br /> +On whom about their ocean-islets flash<br /> +The faces of the Gods—the wise man’s word,<br /> +Here trampled by the populace underfoot,<br /> +There crown’d with worship—and these eyes will +find<br /> +The men I knew, and watch the chariot whirl<br /> +About the goal again, and hunters race<br /> +The shadowy lion, and the warrior-kings,<br /> +In height and prowess more than human, strive<br /> +Again for glory, while the golden lyre<br /> +Is ever sounding in heroic ears<br /> +Heroic hymns, and every way the vales<br /> +Wind, clouded with the grateful incense-fume<br /> +Of those who mix all odour to the Gods<br /> +On one far height in one far-shining fire.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Then follows the pathetic piece on FitzGerald’s death, +and the prayer, not unfulfilled—</p> + +<blockquote><p> “That, +when I from hence<br /> + Shall fade with him into the unknown,<br /> +My close of earth’s experience<br /> + May prove as peaceful as his own.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><i>The Ancient Sage</i>, with its lyric interludes, is one of +Tennyson’s meditations on the mystery of the world and of +existence. Like the poet himself, the Sage finds a gleam of +light and hope in his own subjective experiences of some +unspeakable condition, already recorded in <i>In +Memoriam</i>. The topic was one on which he seems to have +spoken to his friends with freedom:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“And more, my son! for more than once when +I<br /> +Sat all alone, revolving in myself<br /> +The word that is the symbol of myself,<br /> +The mortal limit of the Self was loosed,<br /> +And past into the Nameless, as a cloud<br /> +Melts into Heaven. I touch’d my limbs, the limbs<br +/> +Were strange not mine—and yet no shade of doubt,<br /> +But utter clearness, and thro’ loss of Self<br /> +The gain of such large life as match’d with ours<br /> +Were Sun to spark—unshadowable in words,<br /> +Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The poet’s habit of</p> + +<blockquote><p> “Revolving +in myself<br /> +The word that is the symbol of myself”—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>that is, of dwelling on the sound of his own name, was +familiar to the Arabs. M. Lefébure has drawn my +attention to a passage in the works of a mediæval Arab +philosopher, Ibn Khaldoun: <a name="citation196"></a><a +href="#footnote196" class="citation">[196]</a> “To arrive +at the highest degree of inspiration of which he is capable, the +diviner should have recourse to the use of certain phrases marked +by a peculiar cadence and parallelism. Thus he emancipates +his mind from the influence of the senses, and is enabled to +attain an imperfect contact with the spiritual +world.” Ibn Khaldoun regards the +“contact” as extremely “imperfect.” +He describes similar efforts made by concentrating the gaze on a +mirror, a bowl of water, or the like. Tennyson was +doubtless unaware that he had stumbled accidentally on a method +of “ancient sages.” Psychologists will explain +his experience by the word “dissociation.” It +is not everybody, however, who can thus dissociate himself. +The temperament of genius has often been subject to such +influence, as M. Lefébure has shown in the modern +instances of George Sand and Alfred de Musset: we might add +Shelley, Goethe, and even Scott.</p> +<p>The poet’s versatility was displayed in the appearance +with these records of “weird seizures”, of the Irish +dialect piece <i>To-morrow</i>, the popular <i>Spinster’s +Sweet-Arts</i>, and the <i>Locksley Hall Sixty Years +After</i>. The old fire of the versification is unabated, +but the hero has relapsed on the gloom of the hero of +<i>Maud</i>. He represents himself, of course, not +Tennyson, or only one of the moods of Tennyson, which were +sometimes black enough. A very different mood chants the +<i>Charge of the Heavy Brigade</i>, and speaks of</p> +<blockquote><p>“Green Sussex fading into blue<br /> + With one gray glimpse of sea.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The lines <i>To Virgil</i> were written at the request of the +Mantuans, by the most Virgilian of all the successors of the</p> +<blockquote><p>“Wielder of the stateliest measure<br /> + ever moulded by the lips of man.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Never was Tennyson more Virgilian than in this unmatched +panegyric, the sum and flower of criticism of that</p> +<blockquote><p>“Golden branch amid the shadows,<br /> + kings and realms that pass to rise no +more.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Hardly less admirable is the tribute to Catullus, and the old +poet is young again in the bird-song of <i>Early +Spring</i>. The lines on <i>Poets and their +Bibliographies</i>, with <i>The Dead Prophet</i>, express +Tennyson’s lifelong abhorrence of the critics and +biographers, whose joy is in the futile and the unimportant, in +personal gossip and the sweepings of the studio, the salvage of +the wastepaper basket. The <i>Prefatory Poem to my +Brother’s Sonnets</i> is not only touching in itself, but +proves that the poet can “turn to favour and to +prettiness” such an affliction as the ruinous summer of +1879.</p> +<p>The year 1880 brought deeper distress in the death of the +poet’s son Lionel, whose illness, begun in India, ended +fatally in the Red Sea. The interest of the following years +was mainly domestic. The poet’s health, hitherto +robust, was somewhat impaired in 1888, but his vivid interest in +affairs and in letters was unabated. He consoled himself +with Virgil, Keats, Wordsworth, Gibbon, Euripides, and Mr +Leaf’s speculations on the composite nature of the +<i>Iliad</i>, in which Coleridge, perhaps alone among poets, +believed. “You know,” said Tennyson to Mr Leaf; +“I never liked that theory of yours about the many +poets.” It would be at least as easy to prove that +there were many authors of <i>Ivanhoe</i>, or perhaps it would be +a good deal more easy. However, he admitted that three +lines which occur both in the Eighth and the Sixteenth Books of +the <i>Iliad</i> are more appropriate in the later book. +Similar examples might be found in his own poems. He still +wrote, in the intervals of a malady which brought him “as +near death as a man could be without dying.” He was +an example of the great physical strength which, on the whole, +seems usually to accompany great mental power. The strength +may be dissipated by passion, or by undue labour, as in cases +easily recalled to memory, but neither cause had impaired the +vigour of Tennyson. Like Goethe, he lived out all his life; +and his eightieth birthday was cheered both by public and private +expressions of reverence and affection.</p> +<p>Of Tennyson’s last three years on earth we may think, in +his own words, that his</p> +<blockquote><p> “Life’s latest eve +endured<br /> +Nor settled into hueless grey.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Nature was as dear to him and as inspiring as of old; men and +affairs and letters were not slurred by his intact and energetic +mind. His <i>Demeter and other Poems</i>, with the +dedication to Lord Dufferin, appeared in the December of the +year. The dedication was the lament for the dead son and +the salutation to the Viceroy of India, a piece of resigned and +manly regret. The <i>Demeter and Persephone</i> is a modern +and tender study of the theme of the most beautiful Homeric +Hymn. The ancient poet had no such thought of the restored +Persephone as that which impels Tennyson to describe her</p> +<blockquote><p>“Faint as a climate-changing bird that +flies<br /> +All night across the darkness, and at dawn<br /> +Falls on the threshold of her native land.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The spring, the restored Persephone, comes more vigorous and +joyous to the shores of the Ægean than to ours. All +Tennyson’s own is Demeter’s awe of those +“imperial disimpassioned eyes” of her daughter, come +from the bed and the throne of Hades, the Lord of many +guests. The hymn, happy in its ending, has no thought of +the grey heads of the Fates, and their answer to the goddess +concerning “fate beyond the Fates,” and the breaking +of the bonds of Hades. The ballad of <i>Owd Roä</i> is +one of the most spirited of the essays in dialect to which +Tennyson had of late years inclined. <i>Vastness</i> merely +expresses, in terms of poetry, Tennyson’s conviction that, +without immortality, life is a series of worthless +contrasts. An opposite opinion may be entertained, but a +man has a right to express his own, which, coming from so great a +mind, is not undeserving of attention; or, at least, is hardly +deserving of reproof. The poet’s idea is also stated +thus in <i>The Ring</i>, in terms which perhaps do not fall below +the poetical; or, at least, do not drop into “the utterly +unpoetical”:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“The Ghost in Man, the Ghost that once was +Man,<br /> +But cannot wholly free itself from Man,<br /> +Are calling to each other thro’ a dawn<br /> +Stranger than earth has ever seen; the veil<br /> +Is rending, and the Voices of the day<br /> +Are heard across the Voices of the dark.<br /> +No sudden heaven, nor sudden hell, for man,<br /> +But thro’ the Will of One who knows and rules—<br /> +And utter knowledge is but utter love—<br /> +Æonian Evolution, swift or slow,<br /> +Thro’ all the Spheres—an ever opening height,<br /> +An ever lessening earth.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><i>The Ring</i> is, in fact, a ghost story based on a legend +told by Mr Lowell about a house near where he had once lived; one +of those houses vexed by</p> +<blockquote><p>“A footstep, a low throbbing in the +walls,<br /> +A noise of falling weights that never fell,<br /> +Weird whispers, bells that rang without a hand,<br /> +Door-handles turn’d when none was at the door,<br /> +And bolted doors that open’d of themselves.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>These phenomena were doubtless caused by rats and water-pipes, +but they do not destroy the pity and the passion of the +tale. The lines to Mary Boyle are all of the normal world, +and worthy of a poet’s youth and of the spring. +<i>Merlin and the Gleam</i> is the spiritual allegory of the +poet’s own career:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Arthur had vanish’d<br /> +I knew not whither,<br /> +The king who loved me,<br /> +And cannot die.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>So at last</p> +<blockquote><p> “All but in Heaven<br /> +Hovers The Gleam,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>whither the wayfarer was soon to follow. There is a +marvellous hope and pathos in the melancholy of these all but the +latest songs, reminiscent of youth and love, and even of the dim +haunting memories and dreams of infancy. No other English +poet has thus rounded all his life with music. Tennyson was +in his eighty-first year, when there “came in a +moment” the crown of his work, the immortal lyric, +<i>Crossing the Bar</i>. It is hardly less majestic and +musical in the perfect Greek rendering by his brother-in-law, Mr +Lushington. For once at least a poem has been “poured +from the golden to the silver cup” without the spilling of +a drop. The new book’s appearance was coincident with +the death of Mr Browning, “so loving and +appreciative,” as Lady Tennyson wrote; a friend, not a +rival, however the partisans of either poet might strive to stir +emulation between two men of such lofty and such various +genius.</p> +<h2><a name="page203"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +203</span>X.<br /> +1890.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">In</span> the year 1889 the poet’s +health had permitted him to take long walks on the sea-shore and +along the cliffs, one of which, by reason of its whiteness, he +had named “Taliessin,” “the splendid +brow.” His mind ran on a poem founded on an Egyptian +legend (of which the source is not mentioned), telling how +“despair and death came upon him who was mad enough to try +to probe the secret of the universe.” He also thought +of a drama on Tristram, who, in the Idylls, is treated with +brevity, and not with the sympathy of the old writer who cries, +“God bless Tristram the knight: he fought for +England!” But early in 1890 Tennyson suffered from a +severe attack of influenza. In May Mr Watts painted his +portrait, and</p> +<blockquote><p>“Divinely through all hindrance found the +man.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Tennyson was a great admirer of Miss Austen’s novels: +“The realism and life-likeness of Miss Austen’s +<i>Dramatis Personæ</i> come nearest to those of +Shakespeare. Shakespeare, however, is a sun to which Jane +Austen, though a bright and true little world, is but an +asteroid.” He was therefore pleased to find +apple-blossoms co-existing with ripe strawberries on June 28, as +Miss Austen has been blamed, by minute philosophers, for +introducing this combination in the garden party in +<i>Emma</i>. The poet, like most of the good and great, +read novels eagerly, and excited himself over the confirmation of +an adult male in a story by Miss Yonge. Of Scott, +“the most chivalrous literary figure of the century, and +the author with the widest range since Shakespeare,” he +preferred <i>Old Mortality</i>, and it is a good choice. He +hated “morbid and introspective tales, with their oceans of +sham philosophy.” At this time, with catholic taste, +he read Mr Stevenson and Mr Meredith, Miss Braddon and Mr Henry +James, Ouida and Mr Thomas Hardy; Mr Hall Caine and Mr Anstey; +Mrs Oliphant and Miss Edna Lyall. Not everybody can peruse +all of these very diverse authors with pleasure. He began +his poem on the Roman gladiatorial combats; indeed his years, +fourscore and one, left his intellectual eagerness as unimpaired +as that of Goethe. “A crooked share,” he said +to the Princess Louise, “may make a straight +furrow.” “One afternoon he had a long waltz +with M— in the ballroom.” Speaking of</p> +<blockquote><p>“All the charm of all the Muses<br /> + Often flowering in a lonely word”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>in Virgil, he adduced, rather strangely, the <i>cunctantem +ramum</i>, said of the Golden Bough, in the Sixth +Æneid. The choice is odd, because the Sibyl has just +told Æneas that, if he be destined to pluck the branch of +gold, <i>ipse volens facilisque sequetur</i>, “it will come +off of its own accord,” like the sacred <i>ti</i> branches +of the Fijians, which bend down to be plucked for the Fire +rite. Yet, when the predestined Æneas tries to pluck +the bough of gold, it yields <i>reluctantly</i> +(<i>cunctantem</i>), contrary to what the Sibyl has +foretold. Mr Conington, therefore, thought the phrase a +slip on the part of Virgil. “People accused Virgil of +plagiarising,” he said, “but if a man made it his own +there was no harm in that (look at the great poets, Shakespeare +included).” Tennyson, like Virgil, made much that was +ancient his own; his verses are often, and purposefully, a mosaic +of classical reminiscences. But he was vexed by the hunters +after remote and unconscious resemblances, and far-fetched +analogies between his lines and those of others. He +complained that, if he said that the sun went down, a parallel +was at once cited from Homer, or anybody else, and he used a very +powerful phrase to condemn critics who detected such +repetitions. “The moanings of the homeless +sea,”—“moanings” from Horace, +“homeless” from Shelley. “As if no one +else had ever heard the sea moan except Horace!” +Tennyson’s mixture of memory and forgetfulness was not so +strange as that of Scott, and when he adapted from the Greek, +Latin, or Italian, it was of set purpose, just as it was with +Virgil. The beautiful lines comparing a girl’s eyes +to bottom agates that seem to</p> +<blockquote><p> “Wave and float<br /> +In crystal currents of clear running seas,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>he invented while bathing in Wales. It was his habit, to +note down in verse such similes from nature, and to use them when +he found occasion. But the higher criticism, analysing the +simile, detected elements from Shakespeare and from Beaumont and +Fletcher.</p> +<p>In June 1891 the poet went on a tour in Devonshire, and began +his <i>Akbar</i>, and probably wrote <i>June Bracken and +Heather</i>; or perhaps it was composed when “we often sat +on the top of Blackdown to watch the sunset.” He +wrote to Mr Kipling—</p> +<blockquote><p>“The oldest to the youngest singer<br /> + That England bore”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>(to alter Mr Swinburne’s lines to Landor), praising his +<i>Flag of England</i>. Mr Kipling replied as “the +private to the general.”</p> +<p>Early in 1892 <i>The Foresters</i> was successfully produced +at New York by Miss Ada Rehan, the music by Sir Arthur Sullivan, +and the scenery from woodland designs by Whymper. Robin +Hood (as we learn from Mark Twain) is a favourite hero with the +youth of America. Mr Tom Sawyer himself took, in Mark +Twain’s tale, the part of the bold outlaw.</p> +<p><i>The Death of Œnone</i> was published in 1892, with +the dedication to the Master of Balliol—</p> +<blockquote><p> “Read a Grecian tale +retold<br /> +Which, cast in later Grecian mould,<br /> + Quintus Calaber<br /> +Somewhat lazily handled of old.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Quintus Calaber, more usually called Quintus Smyrnæus, +is a writer of perhaps the fourth century of our era. About +him nothing, or next to nothing, is known. He told, in so +late an age, the conclusion of the Tale of Troy, and (in the +writer’s opinion) has been unduly neglected and +disdained. His manner, I venture to think, is more Homeric +than that of the more famous and doubtless greater Alexandrian +poet of the Argonautic cycle, Apollonius Rhodius, his senior by +five centuries. His materials were probably the ancient and +lost poems of the Epic Cycle, and the story of the death of +Œnone may be from the <i>Little Iliad</i> of Lesches. +Possibly parts of his work may be textually derived from the +Cyclics, but the topic is very obscure. In Quintus, Paris, +after encountering evil omens on his way, makes a long speech, +imploring the pardon of the deserted Œnone. She +replies, not with the Tennysonian brevity; she sends him back to +the helpless arms of her rival, Helen. Paris dies on the +hills; never did Helen see him returning. The wood-nymphs +bewail Paris, and a herdsman brings the bitter news to Helen, who +chants her lament. But remorse falls on Œnone. +She does not go</p> +<blockquote><p> “Slowly +down<br /> +By the long torrent’s ever-deepened roar,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>but rushes “swift as the wind to seek and spring upon +the pyre of her lord.” Fate and Aphrodite drive her +headlong, and in heaven Selene, remembering Endymion, bewails the +lot of her sister in sorrow. Œnone reaches the +funeral flame, and without a word or a cry leaps into her +husband’s arms, the wild Nymphs wondering. The lovers +are mingled in one heap of ashes, and these are bestowed in one +vessel of gold and buried in a howe. This is the story +which the poet rehandled in his old age, completing the work of +his happy youth when he walked with Hallam in the Pyrenean hills, +that were to him as Ida. The romance of Œnone and her +death condone, as even Homer was apt to condone, the sins of +beautiful Paris, whom the nymphs lament, despite the evil that he +has wrought. The silence of the veiled Œnone, as she +springs into her lover’s last embrace, is perhaps more +affecting and more natural than Tennyson’s</p> +<blockquote><p> “She lifted up a voice<br +/> +Of shrill command, ‘Who burns upon the +pyre?’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The <i>St Telemachus</i> has the old splendour and vigour of +verse, and, though written so late in life, is worthy of the +poet’s prime:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “Eve after eve that +haggard anchorite<br /> +Would haunt the desolated fane, and there<br /> +Gaze at the ruin, often mutter low<br /> +‘Vicisti Galilæe’; louder again,<br /> +Spurning a shatter’d fragment of the God,<br /> +‘Vicisti Galilæe!’ but—when now<br /> +Bathed in that lurid crimson—ask’d ‘Is earth<br +/> +On fire to the West? or is the Demon-god<br /> +Wroth at his fall?’ and heard an answer ‘Wake<br /> +Thou deedless dreamer, lazying out a life<br /> +Of self-suppression, not of selfless love.’<br /> +And once a flight of shadowy fighters crost<br /> +The disk, and once, he thought, a shape with wings<br /> +Came sweeping by him, and pointed to the West,<br /> +And at his ear he heard a whisper ‘Rome,’<br /> +And in his heart he cried ‘The call of God!’<br /> +And call’d arose, and, slowly plunging down<br /> +Thro’ that disastrous glory, set his face<br /> +By waste and field and town of alien tongue,<br /> +Following a hundred sunsets, and the sphere<br /> +Of westward-wheeling stars; and every dawn<br /> +Struck from him his own shadow on to Rome.<br /> + Foot-sore, way-worn, at length he touch’d his +goal,<br /> +The Christian city.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><i>Akbar’s Dream</i> may be taken, more or less, to +represent the poet’s own theology of a race seeking after +God, if perchance they may find Him, and the closing Hymn was a +favourite with Tennyson. He said, “It is a +magnificent metre”:—</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">“<span +class="smcap">Hymn</span>.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">I.</p> +<p>Once again thou flamest heavenward, once again we see thee +rise.<br /> +Every morning is thy birthday gladdening human hearts and +eyes.<br /> + Every morning here we greet it, bowing lowly down +before thee,<br /> +Thee the Godlike, thee the changeless in thine ever-changing +skies.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">II.</p> +<p>Shadow-maker, shadow-slayer, arrowing light from clime to +clime,<br /> +Hear thy myriad laureates hail thee monarch in their woodland +rhyme.<br /> + Warble bird, and open flower, and, men, below the +dome of azure<br /> +Kneel adoring Him the Timeless in the flame that measures +Time!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In this final volume the poet cast his handful of incense on +the altar of Scott, versifying the tale of <i>Il Bizarro</i>, +which the dying Sir Walter records in his Journal in Italy. +<i>The Churchwarden and the Curate</i> is not inferior to the +earlier peasant poems in its expression of shrewdness, humour, +and superstition. A verse of <i>Poets and Critics</i> may +be taken as the poet’s last word on the old futile +quarrel:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“This thing, that thing is the rage,<br /> +Helter-skelter runs the age;<br /> +Minds on this round earth of ours<br /> +Vary like the leaves and flowers,<br /> + Fashion’d after certain laws;<br /> +Sing thou low or loud or sweet,<br /> +All at all points thou canst not meet,<br /> + Some will pass and some will pause.</p> +<p>What is true at last will tell:<br /> +Few at first will place thee well;<br /> +Some too low would have thee shine,<br /> +Some too high—no fault of thine—<br /> + Hold thine own, and work thy will!<br /> +Year will graze the heel of year,<br /> +But seldom comes the poet here,<br /> + And the Critic’s rarer still.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Still the lines hold good—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Some too low would have thee shine,<br /> +Some too high—no fault of thine.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The end was now at hand. A sense of weakness was felt by +the poet on September 3, 1892: on the 28th his family sent for +Sir Andrew Clark; but the patient gradually faded out of life, +and expired on Thursday, October 6, at 1.35 <span +class="GutSmall">A.M.</span> To the very last he had +Shakespeare by him, and his windows were open to the sun; on the +last night they were flooded by the moonlight. The +description of the final scenes must be read in the Biography by +the poet’s son. “His patience and quiet +strength had power upon those who were nearest and dearest to +him; we felt thankful for the love and the utter peace of it +all.” “The life after death,” Tennyson +had said just before his fatal illness, “is the cardinal +point of Christianity. I believe that God reveals Himself +in every individual soul; and my idea of Heaven is the perpetual +ministry of one soul to another.” He had lived the +life of heaven upon earth, being in all his work a minister of +things honourable, lovely, consoling, and ennobling to the souls +of others, with a ministry which cannot die. His body +sleeps next to that of his friend and fellow-poet, Robert +Browning, in front of Chaucer’s monument in the Abbey.</p> +<h2><a name="page212"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +212</span>XI.<br /> +LAST CHAPTER.</h2> +<p>“O, <span class="smcap">that</span> Press will get hold +of me now,” Tennyson said when he knew that his last hour +was at hand. He had a horror of personal tattle, as even +his early poems declare—</p> +<blockquote><p>“For now the Poet cannot die,<br /> + Nor leave his music as of old,<br /> + But round him ere he scarce be cold<br /> +Begins the scandal and the cry.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But no “carrion-vulture” has waited</p> +<blockquote><p>“To tear his heart before the +crowd.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>About Tennyson, doubtless, there is much anecdotage: most of +the anecdotes turn on his shyness, his really exaggerated hatred +of personal notoriety, and the odd and brusque things which he +would say when alarmed by effusive strangers. It has not +seemed worth while to repeat more than one or two of these +legends, nor have I sought outside the Biography by his son for +more than the biographer chose to tell. The readers who are +least interested in poetry are most interested in tattle about +the poet. It is the privilege of genius to retain the +freshness and simplicity, with some of the foibles, of the +child. When Tennyson read his poems aloud he was apt to be +moved by them, and to express frankly his approbation where he +thought it deserved. Only very rudimentary psychologists +recognised conceit in this freedom; and only the same set of +persons mistook shyness for arrogance. Effusiveness of +praise or curiosity in a stranger is apt to produce bluntness of +reply in a Briton. “Don’t talk d—d +nonsense, sir,” said the Duke of Wellington to the gushing +person who piloted him, in his old age, across Piccadilly. +Of Tennyson Mr Palgrave says, “I have known him silenced, +almost frozen, before the eager unintentional eyes of a girl of +fifteen. And under the stress of this nervous impulse +compelled to contradict his inner self (especially when under the +terror of leonisation . . . ), he was doubtless at times betrayed +into an abrupt phrase, a cold unsympathetic exterior; a +moment’s ‘defect of the rose.’” Had +he not been sensitive in all things, he would have been less of a +poet. The chief criticism directed against his mode of life +is that he <i>was</i> sensitive and reserved, but he could and +did make himself pleasant in the society of <i>les pauvres +d’esprit</i>. Curiosity alarmed him, and drove him +into his shell: strangers who met him in that mood carried away +false impressions, which developed into myths. As the +Master of Balliol has recorded, despite his shyness “he was +extremely hospitable, often inviting not only his friends, but +the friends of his friends, and giving them a hearty +welcome. For underneath a sensitive exterior he was +thoroughly genial if he was understood.” In these +points he was unlike his great contemporary, Browning; for +instance, Tennyson never (I think) was the Master’s guest +at Balliol, mingling, like Browning, with the undergraduates, to +whom the Master’s hospitality was freely extended. +Yet, where he was familiar, Tennyson was a gay companion, not +shunning jest or even paradox. “As Dr Johnson says, +every man may be judged of by his laughter”: but no Boswell +has chronicled the laughters of Tennyson. “He never, +or hardly ever, made puns or witticisms” (though one pun, +at least, endures in tradition), “but always lived in an +attitude of humour.” Mr Jowett writes (and no +description of the poet is better than his)—</p> +<blockquote><p>If I were to describe his outward appearance, I +should say that he was certainly unlike any one else whom I ever +saw. A glance at some of Watts’ portraits of him will +give, better than any description which can be expressed in +words, a conception of his noble mien and look. He was a +magnificent man, who stood before you in his native refinement +and strength. The unconventionality of his manners was in +keeping with the originality of his figure. He would +sometimes say nothing, or a word or two only, to the stranger who +approached him, out of shyness. He would sometimes come +into the drawing-room reading a book. At other times, +especially to ladies, he was singularly gracious and +benevolent. He would talk about the accidents of his own +life with an extraordinary freedom, as at the moment they +appeared to present themselves to his mind, the days of his +boyhood that were passed at Somersby, and the old school of +manners which he came across in his own neighbourhood: the days +of the “apostles” at Cambridge: the years which he +spent in London; the evenings enjoyed at the Cock Tavern, and +elsewhere, when he saw another side of life, not without a kindly +and humorous sense of the ridiculous in his +fellow-creatures. His repertory of stories was perfectly +inexhaustible; they were often about slight matters that would +scarcely bear repetition, but were told with such lifelike +reality, that they convulsed his hearers with laughter. +Like most story-tellers, he often repeated his favourites; but, +like children, his audience liked hearing them again and again, +and he enjoyed telling them. It might be said of him that +he told more stories than any one, but was by no means the +regular story-teller. In the commonest conversation he +showed himself a man of genius.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>To this description may be added another by Mr F. T. +Palgrave:—</p> +<blockquote><p>Every one will have seen men, distinguished in +some line of work, whose conversation (to take the old figure) +either “smelt too strongly of the lamp,” or lay quite +apart from their art or craft. What, through all these +years, struck me about Tennyson, was that whilst he never +deviated into poetical language as such, whether in rhetoric or +highly coloured phrase, yet throughout the substance of his talk +the same mode of thought, the same imaginative grasp of nature, +the same fineness and gentleness in his view of character, the +same forbearance and toleration, the <i>aurea mediocritas</i> +despised by fools and fanatics, which are stamped on his poetry, +were constantly perceptible: whilst in the easy and as it were +unsought choiceness, the conscientious and truth-loving precision +of his words, the same personal identity revealed itself. +What a strange charm lay here, how deeply illuminating the whole +character, as in prolonged intercourse it gradually revealed +itself! Artist and man, Tennyson was invariably true to +himself, or rather, in Wordsworth’s phrase, he “moved +altogether”; his nature and his poetry being harmonious +aspects of the same soul; as botanists tell us that flower and +fruit are but transformations of root and stem and leafage. +We read how, in mediæval days, conduits were made to flow +with claret. But this was on great occasions only. +Tennyson’s fountain always ran wine.</p> +<p>Once more: In Mme. Récamier’s <i>salon</i>, I +have read, at the time when conversation was yet a fine art in +Paris, guests famous for <i>esprit</i> would sit in the twilight +round the stove, whilst each in turn let fly some sparkling +anecdote or bon-mot, which rose and shone and died out into +silence, till the next of the elect pyrotechnists was +ready. Good things of this kind, as I have said, were +plentiful in Tennyson’s repertory. But what, to pass +from the materials to the method of his conversation, eminently +marked it was the continuity of the electric current. He +spoke, and was silent, and spoke again: but the circuit was +unbroken; there was no effort in taking up the thread, no sense +of disjunction. Often I thought, had he never written a +line of the poems so dear to us, his conversation alone would +have made him the most interesting companion known to me. +From this great and gracious student of humanity, what less, +indeed, could be expected? And if, as a converser, I were +to compare him with Socrates, as figured for us in the dialogues +of his great disciple, I think that I should have the assent of +that eminently valued friend of Tennyson’s, whose long +labour of love has conferred English citizenship upon Plato.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>We have called him shy and sensitive in daily intercourse with +strangers, and as to criticism, he freely confessed that a midge +of dispraise could sting, while applause gave him little +pleasure. Yet no poet altered his verses so much in +obedience to censure unjustly or irritatingly stated, yet in +essence just. He readily rejected some of his +“Juvenilia” on Mr Palgrave’s suggestion. +The same friend tells how well he took a rather fierce attack on +an unpublished piece, when Mr Palgrave “owned that he could +not find one good line in it.” Very few poets, or +even versifiers (fiercer they than poets are), would have +continued to show their virgin numbers to a friend so candid, as +Tennyson did. Perhaps most of the <i>genus irritabile</i> +will grant that spoken criticism, if unfavourable, somehow annoys +and stirs opposition in an author; probably because it confirms +his own suspicions about his work. Such criticism is almost +invariably just. But Campbell, when Rogers offered a +correction, “bounced out of the room, with a ‘Hang +it! I should like to see the man who would dare to correct +me.’”</p> +<p>Mr Jowett justly recognised in the life of Tennyson two +circumstances which made him other than, but for these, he would +have been. He had intended to do with the Arthurian subject +what he never did, “in some way or other to have +represented in it the great religions of the world. . . . It is a +proof of Tennyson’s genius that he should have thus early +grasped the great historical aspect of religion.” His +intention was foiled, his early dream was broken, by the death of +Arthur Hallam, and by the coldness and contempt with which, at +the same period, his early poems were received.</p> +<p>Mr Jowett (who had a firm belief in the “great +work”) regretted the change of plan as to the Arthurian +topic, regretted it the more from his own interest in the History +of Religion. But we need not share the regrets. The +early plan for the Arthur (which Mr Jowett never saw) has been +published, and certainly the scheme could not have been executed +on these lines. <a name="citation218"></a><a href="#footnote218" +class="citation">[218]</a> Moreover, as the Master +observed, the work would have been premature in Tennyson’s +youth, and, indeed, it would still be premature. The +comparative science of religious evolution is even now very +tentative, and does not yield materials of sufficient stability +for an epic, even if such an epic could be forced into the mould +of the Arthur legends, a feat perhaps impossible, and certainly +undesirable. A truly fantastic allegory must have been the +result, and it is fortunate that the poet abandoned the idea in +favour of more human themes. Moreover, he recognised very +early that his was not a Muse <i>de longue haleine</i>; that he +must be “short.” We may therefore feel certain +that his early sorrow and discouragement were salutary to him as +a poet, and as a man. He became more sympathetic, more +tender, and was obliged to put forth that stoical self-control, +and strenuous courage and endurance, through which alone his +poetic career was rendered possible. “He had the +susceptibility of a child or a woman,” says his friend; +“he had also” (it was a strange combination) +“the strength of a giant or of a god.” Without +these qualities he must have broken down between 1833 and 1842 +into a hypochondriac, or a morose, if majestic, failure. +Poor, obscure, and unhappy, he overcame the world, and passed +from darkness into light. The “poetic +temperament” in another not gifted with his endurance and +persistent strength would have achieved ruin.</p> +<p>Most of us remember Taine’s parallel between Tennyson +and Alfred de Musset. The French critic has no high +approval of Tennyson’s “respectability” and +long peaceful life, as compared with the wrecked life and genius +of Musset, <i>l’enfant perdu</i> of love, wine, and +song. This is a theory like another, and is perhaps +attractive to the young. The poet must have strong +passions, or how can he sing of them: he must be tossed and +whirled in the stress of things, like Shelley’s autumn +leaves;—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Ghosts from an enchanter +fleeing.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Looking at Burns, Byron, Musset, or even at Shelley’s +earlier years, youth sees in them the true poets, “sacred +things,” but also “light,” as Plato says, +inspired to break their wings against the nature of existence, +and the <i>flammantia mænia mundi</i>. But this is +almost a boyish idea, this idea that the true poet is the slave +of the passions, and that the poet who dominates them has none, +and is but a staid domestic animal, an ass browsing the common, +as somebody has written about Wordsworth. Certainly +Tennyson’s was no “passionless +perfection.” He, like others, was tempted to beat +with ineffectual wings against the inscrutable nature of +life. He, too, had his dark hour, and was as subject to +temptation as they who yielded to the stress and died, or became +unhappy waifs, “young men with a splendid +past.” He must have known, no less than Musset, the +attractions of many a <i>paradis artificiel</i>, with its bright +visions, its houris, its offers of oblivion of pain. +“He had the look of one who had suffered greatly,” Mr +Palgrave writes in his record of their first meeting in +1842. But he, like Goethe, Scott, and Victor Hugo, had +strength as well as passion and emotion; he came unscorched +through the fire that has burned away the wings of so many other +great poets. This was no less fortunate for the world than +for himself. Of his prolonged dark hour we know little in +detail, but we have seen that from the first he resisted the +Tempter; <i>Ulysses</i> is his <i>Retro Sathanas</i>!</p> +<p>About “the mechanism of genius” in Tennyson Mr +Palgrave has told us a little; more appears incidentally in his +biography. “It was his way that when we had entered +on some scene of special beauty or grandeur, after enjoying it +together, he should always withdraw wholly from sight, and study +the view, as it were, in a little artificial solitude.”</p> +<p>Tennyson’s poems, Mr Palgrave says, often arose in a +kind of <i>point de repère</i> (like those forms and +landscapes which seem to spring from a floating point of light, +beheld with closed eyes just before we sleep). “More +than once he said that his poems sprang often from a +‘nucleus,’ some one word, maybe, or brief melodious +phrase, which had floated through the brain, as it were, +unbidden. And perhaps at once while walking they were +presently wrought into a little song. But if he did not +write it down at once the lyric fled from him +irrecoverably.” He believed himself thus to have lost +poems as good as his best. It seems probable that this is a +common genesis of verses, good or bad, among all who write. +Like Dickens, and like most men of genius probably, he saw all +the scenes of his poems “in his mind’s +eye.” Many authors do this, without the power of +making their readers share the vision; but probably few can +impart the vision who do not themselves “visualise” +with distinctness. We have seen, in the cases of <i>The +Holy Grail</i> and other pieces, that Tennyson, after long +meditating a subject, often wrote very rapidly, and with little +need of correction. He was born with “style”; +it was a gift of his genius rather than the result of conscious +elaboration. Yet he did use “the file,” of +which much is now written, especially for the purpose of +polishing away the sibilants, so common in our language. In +the nine years of silence which followed the little book of 1833 +his poems matured, and henceforth it is probable that he altered +his verses little, if we except the modifications in <i>The +Princess</i>. Many slight verbal touches were made, or old +readings were restored, but important changes, in the way of +omission or addition, became rare.</p> +<p>Of nature Tennyson was scrupulously observant till his very +latest days, eagerly noting, not only “effects,” as a +painter does, but their causes, botanical or geological. +Had man been scientific from the beginning he would probably have +evolved no poetry at all; material things would not have been +endowed by him with life and passion; he would have told himself +no stories of the origins of stars and flowers, clouds and fire, +winds and rainbows. Modern poets have resented, like Keats +and Wordsworth, the destruction of the old prehistoric dreams by +the geologist and by other scientific characters. But it +was part of Tennyson’s poetic originality to see the +beautiful things of nature at once with the vision of early +poetic men, and of moderns accustomed to the microscope, +telescope, spectrum analysis, and so forth. Thus Tennyson +received a double delight from the sensible universe, and it is a +double delight that he communicates to his readers. His +intellect was thus always active, even in apparent repose. +His eyes rested not from observing, or his mind from recording +and comparing, the beautiful familiar phenomena of earth and +sky. In the matter of the study of books we have seen how +deeply versed he was in certain of the Greek, Roman, and Italian +classics. Mr Jowett writes: “He was what might be +called a good scholar in the university or public-school sense of +the term, . . . yet I seem to remember that he had his favourite +classics, such as Homer, and Pindar, and Theocritus. . . . He was +also a lover of Greek fragments. But I am not sure whether, +in later life, he ever sat down to read consecutively the +greatest works of Æschylus and Sophocles, although he used +occasionally to dip into them.” The Greek dramatists, +in fact, seem to have affected Tennyson’s work but +slightly, while he constantly reminds us of Virgil, Homer, +Theocritus, and even Persius and Horace. Mediæval +French, whether in poetry or prose, and the poetry of the +“Pleiad” seems to have occupied little of his +attention. Into the oriental literatures he +dipped—pretty deeply for his <i>Akbar</i>; and even his +<i>Locksley Hall</i> owed something to Sir William Jones’s +version of “the old Arabian <i>Moallakat</i>.” +The debt appears to be infinitesimal. He seems to have been +less closely familiar with Elizabethan poetry than might have +been expected: a number of his <i>obiter dicta</i> on all kinds +of literary points are recorded in the <i>Life</i> by Mr +Palgrave. “Sir Walter Scott’s short tale, <i>My +Aunt Margaret’s Mirror</i> (how little known!), he once +spoke of as the finest of all ghost or magical +stories.” Lord Tennyson adds, “<i>The +Tapestried Chamber</i> also he greatly admired.” Both +are lost from modern view among the short pieces of the last +volumes of the <i>Waverley</i> novels. Of the poet’s +interest in and attitude towards the more obscure pyschological +and psychical problems—to popular science +foolishness—enough has been said, but the remarks of +Professor Tyndall have not been cited:—</p> +<blockquote><p>My special purpose in introducing this poem, +however, was to call your attention to a passage further on which +greatly interested me. The poem is, throughout, a +discussion between a believer in immortality and one who is +unable to believe. The method pursued is this. The +Sage reads a portion of the scroll, which he has taken from the +hands of his follower, and then brings his own arguments to bear +upon that portion, with a view to neutralising the scepticism of +the younger man. Let me here remark that I read the whole +series of poems published under the title “Tiresias,” +full of admiration for their freshness and vigour. Seven +years after I had first read them your father died, and you, his +son, asked me to contribute a chapter to the book which you +contemplate publishing. I knew that I had some small store +of references to my interview with your father carefully written +in ancient journals. On the receipt of your request, I +looked up the account of my first visit to Farringford, and +there, to my profound astonishment, I found described that +experience of your father’s which, in the mouth of the +Ancient Sage, was made the ground of an important argument +against materialism and in favour of personal immortality +eight-and-twenty years afterwards. In no other poem during +all these years is, to my knowledge, this experience once alluded +to. I had completely forgotten it, but here it was recorded +in black and white. If you turn to your father’s +account of the wonderful state of consciousness superinduced by +thinking of his own name, and compare it with the argument of the +Ancient Sage, you will see that they refer to one and the same +phenomenon.</p> +</blockquote> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<blockquote><p> And more, my son! for more than +once when I<br /> +Sat all alone, revolving in myself<br /> +The word that is the symbol of myself,<br /> +The mortal limit of the Self was loosed,<br /> +And past into the Nameless, as a cloud<br /> +Melts into heaven. I touch’d my limbs, the limbs<br +/> +Were strange, not mine—and yet no shade of doubt,<br /> +But utter clearness, and thro’ loss of Self<br /> +The gain of such large life as match’d with ours<br /> +Were Sun to spark—unshadowable in words,<br /> +Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Any words about Tennyson as a politician are apt to excite the +sleepless prejudice which haunts the political field. He +probably, if forced to “put a name to it,” would have +called himself a Liberal. But he was not a social +agitator. He never set a rick on fire. “He held +aloof, in a somewhat detached position, from the great social +seethings of his age” (Mr Frederic Harrison). But in +youth he helped to extinguish some flaming ricks. He spoke +of the “many-headed beast” (the reading public) in +terms borrowed from Plato. He had no higher esteem for mobs +than Shakespeare or John Knox professed, while his theory of +tyrants (in the case of Napoleon III. about 1852) was that of +Liberals like Mr Swinburne and Victor Hugo. Though to +modern enlightenment Tennyson may seem as great a Tory as Dr +Johnson, yet he had spoken his word in 1852 for the freedom of +France, and for securing England against the supposed designs of +a usurper (now fallen). He really believed, obsolete as the +faith may be, in guarding our own, both on land and sea. +Perhaps no Continental or American critic has ever yet dispraised +a poetical fellow-countryman merely for urging the duties of +national union and national defence. A critic, however, +writes thus of Tennyson: “When our poet descends into the +arena of party polemics, in such things as <i>Riflemen</i>, +<i>Form</i>! <i>Hands all Round</i>, . . . <i>The +Fleet</i>, and other topical pieces dear to the Jingo soul, it is +not poetry but journalism.” I doubt whether the +desirableness of the existence of a volunteer force and of a +fleet really is within the arena of <i>party</i> polemics. +If any party thinks that we ought to have no volunteers, and that +it is our duty to starve the fleet, what is that party’s +name? Who cries, “Down with the Fleet! Down +with National Defence! Hooray for the Disintegration of the +Empire!”?</p> +<p>Tennyson was not a party man, but he certainly would have +opposed any such party. If to defend our homes and this +England be “Jingoism,” Tennyson, like Shakespeare, +was a Jingo. But, alas! I do not know the name of the party +which opposes Tennyson, and which wishes the invader to trample +down England—any invader will do for so philanthropic a +purpose. Except when resisting this unnamed party, the poet +seldom or never entered “the arena of party +polemics.” Tennyson could not have exclaimed, like +Squire Western, “Hurrah for old England! Twenty +thousand honest Frenchmen have landed in Kent!” He +undeniably did write verses (whether poetry or journalism) +tending to make readers take an unfavourable view of honest +invaders. If to do that is to be a “Jingo,” and +if such conduct hurts the feelings of any great English party, +then Tennyson was a Jingo and a partisan, and was, so far, a +rhymester, like Mr Kipling. Indeed we know that Tennyson +applauded Mr Kipling’s <i>The English Flag</i>. So +the worst is out, as we in England count the worst. In +America and on the continent of Europe, however, a poet may be +proud of his country’s flag without incurring rebuke from +his countrymen. Tennyson did not reckon himself a party +man; he believed more in political evolution than in political +revolution, with cataclysms. He was neither an Anarchist +nor a Home Ruler, nor a politician so generous as to wish England +to be laid defenceless at the feet of her foes.</p> +<p>If these sentiments deserve censure, in Tennyson, at least, +they claim our tolerance. He was not born in a generation +late enough to be truly Liberal. Old prejudices about +“this England,” old words from <i>Henry V.</i> and +<i>King John</i>, haunted his memory and darkened his vision of +the true proportions of things. We draw in prejudice with +our mother’s milk. The mother of Tennyson had not +been an Agnostic or a Comtist; his father had not been a staunch +true-blue anti-Englander. Thus he inherited a certain bias +in favour of faith and fatherland, a bias from which he could +never emancipate himself. But <i>tout comprendre +c’est tout pardonner</i>. Had Tennyson’s birth +been later, we might find in him a more complete realisation of +our poetic ideal—might have detected less to blame or to +forgive.</p> +<p>With that apology we must leave the fame of Tennyson as a +politician to the clement consideration of an enlightened +posterity. I do not defend his narrow insularities, his +Jingoism, or the appreciable percentage of faith which blushing +analysis may detect in his honest doubt: these things I may +regret or condemn, but we ought not to let them obscure our view +of the Poet. He was led away by bad examples. Of all +Jingoes Shakespeare is the most unashamed, and next to him are +Drayton, Scott, and Wordsworth, with his</p> +<blockquote><p>“Oh, for one hour of that Dundee!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In the years which followed the untoward affair of Waterloo +young Tennyson fell much under the influence of Shakespeare, +Wordsworth, and the other offenders, and these are extenuating +circumstances. By a curious practical paradox, where the +realms of poetry and politics meet, the Tory critics seem milder +of mood and more Liberal than the Liberal critics. Thus Mr +William Morris was certainly a very advanced political theorist; +and in theology Mr Swinburne has written things not easily +reconcilable with orthodoxy. Yet we find Divine-Right +Tories, who in literature are fervent admirers of these two +poets, and leave their heterodoxies out of account. But +many Liberal critics appear unable quite to forgive Tennyson +because he did not wish to starve the fleet, and because he held +certain very ancient, if obsolete, beliefs. Perhaps a +general amnesty ought to be passed, as far as poets are +concerned, and their politics and creeds should be left to +silence, where “beyond these voices there is +peace.”</p> +<p>One remark, I hope, can excite no prejudice. The +greatest of the Gordons was a soldier, and lived in +religion. But the point at which Tennyson’s memory is +blended with that of Gordon is the point of sympathy with the +neglected poor. It is to his wise advice, and to affection +for Gordon, that we owe the Gordon training school for poor +boys,—a good school, and good boys come out of that +academy.</p> +<p>The question as to Tennyson’s precise rank in the +glorious roll of the Poets of England can never be determined by +us, if in any case or at any time such determinations can be +made. We do not, or should not, ask whether Virgil or +Lucretius, whether Æschylus or Sophocles, is the greater +poet. The consent of mankind seems to place Homer and +Shakespeare and Dante high above all. For the rest no +prize-list can be settled. If influence among aliens is the +test, Byron probably takes, among our poets, the next rank after +Shakespeare. But probably there is no possible test. +In certain respects Shelley, in many respects Milton, in some +Coleridge, in some Burns, in the opinion of a number of persons +Browning, are greater poets than Tennyson. But for +exquisite variety and varied exquisiteness Tennyson is not +readily to be surpassed. At one moment he pleases the +uncritical mass of readers, in another mood he wins the verdict +of the <i>raffiné</i>. It is a success which scarce +any English poet but Shakespeare has excelled. His faults +have rarely, if ever, been those of flat-footed, +“thick-ankled” dulness; of rhetoric, of common-place; +rather have his defects been the excess of his qualities. A +kind of John Bullishness may also be noted, especially in +derogatory references to France, which, true or untrue, are out +of taste and keeping. But these errors could be removed by +the excision of half-a-dozen lines. His later work (as the +<i>Voyage of Maeldune</i>) shows a just appreciation of ancient +Celtic literature. A great critic, F. T. Palgrave, has +expressed perhaps the soundest appreciation of +Tennyson:—</p> +<blockquote><p>It is for “the days that remain” to +bear witness to his real place in the great hierarchy, amongst +whom Dante boldly yet justly ranked himself. But if we look +at Tennyson’s work in a twofold aspect,—<i>Here</i>, +on the exquisite art in which, throughout, his verse is clothed, +the lucid beauty of the form, the melody almost audible as music, +the mysterious skill by which the words used constantly strike as +the <i>inevitable</i> words (and hence, unforgettable), the +subtle allusive touches, by which a secondary image is suggested +to enrich the leading thought, as the harmonic +“partials” give richness to the note struck upon the +string; <i>There</i>, when we think of the vast fertility in +subject and treatment, united with happy selection of motive, the +wide range of character, the dramatic force of impersonation, the +pathos in every variety, the mastery over the comic and the +tragic alike, above all, perhaps, those phrases of luminous +insight which spring direct from imaginative observation of +Humanity, true for all time, coming from the heart to the +heart,—his work will probably be found to lie somewhere +between that of Virgil and Shakespeare: having its portion, if I +may venture on the phrase, in the inspiration of both.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>A professed enthusiast for Tennyson can add nothing to, and +take nothing from, these words of one who, though his friend, was +too truly a critic to entertain the admiration that goes beyond +idolatry.</p> +<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> +<p><a name="footnote1"></a><a href="#citation1" +class="footnote">[1]</a> Macmillan & Co.</p> +<p><a name="footnote7"></a><a href="#citation7" +class="footnote">[7]</a> To the present writer, as to +others, <i>The Lover’s Tale</i> appeared to be imitative of +Shelley, but if Tennyson had never read Shelley, <i>cadit +quæstio</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote16"></a><a href="#citation16" +class="footnote">[16]</a> F. W. H. Myers, <i>Science and a +Future Life</i>, p. 133.</p> +<p><a name="footnote39"></a><a href="#citation39" +class="footnote">[39]</a> The writer knew this edition +before he knew Tennyson’s poems.</p> +<p><a name="footnote50"></a><a href="#citation50" +class="footnote">[50]</a> The author of the spiteful +letters was an unpublished anonymous person.</p> +<p><a name="footnote58"></a><a href="#citation58" +class="footnote">[58]</a> The Lennox MSS.</p> +<p><a name="footnote62"></a><a href="#citation62" +class="footnote">[62]</a> Spencer and Gillen, <i>Natives of +Central Australia</i>, pp. 388, 389.</p> +<p><a name="footnote65"></a><a href="#citation65" +class="footnote">[65]</a> <i>Tennyson</i>, <i>Ruskin</i>, +<i>and Mill</i>, pp. 11, 12.</p> +<p><a name="footnote66"></a><a href="#citation66" +class="footnote">[66]</a> <i>Life</i>, p. 37, 1899.</p> +<p><a name="footnote72"></a><a href="#citation72" +class="footnote">[72]</a> Poem omitted from <i>In +Memoriam</i>. <i>Life</i>, p. 257, 1899.</p> +<p><a name="footnote74"></a><a href="#citation74" +class="footnote">[74]</a> Mr Harrison, <i>Tennyson</i>, +<i>Ruskin</i>, <i>and Mill</i>, p. 5.</p> +<p><a name="footnote112"></a><a href="#citation112" +class="footnote">[112]</a> The English reader may consult +Mr Rhys’s <i>The Arthurian Legend</i>, Oxford, 1891, and Mr +Nutt’s <i>Studies of the Legend of the Holy Grail</i>, +which will direct him to other authorities and sources.</p> +<p><a name="footnote113"></a><a href="#citation113" +class="footnote">[113]</a> I have summarised, with +omissions, Miss Jessie L. Watson’s sketch in <i>King Arthur +and his Knights</i>. Nutt, 1899. The learning of the +subject is enormous; Dr Sommer’s <i>Le Mort +d’Arthur</i>, the second volume may be consulted. +Nutt, 1899.</p> +<p><a name="footnote129a"></a><a href="#citation129a" +class="footnote">[129a]</a> +Βέλενος and +Βήληνος. He is +referred to in inscriptions, <i>e.g.</i> Berlin, <i>Corpus</i>, +iii. 4774, V. 732, 733, 1829, 2143–46; xii. 405. See +also Ausonius (Leipsic, 1886, pp. 52, 59), cited by Rhys, <i>The +Arthurian Legend</i> p. 159, note 4.</p> +<p><a name="footnote129b"></a><a href="#citation129b" +class="footnote">[129b]</a> Brebeuf; <i>Relations des +Jésuites</i>, 1636, pp. 100–102.</p> +<p><a name="footnote139"></a><a href="#citation139" +class="footnote">[139]</a> Malory, xviii. 8 <i>et +seq.</i></p> +<p><a name="footnote196"></a><a href="#citation196" +class="footnote">[196]</a> Notices et Extraits des MSS. de +la Bibliothèque Impériale, I. xix. pp. +643–645.</p> +<p><a name="footnote218"></a><a href="#citation218" +class="footnote">[218]</a> See the <i>Life</i>, 1899, p. +521.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALFRED TENNYSON***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 3654-h.htm or 3654-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/6/5/3654 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.06/12/01*END* +[Portions of this header are copyright (C) 2001 by Michael S. Hart +and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.] +[Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be used in any sales +of Project Gutenberg Etexts or other materials be they hardware or +software or any other related product without express permission.] + + + + + +This etext was produced by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, +from the 1901 William Blackwood and Sons edition. + + + + + +ALFRED TENNYSON + +by Andrew Lang + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + + +In writing this brief sketch of the Life of Tennyson, and this +attempt to appreciate his work, I have rested almost entirely on the +Biography by Lord Tennyson (with his kind permission) and on the text +of the Poems. As to the Life, doubtless current anecdotes, not given +in the Biography, are known to me, and to most people. But as they +must also be familiar to the author of the Biography, I have not +thought it desirable to include what he rejected. The works of the +"localisers" I have not read: Tennyson disliked these researches, as +a rule, and they appear to be unessential, and often hazardous. The +professed commentators I have not consulted. It appeared better to +give one's own impressions of the Poems, unaffected by the +impressions of others, except in one or two cases where matters of +fact rather than of taste seemed to be in question. Thus on two or +three points I have ventured to differ from a distinguished living +critic, and have given the reasons for my dissent. Professor +Bradley's Commentary on In Memoriam {1} came out after this sketch +was in print. Many of the comments cited by Mr Bradley from his +predecessors appear to justify my neglect of these curious inquirers. +The "difficulties" which they raise are not likely, as a rule, to +present themselves to persons who read poetry "for human pleasure." + +I have not often dwelt on parallels to be found in the works of +earlier poets. In many cases Tennyson deliberately reproduced +passages from Greek, Latin, and old Italian writers, just as Virgil +did in the case of Homer, Theocritus, Apollonius Rhodius, and others. +There are, doubtless, instances in which a phrase is unconsciously +reproduced by automatic memory, from an English poet. But I am less +inclined than Mr Bradley to think that unconscious reminiscence is +more common in Tennyson than in the poets generally. I have not +closely examined Keats and Shelley, for example, to see how far they +were influenced by unconscious memory. But Scott, confessedly, was +apt to reproduce the phrases of others, and once unwittingly borrowed +from a poem by the valet of one of his friends! I believe that many +of the alleged borrowings in Tennyson are either no true parallels at +all or are the unavoidable coincidences of expression which must +inevitably occur. The poet himself stated, in a lively phrase, his +opinion of the hunters after parallels, and I confess that I am much +of his mind. They often remind me of Mr Punch's parody on an +unfriendly review of Alexander Smith - + + +"Most WOMEN have NO CHARACTER at all." --POPE. +"No CHARACTER that servant WOMAN asked." --SMITH. + + +I have to thank Mr Edmund Gosse and Mr Vernon Rendall for their +kindness in reading my proof-sheets. They have saved me from some +errors, but I may have occasionally retained matter which, for one +reason or another, did not recommend itself to them. In no case are +they responsible for the opinions expressed, or for the critical +estimates. They are those of a Tennysonian, and, no doubt, would be +other than they are if the writer were younger than he is. It does +not follow that they would necessarily be more correct, though +probably they would be more in vogue. The point of view must shift +with each generation of readers, as ideas or beliefs go in or out of +fashion, are accepted, rejected, or rehabilitated. To one age +Tennyson may seem weakly superstitious; to another needlessly +sceptical. After all, what he must live by is, not his opinions, but +his poetry. The poetry of Milton survives his ideas; whatever may be +the fate of the ideas of Tennyson his poetry must endure. + + + +CHAPTER I--BOYHOOD--CAMBRIDGE--EARLY POEMS. + + + +The life and work of Tennyson present something like the normal type +of what, in circumstances as fortunate as mortals may expect, the +life and work of a modern poet ought to be. A modern poet, one says, +because even poetry is now affected by the division of labour. We do +not look to the poet for a large share in the practical activities of +existence: we do not expect him, like AEschylus and Sophocles, +Theognis and Alcaeus, to take a conspicuous part in politics and war; +or even, as in the Age of Anne, to shine among wits and in society. +Life has become, perhaps, too specialised for such multifarious +activities. Indeed, even in ancient days, as a Celtic proverb and as +the picture of life in the Homeric epics prove, the poet was already +a man apart--not foremost among statesmen and rather backward among +warriors. If we agree with a not unpopular opinion, the poet ought +to be a kind of "Titanic" force, wrecking himself on his own passions +and on the nature of things, as did Byron, Burns, Marlowe, and +Musset. But Tennyson's career followed lines really more normal, the +lines of the life of Wordsworth, wisdom and self-control directing +the course of a long, sane, sound, and fortunate existence. The +great physical strength which is commonly the basis of great mental +vigour was not ruined in Tennyson by poverty and passion, as in the +case of Burns, nor in forced literary labour, as in those of Scott +and Dickens. For long he was poor, like Wordsworth and Southey, but +never destitute. He made his early effort: he had his time of great +sorrow, and trial, and apparent failure. With practical wisdom he +conquered circumstances; he became eminent; he outlived reaction +against his genius; he died in the fulness of a happy age and of +renown. This full-orbed life, with not a few years of sorrow and +stress, is what Nature seems to intend for the career of a divine +minstrel. If Tennyson missed the "one crowded hour of glorious +life," he had not to be content in "an age without a name." + +It was not Tennyson's lot to illustrate any modern theory of the +origin of genius. Born in 1809 of a Lincolnshire family, long +connected with the soil but inconspicuous in history, Tennyson had +nothing Celtic in his blood, as far as pedigrees prove. This is +unfortunate for one school of theorists. His mother (genius is +presumed to be derived from mothers) had a genius merely for moral +excellence and for religion. She is described in the poem of Isabel, +and was "a remarkable and saintly woman." In the male line, the +family was not (as the families of genius ought to be) brief of life +and unhealthy. "The Tennysons never die," said the sister who was +betrothed to Arthur Hallam. The father, a clergyman, was, says his +grandson, "a man of great ability," and his "excellent library" was +an element in the education of his family. "My father was a poet," +Tennyson said, "and could write regular verse very skilfully." In +physical type the sons were tall, strong, and unusually dark: +Tennyson, when abroad, was not taken for an Englishman; at home, +strangers thought him "foreign." Most of the children had the +temperament, and several of the sons had some of the accomplishments, +of genius: whence derived by way of heredity is a question beyond +conjecture, for the father's accomplishment was not unusual. As +Walton says of the poet and the angler, they "were born to be so": +we know no more. + +The region in which the paternal hamlet of Somersby lies, "a land of +quiet villages, large fields, grey hillsides, and noble tall-towered +churches, on the lower slope of a Lincolnshire wold," does not appear +to have been rich in romantic legend and tradition. The folk-lore of +Lincolnshire, of which examples have been published, does seem to +have a peculiar poetry of its own, but it was rather the humorous +than the poetical aspect of the country-people that Tennyson appears +to have known. In brief, we have nothing to inform us as to how +genius came into that generation of Tennysons which was born between +1807 and 1819. A source and a cause there must have been, but these +things are hidden, except from popular science. + +Precocity is not a sign of genius, but genius is perhaps always +accompanied by precocity. This is especially notable in the cases of +painting, music, and mathematics; but in the matter of literature +genius may chiefly show itself in acquisition, as in Sir Walter +Scott, who when a boy knew much, but did little that would attract +notice. As a child and a boy young Tennyson was remarked both for +acquisition and performance. His own reminiscences of his childhood +varied somewhat in detail. In one place we learn that at the age of +eight he covered a slate with blank verse in the manner of Jamie +Thomson, the only poet with whom he was then acquainted. In another +passage he says, "The first poetry that moved me was my own at five +years old. When I was eight I remember making a line I thought +grander than Campbell, or Byron, or Scott. I rolled it out, it was +this - + + +'With slaughterous sons of thunder rolled the flood' - + + +great nonsense, of course, but I thought it fine!" + +It WAS fine, and was thoroughly Tennysonian. Scott, Campbell, and +Byron probably never produced a line with the qualities of this +nonsense verse. "Before I could read I was in the habit on a stormy +day of spreading my arms to the wind and crying out, 'I hear a voice +that's speaking in the wind,' and the words 'far, far away' had +always a strange charm for me." A late lyric has this overword, FAR, +FAR AWAY! + +A boy of eight who knew the contemporary poets was more or less +precocious. Tennyson also knew Pope, and wrote hundreds of lines in +Pope's measure. At twelve the boy produced an epic, in Scott's +manner, of some six thousand lines. He "never felt himself more +truly inspired," for the sense of "inspiration" (as the late Mr Myers +has argued in an essay on the "Mechanism of Genius") has little to do +with the actual value of the product. At fourteen Tennyson wrote a +drama in blank verse. A chorus from this play (as one guesses), a +piece from "an unpublished drama written very early," is published in +the volume of 1830:- + + +"The varied earth, the moving heaven, + The rapid waste of roving sea, +The fountain-pregnant mountains riven + To shapes of wildest anarchy, +By secret fire and midnight storms + That wander round their windy cones." + + +These lines are already Tennysonian. There is the classical +transcript, "the varied earth," daedala tellus. There is the +geological interest in the forces that shape the hills. There is the +use of the favourite word "windy," and later in the piece - + + +"The troublous autumn's SALLOW gloom." + + +The young poet from boyhood was original in his manner. + +Byron made him blase at fourteen. Then Byron died, and Tennyson +scratched on a rock "Byron is dead," on "a day when the whole world +seemed darkened for me." Later he considered Byron's poetry "too +much akin to rhetoric." "Byron is not an artist or a thinker, or a +creator in the higher sense, but a strong personality; he is +endlessly clever, and is now unduly depreciated." He "did give the +world another heart and new pulses, and so we are kept going." But +"he was dominated by Byron till he was seventeen, when he put him +away altogether." + +In his boyhood, despite the sufferings which he endured for a while +at school at Louth; despite bullying from big boys and masters, +Tennyson would "shout his verses to the skies." "Well, Arthur, I +mean to be famous," he used to say to one of his brothers. He +observed nature very closely by the brook and the thundering sea- +shores: he was never a sportsman, and his angling was in the manner +of the lover of The Miller's Daughter. He was seventeen (1826) when +Poems by Two Brothers (himself and his brother Frederick) was +published with the date 1827. These poems contain, as far as I have +been able to discover, nothing really Tennysonian. What he had done +in his own manner was omitted, "being thought too much out of the +common for the public taste." The young poet had already saving +common-sense, and understood the public. Fragments of the true gold +are found in the volume of 1830, others are preserved in the +Biography. The ballad suggested by The Bride of Lammermoor was not +unworthy of Beddoes, and that novel, one cannot but think, suggested +the opening situation in Maud, where the hero is a modern Master of +Ravenswood in his relation to the rich interloping family and the +beautiful daughter. To this point we shall return. It does not +appear that Tennyson was conscious in Maud of the suggestion from +Scott, and the coincidence may be merely accidental. + +The Lover's Tale, published in 1879, was mainly a work of the poet's +nineteenth year. A few copies had been printed for friends. One of +these, with errors of the press, and without the intended +alterations, was pirated by an unhappy man in 1875. In old age +Tennyson brought out the work of his boyhood. "It was written before +I had ever seen Shelley, though it is called Shelleyan," he said; and +indeed he believed that his work had never been imitative, after his +earliest efforts in the manner of Thomson and of Scott. The only +things in The Lover's Tale which would suggest that the poet here +followed Shelley are the Italian scene of the story, the character of +the versification, and the extraordinary luxuriance and exuberance of +the imagery. {2} As early as 1868 Tennyson heard that written copies +of The Lover's Tale were in circulation. He then remarked, as to the +exuberance of the piece: "Allowance must be made for abundance of +youth. It is rich and full, but there are mistakes in it. . . . The +poem is the breath of young love." + +How truly Tennysonian the manner is may be understood even from the +opening lines, full of the original cadences which were to become so +familiar:- + + +"Here far away, seen from the topmost cliff, +Filling with purple gloom the vacancies +Between the tufted hills, the sloping seas +Hung in mid-heaven, and half way down rare sails, +White as white clouds, floated from sky to sky." + + +The narrative in parts one and two (which alone were written in +youth) is so choked with images and descriptions as to be almost +obscure. It is the story, practically, of a love like that of Paul +and Virginia, but the love is not returned by the girl, who prefers +the friend of the narrator. Like the hero of Maud, the speaker has a +period of madness and illusion; while the third part, "The Golden +Supper"--suggested by a story of Boccaccio, and written in maturity-- +is put in the mouth of another narrator, and is in a different style. +The discarded lover, visiting the vault which contains the body of +his lady, finds her alive, and restores her to her husband. The +whole finished legend is necessarily not among the author's +masterpieces. But perhaps not even Keats in his earliest work +displayed more of promise, and gave more assurance of genius. Here +and there come turns and phrases, "all the charm of all the Muses," +which remind a reader of things later well known in pieces more +mature. Such lines are - + + + "Strange to me and sweet, +Sweet through strange years," + + +and - + + +"Like to a low-hung and a fiery sky +Hung round with RAGGED RIMS and burning folds." + + +And - + + +"Like sounds without the twilight realm of dreams, +Which wander round the bases of the hills." + + +We also note close observation of nature in the curious phrase - + + +"Cries of the partridge like a rusty key +Turned in a lock." + + +Of this kind was Tennyson's adolescent vein, when he left + + + "The poplars four +That stood beside his father's door," + + +the Somersby brook, and the mills and granges, the seas of the +Lincolnshire coast, and the hills and dales among the wolds, for +Cambridge. He was well read in old and contemporary English +literature, and in the classics. Already he was acquainted with the +singular trance-like condition to which his poems occasionally +allude, a subject for comment later. He matriculated at Trinity, +with his brother Charles, on February 20, 1828, and had an interview +of a not quite friendly sort with a proctor before he wore the gown. + +That Tennyson should go to Cambridge, not to Oxford, was part of the +nature of things, by which Cambridge educates the majority of English +poets, whereas Oxford has only "turned out" a few--like Shelley. At +that time, as in Macaulay's day, the path of university honours at +Cambridge lay through Mathematics, and, except for his prize poem in +1829, Tennyson took no honours at all. His classical reading was +pursued as literature, not as a course of grammar and philology. No +English poet, at least since Milton, had been better read in the +classics; but Tennyson's studies did not aim at the gaining of +academic distinction. His aspect was such that Thompson, later +Master of Trinity, on first seeing him come into hall, said, "That +man must be a poet." Like Byron, Shelley, and probably Coleridge, +Tennyson looked the poet that he was: "Six feet high, broad-chested, +strong-limbed, his face Shakespearian and with deep eyelids, his +forehead ample, crowned with dark wavy hair, his head finely poised." + +Not much is recorded of Tennyson as an undergraduate. In our days +efforts would have been made to enlist so promising a recruit in one +of the college boats; but rowing was in its infancy. It is a +peculiarity of the universities that little flocks of men of unusual +ability come up at intervals together, breaking the monotony of +idlers, prize scholars, and honours men. Such a group appeared at +Balliol in Matthew Arnold's time, and rather later, at various +colleges, in the dawn of Pre-Raphaelitism. The Tennysons--Alfred, +Frederick, and Charles--were members of such a set. There was Arthur +Hallam, son of the historian, from Eton; there was Spedding, the +editor and biographer of Bacon; Milnes (Lord Houghton), Blakesley +(Dean of Lincoln), Thompson, Merivale, Trench (a poet, and later, +Archbishop of Dublin), Brookfield, Buller, and, after Tennyson the +greatest, Thackeray, a contemporary if not an "Apostle." Charles +Buller's, like Hallam's, was to be an "unfulfilled renown." Of +Hallam, whose name is for ever linked with his own, Tennyson said +that he would have been a great man, but not a great poet; "he was as +near perfection as mortal man could be." His scanty remains are +chiefly notable for his divination of Tennyson as a great poet; for +the rest, we can only trust the author of In Memoriam and the verdict +of tradition. + +The studies of the poet at this time included original composition in +Greek and Latin verse, history, and a theme that he alone has made +poetical, natural science. All poetry has its roots in the age +before natural science was more than a series of nature-myths. The +poets have usually, like Keats, regretted the days when + + +"There was an awful rainbow once in heaven," + + +when the hills and streams were not yet "dispeopled of their dreams." +Tennyson, on the other hand, was already finding material for poetry +in the world as seen through microscope and telescope, and as +developed through "aeonian" processes of evolution. In a notebook, +mixed with Greek, is a poem on the Moon--not the moon of Selene, "the +orbed Maiden," but of astronomical science. In Memoriam recalls the +conversations on labour and politics, discussions of the age of the +Reform Bill, of rick-burning (expected to "make taters cheaper"), and +of Catholic emancipation; also the emancipation of such negroes as +had not yet tasted the blessings of freedom. In politics Tennyson +was what he remained, a patriot, a friend of freedom, a foe of +disorder. His politics, he said, were those "of Shakespeare, Bacon, +and every sane man." He was one of the Society of Apostles, and +characteristically contributed an essay on Ghosts. Only the preface +survives: it is not written in a scientific style; but bids us "not +assume that any vision IS baseless." Perhaps the author went on to +discuss "veridical hallucinations," but his ideas about these things +must be considered later. + +It was by his father's wish that Tennyson competed for the English +prize poem. The theme, Timbuctoo, was not inspiring. Thackeray +wrote a good parody of the ordinary prize poem in Pope's metre:- + + +"I see her sons the hill of glory mount, +And sell their sugars on their own account; +Prone to her feet the prostrate nations come, +Sue for her rice and barter for her rum." + + +Tennyson's work was not much more serious: he merely patched up an +old piece, in blank verse, on the battle of Armageddon. The poem is +not destitute of Tennysonian cadence, and ends, not inappropriately, +with "All was night." Indeed, all WAS night. + + An ingenious myth accounts for Tennyson's success: At Oxford, says +Charles Wordsworth, the author was more likely to have been +rusticated than rewarded. But already (1829) Arthur Hallam told Mr +Gladstone that Tennyson "promised fair to be the greatest poet of our +generation, perhaps of our century." + +In 1830 Tennyson published the first volume of which he was sole +author. Browning's Pauline was of the year 1833. It was the very +dead hours of the Muses. The great Mr Murray had ceased, as one +despairing of song, to publish poetry. Bulwer Lytton, in the preface +to Paul Clifford (1830), announced that poetry, with every other form +of literature except the Novel, was unremunerative and unread. +Coleridge and Scott were silent: indeed Sir Walter was near his +death; Wordsworth had shot his bolt, though an arrow or two were left +in the quiver. Keats, Shelley, and Byron were dead; Milman's brief +vogue was departing. It seemed as if novels alone could appeal to +readers, so great a change in taste had been wrought by the sixteen +years of Waverley romances. The slim volume of Tennyson was +naturally neglected, though Leigh Hunt reviewed it in the Tatler. +Hallam's comments in the Englishman's Magazine, though enthusiastic +(as was right and natural), were judicious. "The author imitates no +one." Coleridge did not read all the book, but noted "things of a +good deal of beauty. The misfortune is that he has begun to write +verses without very well understanding what metre is." As Tennyson +said in 1890, "So I, an old man, who get a poem or poems every day, +might cast a casual glance at a book, and seeing something which I +could not scan or understand, might possibly decide against the book +without further consideration." As a rule, the said books are +worthless. The number of versifiers makes it hard, indeed, for the +poet to win recognition. One little new book of rhyme is so like +another, and almost all are of so little interest! + +The rare book that differs from the rest has a bizarrerie with its +originality, and in the poems of 1830 there was, assuredly, more than +enough of the bizarre. There were no hyphens in the double epithets, +and words like "tendriltwine" seemed provokingly affected. A kind of +lusciousness, like that of Keats when under the influence of Leigh +Hunt, may here and there be observed. Such faults as these catch the +indifferent eye when a new book is first opened, and the volume of +1830 was probably condemned by almost every reader of the previous +generation who deigned to afford it a glance. Out of fifty-six +pieces only twenty-three were reprinted in the two volumes of 1842, +which won for Tennyson the general recognition of the world of +letters. Five or six of the pieces then left out were added as +Juvenilia in the collected works of 1871, 1872. The whole mass +deserves the attention of students of the poet's development. + +This early volume may be said to contain, in the germ, all the great +original qualities of Tennyson, except the humour of his rural +studies and the elaboration of his Idylls. For example, in Mariana +we first note what may be called his perfection and accomplishment. +The very few alterations made later are verbal. The moated grange of +Mariana in Measure for Measure, and her mood of desertion and +despair, are elaborated by a precision of truth and with a perfection +of harmony worthy of Shakespeare himself, and minutely studied from +the natural scenes in which the poet was born. If these verses alone +survived out of the wreck of Victorian literature, they would +demonstrate the greatness of the author as clearly as do the +fragments of Sappho. Isabel (a study of the poet's mother) is almost +as remarkable in its stately dignity; while Recollections of the +Arabian Nights attest the power of refined luxury in romantic +description, and herald the unmatched beauty of The Lotos-Eaters. +The Poet, again, is a picture of that which Tennyson himself was to +fulfil; and Oriana is a revival of romance, and of the ballad, not +limited to the ballad form as in its prototype, Helen of Kirkconnell. +Curious and exquisite experiment in metre is indicated in the Leonine +Elegiacs, in Claribel, and several other poems. Qualities which were +not for long to find public expression, speculative powers brooding, +in various moods, on ultimate and insoluble questions, were attested +by The Mystic, and Supposed Confessions of a Second-rate Sensitive +Mind not in Unity with Itself, an unlucky title of a remarkable +performance. "In this, the most agitated of all his poems, we find +the soul urging onward + + +'Thro' utter dark a full-sail'd skiff, +Unpiloted i' the echoing dance +Of reboant whirlwinds;' + + +and to the question, 'Why not believe, then?' we have as answer a +simile of the sea, which cannot slumber like a mountain tarn, or + + +'Draw down into his vexed pools +All that blue heaven which hues and paves' + + +the tranquil inland mere." {3} + +The poet longs for the faith of his infant days and of his mother - + + +"Thy mild deep eyes upraised, that knew +The beauty and repose of faith, +And the clear spirit shining thro'." + + +That faith is already shaken, and the long struggle for belief has +already begun. + +Tennyson, according to Matthew Arnold, was not un esprit puissant. +Other and younger critics, who have attained to a cock-certain mood +of negation, are apt to blame him because, in fact, he did not +finally agree with their opinions. If a man is necessarily a +weakling or a hypocrite because, after trying all things, he is not +an atheist or a materialist, then the reproach of insincerity or of +feebleness of mind must rest upon Tennyson. But it is manifest that, +almost in boyhood, he had already faced the ideas which, to one of +his character, almost meant despair: he had not kept his eyes +closed. To his extremely self-satisfied accusers we might answer, in +lines from this earliest volume (The Mystic):- + + +"Ye scorn him with an undiscerning scorn; +Ye cannot read the marvel in his eye, +The still serene abstraction." + + +He would behold + + +"One shadow in the midst of a great light, +One reflex from eternity on time, +One mighty countenance of perfect calm, +Awful with most invariable eyes." + + +His mystic of these boyish years - + + + "Often lying broad awake, and yet +Remaining from the body, and apart +In intellect and power and will, hath heard +Time flowing in the middle of the night, +And all things creeping to a day of doom." + + +In this poem, never republished by the author, is an attempt to +express an experience which in later years he more than once +endeavoured to set forth in articulate speech, an experience which +was destined to colour his finial speculations on ultimate problems +of God and of the soul. We shall later have to discuss the opinion +of an eminent critic, Mr Frederic Harrison, that Tennyson's ideas, +theological, evolutionary, and generally speculative, "followed, +rather than created, the current ideas of his time." "The train of +thought" (in In Memoriam), writes Mr Harrison, "is essentially that +with which ordinary English readers had been made familiar by F. D. +Maurice, Professor Jowett, Dr Martineau, Ecce Homo, Hypatia." Of +these influences only Maurice, and Maurice only orally, could have +reached the author of The Mystic and the Supposed Confessions. Ecce +Homo, Hypatia, Mr Jowett, were all in the bosom of the future when In +Memoriam was written. Now, The Mystic and the Supposed Confessions +are prior to In Memoriam, earlier than 1830. Yet they already +contain the chief speculative tendencies of In Memoriam; the growing +doubts caused by evolutionary ideas (then familiar to Tennyson, +though not to "ordinary English readers"), the longing for a return +to childlike faith, and the mystical experiences which helped +Tennyson to recover a faith that abode with him. In these things he +was original. Even as an undergraduate he was not following "a train +of thought made familiar" by authors who had not yet written a line, +and by books which had not yet been published. + +So much, then, of the poet that was to be and of the philosopher +existed in the little volume of the undergraduate. In The Mystic we +notice a phrase, two words long, which was later to be made familiar, +"Daughters of time, divinely tall," reproduced in the picture of +Helen:- + + +"A daughter of the Gods, divinely tall, + And most divinely fair." + + +The reflective pieces are certainly of more interest now (though they +seem to have satisfied the poet less) than the gallery of airy fairy +Lilians, Adelines, Rosalinds, and Eleanores:- + + +"Daughters of dreams and of stories," + + +like + + +"Faustine, Fragoletta, Dolores, +Felise, and Yolande, and Juliette." + + +Cambridge, which he was soon to leave, did not satisfy the poet. +Oxford did not satisfy Gibbon, or later, Shelley; and young men of +genius are not, in fact, usually content with universities which, +perhaps, are doing their best, but are neither governed nor populated +by minds of the highest and most original class. + + + "You that do profess to teach +And teach us nothing, feeding not the heart." + + +The universities, in fact, teach a good deal of that which can be +learned, but the best things cannot be taught. The universities give +men leisure, books, and companionship, to learn for themselves. All +tutors cannot be, and at that time few dreamed of being, men like +Jowett and T. H. Green, Gamaliels at whose feet undergraduates sat +with enthusiasm, "did EAGERLY frequent," like Omar Khayyam. In later +years Tennyson found closer relations between dons and +undergraduates, and recorded his affection for his university. She +had supplied him with such companionship as is rare, and permitted +him to "catch the blossom of the flying terms," even if tutors and +lecturers were creatures of routine, terriblement enfonces dans la +matiere, like the sire of Madelon and Cathos, that honourable +citizen. + +Tennyson just missed, by going down, a visit of Wordsworth to +Cambridge. The old enthusiast of revolution was justifying passive +obedience: thirty years had turned the almost Jacobin into an almost +Jacobite. Such is the triumph of time. In the summer of 1830 +Tennyson, with Hallam, visited the Pyrenees. The purpose was +political--to aid some Spanish rebels. The fruit is seen in OEnone +and Mariana in the South. + +In March 1831 Tennyson lost his father. "He slept in the dead man's +bed, earnestly desiring to see his ghost, but no ghost came." "You +see," he said, "ghosts do not generally come to imaginative people;" +a remark very true, though ghosts are attributed to "imagination." +Whatever causes these phantasms, it is not the kind of phantasia +which is consciously exercised by the poet. Coleridge had seen far +too many ghosts to believe in them; and Coleridge and Donne apart, +with the hallucinations of Goethe and Shelley, who met themselves, +what poet ever did "see a ghost"? One who saw Tennyson as he +wandered alone at this period called him "a mysterious being, +seemingly lifted high above other mortals, and having a power of +intercourse with the spirit world not granted to others." But it was +the world of the poet, not of the "medium." + +The Tennysons stayed on at the parsonage for six years. But, +anticipating their removal, Arthur Hallam in 1831 dealt in prophecy +about the identification in the district of places in his friend's +poems--"critic after critic will trace the wanderings of the brook," +as,--in fact, critic after critic has done. Tennyson disliked--these +"localisers." The poet's walks were shared by Arthur Hallam, then +affianced to his sister Emily. + + + +CHAPTER II.--POEMS OF 1831-1833. + + + +By 1832 most of the poems of Tennyson's second volume were +circulating in MS. among his friends, and no poet ever had friends +more encouraging. Perhaps bards of to-day do not find an eagerness +among their acquaintance for effusions in manuscript, or in proof- +sheets. The charmed volume appeared at the end of the year (dated +1833), and Hallam denounced as "infamous" Lockhart's review in the +Quarterly. Infamous or not, it is extremely diverting. How Lockhart +could miss the great and abundant poetry remains a marvel. Ten years +later the Scorpion repented, and invited Sterling to review any book +he pleased, for the purpose of enabling him to praise the two volumes +of 1842, which he did gladly. Lockhart hated all affectation and +"preciosity," of which the new book was not destitute. He had been +among Wordsworth's most ardent admirers when Wordsworth had few, but +the memories of the war with the "Cockney School" clung to him, the +war with Leigh Hunt, and now he gave himself up to satire. Probably +he thought that the poet was a member of a London clique. There is +really no excuse for Lockhart, except that he DID repent, that much +of his banter was amusing, and that, above all, his censures were +accepted by the poet, who altered, later, many passages of a fine +absurdity criticised by the infamous reviewer. One could name great +prose-writers, historians, who never altered the wondrous errors to +which their attention was called by critics. Prose-writers have been +more sensitively attached to their glaring blunders in verifiable +facts than was this very sensitive poet to his occasional lapses in +taste. + +The Lady of Shalott, even in its early form, was more than enough to +give assurance of a poet. In effect it is even more poetical, in a +mysterious way, if infinitely less human, than the later treatment of +the same or a similar legend in Elaine. It has the charm of +Coleridge, and an allegory of the fatal escape from the world of +dreams and shadows into that of realities may have been really +present to the mind of the young poet, aware that he was "living in +phantasy." The alterations are usually for the better. The daffodil +is not an aquatic plant, as the poet seems to assert in the first +form - + + +"The yellow-leaved water-lily, +The green sheathed daffodilly, +Tremble in the water chilly, + Round about Shalott." + + +Nobody can prefer to keep + + +"Though the squally east wind keenly +Blew, with folded arms serenely +By the water stood the queenly + Lady of Shalott." + + +However stoical the Lady may have been, the reader is too seriously +sympathetic with her inevitable discomfort - + + +"All raimented in snowy white +That loosely flew," + + +as she was. The original conclusion was distressing; we were dropped +from the airs of mysterious romance:- + + +"They crossed themselves, their stars they blest, +Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire, and guest; +There lay a parchment on her breast, +That puzzled more than all the rest + The well-fed wits at Camelot." + + +Hitherto we have been "puzzled," but as with the sublime incoherences +of a dream. Now we meet well-fed wits, who say, "Bless my stars!" as +perhaps we should also have done in the circumstances--a dead lady +arriving, in a very cold east wind, alone in a boat, for "her blood +was frozen slowly," as was natural, granting the weather and the +lady's airy costume. It is certainly matter of surprise that the +young poet's vision broke up in this humorous manner. And, after +all, it is less surprising that the Scorpion, finding such matter in +a new little book by a new young man, was more sensitive to the +absurdity than to the romance. But no lover of poetry should have +been blind to the almost flawless excellence of Mariana in the South, +inspired by the landscape of the Provencal tour with Arthur Hallam. +In consequence of Lockhart's censures, or in deference to the maturer +taste of the poet, The Miller's Daughter was greatly altered before +1842. It is one of the earliest, if not the very earliest, of +Tennyson's domestic English idylls, poems with conspicuous beauties, +but not without sacrifices to that Muse of the home affections on +whom Sir Barnes Newcome delivered his famous lecture. The seventh +stanza perhaps hardly deserved to be altered, as it is, so as to +bring in "minnows" where "fish" had been the reading, and where +"trout" would best recall an English chalk stream. To the angler the +rising trout, which left the poet cold, is at least as welcome as the +"reflex of a beauteous form." "Every woman seems an angel at the +water-side," said "that good old angler, now with God," Thomas Todd +Stoddart, and so "the long and listless boy" found it to be. It is +no wonder that the mother was "SLOWLY brought to yield consent to my +desire." The domestic affections, in fact, do not adapt themselves +so well to poetry as the passion, unique in Tennyson, of Fatima. The +critics who hunt for parallels or plagiarisms will note - + + +"O Love, O fire! once he drew +With one long kiss my whole soul thro' +My lips," + + +and will observe Mr Browning's + + + "Once he kissed +My soul out in a fiery mist." + + +As to OEnone, the scenery of that earliest of the classical idylls is +borrowed from the Pyrenees and the tour with Hallam. "It is possible +that the poem may have been suggested by Beattie's Judgment of +Paris," says Mr Collins; it is also possible that the tale which + + + "Quintus Calaber +Somewhat lazily handled of old" + + +may have reached Tennyson's mind from an older writer than Beattie. +He is at least as likely to have been familiar with Greek myth as +with the lamented "Minstrel." The form of 1833, greatly altered in +1842, contained such unlucky phrases as "cedar shadowy," and +"snowycoloured," "marblecold," "violet-eyed"--easy spoils of +criticism. The alterations which converted a beautiful but faulty +into a beautiful and flawless poem perhaps obscure the significance +of OEnone's "I will not die alone," which in the earlier volume +directly refers to the foreseen end of all as narrated in Tennyson's +late piece, The Death of OEnone. The whole poem brings to mind the +glowing hues of Titian and the famous Homeric lines on the divine +wedlock of Zeus and Hera. + +The allegory or moral of The Palace of Art does not need explanation. +Not many of the poems owe more to revision. The early stanza about +Isaiah, with fierce Ezekiel, and "Eastern Confutzee," did undeniably +remind the reader, as Lockhart said, of The Groves of Blarney. + + +"With statues gracing that noble place in, + All haythen goddesses most rare, +Petrarch, Plato, and Nebuchadnezzar, + All standing naked in the open air." + + +In the early version the Soul, being too much "up to date," + + +"Lit white streams of dazzling gas," + + +like Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford. + + +"Thus her intense, untold delight, +In deep or vivid colour, smell, and sound, + Was flattered day and night." + + +Lockhart was not fond of Sir Walter's experiments in gas, the "smell" +gave him no "deep, untold delight," and his "infamous review" was +biassed by these circumstances. + +The volume of 1833 was in nothing more remarkable than in its proof +of the many-sidedness of the author. He offered mediaeval romance, +and classical perfection touched with the romantic spirit, and +domestic idyll, of which The May Queen is probably the most popular +example. The "mysterious being," conversant with "the spiritual +world," might have been expected to disdain topics well within the +range of Eliza Cook. He did not despise but elevated them, and +thereby did more to introduce himself to the wide English public than +he could have done by a century of Fatimas or Lotos-Eaters. On the +other hand, a taste more fastidious, or more perverse, will scarcely +be satisfied with pathos which in process of time has come to seem +"obvious." The pathos of early death in the prime of beauty is less +obvious in Homer, where Achilles is to be the victim, or in the +laments of the Anthology, where we only know that the dead bride or +maiden was fair; but the poor May Queen is of her nature rather +commonplace. + + +"That good man, the clergyman, has told me words of peace," + + +strikes a note rather resembling the Tennysonian parody of Wordsworth +- + + +"A Mr Wilkinson, a clergyman." + + +The Lotos-Eaters, of course, is at the opposite pole of the poet's +genius. A few plain verses of the Odyssey, almost bald in their +reticence, are the point de repere of the most magical vision +expressed in the most musical verse. Here is the languid charm of +Spenser, enriched with many classical memories, and pictures of +natural beauty gorgeously yet delicately painted. After the excision +of some verses, rather fantastical, in 1842, the poem became a +flawless masterpiece,--one of the eternal possessions of song. + +On the other hand, the opening of The Dream of Fair Women was marred +in 1833 by the grotesque introductory verses about "a man that sails +in a balloon." Young as Tennyson was, these freakish passages are a +psychological marvel in the work of one who did not lack the saving +sense of humour. The poet, wafted on the wing and "pinion that the +Theban eagle bear," cannot conceivably be likened to an aeronaut +waving flags out of a balloon--except in a spirit of self-mockery +which was not Tennyson's. His remarkable self-discipline in excising +the fantastic and superfluous, and reducing his work to its classical +perfection of thought and form, is nowhere more remarkable than in +this magnificent vision. It is probably by mere accidental +coincidence of thought that, in the verses To J. S. (James Spedding), +Tennyson reproduces the noble speech on the warrior's death which Sir +Walter Scott places in the lips of the great Dundee: "It is the +memory which the soldier leaves behind him, like the long train of +light that follows the sunken sun, THAT is all that is worth caring +for," the light which lingers eternally on the hills of Atholl. +Tennyson's lines are a close parallel:- + + +"His memory long will live alone + In all our hearts, as mournful light +That broods above the fallen sun, + And dwells in heaven half the night." + + +Though Tennyson disliked the exhibition of "the chips of the +workshop," we have commented on them, on the early readings of the +early volumes. They may be regarded more properly as the sketches of +a master than as "chips," and do more than merely engage the idle +curiosity of the fanatics of first editions. They prove that the +poet was studious of perfection, and wisely studious, for his +alterations, unlike those of some authors, were almost invariably for +the better, the saner, the more mature in taste. The early readings +are also worth notice, because they partially explain, by their +occasionally fantastic and humourless character, the lack of early +and general recognition of the poet's genius. The native prejudice +of mankind is not in favour of a new poet. Of new poets there are +always so many, most of them bad, that nature has protected mankind +by an armour of suspiciousness. The world, and Lockhart, easily +found good reasons for distrusting this new claimant of the ivy and +the bays: moreover, since about 1814 there had been a reaction +against new poetry. The market was glutted. Scott had set everybody +on reading, and too many on writing, novels. The great reaction of +the century against all forms of literature except prose fiction had +begun. Near the very date of Tennyson's first volume Bulwer Lytton, +as we saw, had frankly explained that he wrote novels because nobody +would look at anything else. Tennyson had to overcome this +universal, or all but universal, indifference to new poetry, and, +after being silent for ten years, overcome it he did--a remarkable +victory of art and of patient courage. Times were even worse for +poets than to-day. Three hundred copies of the new volume were sold! +But Tennyson's friends were not puffers in league with pushing +publishers. + +Meanwhile the poet in 1833 went on quietly and undefeated with his +work. He composed The Gardener's Daughter, and was at work on the +Morte d'Arthur, suppressed till the ninth year, on the Horatian plan. +Many poems were produced (and even written out, which a number of his +pieces never were), and were left in manuscript till they appeared in +the Biography. Most of these are so little worthy of the author that +the marvel is how he came to write them--in what uninspired hours. +Unlike Wordsworth, he could weed the tares from his wheat. His +studies were in Greek, German, Italian, history (a little), and +chemistry, botany, and electricity--"cross-grained Muses," these +last. + +It was on September 15, 1833, that Arthur Hallam died. Unheralded by +sign or symptom of disease as it was, the news fell like a +thunderbolt from a serene sky. Tennyson's and Hallam's love had been +"passing the love of women." A blow like this drives a man on the +rocks of the ultimate, the insoluble problems of destiny. "Is this +the end?" Nourished as on the milk of lions, on the elevating and +strengthening doctrines of popular science, trained from childhood to +forego hope and attend evening lectures, the young critics of our +generation find Tennyson a weakling because he had hopes and fears +concerning the ultimate renewal of what was more than half his life-- +his friendship. + + +"That faith I fain would keep, + That hope I'll not forego: +Eternal be the sleep - + Unless to waken so," + + +wrote Lockhart, and the verses echoed ceaselessly in the widowed +heart of Carlyle. These men, it is part of the duty of critics later +born to remember, were not children or cowards, though they dreamed, +and hoped, and feared. We ought to make allowance for failings +incident to an age not yet fully enlightened by popular science, and +still undivorced from spiritual ideas that are as old as the human +race, and perhaps not likely to perish while that race exists. Now +and then even scientific men have been mistaken, especially when they +have declined to examine evidence, as in this problem of the +transcendental nature of the human spirit they usually do. At all +events Tennyson was unconvinced that death is the end, and shortly +after the fatal tidings arrived from Vienna he began to write +fragments in verse preluding to the poem of In Memoriam. He also +began, in a mood of great misery, The Two Voices; or, Thoughts of a +Suicide. The poem seems to have been partly done by September 1834, +when Spedding commented on it, and on the beautiful Sir Galahad, +"intended for something of a male counterpart to St Agnes." The +Morte d'Arthur Tennyson then thought "the best thing I have managed +lately." Very early in 1835 many stanzas of In Memoriam had taken +form. "I do not wish to be dragged forward in any shape before the +reading public at present," wrote the poet, when he heard that Mill +desired to write on him. His OEnone he had brought to its new +perfection, and did not desire comments on work now several years +old. He also wrote his Ulysses and his Tithonus. + +If ever the term "morbid" could have been applied to Tennyson, it +would have been in the years immediately following the death of +Arthur Hallam. But the application would have been unjust. True, +the poet was living out of the world; he was unhappy, and he was, as +people say, "doing nothing." He was so poor that he sold his +Chancellor's prize gold medal, and he did not + + + "Scan his whole horizon +In quest of what he could clap eyes on," + + +in the way of money-making, which another poet describes as the +normal attitude of all men as well as of pirates. A careless +observer would have thought that the poet was dawdling. But he dwelt +in no Castle of Indolence; he studied, he composed, he corrected his +verses: like Sir Walter in Liddesdale, "he was making himsel' a' the +time." He did not neglect the movements of the great world in that +dawn of discontent with the philosophy of commercialism. But it was +not his vocation to plunge into the fray, and on to platforms. + +It is a very rare thing anywhere, especially in England, for a man +deliberately to choose poetry as the duty of his life, and to remain +loyal, as a consequence, to the bride of St Francis--Poverty. This +loyalty Tennyson maintained, even under the temptation to make money +in recognised ways presented by his new-born love for his future +wife, Miss Emily Sellwood. They had first met in 1830, when she, a +girl of seventeen, seemed to him like "a Dryad or an Oread wandering +here." But admiration became the affection of a lifetime when +Tennyson met Miss Sellwood as bridesmaid to her sister, the bride of +his brother Charles, in 1836. The poet could not afford to marry, +and, like the hero of Locksley Hall, he may have asked himself, "What +is that which I should do?" By 1840 he had done nothing tangible and +lucrative, and correspondence between the lovers was forbidden. That +neither dreamed of Tennyson's deserting poetry for a more normal +profession proved of great benefit to the world. The course is one +which could only be justified by the absolute certainty of possessing +genius. + + + +CHAPTER III.--1837-1842. + + + +In 1837 the Tennysons left the old rectory; till 1840 they lived at +High Beech in Epping Forest, and after a brief stay at Tunbridge +Wells went to Boxley, near Maidstone. + +It appears that at last the poet had "beat his music out," though his +friends "still tried to cheer him." But the man who wrote Ulysses +when his grief was fresh could not be suspected of declining into a +hypochondriac. "If I mean to make my mark at all, it must be by +shortness," he said at this time; "for the men before me had been so +diffuse, and most of the big things, except King Arthur, had been +done." The age had not la tete epique: Poe had announced the +paradox that there is no such thing as a long poem, and even in +dealing with Arthur, Tennyson followed the example of Theocritus in +writing, not an epic, but epic idylls. Long poems suit an age of +listeners, for which they were originally composed, or of leisure and +few books. At present epics are read for duty's sake, not for the +only valid reason, "for human pleasure," in FitzGerald's phrase. + +Between 1838 and 1840 Tennyson made some brief tours in England with +FitzGerald, and, coming from Coventry, wrote Godiva. His engagement +with Miss Sellwood seemed to be adjourned sine die, as they were +forbidden to correspond. + +By 1841 Tennyson was living at Mablethorpe on the Lincolnshire coast; +working at his volumes of 1842, much urged by FitzGerald and American +admirers, who had heard of the poet through Emerson. Moxon was to be +the publisher, himself something of a poet; but early in 1842 he had +not yet received the MS. Perhaps Emerson heard of Tennyson through +Carlyle, who, says Sterling, "said more in your praise than in any +one's except Cromwell, and an American backwoodsman who has killed +thirty or forty people with a bowie-knife." Carlyle at this time was +much attached to Lockhart, editor of the Quarterly Review, and it may +have been Carlyle who converted Lockhart to admiration of his old +victim. Carlyle had very little more appreciation of Keats than had +Byron, or (in early days) Lockhart, and it was probably as much the +man of heroic physical mould, "a life-guardsman spoilt by making +poetry," and the unaffected companion over a pipe, as the poet, that +attracted him in Tennyson. As we saw, when the two triumphant +volumes of 1842 did appear, Lockhart asked Sterling to review +whatever book he pleased (meaning the Poems) in the Quarterly. The +praise of Sterling may seem lukewarm to us, especially when compared +with that of Spedding in the Edinburgh. But Sterling, and Lockhart +too, were obliged to "gang warily." Lockhart had, to his constant +annoyance, "a partner, Mr Croker," and I have heard from the late +Dean Boyle that Mr Croker was much annoyed by even the mild applause +yielded in the Quarterly to the author of the Morte d'Arthur. + +While preparing the volumes of 1842 at Boxley, Tennyson's life was +divided between London and the society of his brother-in-law, Mr +Edmund Lushington, the great Greek scholar and Professor of Greek at +Glasgow University. There was in Mr Lushington's personal aspect, +and noble simplicity of manner and character, something that strongly +resembled Tennyson himself. Among their common friends were Lord +Houghton (Monckton Milnes), Mr Lear of the Book of Nonsense ("with +such a pencil, such a pen"), Mr Venables (who at school modified the +profile of Thackeray), and Lord Kelvin. In town Tennyson met his +friends at The Cock, which he rendered classic; among them were +Thackeray, Forster, Maclise, and Dickens. The times were stirring: +social agitation, and "Carol philosophy" in Dickens, with growls from +Carlyle, marked the period. There was also a kind of optimism in the +air, a prophetic optimism, not yet fulfilled. + + +"Fly, happy happy sails, and bear the Press!" + + +That mission no longer strikes us as exquisitely felicitous. "The +mission of the Cross," and of the missionaries, means international +complications; and "the markets of the Golden Year" are precisely the +most fruitful causes of wars and rumours of wars:- + + + "Sea and air are dark +With great contrivances of Power." + + +Tennyson's was not an unmitigated optimism, and had no special +confidence in + + +"The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings + That every sophister can lime." + + +His political poetry, in fact, was very unlike the socialist chants +of Mr William Morris, or Songs before Sunrise. He had nothing to say +about + + +"The blood on the hands of the King, + And the lie on the lips of the Priest." + + +The hands of Presidents have not always been unstained; nor are +statements of a mythical nature confined to the lips of the clergy. +The poet was anxious that freedom should "broaden down," but +"slowly," not with indelicate haste. Persons who are more in a hurry +will never care for the political poems, and it is certain that +Tennyson did not feel sympathetically inclined towards the Iberian +patriot who said that his darling desire was "to cut the throats of +all the cures," like some Covenanters of old. "Mais vous connaissez +mon coeur"--"and a pretty black one it is," thought young Tennyson. +So cautious in youth, during his Pyrenean tour with Hallam in 1830, +Tennyson could not become a convinced revolutionary later. We must +accept him with his limitations: nor must we confuse him with the +hero of his Locksley Hall, one of the most popular, and most +parodied, of the poems of 1842: full of beautiful images and +"confusions of a wasted youth," a youth dramatically conceived, and +in no way autobiographical. + +In so marvellous a treasure of precious things as the volumes of +1842, perhaps none is more splendid, perfect, and perdurable than the +Morte d'Arthur. It had been written seven years earlier, and +pronounced by the poet "not bad." Tennyson was never, perhaps, a +very deep Arthurian student. A little cheap copy of Malory was his +companion. {4} He does not appear to have gone deeply into the +French and German "literature of the subject." Malory's compilation +(1485) from French and English sources, with the Mabinogion of Lady +Charlotte Guest, sufficed for him as materials. The whole poem, +enshrined in the memory of all lovers of verse, is richly studded, as +the hilt of Excalibur, with classical memories. "A faint Homeric +echo" it is not, nor a Virgilian echo, but the absolute voice of old +romance, a thing that might have been chanted by + + +"The lonely maiden of the Lake" + + +when + + +"Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps, +Upon the hidden bases of the hills." + + +Perhaps the most exquisite adaptation of all are the lines from the +Odyssey - + + +"Where falls not hail nor rain, nor any snow." + + +"Softly through the flutes of the Grecians" came first these Elysian +numbers, then through Lucretius, then through Tennyson's own +Lucretius, then in Mr Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon:- + + +"Lands indiscoverable in the unheard-of west +Round which the strong stream of a sacred sea +Rolls without wind for ever, and the snow +There shows not her white wings and windy feet, +Nor thunder nor swift rain saith anything, +Nor the sun burns, but all things rest and thrive." + + +So fortunate in their transmission through poets have been the lines +of "the Ionian father of the rest," the greatest of them all. + +In the variety of excellences which marks Tennyson, the new English +idylls of 1842 hold their prominent place. Nothing can be more +exquisite and more English than the picture of "the garden that I +love." Theocritus cannot be surpassed; but the idyll matches to the +seventh of his, where it is most closely followed, and possesses such +a picture of a girl as the Sicilian never tried to paint. + +Dora is another idyll, resembling the work of a Wordsworth in a clime +softer than that of the Fells. The lays of Edwin Morris and Edward +Bull are not among the more enduring of even the playful poems. The +St Simeon Stylites appears "made to the hand" of the author of Men +and Women rather than of Tennyson. The grotesque vanity of the +anchorite is so remote from us, that we can scarcely judge of the +truth of the picture, though the East has still her parallels to St +Simeon. From the almost, perhaps quite, incredible ascetic the poet +lightly turns to "society verse" lifted up into the air of poetry, in +the charm of The Talking Oak, and the happy flitting sketches of +actual history; and thence to the strength and passion of Love and +Duty. Shall + + + "Sin itself be found +The cloudy porch oft opening on the Sun?" + + +That this is the province of sin is a pretty popular modern moral. +But Honour is the better part, and here was a poet who had the +courage to say so; though, to be sure, the words ring strange in an +age when highly respectable matrons assure us that "passion," like +charity, covers a multitude of sins. Love and Duty, we must admit, +is "early Victorian." + +The Ulysses is almost a rival to the Morte d'Arthur. It is of an +early date, after Arthur Hallam's death, and Thackeray speaks of the +poet chanting his + + +"Great Achilles whom we knew," + + +as if he thought that this was in Cambridge days. But it is later +than these. Tennyson said, "Ulysses was written soon after Arthur +Hallam's death, and gave my feeling about the need of going forward, +and braving the struggle of life, perhaps more simply than anything +in In Memoriam." Assuredly the expression is more simple, and more +noble, and the personal emotion more dignified for the classic veil. +When the plaintive Pessimist ("'proud of the title,' as the Living +Skeleton said when they showed him") tells us that "not to have been +born is best," we may answer with Ulysses - + + + "Life piled on life +Were all too little." + + +The Ulysses of Tennyson, of course, is Dante's Ulysses, not Homer's +Odysseus, who brought home to Ithaca not one of his mariners. His +last known adventure, the journey to the land of men who knew not the +savour of salt, Odysseus was to make on foot and alone; so spake the +ghost of Tiresias within the poplar pale of Persephone. + +The Two Voices expresses the contest of doubts and griefs with the +spirit of endurance and joy which speaks alone in Ulysses. The man +who is unhappy, but does not want to put an end to himself, has +certainly the better of the argument with the despairing Voice. The +arguments of "that barren Voice" are, indeed, remarkably deficient in +cogency and logic, if we can bring ourselves to strip the discussion +of its poetry. The original title, Thoughts of a Suicide, was +inappropriate. The suicidal suggestions are promptly faced and +confuted, and the mood of the author is throughout that of one who +thinks life worth living:- + + +"Whatever crazy sorrow saith, +No life that breathes with human breath +Has ever truly long'd for death. + +'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, +Oh life, not death, for which we pant; +More life, and fuller, that I want." + + +This appears to be a satisfactory reply to the persons who eke out a +livelihood by publishing pessimistic books, and hooting, as the great +Alexandre Dumas says, at the great drama of Life. + +With The Day-Dream (of The Sleeping Beauty) Tennyson again displays +his matchless range of powers. Verse of Society rises into a charmed +and musical fantasy, passing from the Berlin-wool work of the period + + +("Take the broidery frame, and add +A crimson to the quaint Macaw") + + +into the enchanted land of the fable: princes immortal, princesses +eternally young and fair. The St Agnes and Sir Galahad, companion +pieces, contain the romance, as St Simeon Stylites shows the +repulsive side of asceticism; for the saint and the knight are young, +beautiful, and eager as St Theresa in her childhood. It has been +said, I do not know on what authority, that the poet had no +recollection of composing Sir Galahad, any more than Scott remembered +composing The Bride of Lammermoor, or Thackeray parts of Pendennis. +The haunting of Tennyson's mind by the Arthurian legends prompted +also the lovely fragment on the Queen's last Maying, Sir Launcelot +and Queen Guinevere, a thing of perfect charm and music. The ballads +of Lady Clare and The Lord of Burleigh are not examples of the poet +in his strength; for his power and fantasy we must turn to The Vision +of Sin, where the early passages have the languid voluptuous music of +The Lotos-Eaters, with the ethical element superadded, while the +portion beginning - + + +"Wrinkled ostler, grim and thin + + +is in parts reminiscent of Burns's Jolly Beggars. In Break, Break, +Break, we hear a note prelusive to In Memoriam, much of which was +already composed. + +The Poems of 1842 are always vocal in the memories of all readers of +English verse. None are more familiar, at least to men of the +generations which immediately followed Tennyson's. FitzGerald was +apt to think that the poet never again attained the same level, and I +venture to suppose that he never rose above it. For FitzGerald's +opinion, right or wrong, it is easy to account. He had seen all the +pieces in manuscript; they were his cherished possession before the +world knew them. C'est mon homme, he might have said of Tennyson, as +Boileau said of Moliere. Before the public awoke FitzGerald had +"discovered Tennyson," and that at the age most open to poetry and +most enthusiastic in friendship. Again, the Poems of 1842 were +SHORT, while The Princess, Maud, and The Idylls of the King were +relatively long, and, with In Memoriam, possessed unity of subject. +They lacked the rich, the unexampled variety of topic, treatment, and +theme which marks the Poems of 1842. These were all reasons why +FitzGerald should think that the two slim green volumes held the +poet's work at its highest level. Perhaps he was not wrong, after +all. + + + +CHAPTER IV.--1842-848--THE PRINCESS. + + + +The Poems, and such criticisms as those of Spedding and Sterling, +gave Tennyson his place. All the world of letters heard of him. +Dean Bradley tells us how he took Oxford by storm in the days of the +undergraduateship of Clough and Matthew Arnold. Probably both of +these young writers did not share the undergraduate enthusiasm. Mr +Arnold, we know, did not reckon Tennyson un esprit puissant. Like +Wordsworth (who thought Tennyson "decidedly the first of our living +poets, . . . he has expressed in the strongest terms his gratitude to +my writings"), Arnold was no fervent admirer of his contemporaries. +Besides, if Tennyson's work is "a criticism of Life," the moral +criticism, so far, was hidden in flowers, like the sword of +Aristogiton at the feast. But, on the whole, Tennyson had won the +young men who cared for poetry, though Sir Robert Peel had never +heard of him: and to win the young, as Theocritus desired to do, is +more than half the battle. On September 8, 1842, the poet was able +to tell Mr Lushington that "500 of my books are sold; according to +Moxon's brother, I have made a sensation." The sales were not like +those of Childe Harold or Marmion; but for some twenty years new +poetry had not sold at all. Novels had come in about 1814, and few +wanted or bought recent verse. But Carlyle was converted. He spoke +no more of a spoiled guardsman. "If you knew what my relation has +been to the thing called 'English Poetry' for many years back, you +would think such a fact" (his pleasure in the book) "surprising." +Carlyle had been living (as Mrs Carlyle too well knew) in Oliver +Cromwell, a hero who probably took no delight in Lycidas or Comus, in +Lovelace or Carew. "I would give all my poetry to have made one song +like that," said Tennyson of Lovelace's Althea. But Noll would have +disregarded them all alike, and Carlyle was full of the spirit of the +Protector. To conquer him was indeed a victory for Tennyson; while +Dickens, not a reading man, expressed his "earnest and sincere +homage." + +But Tennyson was not successful in the modern way. Nobody +"interviewed" him. His photograph, of course, with disquisitions on +his pipes and slippers, did not adorn the literary press. His +literary income was not magnified by penny-a-liners. He did not +become a lion; he never would roar and shake his mane in drawing- +rooms. Lockhart held that Society was the most agreeable form of the +stage: the dresses and actresses incomparably the prettiest. But +Tennyson liked Society no better than did General Gordon. He had +friends enough, and no desire for new acquaintances. Indeed, his +fortune was shattered at this time by a strange investment in wood- +carving by machinery. Ruskin had only just begun to write, and wood- +carving by machinery was still deemed an enterprise at once +philanthropic and aesthetic. "My father's worldly goods were all +gone," says Lord Tennyson. The poet's health suffered extremely: he +tried a fashionable "cure" at Cheltenham, where he saw miracles of +healing, but underwent none. In September 1845 Peel was moved by +Lord Houghton to recommend the poet for a pension (200 pounds +annually). "I have done nothing slavish to get it: I never even +solicited for it either by myself or others." Like Dr Johnson, he +honourably accepted what was offered in honour. For some reason many +persons who write in the press are always maddened when such good +fortune, however small, however well merited, falls to a brother in +letters. They, of course, were "causelessly bitter." "Let them +rave!" + +If few of the rewards of literary success arrived, the penalties at +once began, and only ceased with the poet's existence. "If you only +knew what a nuisance these volumes of verse are! Rascals send me +theirs per post from America, and I have more than once been knocked +up out of bed to pay three or four shillings for books of which I +can't get through one page, for of all books the most insipid reading +is second-rate verse." + +Would that versifiers took the warning! Tennyson had not sent his +little firstlings to Coleridge and Wordsworth: they are only the +hopeless rhymers who bombard men of letters with their lyrics and +tragedies. + +Mr Browning was a sufferer. To one young twitterer he replied in the +usual way. The bard wrote acknowledging the letter, but asking for a +definite criticism. "I do not think myself a Shakespeare or a +Milton, but I KNOW I am better than Mr Coventry Patmore or Mr Austin +Dobson." Mr Browning tried to procrastinate: he was already deeply +engaged with earlier arrivals of volumes of song. The poet was hurt, +not angry; he had expected other things from Mr Browning: HE ought +to know his duty to youth. At the intercession of a relation Mr +Browning now did his best, and the minstrel, satisfied at last, +repeated his conviction of his superiority to the authors of The +Angel in the House and Beau Brocade. Probably no man, not even Mr +Gladstone, ever suffered so much from minstrels as Tennyson. He did +not suffer them gladly. + +In 1846 the Poems reached their fourth edition. Sir Edward Bulwer +Lytton (bitten by what fly who knows?) attacked Tennyson in The New +Timon, a forgotten satire. We do not understand the ways of that +generation. The cheap and spiteful genre of satire, its forged +morality, its sham indignation, its appeal to the ape-like passions, +has gone out. Lytton had suffered many things (not in verse) from +Jeames Yellowplush: I do not know that he hit back at Thackeray, but +he "passed it on" to Thackeray's old college companion. Tennyson, +for once, replied (in Punch: the verses were sent thither by John +Forster); the answer was one of magnificent contempt. But he soon +decided that + + +"The noblest answer unto such +Is perfect stillness when they brawl." + + +Long afterwards the poet dedicated a work to the son of Lord Lytton. +He replied to no more satirists. {5} Our difficulty, of course, is +to conceive such an attack coming from a man of Lytton's position and +genius. He was no hungry hack, and could, and did, do infinitely +better things than "stand in a false following" of Pope. Probably +Lytton had a false idea that Tennyson was a rich man, a branch of his +family being affluent, and so resented the little pension. The poet +was so far from rich in 1846, and even after the publication of The +Princess, that his marriage had still to be deferred for four years. + +On reading The Princess afresh one is impressed, despite old +familiarity, with the extraordinary influence of its beauty. Here +are, indeed, the best words best placed, and that curious felicity of +style which makes every line a marvel, and an eternal possession. It +is as if Tennyson had taken the advice which Keats gave to Shelley, +"Load every rift with ore." To choose but one or two examples, how +the purest and freshest impression of nature is re-created in mind +and memory by the picture of Melissa with + + + "All her thoughts as fair within her eyes, +As bottom agates seen to wave and float +In crystal currents of clear morning seas." + + +The lyric, "Tears, idle tears," is far beyond praise: once read it +seems like a thing that has always existed in the world of poetic +archetypes, and has now been not so much composed as discovered and +revealed. The many pictures and similitudes in The Princess have a +magical gorgeousness:- + + + "From the illumined hall +Long lanes of splendour slanted o'er a press +Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes, +And rainbow robes, and gems and gem-like eyes, +And gold and golden heads; they to and fro +Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, some pale." + + +The "small sweet Idyll" from + + +"A volume of the poets of her land" + + +pure Theocritus. It has been admirably rendered into Greek by Mr +Gilbert Murray. The exquisite beauties of style are not less +exquisitely blended in the confusions of a dream, for a dream is the +thing most akin to The Princess. Time does not exist in the realm of +Gama, or in the ideal university of Ida. We have a bookless North, +severed but by a frontier pillar from a golden and learned South. +The arts, from architecture to miniature-painting, are in their +highest perfection, while knights still tourney in armour, and the +quarrel of two nations is decided as in the gentle and joyous passage +of arms at Ashby de la Zouche. Such confusions are purposefully +dream-like: the vision being a composite thing, as dreams are, +haunted by the modern scene of the holiday in the park, the "gallant +glorious chronicle," the Abbey, and that "old crusading knight +austere," Sir Ralph. The seven narrators of the scheme are like the +"split personalities" of dreams, and the whole scheme is of great +technical skill. The earlier editions lacked the beautiful songs of +the ladies, and that additional trait of dream, the strange trance- +like seizures of the Prince: "fallings from us, vanishings," in +Wordsworthian phrase; instances of "dissociation," in modern +psychological terminology. Tennyson himself, like Shelley and +Wordsworth, had experience of this kind of dreaming awake which he +attributes to his Prince, to strengthen the shadowy yet brilliant +character of his romance. It is a thing of normal and natural points +de repere; of daylight suggestion, touched as with the magnifying and +intensifying elements of haschish-begotten phantasmagoria. In the +same way opium raised into the region of brilliant vision that +passage of Purchas which Coleridge was reading before he dreamed +Kubla Khan. But in Tennyson the effects were deliberately sought and +secured. + + One might conjecture, though Lord Tennyson says nothing on the +subject, that among the suggestions for The Princess was the opening +of Love's Labour's Lost. Here the King of Navarre devises the +College of Recluses, which is broken up by the arrival of the +Princess of France, Rosaline, and the other ladies:- + + +King. Our Court shall be a little Academe, +Still and contemplative in living art. +You three, Biron, Domain, and Longaville, +Have sworn for three years' term to live with me, +My fellow-scholars, and to keep those statutes. +* * * +Biron. That is, to live and study here three years. +But there are other strict observances; +As, not to see a woman in that term. +* * * +[Reads] 'That no woman shalt come within a mile of my Court:' Hath +this been proclaimed? +Long. Four days ago. +Biron. Let's see the penalty. [Reads] 'On pain of losing her +tongue.' + + +The Princess then arrives with her ladies, as the Prince does with +Cyril and Florian, as Charles did, with Buckingham, in Spain. The +conclusion of Shakespeare is Tennyson's conclusion - + + +"We cannot cross the cause why we are born." + + +The later poet reverses the attitude of the sexes in Love's Labour's +Lost: it is the women who make and break the vow; and the women in +The Princess insist on the "grand, epic, homicidal" scenes, while the +men are debarred, more or less, from a sportive treatment of the +subject. The tavern catch of Cyril; the laughable pursuit of the +Prince by the feminine Proctors; the draggled appearance of the +adventurers in female garb, are concessions to the humour of the +situation. Shakespeare would certainly have given us the song of +Cyril at the picnic, and comic enough the effect would have been on +the stage. It may be a gross employment, but The Princess, with the +pretty chorus of girl undergraduates, + + +"In colours gayer than the morning mist," + + +went reasonably well in opera. Merely considered as a romantic +fiction, The Princess presents higher proofs of original narrative +genius than any other such attempt by its author. + +The poem is far from being deficient in that human interest which +Shelley said that it was as vain to ask from HIM, as to seek to buy a +leg of mutton at a gin-shop. The characters, the protagonists, with +Cyril, Melissa, Lady Blanche, the child Aglaia, King Gama, the other +king, Arac, and the hero's mother--beautifully studied from the +mother of the poet--are all sufficiently human. But they seem to +waver in the magic air, "as all the golden autumn woodland reels +athwart the fires of autumn leaves. For these reasons, and because +of the designed fantasy of the whole composition, The Princess is +essentially a poem for the true lovers of poetry, of Spenser and of +Coleridge. The serious motive, the question of Woman, her wrongs, +her rights, her education, her capabilities, was not "in the air" in +1847. To be sure it had often been "in the air." The Alexandrian +Platonists, the Renaissance, even the age of Anne, had their +emancipated and learned ladies. Early Greece had Sappho, Corinna, +and Erinna, the first the chief of lyric poets, even in her +fragments, the two others applauded by all Hellas. The French +Revolution had begotten Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and her +Vindication of the Rights of Women, and in France George Sand was +prominent and emancipated enough while the poet wrote. But, the +question of love apart, George Sand was "very, very woman," shining +as a domestic character and fond of needlework. England was not +excited about the question which has since produced so many +disputants, inevitably shrill, and has not been greatly meddled with +by women of genius, George Eliot or Mrs Oliphant. The poem, in the +public indifference as to feminine education, came rather +prematurely. We have now ladies' colleges, not in haunts remote from +man, but by the sedged banks of Cam and Cherwell. There have been no +revolutionary results: no boys have spied these chaste nests, with +echoing romantic consequences. The beauty and splendour of the +Princess's university have not arisen in light and colour, and it is +only at St Andrews that girls wear the academic and becoming costume +of the scarlet gown. The real is far below the ideal, but the real +in 1847 seemed eminently remote, or even impossible. + +The learned Princess herself was not on our level as to knowledge and +the past of womankind. She knew not of their masterly position in +the law of ancient Egypt. Gynaeocracy and matriarchy, the woman the +head of the savage or prehistoric group, were things hidden from her. +She "glanced at the Lycian custom," but not at the Pictish, a custom +which would have suited George Sand to a marvel. She maligned the +Hottentots. + + +"The highest is the measure of the man, +And not the Kaffir, Hottentot, Malay." + + +The Hottentots had long ago anticipated the Princess and her shrill +modern sisterhood. If we take the Greeks, or even ourselves, we may +say, with Dampier (1689), "The Hodmadods, though a nasty people, yet +are gentlemen to these" as regards the position of women. Let us +hear Mr Hartland: "In every Hottentot's house the wife is supreme. +Her husband, poor fellow, though he may wield wide power and +influence out of doors, at home dare not even take a mouthful of +sour-milk out of the household vat without her permission . . . The +highest oath a man can take is to swear by his eldest sister, and if +he abuses this name he forfeits to her his finest goods and sheep." + +However, in 1847 England had not yet thought of imitating the +Hodmadods. Consequently, and by reason of the purely literary and +elaborately fantastical character of The Princess, it was not of a +nature to increase the poet's fame and success. "My book is out, and +I hate it, and so no doubt will you," Tennyson wrote to FitzGerald, +who hated it and said so. "Like Carlyle, I gave up all hopes of him +after The Princess," indeed it was not apt to conciliate Carlyle. +"None of the songs had the old champagne flavour," said Fitz; and +Lord Tennyson adds, "Nothing either by Thackeray or by my father met +FitzGerald's approbation unless he had first seen it in manuscript." +This prejudice was very human. Lord Tennyson remarks, as to the +poet's meaning in this work, born too early, that "the sooner woman +finds out, before the great educational movement begins, that 'woman +is not undeveloped man, but diverse,' the better it will be for the +progress of the world." + +But probably the "educational movement" will not make much difference +to womankind on the whole. The old Platonic remark that woman "does +the same things as man, but not so well," will eternally hold good, +at least in the arts, and in letters, except in rare cases of genius. +A new Jeanne d'Arc, the most signal example of absolute genius in +history, will not come again; and the ages have waited vainly for a +new Sappho or a new Jane Austen. Literature, poetry, painting, have +always been fields open to woman. But two names exhaust the roll of +women of the highest rank in letters--Sappho and Jane Austen. And +"when did woman ever yet invent?" In "arts of government" Elizabeth +had courage, and just saving sense enough to yield to Cecil at the +eleventh hour, and escape the fate of "her sister and her foe," the +beautiful unhappy queen who told her ladies that she dared to look on +whatever men dared to do, and herself would do it if her strength so +served her." {6} "The foundress of the Babylonian walls" is a myth; +"the Rhodope that built the Pyramid" is not a creditable myth; for +exceptions to Knox's "Monstrous Regiment of Women" we must fall back +on "The Palmyrene that fought Aurelian," and the revered name of the +greatest of English queens, Victoria. Thus history does not +encourage the hope that a man-like education will raise many women to +the level of the highest of their sex in the past, or even that the +enormous majority of women will take advantage of the opportunity of +a man-like education. A glance at the numerous periodicals designed +for the reading of women depresses optimism, and the Princess's +prophecy of + + +"Two plummets dropped for one to sound the abyss +Of science, and the secrets of the mind," + + +is not near fulfilment. Fortunately the sex does not "love the +Metaphysics," and perhaps has not yet produced even a manual of +Logic. It must suffice man and woman to + + + "Walk this world +Yoked in all exercise of noble end," + + +of a more practical character, while woman is at liberty + + + "To live and learn and be +All that not harms distinctive womanhood." + + +This was the conclusion of the poet who had the most chivalrous +reverence for womanhood. This is the eirenicon of that old strife +between the women and the men--that war in which both armies are +captured. It may not be acceptable to excited lady combatants, who +think man their foe, when the real enemy is (what Porson damned) the +Nature of Things. + +A new poem like The Princess would soon reach the public of our day, +so greatly increased are the uses of advertisement. But The Princess +moved slowly from edition to revised and improved edition, bringing +neither money nor much increase of fame. The poet was living with +his family at Cheltenham, where among his new acquaintances were +Sydney Dobell, the poet of a few exquisite pieces, and F. W. +Robertson, later so popular as a preacher at Brighton. Meeting him +for the first time, and knowing Robertson's "wish to pluck the heart +from my mystery, from pure nervousness I would only talk of beer." +This kind of shyness beset Tennyson. A lady tells me that as a girl +(and a very beautiful girl) she and her sister, and a third, nec +diversa, met the poet, and expected high discourse. But his speech +was all of that wingless insect which "gets there, all the same," +according to an American lyrist; the insect which fills Mrs Carlyle's +letters with bulletins of her success or failure in domestic +campaigns. + +Tennyson kept visiting London, where he saw Thackeray and the despair +of Carlyle, and at Bath House he was too modest to be introduced to +the great Duke whose requiem he was to sing so nobly. Oddly enough +Douglas Jerrold enthusiastically assured Tennyson, at a dinner of a +Society of Authors, that "you are the one who will live." To that +end, humanly speaking, he placed himself under the celebrated Dr +Gully and his "water-cure," a foible of that period. In 1848 he made +a tour to King Arthur's Cornish bounds, and another to Scotland, +where the Pass of Brander disappointed him: perhaps he saw it on a +fine day, and, like Glencoe, it needs tempest and mist lit up by the +white fires of many waterfalls. By bonny Doon he "fell into a +passion of tears," for he had all of Keats's sentiment for Burns: +"There never was immortal poet if he be not one." Of all English +poets, the warmest in the praise of Burns have been the two most +unlike himself--Tennyson and Keats. It was the songs that Tennyson +preferred; Wordsworth liked the Cottar's Saturday Night. + + + +CHAPTER V.--IN MEMORIAM. + + + +In May 1850 a few, copies of In Memoriam were printed for friends, +and presently the poem was published without author's name. The +pieces had been composed at intervals, from 1833 onwards. It is to +be observed that the "section about evolution" was written some years +before 1844, when the ingenious hypotheses of Robert Chambers, in +Vestiges of Creation, were given to the world, and caused a good deal +of talk. Ten years, again, after In Memoriam, came Darwin's Origin +of Species. These dates are worth observing. The theory of +evolution, of course in a rude mythical shape, is at least as old as +the theory of creation, and is found among the speculations of the +most backward savages. The Arunta of Central Australia, a race +remote from the polite, have a hypothesis of evolution which +postulates only a few rudimentary forms of life, a marine +environment, and the minimum of supernormal assistance in the way of +stimulating the primal forms in the direction of more highly +differentiated developments. "The rudimentary forms, Inapertwa, were +in reality stages in the transformation of various plants and animals +into human beings. . . . They had no distinct limbs or organs of +sight, hearing, or smell." They existed in a kind of lumps, and were +set free from the cauls which enveloped them by two beings called +Ungambikula, "a word which means 'out of nothing,' or 'self- +existing.' Men descend from lower animals thus evolved." {7} + +This example of the doctrine of evolution in an early shape is only +mentioned to prove that the idea has been familiar to the human mind +from the lowest known stage of culture. Not less familiar has been +the theory of creation by a kind of supreme being. The notion of +creation, however, up to 1860, held the foremost place in modern +European belief. But Lamarck, the elder Darwin, Monboddo, and others +had submitted hypotheses of evolution. Now it was part of the +originality of Tennyson, as a philosophic poet, that he had brooded +from boyhood on these early theories of evolution, in an age when +they were practically unknown to the literary, and were not +patronised by the scientific, world. In November 1844 he wrote to Mr +Moxon, "I want you to get me a book which I see advertised in the +Examiner: it seems to contain many speculations with which I have +been familiar for years, and on which I have written more than one +poem." This book was Vestiges of Creation. These poems are the +stanzas in In Memoriam about "the greater ape," and about Nature as +careless of the type: "all shall go." The poetic and philosophic +originality of Tennyson thus faced the popular inferences as to the +effect of the doctrine of evolution upon religious beliefs long +before the world was moved in all its deeps by Darwin's Origin of +Species. Thus the geological record is inconsistent, we learned, +with the record of the first chapters of Genesis. If man is a +differentiated monkey, and if a monkey has no soul, or future life +(which is taken for granted), where are man's title-deeds to these +possessions? With other difficulties of an obvious kind, these +presented themselves to the poet with renewed force when his only +chance of happiness depended on being able to believe in a future +life, and reunion with the beloved dead. Unbelief had always +existed. We hear of atheists in the Rig Veda. In the early +eighteenth century, in the age of Swift - + + +"Men proved, as sure as God's in Gloucester, +That Moses was a great impostor." + + +distrust of Moses increased with the increase of hypotheses of +evolution. But what English poet, before Tennyson, ever attempted +"to lay the spectres of the mind"; ever faced world-old problems in +their most recent aspects? I am not acquainted with any poet who +attempted this task, and, whatever we may think of Tennyson's +success, I do not see how we can deny his originality. + +Mr Frederic Harrison, however, thinks that neither "the theology nor +the philosophy of In Memoriam are new, original, with an independent +force and depth of their own." "They are exquisitely graceful re- +statements of the theology of the Broad Churchman of the school of F. +D. Maurice and Jowett--a combination of Maurice's somewhat illogical +piety with Jowett's philosophy of mystification." The piety of +Maurice may be as illogical as that of Positivism is logical, and the +philosophy of the Master of Balliol may be whatever Mr Harrison +pleases to call it. But as Jowett's earliest work (except an essay +on Etruscan religion) is of 1855, one does not see how it could +influence Tennyson before 1844. And what had the Duke of Argyll +written on these themes some years before 1844? The late Duke, to +whom Mr Harrison refers in this connection, was born in 1823. His +philosophic ideas, if they were to influence Tennyson's In Memoriam, +must have been set forth by him at the tender age of seventeen, or +thereabouts. Mr Harrison's sentence is, "But does In Memoriam teach +anything, or transfigure any idea which was not about that time" (the +time of writing was mainly 1833-1840) "common form with F. D. +Maurice, with Jowett, C. Kingsley, F. Robertson, Stopford Brooke, Mr +Ruskin, and the Duke of Argyll, Bishops Westcott and Boyd Carpenter?" + +The dates answer Mr Harrison. Jowett did not publish anything till +at least fifteen years after Tennyson wrote his poems on evolution +and belief. Dr Boyd Carpenter's works previous to 1840 are unknown +to bibliography. F. W. Robertson was a young parson at Cheltenham. +Ruskin had not published the first volume of Modern Painters. His +Oxford prize poem is of 1839. Mr Stopford Brooke was at school. The +Duke of Argyll was being privately educated: and so with the rest, +except the contemporary Maurice. How can Mr Harrison say that, in +the time of In Memoriam, Tennyson was "in touch with the ideas of +Herschel, Owen, Huxley, Darwin, and Tyndall"? {8} When Tennyson +wrote the parts of In Memoriam which deal with science, nobody beyond +their families and friends had heard of Huxley, Darwin, and Tyndall. +They had not developed, much less had they published, their "general +ideas." Even in his journal of the Cruise of the Beagle Darwin's +ideas were religious, and he naively admired the works of God. It is +strange that Mr Harrison has based his criticism, and his theory of +Tennyson's want of originality, on what seems to be a historical +error. He cites parts of In Memoriam, and remarks, "No one can deny +that all this is exquisitely beautiful; that these eternal problems +have never been clad in such inimitable grace . . . But the train of +thought is essentially that with which ordinary English readers have +been made familiar by F. D. Maurice, Professor Jowett, Ecce Homo, +Hypatia, and now by Arthur Balfour, Mr Drummond, and many valiant +companies of Septem [why Septem?] contra Diabolum." One must keep +repeating the historical verity that the ideas of In Memoriam could +not have been "made familiar by" authors who had not yet published +anything, or by books yet undreamed of and unborn, such as Ecce Homo +and Jowett's work on some of St Paul's Epistles. If these books +contain the ideas of In Memoriam, it is by dint of repetition and +borrowing from In Memoriam, or by coincidence. The originality was +Tennyson's, for we cannot dispute the evidence of dates. + +When one speaks of "originality" one does not mean that Tennyson +discovered the existence of the ultimate problems. But at Cambridge +(1828-1830) he had voted "No" in answer to the question discussed by +"the Apostles," "Is an intelligible [intelligent?] First Cause +deducible from the phenomena of the universe?" {9} He had also +propounded the theory that "the development of the human body might +possibly be traced from the radiated vermicular molluscous and +vertebrate organisms," thirty years before Darwin published The +Origin of Species. To be concerned so early with such hypotheses, +and to face, in poetry, the religious or irreligious inferences which +may be drawn from them, decidedly constitutes part of the poetic +originality of Tennyson. His attitude, as a poet, towards religious +doubt is only so far not original, as it is part of the general +reaction from the freethinking of the eighteenth century. Men had +then been freethinkers avec delices. It was a joyous thing to be an +atheist, or something very like one; at all events, it was glorious +to be "emancipated." Many still find it glorious, as we read in the +tone of Mr Huxley, when he triumphs and tramples over pious dukes and +bishops. Shelley said that a certain schoolgirl "would make a dear +little atheist." But by 1828-1830 men were less joyous in their +escape from all that had hitherto consoled and fortified humanity. +Long before he dreamed of In Memoriam, in the Poems chiefly Lyrical +of 1830 Tennyson had written - + + +"'Yet,' said I, in my morn of youth, +The unsunn'd freshness of my strength, +When I went forth in quest of truth, +'It is man's privilege to doubt.' . . . + Ay me! I fear +All may not doubt, but everywhere +Some must clasp Idols. Yet, my God, +Whom call I Idol? Let Thy dove +Shadow me over, and my sins +Be unremember'd, and Thy love +Enlighten me. Oh teach me yet +Somewhat before the heavy clod +Weighs on me, and the busy fret +Of that sharp-headed worm begins +In the gross blackness underneath. + +Oh weary life! oh weary death! +Oh spirit and heart made desolate! +Oh damned vacillating state!" + + +Now the philosophy of In Memoriam may be, indeed is, regarded by +robust, first-rate, and far from sensitive minds, as a "damned +vacillating state." The poet is not so imbued with the spirit of +popular science as to be sure that he knows everything: knows that +there is nothing but atoms and ether, with no room for God or a soul. +He is far from that happy cock-certainty, and consequently is exposed +to the contempt of the cock-certain. The poem, says Mr Harrison, +"has made Tennyson the idol of the Anglican clergyman--the world in +which he was born and the world in which his life was ideally passed- +-the idol of all cultured youth and of all aesthetic women. It is an +honourable post to fill"--that of idol. "The argument of In Memoriam +apparently is . . . that we should faintly trust the larger hope." +That, I think, is not the argument, not the conclusion of the poem, +but is a casual expression of one mood among many moods. + +The argument and conclusion of In Memoriam are the argument and +conclusion of the life of Tennyson, and of the love of Tennyson, that +immortal passion which was a part of himself, and which, if aught of +us endure, is living yet, and must live eternally. From the record +of his Life by his son we know that his trust in "the larger hope" +was not "faint," but strengthened with the years. There are said to +have been less hopeful intervals. + +His faith is, of course, no argument for others,--at least it ought +not to be. We are all the creatures of our bias, our environment, +our experience, our emotions. The experience of Tennyson was unlike +the experience of most men. It yielded him subjective grounds for +belief. He "opened a path unto many," like Yama, the Vedic being who +discovered the way to death. But Tennyson's path led not to death, +but to life spiritual, and to hope, and he did "give a new impulse to +the thought of his age," as other great poets have done. Of course +it may be an impulse to wrong thought. As the philosophical +Australian black said, "We shall know when we are dead." + +Mr Harrison argues as if, unlike Tennyson, Byron, Wordsworth, +Shelley, and Burns produced "original ideas fresh from their own +spirit, and not derived from contemporary thinkers." I do not know +what original ideas these great poets discovered and promulgated; +their ideas seem to have been "in the air." These poets "made them +current coin." Shelley thought that he owed many of his ideas to +Godwin, a contemporary thinker. Wordsworth has a debt to Plato, a +thinker not contemporary. Burns's democratic independence was "in +the air," and had been, in Scotland, since Elder remarked on it in a +letter to Ingles in 1515. It is not the ideas, it is the expression +of the ideas, that marks the poet. Tennyson's ideas are relatively +novel, though as old as Plotinus, for they are applied to a novel, or +at least an unfamiliar, mental situation. Doubt was abroad, as it +always is; but, for perhaps the first time since Porphyry wrote his +letter to Abammon, the doubters desired to believe, and said, "Lord, +help Thou my unbelief." To robust, not sensitive minds, very much in +unity with themselves, the attitude seems contemptible, or at best +decently futile. Yet I cannot think it below the dignity of mankind, +conscious that it is not omniscient. The poet does fail in logic (In +Memoriam, cxx.) when he says - + + +"Let him, the wiser man who springs + Hereafter, up from childhood shape + His action like the greater ape, +But I was BORN to other things." + + +I am not well acquainted with the habits of the greater ape, but it +would probably be unwise, and perhaps indecent, to imitate him, even +if "we also are his offspring." We might as well revert to polyandry +and paint, because our Celtic or Pictish ancestors, if we had any, +practised the one and wore the other. However, petulances like the +verse on the greater ape are rare in In Memoriam. To declare that "I +would not stay" in life if science proves us to be "cunning casts in +clay," is beneath the courage of the Stoical philosophy. + +Theologically, the poem represents the struggle with doubts and hopes +and fears, which had been with Tennyson from his boyhood, as is +proved by the volume of 1830. But the doubts had exerted, probably, +but little influence on his happiness till the sudden stroke of loss +made life for a time seem almost unbearable unless the doubts were +solved. They WERE solved, or stoically set aside, in the Ulysses, +written in the freshness of grief, with the conclusion that we must +be + + + "Strong in will +To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." + + +But the gnawing of grief till it becomes a physical pain, the fever +fits of sorrow, the aching desiderium, bring back in many guises the +old questions. These require new attempts at answers, and are +answered, "the sad mechanic exercise" of verse allaying the pain. +This is the genesis of In Memoriam, not originally written for +publication but produced at last as a monument to friendship, and as +a book of consolation. + +No books of consolation can console except by sympathy; and in In +Memoriam sympathy and relief have been found, and will be found, by +many. Another, we feel, has trodden our dark and stony path, has +been shadowed by the shapes of dread which haunt our valley of +tribulation: a mind almost infinitely greater than ours has been our +fellow-sufferer. He has emerged from the darkness of the shadow of +death into the light, whither, as it seems to us, we can scarcely +hope to come. It is the sympathy and the example, I think, not the +speculations, mystical or scientific, which make In Memoriam, in more +than name, a book of consolation: even in hours of the sharpest +distress, when its technical beauties and wonderful pictures seem +shadowy and unreal, like the yellow sunshine and the woods of that +autumn day when a man learned that his friend was dead. No, it was +not the speculations and arguments that consoled or encouraged us. +We did not listen to Tennyson as to Mr Frederic Harrison's glorified +Anglican clergyman. We could not murmur, like the Queen of the May - + + +"That good man, the Laureate, has told tis words of peace." + + +What we valued was the poet's companionship. There was a young +reader to whom All along the Valley came as a new poem in a time of +recent sorrow. + + +"The two-and-thirty years were a mist that rolls away," + + +said the singer of In Memoriam, and in that hour it seemed as if none +could endure for two-and-thirty years the companionship of loss. But +the years have gone by, and have left + + + "Ever young the face that dwells +With reason cloister'd in the brain." {10} + + +In this way to many In Memoriam is almost a life-long companion: we +walk with Great-heart for our guide through the valley Perilous. + +In this respect In Memoriam is unique, for neither to its praise nor +dispraise is it to be compared with the other famous elegies of the +world. These are brief outbursts of grief--real, as in the hopeless +words of Catullus over his brother's tomb; or academic, like Milton's +Lycidas. We are not to suppose that Milton was heart-broken by the +death of young Mr King, or that Shelley was greatly desolated by the +death of Keats, with whom his personal relations had been slight, and +of whose poetry he had spoken evil. He was nobly stirred as a poet +by a poet's death--like Mr Swinburne by the death of Charles +Baudelaire; but neither Shelley nor Mr Swinburne was lamenting +dimidium animae suae, or mourning for a friend + + + "Dear as the mother to the son, +More than my brothers are to me." + + +The passion of In Memoriam is personal, is acute, is life-long, and +thus it differs from the other elegies. Moreover, it celebrates a +noble object, and thus is unlike the ambiguous affection, real or +dramatic, which informs the sonnets of Shakespeare. So the poem +stands alone, cloistered; not fiery with indignation, not breaking +into actual prophecy, like Shelley's Adonais; not capable, by reason +even of its meditative metre, of the organ music of Lycidas. Yet it +is not to be reckoned inferior to these because its aim and plan are +other than theirs. + + It is far from my purpose to "class" Tennyson, or to dispute about +his relative greatness when compared with Wordsworth or Byron, +Coleridge, Shelley, or Burns. He rated one song of Lovelace above +all his lyrics, and, in fact, could no more have written the +Cavalier's To Althea from Prison than Lovelace could have written the +Morte d'Arthur. "It is not reasonable, it is not fair," says Mr +Harrison, after comparing In Memoriam with Lycidas, "to compare +Tennyson with Milton," and it is not reasonable to compare Tennyson +with any poet whatever. Criticism is not the construction of a class +list. But we may reasonably say that In Memoriam is a noble poem, an +original poem, a poem which stands alone in literature. The +wonderful beauty, ever fresh, howsoever often read, of many stanzas, +is not denied by any critic. The marvel is that the same serene +certainty of art broods over even the stanzas which must have been +conceived while the sorrow was fresh. The second piece, + + +"Old yew, which graspest at the stones," + + +must have been composed soon after the stroke fell. Yet it is as +perfect as the proem of 1849. As a rule, the poetical expression of +strong emotion appears usually to clothe the memory of passion when +it has been softened by time. But here already "the rhythm, +phrasing, and articulation are entirely faultless, exquisitely clear, +melodious, and rare." {11} It were superfluous labour to point at +special beauties, at the exquisite rendering of nature; and copious +commentaries exist to explain the course of the argument, if a series +of moods is to be called an argument. One may note such a point as +that (xiv.) where the poet says that, were he to meet his friend in +life, + + +"I should not feel it to be strange." + + +It may have happened to many to mistake, for a section of a second, +the face of a stranger for the face seen only in dreams, and to find +that the recognition brings no surprise. + +Pieces of a character apart from the rest, and placed in a designed +sequence, are xcii., xciii., xcv. In the first the poet says - + + +"If any vision should reveal + Thy likeness, I might count it vain + As but the canker of the brain; +Yea, tho' it spake and made appeal + +To chances where our lots were cast + Together in the days behind, + I might but say, I hear a wind +Of memory murmuring the past. + +Yea, tho' it spake and bared to view + A fact within the coming year; + And tho' the months, revolving near, +Should prove the phantom-warning true, + +They might not seem thy prophecies, + But spiritual presentiments, + And such refraction of events +As often rises ere they rise." + + +The author thus shows himself difficile as to recognising the +personal identity of a phantasm; nor is it easy to see what mode of +proving his identity would be left to a spirit. The poet, therefore, +appeals to some perhaps less satisfactory experience:- + + +"Descend, and touch, and enter; hear + The wish too strong for words to name; + That in this blindness of the frame +My Ghost may feel that thine is near." + + +The third poem is the crown of In Memoriam, expressing almost such +things as are not given to man to utter:- + + + And all at once it seem'd at last +The living soul was flash'd on mine, + +And mine in this was wound, and whirl'd + About empyreal heights of thought, + And came on that which is, and caught +The deep pulsations of the world, + +AEonian music measuring out + The steps of Time--the shocks of Chance - + The blows of Death. At length my trance +Was cancell'd, stricken thro' with doubt. + +Vague words! but ah, how hard to frame + In matter-moulded forms of speech, + Or ev'n for intellect to reach +Thro' memory that which I became." + + +Experiences like this, subjective, and not matter for argument, were +familiar to Tennyson. Jowett said, "He was one of those who, though +not an upholder of miracles, thought that the wonders of Heaven and +Earth were never far absent from us." In The Mystic, Tennyson, when +almost a boy, had shown familiarity with strange psychological and +psychical conditions. Poems of much later life also deal with these, +and, more or less consciously, his philosophy was tinged, and his +confidence that we are more than "cunning casts in clay" was +increased, by phenomena of experience, which can only be evidence for +the mystic himself, if even for him. But this dim aspect of his +philosophy, of course, is "to the Greeks foolishness." + +His was a philosophy of his own; not a philosophy for disciples, and +"those that eddy round and round." It was the sum of his reflection +on the mass of his impressions. I have shown, by the aid of dates, +that it was not borrowed from Huxley, Mr Stopford Brooke, or the late +Duke of Argyll. But, no doubt, many of the ideas were "in the air," +and must have presented themselves to minds at once of religious +tendency, and attracted by the evolutionary theories which had always +existed as floating speculations, till they were made current coin by +the genius and patient study of Darwin. That Tennyson's opinions +between 1830 and 1840 were influenced by those of F. D. Maurice is +reckoned probable by Canon Ainger, author of the notice of the poet +in The Dictionary of National Biography. In the Life of Maurice, +Tennyson does not appear till 1850, and the two men were not at +Cambridge together. But Maurice's ideas, as they then existed, may +have reached Tennyson orally through Hallam and other members of the +Trinity set, who knew personally the author of Letters to a Quaker. +However, this is no question of scientific priority: to myself it +seems that Tennyson "beat his music out" for himself, as perhaps most +people do. Like his own Sir Percivale, "I know not all he meant." + +Among the opinions as to In Memoriam current at the time of its +publication Lord Tennyson notices those of Maurice and Robertson. +They "thought that the poet had made a definite step towards the +unification of the highest religion and philosophy with the +progressive science of the day." Neither science nor religion stands +still; neither stands now where it then did. Conceivably they are +travelling on paths which will ultimately coincide; but this opinion, +of course, must seem foolishness to most professors of science. +Bishop Westcott was at Cambridge when the book appeared: he is one +of Mr Harrison's possible sources of Tennyson's ideas. He recognised +the poet's "splendid faith (in the face of every difficulty) in the +growing purpose of the sum of life, and in the noble destiny of the +individual man." Ten years later Professor Henry Sidgwick, a mind +sufficiently sceptical, found in some lines of In Memoriam "the +indestructible and inalienable minimum of faith which humanity cannot +give up because it is necessary for life; and which I know that I, at +least so far as the man in me is deeper than the methodical thinker, +cannot give up." But we know that many persons not only do not find +an irreducible minimum of faith "necessary for life," but are highly +indignant and contemptuous if any one else ventures to suggest the +logical possibility of any faith at all. + +The mass of mankind will probably never be convinced unbelievers-- +nay, probably the backward or forward swing of the pendulum will +touch more convinced belief. But there always have been, since the +Rishis of India sang, superior persons who believe in nothing not +material--whatever the material may be. Tennyson was, it is said, +"impatient" of these esprits forts, and they are impatient of him. +It is an error to be impatient: we know not whither the logos may +lead us, or later generations; and we ought not to be irritated with +others because it leads them into what we think the wrong path. It +is unfortunate that a work of art, like In Memoriam, should arouse +theological or anti-theological passions. The poet only shows us the +paths by which his mind travelled: they may not be the right paths, +nor is it easy to trace them on a philosophical chart. He escaped +from Doubting Castle. Others may "take that for a hermitage," and be +happy enough in the residence. We are all determined by our bias: +Tennyson's is unconcealed. His poem is not a tract: it does not aim +at the conversion of people with the contrary bias, it is irksome, in +writing about a poet, to be obliged to discuss a philosophy which, +certainly, is not stated in the manner of Spinoza, but is merely the +equilibrium of contending forces in a single mind. + +The most famous review of In Memoriam is that which declared that +"these touching lines evidently come from the full heart of the widow +of a military man." This is only equalled, if equalled, by a recent +critique which treated a fresh edition of Jane Eyre as a new novel, +"not without power, in parts, and showing some knowledge of Yorkshire +local colour." + + + +CHAPTER VI.--AFTER IN MEMORIAM. + + + +On June 13 Tennyson married, at Shiplake, the object of his old, +long-tried, and constant affection. The marriage was still +"imprudent,"--eight years of then uncontested supremacy in English +poetry had not brought a golden harvest. Mr Moxon appears to have +supplied 300 pounds "in advance of royalties." The sum, so +contemptible in the eyes of first-rate modern novelists, was a +competence to Tennyson, added to his little pension and the epaves of +his patrimony. "The peace of God came into my life when I married +her," he said in later days. The poet made a charming copy of verses +to his friend, the Rev. Mr Rawnsley, who tied the knot, as he and his +bride drove to the beautiful village of Pangbourne. Thence they went +to the stately Clevedon Court, the seat of Sir Abraham Elton, hard by +the church where Arthur Hallam sleeps. The place is very ancient and +beautiful, and was a favourite haunt of Thackeray. They passed on to +Lynton, and to Glastonbury, where a collateral ancestor of Mrs +Tennyson's is buried beside King Arthur's grave, in that green valley +of Avilion, among the apple-blossoms. They settled for a while at +Tent Lodge on Coniston Water, in a land of hospitable Marshalls. + +After their return to London, on the night of November 18, Tennyson +dreamed that Prince Albert came and kissed him, and that he himself +said, "Very kind, but very German," which was very like him. Next +day he received from Windsor the offer of the Laureateship. He +doubted, and hesitated, but accepted. Since Wordsworth's death there +had, as usual, been a good deal of banter about the probable new +Laureate: examples of competitive odes exist in Bon Gaultier. That +by Tennyson is Anacreontic, but he was not really set on kissing the +Maids of Honour, as he is made to sing. Rogers had declined, on the +plea of extreme old age; but it was worthy of the great and good +Queen not to overlook the Nestor of English poets. For the rest, the +Queen looked for "a name bearing such distinction in the literary +world as to do credit to the appointment." In the previous century +the great poets had rarely been Laureates. But since Sir Walter +Scott declined the bays in favour of Southey, for whom, again, the +tale of bricks in the way of Odes was lightened, and when Wordsworth +succeeded Southey, the office became honourable. Tennyson gave it an +increase of renown, while, though in itself of merely nominal value, +it served his poems, to speak profanely, as an advertisement. New +editions of his books were at once in demand; while few readers had +ever heard of Mr Browning, already his friend, and already author of +Men and Women. + +The Laureateship brought the poet acquainted with the Queen, who was +to be his debtor in later days for encouragement and consolation. To +his Laureateship we owe, among other good things, the stately and +moving Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, a splendid heroic +piece, unappreciated at the moment. But Tennyson was, of course, no +Birthday poet. Since the exile of the House of Stuart our kings in +England have not maintained the old familiarity with many classes of +their subjects. Literature has not been fashionable at Court, and +Tennyson could in no age have been a courtier. We hear the +complaint, every now and then, that official honours are not +conferred (except the Laureateship) on men of letters. But most of +them probably think it rather distinguished not to be decorated, or +to carry titles borne by many deserving persons unvisited by the +Muses. Even the appointment to the bays usually provokes a great +deal of jealous and spiteful feeling, which would only be multiplied +if official honours were distributed among men of the pen. Perhaps +Tennyson's laurels were not for nothing in the chorus of dispraise +which greeted the Ode on the Duke of Wellington, and Maud. + +The year 1851 was chiefly notable for a tour to Italy, made immortal +in the beautiful poem of The Daisy, in a measure of the poet's own +invention. The next year, following on the Coup d'etat and the rise +of the new French empire, produced patriotic appeals to Britons to +"guard their own," which to a great extent former alien owners had +been unsuccessful in guarding from Britons. The Tennysons had lost +their first child at his birth: perhaps he is remembered in The +Grandmother, "the babe had fought for his life." In August 1852 the +present Lord Tennyson was born, and Mr Maurice was asked to be +godfather. The Wellington Ode was of November, and was met by "the +almost universal depreciation of the press,"--why, except because, as +I have just suggested, Tennyson was Laureate, it is impossible to +imagine. The verses were worthy of the occasion: more they could +not be. + +In the autumn of 1853 the poet visited Ardtornish on the Sound of +Mull, a beautiful place endeared to him who now writes by the +earliest associations. It chanced to him to pass his holidays there +just when Tennyson and Mr Palgrave had left--"Mr Tinsmith and Mr +Pancake," as Robert the boatman, a very black Celt, called them. +Being then nine years of age, I heard of a poet's visit, and asked, +"A real poet, like Sir Walter Scott?" with whom I then supposed that +"the Muse had gone away." "Oh, not like Sir Walter Scott, of +course," my mother told me, with loyalty unashamed. One can think of +the poet as Mrs Sellar, his hostess, describes him, beneath the limes +of the avenue at Acharn, planted, Mrs Sellar says, by a cousin of +Flora Macdonald. I have been told that the lady who planted the +lilies, if not the limes, was the famed Jacobite, Miss Jennie +Cameron, mentioned in Tom Jones. An English engraving of 1746 shows +the Prince between these two beauties, Flora and Jennie. + +"No one," says Mrs Sellar, "could have been more easy, simple, and +delightful," and indeed it is no marvel that in her society and that +of her husband, the Greek professor, and her cousin, Miss Cross, and +in such scenes, "he blossomed out in the most genial manner, making +us all feel as if he were an old friend." + +In November Tennyson took a house at Farringford, "as it was +beautiful and far from the haunts of men." There he settled to a +country existence in the society of his wife, his two children (the +second, Lionel, being in 1854 the baby), and there he composed Maud, +while the sound of the guns, in practice for the war of the Crimea, +boomed from the coast. In May Tennyson saw the artists, of schools +oddly various, who illustrated his poems. Millais, Rossetti, and +Holman Hunt gave the tone to the art, but Mr Horsley, Creswick, and +Mulgrave were also engaged. While Maud was being composed Tennyson +wrote The Charge of the Light Brigade; a famous poem, not in a manner +in which he was born to excel--at least in my poor opinion. "Some +one HAD blundered," and that line was the first fashioned and the +keynote of the poem; but, after all, "blundered" is not an exquisite +rhyme to "hundred." The poem, in any case, was most welcome to our +army in the Crimea, and is a spirited piece for recitation. + +In January 1855 Maud was finished; in April the poet copied it out +for the press, and refreshed himself by reading a very different +poem, The Lady of the Lake. The author, Sir Walter, had suffered, +like the hero of Maud, by an unhappy love affair, which just faintly +colours The Lady of the Lake by a single allusion, in the description +of Fitz-James's dreams:- + + +"Then,--from my couch may heavenly might +Chase that worst phantom of the night! - +Again returned the scenes of youth, +Of confident undoubting truth; +Again his soul he interchanged +With friends whose hearts were long estranged. +They come, in dim procession led, +The cold, the faithless, and the dead; +As warm each hand, each brow as gay, +As if they parted yesterday. +And doubt distracts him at the view - +Oh, were his senses false or true? +Dreamed he of death, or broken vow, +Or is it all a vision now?" + + +We learn from Lady Louisa Stuart, to whom Scott read these lines, +that they referred to his lost love. I cite the passage because the +extreme reticence of Scott, in his undying sorrow, is in contrast +with what Tennyson, after reading The Lady of the Lake, was putting +into the mouth of his complaining lover in Maud. + +We have no reason to suppose that Tennyson himself had ever to bewail +a faithless love. To be sure, the hero of Locksley Hall is in this +attitude, but then Locksley Hall is not autobiographical. Less +dramatic and impersonal in appearance are the stanzas - + + +"Come not, when I am dead, + To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave;" + + +and + + +"Child, if it were thine error or thy crime + I care no longer, being all unblest." + + +No biographer tells us whether this was a personal complaint or a +mere set of verses on an imaginary occasion. In In Memoriam Tennyson +speaks out concerning the loss of a friend. In Maud, as in Locksley +Hall, he makes his hero reveal the agony caused by the loss of a +mistress. There is no reason to suppose that the poet had ever any +such mischance, but many readers have taken Locksley Hall and Maud +for autobiographical revelations, like In Memoriam. They are, on the +other hand, imaginative and dramatic. They illustrate the pangs of +disappointed love of woman, pangs more complex and more rankling than +those inflicted by death. In each case, however, the poet, who has +sung so nobly the happiness of fortunate wedded loves, has chosen a +hero with whom we do not readily sympathise--a Hamlet in miniature, + + +"With a heart of furious fancies," + + +as in the old mad song. This choice, thanks to the popular +misconception, did him some harm. As a "monodramatic Idyll," a +romance in many rich lyric measures, Maud was at first excessively +unpopular. "Tennyson's Maud is Tennyson's Maudlin," said a satirist, +and "morbid," "mad," "rampant," and "rabid bloodthirstiness of soul," +were among the amenities of criticism. Tennyson hated war, but his +hero, at least, hopes that national union in a national struggle will +awake a nobler than the commercial spirit. Into the rights and +wrongs of our quarrel with Russia we are not to go. Tennyson, +rightly or wrongly, took the part of his country, and must "thole the +feud" of those high-souled citizens who think their country always in +the wrong--as perhaps it very frequently is. We are not to expect a +tranquil absence of bias in the midst of military excitement, when +very laudable sentiments are apt to misguide men in both directions. +In any case, political partisanship added to the enemies of the poem, +which was applauded by Henry Taylor, Ruskin, George Brimley, and +Jowett, while Mrs Browning sent consoling words from Italy. The poem +remained a favourite with the author, who chose passages from it +often, when persuaded to read aloud by friends; and modern criticism +has not failed to applaud the splendour of the verse and the subtlety +of the mad scenes, the passion of the love lyrics. + +These merits have ceased to be disputed, but, though a loyal +Tennysonian, I have never quite been able to reconcile myself to Maud +as a whole. The hero is an unwholesome young man, and not of an +original kind. He is un beau tenebreux of 1830. I suppose it has +been observed that he is merely The Master of Ravenswood in modern +costume, and without Lady Ashton. Her part is taken by Maud's +brother. The situations of the hero and of the Master (whose +acquaintance Thackeray never renewed after he lost his hat in the +Kelpie Flow) are nearly identical. The families and fathers of both +have been ruined by "the gray old wolf," and by Sir William Ashton, +representing the house of Stair. Both heroes live dawdling on, hard +by their lost ancestral homes. Both fall in love with the daughters +of the enemies of their houses. The loves of both are baffled, and +end in tragedy. Both are concerned in a duel, though the Master, on +his way to the ground, "stables his steed in the Kelpie Flow," and +the wooer in Maud shoots Lucy Ashton's brother,--I mean the brother +of Maud,--though duelling in England was out of date. Then comes an +interval of madness, and he recovers amid the patriotic emotions of +the ill-fated Crimean expedition. Both lovers are gloomy, though the +Master has better cause, for the Tennysonian hero is more comfortably +provided for than Edgar with his "man and maid," his Caleb and Mysie. +Finally, both The Bride of Lammermoor, which affected Tennyson so +potently in boyhood + + +("A merry merry bridal, +A merry merry day"), + + +and Maud, excel in passages rather than as wholes. + +The hero of Maud, with his clandestine wooing of a girl of sixteen, +has this apology, that the match had been, as it were, predestined, +and desired by the mother of the lady. Still, the brother did not +ill to be angry; and the peevishness of the hero against the brother +and the parvenu lord and rival strikes a jarring note. In England, +at least, the general sentiment is opposed to this moody, +introspective kind of young man, of whom Tennyson is not to be +supposed to approve. We do not feel certain that his man and maid +were "ever ready to slander and steal." That seems to be part of his +jaundiced way of looking at everything and everybody. He has even a +bad word for the "man-god" of modern days, - + + +"The man of science himself is fonder of glory, and vain, +An eye well-practised in nature, a spirit bounded and poor." + + +Rien n'est sacre for this cynic, who thinks himself a Stoic. Thus +Maud was made to be unpopular with the author's countrymen, who +conceived a prejudice against Maud's lover, described by Tennyson as +"a morbid poetic soul, . . . an egotist with the makings of a cynic." +That he is "raised to sanity" (still in Tennyson's words) "by a pure +and holy love which elevates his whole nature," the world failed to +perceive, especially as the sanity was only a brief lucid interval, +tempered by hanging about the garden to meet a girl of sixteen, +unknown to her relations. Tennyson added that "different phases of +passion in one person take the place of different characters," to +which critics replied that they wanted different characters, if only +by way of relief, and did not care for any of the phases of passion. +The learned Monsieur Janet has maintained that love is a disease like +another, and that nobody falls in love when in perfect health of mind +and body. This theory seems open to exception, but the hero of Maud +is unhealthy enough. At best and last, he only helps to give a +martial force a "send-off":- + + +"I stood on a giant deck and mixed my breath +With a loyal people shouting a battle-cry." + + +He did not go out as a volunteer, and probably the Crimean winters +brought him back to his original estate of cynical gloom--and very +naturally. + +The reconciliation with Life is not like the reconciliation of In +Memoriam. The poem took its rise in old lines, and most beautiful +lines, which Tennyson had contributed in 1837 to a miscellany:- + + +"O that 'twere possible, + After long grief and pain, +To find the arms of my true love + Round me once again." + + +Thence the poet, working back to find the origin of the situation, +encountered the ideas and the persons of Maud. + +I have tried to state the sources, in the general mind, of the +general dislike of Maud. The public, "driving at practice," +disapproved of the "criticism of life" in the poem; confused the +suffering narrator with the author, and neglected the poetry. "No +modern poem," said Jowett, "contains more lines that ring in the ears +of men. I do not know any verse out of Shakespeare in which the +ecstacy of love soars to such a height." With these comments we may +agree, yet may fail to follow Jowett when he says, "No poem since +Shakespeare seems to show equal power of the same kind, or equal +knowledge of human nature." Shakespeare could not in a narrative +poem have preferred the varying passions of one character to the +characters of many persons. + +Tennyson was "nettled at first," his son says, "by these captious +remarks of the 'indolent reviewers,' but afterwards he would take no +notice of them except to speak of them in a half-pitiful, half- +humorous, half-mournful manner." The besetting sin and error of the +critics was, of course, to confound Tennyson's hero with himself, as +if we confused Dickens with Pip. + +Like Aurora Leigh, Lucile, and other works, Maud is under the +disadvantage of being, practically, a novel of modern life in verse. +Criticised as a tale of modern life (and it was criticised in that +character), it could not be very highly esteemed. But the essence of +Maud, of course, lies in the poetical vehicle. Nobody can cavil at +the impressiveness of the opening stanzas - + + +"I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood"; + + +with the keynotes of colour and of desolation struck; the lips of the +hollow "dabbled with blood-red heath," the "red-ribb'd ledges," and +"the flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands"; and the contrast in the +picture of the child Maud - + + +"Maud the delight of the village, the ringing joy of the Hall." + + +The poem abounds in lines which live in the memory, as in the vernal +description - + + +"A million emeralds break from the ruby-budded lime"; + + +and the voice heard in the garden singing + + +"A passionate ballad gallant and gay," + + +as Lovelace's Althea, and the lines on the far-off waving of a white +hand, "betwixt the cloud and the moon." The lyric of + + +"Birds in the high Hall-garden + When twilight was falling, +Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud, + They were crying and calling," + + +was a favourite of the poet. + +"What birds were these?" he is said to have asked a lady suddenly, +when reading to a silent company. + +"Nightingales," suggested a listener, who did not probably remember +any other fowl that is vocal in the dusk. + +"No, they were rooks," answered the poet. + +"Come into the Garden, Maud," is as fine a love-song as Tennyson ever +wrote, with a triumphant ring, and a soaring exultant note. Then the +poem drops from its height, like a lark shot high in heaven; tragedy +comes, and remorse, and the beautiful interlude of the + + + "lovely shell, +Small and pure as a pearl." + + +Then follows the exquisite + + +"O that 'twere possible," + + +and the dull consciousness of the poem of madness, with its dumb +gnawing confusion of pain and wandering memory; the hero being +finally left, in the author's words, "sane but shattered." + +Tennyson's letters of the time show that the critics succeeded in +wounding him: it was not a difficult thing to do. Maud was +threatened with a broadside from "that pompholygous, broad-blown +Apollodorus, the gifted X." People who have read Aytoun's diverting +Firmilian, where Apollodorus plays his part, and who remember "gifted +Gilfillan" in Waverley, know who the gifted X. was. But X. was no +great authority south of Tay. + +Despite the almost unanimous condemnation by public critics, the +success of Maud enabled Tennyson to buy Farringford, so he must have +been better appreciated and understood by the world than by the +reviewers. + +In February 1850 Tennyson returned to his old Arthurian themes, "the +only big thing not done," for Milton had merely glanced at Arthur, +Dryden did not + + +"Raise the Table Round again," + + +and Blackmore has never been reckoned adequate. Vivien was first +composed as Merlin and Nimue, and then Geraint and Enid was adapted +from the Mabinogion, the Welsh collection of Marchen and legends, +things of widely different ages, now rather Celtic, or Brythonic, now +amplifications made under the influence of mediaeval French romance. +Enid was finished in Wales in August, and Tennyson learned Welsh +enough to be able to read the Mabinogion, which is much more of Welsh +than many Arthurian critics possess. The two first Idylls were +privately printed in the summer of 1857, being very rare and much +desired of collectors in this embryonic shape. In July Guinevere was +begun, in the middle, with Arthur's valedictory address to his erring +consort. In autumn Tennyson visited the late Duke of Argyll at +Inveraray: he was much attached to the Duke--unlike Professor +Huxley. Their love of nature, the Duke being as keen-eyed as the +poet was short-sighted, was one tie of union. The Indian Mutiny, or +at least the death of Havelock, was the occasion of lines which the +author was too wise to include in any of his volumes: the poem on +Lucknow was of later composition. + +Guinevere was completed in March 1858; and Tennyson met Mr Swinburne, +then very young. "What I particularly admired in him was that he did +not press upon me any verses of his own." Tennyson would have found +more to admire if he had pressed for a sight of the verses. Neither +he nor Mr Matthew Arnold was very encouraging to young poets: they +had no sons in Apollo, like Ben Jonson. But both were kept in a +perpetual state of apprehension by the army of versifiers who send +volumes by post, to whom that can only be said what Tennyson did say +to one of them, "As an amusement to yourself and your friends, the +writing it" (verse) "is all very well." It is the friends who do not +find it amusing, while the stranger becomes the foe. The psychology +of these pests of the Muses is bewildering. They do not seem to read +poetry, only to write it and launch it at unoffending strangers. If +they bought each other's books, all of them could afford to publish. + +The Master of Balliol, the most adviceful man, if one may use the +term, of his age, appears to have advised Tennyson to publish the +Idylls at once. There had been years of silence since Maud, and the +Master suspected that "mosquitoes" (reviewers) were the cause. +"There is a note needed to show the good side of human nature and to +condone its frailties which Thackeray will never strike." To others +it seems that Thackeray was eternally striking this note: at that +time in General Lambert, his wife, and daughters, not to speak of +other characters in The Virginians. Who does not condone the +frailties of Captain Costigan, and F. B., and the Chevalier Strong? +In any case, Tennyson took his own time, he was (1858) only beginning +Elaine. There is no doubt that Tennyson was easily pricked by +unsympathetic criticism, even from the most insignificant source, +and, as he confessed, he received little pleasure from praise. All +authors, without exception, are sensitive. A sturdier author wrote +that he would sometimes have been glad to meet his assailant "where +the muir-cock was bailie." We know how testily Wordsworth replied in +defence to the gentlest comments by Lamb. + +The Master of Balliol kept insisting, "As to the critics, their power +is not really great. . . . One drop of natural feeling in poetry or +the true statement of a single new fact is already felt to be of more +value than all the critics put together." Yet even critics may be in +the right, and of all great poets, Tennyson listened most obediently +to their censures, as we have seen in the case of his early poems. +His prolonged silences after the attacks of 1833 and 1855 were +occupied in work and reflection: Achilles was not merely sulking in +his tent, as some of his friends seem to have supposed. An epic in a +series of epic idylls cannot be dashed off like a romantic novel in +rhyme; and Tennyson's method was always one of waiting for maturity +of conception and execution. + +Mrs Tennyson, doubtless by her lord's desire, asked the Master (then +tutor of Balliol) to suggest themes. Old age was suggested, and is +treated in The Grandmother. Other topics were not handled. "I hold +most strongly," said the Master, "that it is the duty of every one +who has the good fortune to know a man of genius to do any trifling +service they can to lighten his work." To do every service in his +power to every man was the Master's life-long practice. He was not +much at home, his letters show, with Burns, to whom he seems to have +attributed John Anderson, my jo, John, while he tells an anecdote of +Burns composing Tam o' Shanter with emotional tears, which, if true +at all, is true of the making of To Mary in Heaven. If Burns wept +over Tam o' Shanter, the tears must have been tears of laughter. + +The first four Idylls of the King were prepared for publication in +the spring of 1859; while Tennyson was at work also on Pelleas and +Ettarre, and the Tristram cycle. In autumn he went on a tour to +Lisbon with Mr F. T. Palgrave and Mr Craufurd Grove. Returning, he +fell eagerly to reading an early copy of Darwin's Origin of Species, +the crown of his own early speculations on the theory of evolution. +"Your theory does not make against Christianity?" he asked Darwin +later (1868), who replied, "No, certainly not." But Darwin has +stated the waverings of his own mind in contact with a topic too high +for a priori reasoning, and only to be approached, if at all, on the +strength of the scientific method applied to facts which science, so +far, neglects, or denies, or "explains away," rather than explains. + +The Idylls, unlike Maud, were well received by the press, better by +the public, and best of all by friends like Thackeray, the Duke of +Argyll, the Master of Balliol, and Clough, while Ruskin showed some +reserve. The letter from Thackeray I cannot deny myself the pleasure +of citing from the Biography: it was written "in an ardour of claret +and gratitude," but posted some six weeks later:- + + +FOLKESTONE, September. +36 ONSLOW SQUARE, October. + +My Dear Old Alfred,--I owe you a letter of happiness and thanks. +Sir, about three weeks ago, when I was ill in bed, I read the Idylls +of the King, and I thought, "Oh, I must write to him now, for this +pleasure, this delight, this splendour of happiness which I have been +enjoying." But I should have blotted the sheets, 'tis ill writing on +one's back. The letter full of gratitude never went as far as the +post-office, and how comes it now? + +D'abord, a bottle of claret. (The landlord of the hotel asked me +down to the cellar and treated me.) Then afterwards sitting here, an +old magazine, Fraser's Magazine, 1850, and I come on a poem out of +The Princess which says, "I hear the horns of Elfland blowing, +blowing,"--no, it's "the horns of Elfland faintly blowing" (I have +been into my bedroom to fetch my pen and it has made that blot), and, +reading the lines, which only one man in the world could write, I +thought about the other horns of Elfland blowing in full strength, +and Arthur in gold armour, and Guinevere in gold hair, and all those +knights and heroes and beauties and purple landscapes and misty gray +lakes in which you have made me live. They seem like facts to me, +since about three weeks ago (three weeks or a month was it?) when I +read the book. It is on the table yonder, and I don't like, somehow, +to disturb it, but the delight and gratitude! You have made me as +happy as I was as a child with the Arabian Nights,--every step I have +walked in Elfland has been a sort of Paradise to me. (The landlord +gave TWO bottles of his claret and I think I drank the most) and here +I have been lying back in the chair and thinking of those delightful +Idylls, my thoughts being turned to you: what could I do but be +grateful to that surprising genius which has made me so happy? Do +you understand that what I mean is all true, and that I should break +out were you sitting opposite with a pipe in your mouth? Gold and +purple and diamonds, I say, gentlemen, and glory and love and honour, +and if you haven't given me all these why should I be in such an +ardour of gratitude? But I have had out of that dear book the +greatest delight that has ever come to me since I was a young man; to +write and think about it makes me almost young, and this I suppose is +what I'm doing, like an after-dinner speech. + +P.S.--I thought the "Grandmother" quite as fine. How can you at 50 +be doing things as well as at 35? + +October 16th.--(I should think six weeks after the writing of the +above.) + +The rhapsody of gratitude was never sent, and for a peculiar reason: +just about the time of writing I came to an arrangement with Smith & +Elder to edit their new magazine, and to have a contribution from T. +was the publishers' and editor's highest ambition. But to ask a man +for a favour, and to praise and bow down before him in the same page, +seemed to be so like hypocrisy, that I held my hand, and left this +note in my desk, where it has been lying during a little French- +Italian-Swiss tour which my girls and their papa have been making. + +Meanwhile S. E. & Co. have been making their own proposals to you, +and you have replied not favourably, I am sorry to hear; but now +there is no reason why you should not have my homages, and I am just +as thankful for the Idylls, and love and admire them just as much, as +I did two months ago when I began to write in that ardour of claret +and gratitude. If you can't write for us you can't. If you can by +chance some day, and help an old friend, how pleased and happy I +shall be! This however must be left to fate and your convenience: I +don't intend to give up hope, but accept the good fortune if it +comes. I see one, two, three quarterlies advertised to-day, as all +bringing laurels to laureatus. He will not refuse the private +tribute of an old friend, will he? You don't know how pleased the +girls were at Kensington t'other day to hear you quote their father's +little verses, and he too I daresay was not disgusted. He sends you +and yours his very best regards in this most heartfelt and artless + +(note of admiration)! +Always yours, my dear Alfred, +W. M. THACKERAY. + + +Naturally this letter gave Tennyson more pleasure than all the +converted critics with their favourable reviews. The Duke of Argyll +announced the conversion of Macaulay. The Master found Elaine "the +fairest, sweetest, purest love poem in the English language." As to +the whole, "The allegory in the distance GREATLY STRENGTHENS, ALSO +ELEVATES, THE MEANING OF THE POEM." + +Ruskin, like some other critics, felt "the art and finish in these +poems a little more than I like to feel it." Yet Guinevere and +Elaine had been rapidly written and little corrected. I confess to +the opinion that what a man does most easily is, as a rule, what he +does best. We know that the "art and finish" of Shakespeare were +spontaneous, and so were those of Tennyson. Perfection in art is +sometimes more sudden than we think, but then "the long preparation +for it,--that unseen germination, THAT is what we ignore and forget." +But he wisely kept his pieces by him for a long time, restudying them +with a fresh eye. The "unreality" of the subject also failed to +please Ruskin, as it is a stumbling-block to others. He wanted poems +on "the living present," a theme not selected by Homer, Shakespeare, +Spenser, Milton, Virgil, or the Greek dramatists, except (among +surviving plays) in the Persae of AEschylus. The poet who can +transfigure the hot present is fortunate, but most, and the greatest, +have visited the cool quiet purlieus of the past. + + + +CHAPTER VII.--THE IDYLLS OF THE KING. + + + +The Idylls may probably be best considered in their final shape: +they are not an epic, but a series of heroic idyllia of the same +genre as the heroic idyllia of Theocritus. He wrote long after the +natural age of national epic, the age of Homer. He saw the later +literary epic rise in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, a poem +with many beauties, if rather an archaistic and elaborate revival as +a whole. The time for long narrative poems, Theocritus appears to +have thought, was past, and he only ventured on the heroic idyllia of +Heracles, and certain adventures of the Argonauts. Tennyson, too, +from the first believed that his pieces ought to be short. +Therefore, though he had a conception of his work as a whole, a +conception long mused on, and sketched in various lights, he produced +no epic, only a series of epic idyllia. He had a spiritual +conception, "an allegory in the distance," an allegory not to be +insisted upon, though its presence was to be felt. No longer, as in +youth, did Tennyson intend Merlin to symbolise "the sceptical +understanding" (as if one were to "break into blank the gospel of" +Herr Kant), or poor Guinevere to stand for the Blessed Reformation, +or the Table Round for Liberal Institutions. Mercifully Tennyson +never actually allegorised Arthur in that fashion. Later he thought +of a musical masque of Arthur, and sketched a scenario. Finally +Tennyson dropped both the allegory of Liberal principles and the +musical masque in favour of the series of heroic idylls. There was +only a "parabolic drift" in the intention. "There is no single fact +or incident in the Idylls, however seemingly mystical, which cannot +be explained without any mystery or allegory whatever. The Idylls +ought to be read (and the right readers never dream of doing anything +else) as romantic poems, just like Browning's Childe Roland, in which +the wrong readers (the members of the Browning Society) sought for +mystic mountains and marvels. Yet Tennyson had his own +interpretation, "a dream of man coming into practical life and ruined +by one sin." That was his "interpretation," or "allegory in the +distance." + +People may be heard objecting to the suggestion of any spiritual +interpretation of the Arthur legends, and even to the existence of +elementary morality among the Arthurian knights and ladies. There +seems to be a notion that "bold bawdry and open manslaughter," as +Roger Ascham said, are the staple of Tennyson's sources, whether in +the mediaeval French, the Welsh, or in Malory's compilation, chiefly +from French sources. Tennyson is accused of "Bowdlerising" these, +and of introducing gentleness, courtesy, and conscience into a +literature where such qualities were unknown. I must confess myself +ignorant of any early and popular, or "primitive" literature, in +which human virtues, and the human conscience, do not play their +part. Those who object to Tennyson's handling of the great Arthurian +cycle, on the ground that he is too refined and too moral, must +either never have read or must long have forgotten even Malory's +romance. Thus we read, in a recent novel, that Lancelot was an homme +aux bonnes fortunes, whereas Lancelot was the most loyal of lovers. + +Among other critics, Mr Harrison has objected that the Arthurian +world of Tennyson "is not quite an ideal world. Therein lies the +difficulty. The scene, though not of course historic, has certain +historic suggestions and characters." It is not apparent who the +historic characters are, for the real Arthur is but a historic +phantasm. "But then, in the midst of so much realism, the knights, +from Arthur downwards, talk and act in ways with which we are +familiar in modern ethical and psychological novels, but which are as +impossible in real mediaeval knights as a Bengal tiger or a Polar +bear would be in a drawing-room." I confess to little acquaintance +with modern ethical novels; but real mediaeval knights, and still +more the knights of mediaeval romance, were capable of very ethical +actions. To halt an army for the protection and comfort of a +laundress was a highly ethical action. Perhaps Sir Redvers Buller +would do it: Bruce did. Mr Harrison accuses the ladies of the +Idylls of soul-bewildering casuistry, like that of women in +Middlemarch or Helbeck of Bannisdale. Now I am not reminded by +Guinevere, and Elaine, and Enid, of ladies in these ethical novels. +But the women of the mediaeval Cours d'Amour (the originals from whom +the old romancers drew) were nothing if not casuists. "Spiritual +delicacy" (as they understood it) was their delight. + +Mr Harrison even argues that Malory's men lived hot-blooded lives in +fierce times, "before an idea had arisen in the world of 'reverencing +conscience,' 'leading sweet lives,'" and so on. But he admits that +they had "fantastic ideals of 'honour' and 'love.'" As to +"fantastic," that is a matter of opinion, but to have ideals and to +live in accordance with them is to "reverence conscience", which the +heroes of the romances are said by Mr Harrison never to have had an +idea of doing. They are denied even "amiable words and courtliness." +Need one say that courtliness is the dominant note of mediaeval +knights, in history as in romance? With discourtesy Froissart would +"head the count of crimes." After a battle, he says, Scots knights +and English would thank each other for a good fight, "not like the +Germans." "And now, I dare say," said Malory's Sir Ector, "thou, Sir +Lancelot, wast the curtiest knight that ever bare shield, . . . and +thou wast the meekest man and the gentlest that ever ate in hall +among ladies." Observe Sir Lancelot in the difficult pass where the +Lily Maid offers her love: "Jesu defend me, for then I rewarded your +father and your brother full evil for their great goodness. . . . +But because, fair damsel, that ye love me as ye say ye do, I will, +for your good will and kindness, show you some goodness, . . . and +always while I live to be your true knight." Here are "amiable words +and courtesy." I cannot agree with Mr Harrison that Malory's book is +merely "a fierce lusty epic." That was not the opinion of its +printer and publisher, Caxton. He produced it as an example of "the +gentle and virtuous deeds that some knights used in these days, . . . +noble and renowned acts of humanity, gentleness, and chivalry. For +herein may be seen noble chivalry, courtesy, humanity, friendliness, +love, cowardice, murder, hate, virtue, and sin. Do after the good +and leave the evil." + +In reaction against the bold-faced heroines and sensual amours of +some of the old French romances, an ideal of exaggerated asceticism, +of stainless chastity, notoriously pervades the portion of Malory's +work which deals with the Holy Grail. Lancelot is distraught when he +finds that, by dint of enchantment, he has been made false to +Guinevere (Book XI. chap. viii.) After his dreaming vision of the +Holy Grail, with the reproachful Voice, Sir Lancelot said, "My sin +and my wickedness have brought me great dishonour, . . . and now I +see and understand that my old sin hindereth and shameth me." He was +human, the Lancelot of Malory, and "fell to his old love again," with +a heavy heart, and with long penance at the end. How such good +knights can be deemed conscienceless and void of courtesy one knows +not, except by a survival of the Puritanism of Ascham. But Tennyson +found in the book what is in the book--honour, conscience, courtesy, +and the hero - + + +"Whose honour rooted in dishonour stood, +And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true." + + +Malory's book, which was Tennyson's chief source, ends by being the +tragedy of the conscience of Lancelot. Arthur is dead, or "In Avalon +he groweth old." The Queen and Lancelot might sing, as Lennox +reports that Queen Mary did after Darnley's murder - + + +"Weel is me +For I am free." + + +"Why took they not their pastime?" Because conscience forbade, and +Guinevere sends her lover far from her, and both die in religion. +Thus Malory's "fierce lusty epic" is neither so lusty nor so fierce +but that it gives Tennyson his keynote: the sin that breaks the fair +companionship, and is bitterly repented. + +"The knights are almost too polite to kill each other," the critic +urges. In Malory they are sometimes quite too polite to kill each +other. Sir Darras has a blood-feud against Sir Tristram, and Sir +Tristram is in his dungeon. Sir Darras said, "Wit ye well that Sir +Darras shall never destroy such a noble knight as thou art in prison, +howbeit that thou hast slain three of my sons, whereby I was greatly +aggrieved. But now shalt thou go and thy fellows. . . . All that ye +did," said Sir Darras, "was by force of knighthood, and that was the +cause I would not put you to death" (Book IX. chap. xl.) + +Tennyson is accused of "emasculating the fierce lusty epic into a +moral lesson, as if it were to be performed in a drawing-room by an +academy of young ladies"--presided over, I daresay, by "Anglican +clergymen." I know not how any one who has read the Morte d'Arthur +can blame Tennyson in the matter. Let Malory and his sources be +blamed, if to be moral is to be culpable. A few passages apart, +there is no coarseness in Malory; that there are conscience, +courtesy, "sweet lives," "keeping down the base in man," "amiable +words," and all that Tennyson gives, and, in Mr Harrison's theory, +gives without authority in the romance, my quotations from Malory +demonstrate. They are chosen at a casual opening of his book. That +there "had not arisen in the world" "the idea of reverencing +conscience" before the close of the fifteenth century A.D. is an +extraordinary statement for a critic of history to offer. + +Mr Harrison makes his protest because "in the conspiracy of silence +into which Tennyson's just fame has hypnotised the critics, it is +bare honesty to admit defects." I think I am not hypnotised, and I +do not regard the Idylls as the crown of Tennyson's work. But it is +not his "defect" to have introduced generosity, gentleness, +conscience, and chastity where no such things occur in his sources. +Take Sir Darras: his position is that of Priam when he meets +Achilles, who slew his sons, except that Priam comes as a suppliant; +Sir Darras has Tristram in his hands, and may slay him. He is "too +polite," as Mr Harrison says: he is too good a Christian, or too +good a gentleman. One would not have given a tripod for the life of +Achilles had he fallen into the hands of Priam. But between 1200 +B.C. (or so) and the date of Malory, new ideas about "living sweet +lives" had arisen. Where and when do they not arise? A British +patrol fired on certain Swazis in time of truce. Their lieutenant, +who had been absent when this occurred, rode alone to the stronghold +of the Swazi king, Sekukoeni, and gave himself up, expecting death by +torture. "Go, sir," said the king; "we too are gentlemen." The idea +of a "sweet life" of honour had dawned even on Sekukoeni: it lights +up Malory's romance, and is reflected in Tennyson's Idylls, doubtless +with some modernism of expression. + +That the Idylls represent no real world is certain. That Tennyson +modernises and moralises too much, I willingly admit; what I deny is +that he introduces gentleness, courtesy, and conscience where his +sources have none. Indeed this is not a matter of critical opinion, +but of verifiable fact. Any one can read Malory and judge for +himself. But the world in which the Idylls move could not be real. +For more than a thousand years different races, different ages, had +taken hold of the ancient Celtic legends and spiritualised them after +their own manner, and moulded them to their own ideals. There may +have been a historical Arthur, Comes Britanniae, after the Roman +withdrawal. Ye Amherawdyr Arthur, "the Emperor Arthur," may have +lived and fought, and led the Brythons to battle. But there may also +have been a Brythonic deity, or culture hero, of the same, or of a +similar name, and myths about him may have been assigned to a real +Arthur. Again, the Arthur of the old Welsh legends was by no means +the blameless king--even in comparatively late French romances he is +not blameless. But the process of idealising him went on: still +incomplete in Malory's compilation, where he is often rather otiose +and far from royal. Tennyson, for his purpose, completed the +idealisation. + +As to Guinevere, she was not idealised in the old Welsh rhyme - + + +"Guinevere, Giant Ogurvan's daughter, +Naughty young, more naughty later." + + +Of Lancelot, and her passion for him, the old Welsh has nothing to +say. Probably Chretien de Troyes, by a happy blunder or +misconception, gave Lancelot his love and his pre-eminent part. +Lancelot was confused with Peredur, and Guinevere with the lady of +whom Peredur was in quest. The Elaine who becomes by Lancelot the +mother of Galahad "was Lancelot's rightful consort, as one recognises +in her name that of Elen, the Empress, whom the story of Peredur" +(Lancelot, by the confusion) "gives that hero to wife." The second +Elaine, the maid of Astolat, is another refraction from the original +Elen. As to the Grail, it may be a Christianised rendering of one or +another of the magical and mystic caldrons of Welsh or Irish legend. +There is even an apparent Celtic source of the mysterious fisher king +of the Grail romance. {12} + +A sketch of the evolution of the Arthurian legends might run thus:- + +Sixth to eighth century, growth of myth about an Arthur, real, or +supposed to be real. + +Tenth century, the Duchies of Normandy and Brittany are in close +relations; by the eleventh century Normans know Celtic Arthurian +stories. + +After, 1066, Normans in contact with the Celtic peoples of this +island are in touch with the Arthur tales. + +1130-1145, works on Arthurian matter by Geoffrey of Monmouth. + +1155, Wace's French translation of Geoffrey. + +1150-1182, Chretien de Troyes writes poems on Arthurian topics. + +French prose romances on Arthur, from, say, 1180 to 1250. Those +romances reach Wales, and modify, in translations, the original Welsh +legends, or, in part, supplant them. + +Amplifications and recastings are numerous. In 1485 Caxton publishes +Malory's selections from French and English sources, the whole being +Tennyson's main source, Le Mort d'Arthur. {13} + + +Thus the Arthur stories, originally Celtic, originally a mass of +semi-pagan legend, myth, and marchen, have been retold and rehandled +by Norman, Englishman, and Frenchman, taking on new hues, expressing +new ideals--religious, chivalrous, and moral. Any poet may work his +will on them, and Tennyson's will was to retain the chivalrous +courtesy, generosity, love, and asceticism, while dimly or brightly +veiling or illuminating them with his own ideals. After so many +processes, from folk-tale to modern idyll, the Arthurian world could +not be real, and real it is not. Camelot lies "out of space, out of +time," though the colouring is mainly that of the later chivalry, and +"the gleam" on the hues is partly derived from Celtic fancy of +various dates, and is partly Tennysonian. + +As the Idylls were finally arranged, the first, The Coming of Arthur, +is a remarkable proof of Tennyson's ingenuity in construction. Tales +about the birth of Arthur varied. In Malory, Uther Pendragon, the +Bretwalda (in later phrase) of Britain, besieges the Duke of +Tintagil, who has a fair wife, Ygerne, in another castle. Merlin +magically puts on Uther the shape of Ygerne's husband, and as her +husband she receives him. On that night Arthur is begotten by Uther, +and the Duke of Tintagil, his mother's husband, is slain in a sortie. +Uther weds Ygerne; both recognise Arthur as their child. However, by +the Celtic custom of fosterage the infant is intrusted to Sir Ector +as his dalt, or foster-child, and Uther falls in battle. Arthur is +later approven king by the adventure of drawing from the stone the +magic sword that no other king could move. This adventure answers to +Sigmund's drawing the sword from the Branstock, in the Volsunga Saga, +"Now men stand up, and none would fain be the last to lay hand to the +sword," apparently stricken into the pillar by Woden. "But none who +came thereto might avail to pull it out, for in nowise would it come +away howsoever they tugged at it, but now up comes Sigmund, King +Volsung's son, and sets hand to the sword, and pulls it from the +stock, even as if it lay loose before him." The incident in the +Arthurian as in the Volsunga legend is on a par with the Golden +Bough, in the sixth book of the AEneid. Only the predestined +champion, such as AEneas, can pluck, or break, or cut the bough - + + + "Ipse volens facilisque sequetur +Si te fata vocant." + + +All this ancient popular element in the Arthur story is disregarded +by Tennyson. He does not make Uther approach Ygerne in the semblance +of her lord, as Zeus approached Alcmena in the semblance of her +husband, Amphitryon. He neglects the other ancient test of the +proving of Arthur by his success in drawing the sword. The poet's +object is to enfold the origin and birth of Arthur in a spiritual +mystery. This is deftly accomplished by aid of the various versions +of the tale that reach King Leodogran when Arthur seeks the hand of +his daughter Guinevere, for Arthur's title to the crown is still +disputed, so Leodogran makes inquiries. The answers first leave it +dubious whether Arthur is son of Gorlois, husband of Ygerne, or of +Uther, who slew Gorlois and married her:- + + +"Enforced she was to wed him in her tears." + + +The Celtic custom of fosterage is overlooked, and Merlin gives the +child to Anton, not as the customary dalt, but to preserve the babe +from danger. Queen Bellicent then tells Leodogran, from the evidence +of Bleys, Merlin's master in necromancy, the story of Arthur's +miraculous advent. + + +"And down the wave and in the flame was borne +A naked babe, and rode to Merlin's feet, +Who stoopt and caught the babe, and cried 'The King! +Here is an heir for Uther!'" + + +But Merlin, when asked by Bellicent to corroborate the statement of +Bleys, merely + + +"Answer'd in riddling triplets of old time." + + +Finally, Leodogran's faith is confirmed by a vision. Thus +doubtfully, amidst rumour and portent, cloud and spiritual light, +comes Arthur: "from the great deep" he comes, and in as strange +fashion, at the end, "to the great deep he goes"--a king to be +accepted in faith or rejected by doubt. Arthur and his ideal are +objects of belief. All goes well while the knights hold that + + +"The King will follow Christ, and we the King, +In whom high God hath breathed a secret thing." + + +In history we find the same situation in the France of 1429 - + + +"The King will follow Jeanne, and we the King." + + +While this faith held, all went well; when the king ceased to follow, +the spell was broken,--the Maid was martyred. In this sense the poet +conceives the coming of Arthur, a sign to be spoken against, a test +of high purposes, a belief redeeming and ennobling till faith fails, +and the little rift within the lute, the love of Lancelot and +Guinevere, makes discord of the music. As matter of legend, it is to +be understood that Guinevere did not recognise Arthur when first he +rode below her window - + + +"Since he neither wore on helm or shield +The golden symbol of his kinglihood." + + +But Lancelot was sent to bring the bride - + + + "And return'd +Among the flowers, in May, with Guinevere." + + +Then their long love may have begun, as in the story of Tristram sent +to bring Yseult to be the bride of King Mark. In Malory, however, +Lancelot does not come on the scene till after Arthur's wedding and +return from his conquering expedition to Rome. Then Lancelot wins +renown, "wherefore Queen Guinevere had him in favour above all other +knights; and in certain he loved the Queen again above all other +ladies damosels of his life." Lancelot, as we have seen, is +practically a French creation, adopted to illustrate the chivalrous +theory of love, with its bitter fruit. Though not of the original +Celtic stock of legend, Sir Lancelot makes the romance what it is, +and draws down the tragedy that originally turned on the sin of +Arthur himself, the sin that gave birth to the traitor Modred. But +the mediaeval romancers disguised that form of the story, and the +process of idealising Arthur reached such heights in the middle ages +that Tennyson thought himself at liberty to paint the Flos Regum, +"the blameless King." He followed the Brut ab Arthur. "In short, +God has not made since Adam was, the man more perfect than Arthur." +This is remote from the Arthur of the oldest Celtic legends, but +justifies the poet in adapting Arthur to the ideal hero of the +Idylls:- + + +"Ideal manhood closed in real man, +Rather than that grey king, whose name, a ghost, +Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain-peak, +And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still; or him +Of Geoffrey's book, or him of Malleor's, one +Touched by the adulterous finger of a time +That hovered between war and wantonness, +And crownings and dethronements." + + +The poetical beauties of The Coming of Arthur excel those of Gareth +and Lynette. The sons of Lot and Bellicent seem to have been +originally regarded as the incestuous offspring of Arthur and his +sister, the wife of King Lot. Next it was represented that Arthur +was ignorant of the relationship. Mr Rhys supposes that the mythical +scandal (still present in Malory as a sin of ignorance) arose from +blending the Celtic Arthur (as Culture Hero) with an older divine +personage, such as Zeus, who marries his sister Hera. Marriages of +brother and sister are familiar in the Egyptian royal house, and that +of the Incas. But the poet has a perfect right to disregard a +scandalous myth which, obviously crystallised later about the figure +of the mythical Celtic Arthur, was an incongruous accretion to his +legend. Gareth, therefore, is merely Arthur's nephew, not son, in +the poem, as are Gawain and the traitor Modred. The story seems to +be rather mediaeval French than Celtic--a mingling of the spirit of +fabliau and popular fairy tale. The poet has added to its lightness, +almost frivolity, the description of the unreal city of Camelot, +built to music, as when + + +"Ilion, like a mist, rose into towers." + + +He has also brought in the allegory of Death, which, when faced, +proves to be "a blooming boy" behind the mask. The courtesy and +prowess of Lancelot lead up to the later development of his +character. + +In The Marriage of Geraint, a rumour has already risen about Lancelot +and the Queen, darkening the Court, and presaging + + +"The world's loud whisper breaking into storm." + + +For this reason Geraint removes Enid from Camelot to his own land-- +the poet thus early leading up to the sin and the doom of Lancelot. +But this motive does not occur in the Welsh story of Enid and +Geraint, which Tennyson has otherwise followed with unwonted +closeness. The tale occurs in French romances in various forms, but +it appears to have returned, by way of France and coloured with +French influences, to Wales, where it is one of the later Mabinogion. +The characters are Celtic, and Nud, father of Edyrn, Geraint's +defeated antagonist, appears to be recognised by Mr Rhys as "the +Celtic Zeus." The manners and the tournaments are French. In the +Welsh tale Geraint and Enid are bedded in Arthur's own chamber, which +seems to be a symbolic commutation of the jus primae noctis a custom +of which the very existence is disputed. This unseemly antiquarian +detail, of course, is omitted in the Idyll. + +An abstract of the Welsh tale will show how closely Tennyson here +follows his original. News is brought into Arthur's Court of the +appearance of a white stag. The king arranges a hunt, and Guinevere +asks leave to go and watch the sport. Next morning she cannot be +wakened, though the tale does not aver, like the Idyll, that she was + + +"Lost in sweet dreams, and dreaming of her love +For Lancelot." + + +Guinevere wakes late, and rides through a ford of Usk to the hunt. +Geraint follows, "a golden-hilted sword was at his side, and a robe +and a surcoat of satin were upon him, and two shoes of leather upon +his feet, and around him was a scarf of blue purple, at each corner +of which was a golden apple":- + + +"But Guinevere lay late into the morn, +Lost in sweet dreams, and dreaming of her love +For Lancelot, and forgetful of the hunt; +But rose at last, a single maiden with her, +Took horse, and forded Usk, and gain'd the wood; +There, on a little knoll beside it, stay'd +Waiting to hear the hounds; but heard instead +A sudden sound of hoofs, for Prince Geraint, +Late also, wearing neither hunting-dress +Nor weapon, save a golden-hilted brand, +Came quickly flashing thro' the shallow ford +Behind them, and so gallop'd up the knoll. +A purple scarf, at either end whereof +There swung an apple of the purest gold, +Sway'd round about him, as he gallop'd up +To join them, glancing like a dragon-fly +In summer suit and silks of holiday." + + +The encounter with the dwarf, the lady, and the knight follows. The +prose of the Mabinogi may be compared with the verse of Tennyson:- + + +"Geraint," said Gwenhwyvar, "knowest thou the name of that tall +knight yonder?" "I know him not," said he, "and the strange armour +that he wears prevents my either seeing his face or his features." +"Go, maiden," said Gwenhwyvar, "and ask the dwarf who that knight +is." Then the maiden went up to the dwarf; and the dwarf waited for +the maiden, when he saw her coming towards him. And the maiden +inquired of the dwarf who the knight was. "I will not tell thee," he +answered. "Since thou art so churlish as not to tell me," said she, +"I will ask him himself." "Thou shalt not ask him, by my faith," +said he. "Wherefore?" said she. "Because thou art not of honour +sufficient to befit thee to speak to my Lord." Then the maiden +turned her horse's head towards the knight, upon which the dwarf +struck her with the whip that was in his hand across the face and the +eyes, until the blood flowed forth. And the maiden, through the hurt +she received from the blow, returned to Gwenhwyvar, complaining of +the pain. "Very rudely has the dwarf treated thee," said Geraint. +"I will go myself to know who the knight is." "Go," said Gwenhwyvar. +And Geraint went up to the dwarf. "Who is yonder knight?" said +Geraint. "I will not tell thee," said the dwarf. "Then will I ask +him himself," said he. "That wilt thou not, by my faith," said the +dwarf; "thou art not honourable enough to speak with my Lord." Said +Geraint, "I have spoken with men of equal rank with him." And he +turned his horse's head towards the knight; but the dwarf overtook +him, and struck him as he had done the maiden, so that the blood +coloured the scarf that Geraint wore. Then Geraint put his hand upon +the hilt of his sword, but he took counsel with himself, and +considered that it would be no vengeance for him to slay the dwarf, +and to be attacked unarmed by the armed knight, so he returned to +where Gwenhwyvar was. + + + "And while they listen'd for the distant hunt, +And chiefly for the baying of Cavall, +King Arthur's hound of deepest mouth, there rode +Full slowly by a knight, lady, and dwarf; +Whereof the dwarf lagg'd latest, and the knight +Had vizor up, and show'd a youthful face, +Imperious, and of haughtiest lineaments. +And Guinevere, not mindful of his face +In the King's hall, desired his name, and sent +Her maiden to demand it of the dwarf; +Who being vicious, old and irritable, +And doubling all his master's vice of pride, +Made answer sharply that she should not know. +'Then will I ask it of himself,' she said. +'Nay, by my faith, thou shalt not,' cried the dwarf; +'Thou art not worthy ev'n to speak of him'; +And when she put her horse toward the knight, +Struck at her with his whip, and she return'd +Indignant to the Queen; whereat Geraint +Exclaiming, 'Surely I will learn the name,' +Made sharply to the dwarf, and ask'd it of him, +Who answer'd as before; and when the Prince +Had put his horse in motion toward the knight, +Struck at him with his whip, and cut his cheek. +The Prince's blood spirted upon the scarf, +Dyeing it; and his quick, instinctive hand +Caught at the hilt, as to abolish him: +But he, from his exceeding manfulness +And pure nobility of temperament, +Wroth to be wroth at such a worm, refrain'd +From ev'n a word." + + +The self-restraint of Geraint, who does not slay the dwarf, + + + "From his exceeding manfulness +And pure nobility of temperament," + + +may appear "too polite," and too much in accord with the still +undiscovered idea of "leading sweet lives." However, the uninvented +idea does occur in the Welsh original: "Then Geraint put his hand +upon the hilt of his sword, but he took counsel with himself, and +considered that it would be no vengeance for him to slay the dwarf," +while he also reflects that he would be "attacked unarmed by the +armed knight." Perhaps Tennyson may be blamed for omitting this +obvious motive for self-restraint. Geraint therefore follows the +knight in hope of finding arms, and arrives at the town all busy with +preparations for the tournament of the sparrow-hawk. This was a +challenge sparrow-hawk: the knight had won it twice, and if he won +it thrice it would be his to keep. The rest, in the tale, is exactly +followed in the Idyll. Geraint is entertained by the ruined Yniol. +The youth bears the "costrel" full of "good purchased mead" (the +ruined Earl not brewing for himself), and Enid carries the manchet +bread in her veil, "old, and beginning to be worn out." All +Tennyson's own is the beautiful passage - + + + "And while he waited in the castle court, +The voice of Enid, Yniol's daughter, rang +Clear thro' the open casement of the hall, +Singing; and as the sweet voice of a bird, +Heard by the lander in a lonely isle, +Moves him to think what kind of bird it is +That sings so delicately clear, and make +Conjecture of the plumage and the form; +So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint; +And made him like a man abroad at morn +When first the liquid note beloved of men +Comes flying over many a windy wave +To Britain, and in April suddenly +Breaks from a coppice gemm'd with green and red, +And he suspends his converse with a friend, +Or it may be the labour of his hands, +To think or say, 'There is the nightingale'; +So fared it with Geraint, who thought and said, +'Here, by God's grace, is the one voice for me.'" + + +Yniol frankly admits in the tale that he was in the wrong in the +quarrel with his nephew. The poet, however, gives him the right, as +is natural. The combat is exactly followed in the Idyll, as is +Geraint's insistence in carrying his bride to Court in her faded +silks. Geraint, however, leaves Court with Enid, not because of the +scandal about Lancelot, but to do his duty in his own country. He +becomes indolent and uxorious, and Enid deplores his weakness, and +awakes his suspicions, thus:- + + +And one morning in the summer time they were upon their couch, and +Geraint lay upon the edge of it. And Enid was without sleep in the +apartment which had windows of glass. And the sun shone upon the +couch. And the clothes had slipped from off his arms and his breast, +and he was asleep. Then she gazed upon the marvellous beauty of his +appearance, and she said, "Alas, and am I the cause that these arms +and this breast have lost their glory and the warlike fame which they +once so richly enjoyed!" And as she said this, the tears dropped +from her eyes, and they fell upon his breast. And the tears she +shed, and the words she had spoken, awoke him; and another thing +contributed to awaken him, and that was the idea that it was not in +thinking of him that she spoke thus, but that it was because she +loved some other man more than him, and that she wished for other +society, and thereupon Geraint was troubled in his mind, and he +called his squire; and when he came to him, "Go quickly," said he, +"and prepare my horse and my arms, and make them ready. And do thou +arise," said he to Enid, "and apparel thyself; and cause thy horse to +be accoutred, and clothe thee in the worst riding-dress that thou +hast in thy possession. And evil betide me," said he, "if thou +returnest here until thou knowest whether I have lost my strength so +completely as thou didst say. And if it be so, it will then be easy +for thee to seek the society thou didst wish for of him of whom thou +wast thinking." So she arose, and clothed herself in her meanest +garments. "I know nothing, Lord," said she, "of thy meaning." +"Neither wilt thou know at this time," said he. + + + "At last, it chanced that on a summer morn +(They sleeping each by either) the new sun +Beat thro' the blindless casement of the room, +And heated the strong warrior in his dreams; +Who, moving, cast the coverlet aside, +And bared the knotted column of his throat, +The massive square of his heroic breast, +And arms on which the standing muscle sloped, +As slopes a wild brook o'er a little stone, +Running too vehemently to break upon it. +And Enid woke and sat beside the couch, +Admiring him, and thought within herself, +Was ever man so grandly made as he? +Then, like a shadow, past the people's talk +And accusation of uxoriousness +Across her mind, and bowing over him, +Low to her own heart piteously she said: + + 'O noble breast and all-puissant arms, +Am I the cause, I the poor cause that men +Reproach you, saying all your force is gone? +I AM the cause, because I dare not speak +And tell him what I think and what they say. +And yet I hate that he should linger here; +I cannot love my lord and not his name. +Far liefer had I gird his harness on him, +And ride with him to battle and stand by, +And watch his mightful hand striking great blows +At caitiffs and at wrongers of the world. +Far better were I laid in the dark earth, +Not hearing any more his noble voice, +Not to be folded more in these dear arms, +And darken'd from the high light in his eyes, +Than that my lord thro' me should suffer shame. +Am I so bold, and could I so stand by, +And see my dear lord wounded in the strife, +Or maybe pierced to death before mine eyes, +And yet not dare to tell him what I think, +And how men slur him, saying all his force +Is melted into mere effeminacy? +O me, I fear that I am no true wife.' + + Half inwardly, half audibly she spoke, +And the strong passion in her made her weep +True tears upon his broad and naked breast, +And these awoke him, and by great mischance +He heard but fragments of her later words, +And that she fear'd she was not a true wife. +And then he thought, 'In spite of all my care, +For all my pains, poor man, for all my pains, +She is not faithful to me, and I see her +Weeping for some gay knight in Arthur's hall.' +Then tho' he loved and reverenced her too much +To dream she could be guilty of foul act, +Right thro' his manful breast darted the pang +That makes a man, in the sweet face of her +Whom he loves most, lonely and miserable. +At this he hurl'd his huge limbs out of bed, +And shook his drowsy squire awake and cried, +'My charger and her palfrey'; then to her, +'I will ride forth into the wilderness; +For tho' it seems my spurs are yet to win, +I have not fall'n so low as some would wish. +And thou, put on thy worst and meanest dress +And ride with me.' And Enid ask'd, amazed, +'If Enid errs, let Enid learn her fault.' +But he, 'I charge thee, ask not, but obey.' +Then she bethought her of a faded silk, +A faded mantle and a faded veil, +And moving toward a cedarn cabinet, +Wherein she kept them folded reverently +With sprigs of summer laid between the folds, +She took them, and array'd herself therein, +Remembering when first he came on her +Drest in that dress, and how he loved her in it, +And all her foolish fears about the dress, +And all his journey to her, as himself +Had told her, and their coming to the court." + + +Tennyson's + + +"Arms on which the standing muscle sloped, +As slopes a wild brook o'er a little stone, +Running too vehemently to break upon it," + + +is suggested perhaps by Theocritus--"The muscles on his brawny arms +stood out like rounded rocks that the winter torrent has rolled and +worn smooth, in the great swirling stream" (Idyll xxii.) + +The second part of the poem follows the original less closely. Thus +Limours, in the tale, is not an old suitor of Enid; Edyrn does not +appear to the rescue; certain cruel games, veiled in a magic mist, +occur in the tale, and are omitted by the poet; "Gwyffert petit, so +called by the Franks, whom the Cymry call the Little King," in the +tale, is not a character in the Idyll, and, generally, the gross +Celtic exaggerations of Geraint's feats are toned down by Tennyson. +In other respects, as when Geraint eats the mowers' dinner, the tale +supplies the materials. But it does not dwell tenderly on the +reconciliation. The tale is more or less in the vein of "patient +Grizel," and he who told it is more concerned with the fighting than +with amoris redintegratio, and the sufferings of Enid. The Idyll is +enriched with many beautiful pictures from nature, such as this:- + + +"But at the flash and motion of the man +They vanish'd panic-stricken, like a shoal +Of darting fish, that on a summer morn +Adown the crystal dykes at Camelot +Come slipping o'er their shadows on the sand, +But if a man who stands upon the brink +But lift a shining hand against the sun, +There is not left the twinkle of a fin +Betwixt the cressy islets white in flower; +So, scared but at the motion of the man, +Fled all the boon companions of the Earl, +And left him lying in the public way." + + +In Balin and Balan Tennyson displays great constructive power, and +remarkable skill in moulding the most recalcitrant materials. Balin +or Balyn, according to Mr Rhys, is the Belinus of Geoffrey of +Monmouth, "whose name represents the Celtic divinity described in +Latin as Apollo Belenus or Belinus." {14} In Geoffrey, Belinus, +euphemerised, or reduced from god to hero, has a brother, Brennius, +the Celtic Bran, King of Britain from Caithness to the Humber. +Belinus drives Bran into exile. "Thus it is seen that Belinus or +Balyn was, mythologically speaking, the natural enemy" (as Apollo +Belinus, the radiant god) "of the dark divinity Bran or Balan." + +If this view be correct, the two brothers answer to the good and bad +principles of myths like that of the Huron Iouskeha the Sun, and +Anatensic the Moon, or rather Taouiscara and Iouskeha, the hostile +brothers, Black and White. {15} These mythical brethren are, in +Malory, two knights of Northumberland, Balin the wild and Balan. +Their adventures are mixed up with a hostile Lady of the Lake, whom +Balin slays in Arthur's presence, with a sword which none but Balin +can draw from sheath; and with an evil black-faced knight Garlon, +invisible at will, whom Balin slays in the castle of the knight's +brother, King Pellam. Pursued from room to room by Pellam, Balin +finds himself in a chamber full of relics of Joseph of Arimathea. +There he seizes a spear, the very spear with which the Roman soldier +pierced the side of the Crucified, and wounds Pellam. The castle +falls in ruins "through that dolorous stroke." Pellam becomes the +maimed king, who can only be healed by the Holy Grail. Apparently +Celtic myths of obscure antiquity have been adapted in France, and +interwoven with fables about Joseph of Arimathea and Christian +mysteries. It is not possible here to go into the complicated +learning of the subject. In Malory, Balin, after dealing the +dolorous stroke, borrows a strange shield from a knight, and, thus +accoutred, meets his brother Balan, who does not recognise him. They +fight, both die and are buried in one tomb, and Galahad later +achieves the adventure of winning Balin's sword. "Thus endeth the +tale of Balyn and of Balan, two brethren born in Northumberland, good +knights," says Malory, simply, and unconscious of the strange +mythological medley under the coat armour of romance. + +The materials, then, seemed confused and obdurate, but Tennyson works +them into the course of the fatal love of Lancelot and Guinevere, and +into the spiritual texture of the Idylls. Balin has been expelled +from Court for the wildness that gives him his name, Balin le +Sauvage. He had buffeted a squire in hall. He and Balan await all +challengers beside a well. Arthur encounters and dismounts them. +Balin devotes himself to self-conquest. Then comes tidings that +Pellam, of old leagued with Lot against Arthur, has taken to +religion, collects relics, claims descent from Joseph of Arimathea, +and owns the sacred spear that pierced the side of Christ. But +Garlon is with him, the knight invisible, who appears to come from an +Irish source, or at least has a parallel in Irish legend. This +Garlon has an unknightly way of killing men by viewless blows from +the rear. Balan goes to encounter Garlon. Balin remains, learning +courtesy, modelling himself on Lancelot, and gaining leave to bear +Guinevere's Crown Matrimonial for his cognisance,--which, of course, +Balan does not know, - + + +"As golden earnest of a better life." + + +But Balin sees reason to think that Lancelot and Guinevere love even +too well. + + + "Then chanced, one morning, that Sir Balin sat +Close-bower'd in that garden nigh the hall. +A walk of roses ran from door to door; +A walk of lilies crost it to the bower: +And down that range of roses the great Queen +Came with slow steps, the morning on her face; +And all in shadow from the counter door +Sir Lancelot as to meet her, then at once, +As if he saw not, glanced aside, and paced +The long white walk of lilies toward the bower. +Follow'd the Queen; Sir Balin heard her 'Prince, +Art thou so little loyal to thy Queen, +As pass without good morrow to thy Queen?' +To whom Sir Lancelot with his eyes on earth, +'Fain would I still be loyal to the Queen.' +'Yea so,' she said, 'but so to pass me by - +So loyal scarce is loyal to thyself, +Whom all men rate the king of courtesy. +Let be: ye stand, fair lord, as in a dream.' + + Then Lancelot with his hand among the flowers, +'Yea--for a dream. Last night methought I saw +That maiden Saint who stands with lily in hand +In yonder shrine. All round her prest the dark, +And all the light upon her silver face +Flow'd from the spiritual lily that she held. +Lo! these her emblems drew mine eyes--away: +For see, how perfect-pure! As light a flush +As hardly tints the blossom of the quince +Would mar their charm of stainless maidenhood.' + + 'Sweeter to me,' she said, 'this garden rose +Deep-hued and many-folded sweeter still +The wild-wood hyacinth and the bloom of May. +Prince, we have ridd'n before among the flowers +In those fair days--not all as cool as these, +Tho' season-earlier. Art thou sad? or sick? +Our noble King will send thee his own leech - +Sick? or for any matter anger'd at me?' + + Then Lancelot lifted his large eyes; they dwelt +Deep-tranced on hers, and could not fall: her hue +Changed at his gaze: so turning side by side +They past, and Balin started from his bower. + + 'Queen? subject? but I see not what I see. +Damsel and lover? hear not what I hear. +My father hath begotten me in his wrath. +I suffer from the things before me, know, +Learn nothing; am not worthy to be knight; +A churl, a clown!' and in him gloom on gloom +Deepen'd: he sharply caught his lance and shield, +Nor stay'd to crave permission of the King, +But, mad for strange adventure, dash'd away." + + +Balin is "disillusioned," his faith in the Ideal is shaken if not +shattered. He rides at adventure. Arriving at the half-ruined +castle of Pellam, that dubious devotee, he hears Garlon insult +Guinevere, but restrains himself. Next day, again insulted for +bearing "the crown scandalous" on his shield, he strikes Garlon down, +is pursued, seizes the sacred spear, and escapes. Vivien meets him +in the woods, drops scandal in his ears, and so maddens him that he +defaces his shield with the crown of Guinevere. Her song, and her +words, + + + "This fire of Heaven, +This old sun-worship, boy, will rise again, +And beat the cross to earth, and break the King +And all his Table," + + +might be forced into an allegory of the revived pride of life, at the +Renaissance and after. The maddened yells of Balin strike the ear of +Balan, who thinks he has met the foul knight Garlon, that + + +"Tramples on the goodly shield to show +His loathing of our Order and the Queen." + + +They fight, fatally wound, and finally recognise each other: Balan +trying to restore Balin's faith in Guinevere, who is merely slandered +by Garlon and Vivien. Balin acknowledges that his wildness has been +their common bane, and they die, "either locked in either's arms." + +There is nothing in Malory, nor in any other source, so far as I am +aware, which suggested to Tennyson the clou of the situation--the use +of Guinevere's crown as a cognisance by Balin. This device enables +the poet to weave the rather confused and unintelligible adventures +of Balin and Balan into the scheme, and to make it a stage in the +progress of his fable. That Balin was reckless and wild Malory bears +witness, but his endeavours to conquer himself and reach the ideal +set by Lancelot are Tennyson's addition, with all the tragedy of +Balin's disenchantment and despair. The strange fantastic house of +Pellam, full of the most sacred things, + + +"In which he scarce could spy the Christ for Saints," + + +yet sheltering the human fiend Garlon, is supplied by Malory, whose +predecessors probably blended more than one myth of the old Cymry +into the romance, washed over with Christian colouring. As Malory +tells this part of the tale it is perhaps more strange and effective +than in the Idyll. The introduction of Vivien into this adventure is +wholly due to Tennyson: her appearance here leads up to her triumph +in the poem which follows, Merlin and Vivien. + +The nature and origin of Merlin are something of a mystery. Hints +and rumours of Merlin, as of Arthur, stream from hill and grave as +far north as Tweedside. If he was a historical person, myths of +magic might crystallise round him, as round Virgil in Italy. The +process would be the easier in a country where the practices of +Druidry still lingered, and revived after the retreat of the Romans. +The mediaeval romancers invented a legend that Merlin was a virgin- +born child of Satan. In Tennyson he may be guessed to represent the +fabled esoteric lore of old religions, with their vague pantheisms, +and such magic as the tapas of Brahmanic legends. He is wise with a +riddling evasive wisdom: the builder of Camelot, the prophet, a +shadow of Druidry clinging to the Christian king. His wisdom cannot +avail him: if he beholds "his own mischance with a glassy +countenance," he cannot avoid his shapen fate. He becomes assotted +of Vivien, and goes open-eyed to his doom. + +The enchantress, Vivien, is one of that dubious company of Ladies of +the Lake, now friendly, now treacherous. Probably these ladies are +the fairies of popular Celtic tradition, taken up into the more +elaborate poetry of Cymric literature and mediaeval romance. Mr Rhys +traces Vivien, or Nimue, or Nyneue, back, through a series of +palaeographic changes and errors, to Rhiannon, wife of Pwyll, a kind +of lady of the lake he thinks, but the identification is not very +satisfactory. Vivien is certainly "one of the damsels of the lake" +in Malory, and the damsels of the lake seem to be lake fairies, with +all their beguilements and strange unstable loves. "And always +Merlin lay about the lady to have her maidenhood, and she was ever +passing weary of him, and fain would have been delivered of him, for +she was afraid of him because he was a devil's son. . . . So by her +subtle working she made Merlin to go under that stone to let her wit +of the marvels there, but she wrought so there for him that he came +never out for all the craft he could do. And so she departed and +left Merlin." The sympathy of Malory is not with the enchanter. In +the Idylls, as finally published, Vivien is born on a battlefield of +death, with a nature perverted, and an instinctive hatred of the +good. Wherefore she leaves the Court of King Mark to make mischief +in Camelot. She is, in fact, the ideal minx, a character not +elsewhere treated by Tennyson:- + + + "She hated all the knights, and heard in thought +Their lavish comment when her name was named. +For once, when Arthur walking all alone, +Vext at a rumour issued from herself +Of some corruption crept among his knights, +Had met her, Vivien, being greeted fair, +Would fain have wrought upon his cloudy mood +With reverent eyes mock-loyal, shaken voice, +And flutter'd adoration, and at last +With dark sweet hints of some who prized him more +Than who should prize him most; at which the King +Had gazed upon her blankly and gone by: +But one had watch'd, and had not held his peace: +It made the laughter of an afternoon +That Vivien should attempt the blameless King. +And after that, she set herself to gain +Him, the most famous man of all those times, +Merlin, who knew the range of all their arts, +Had built the King his havens, ships, and halls, +Was also Bard, and knew the starry heavens; +The people call'd him Wizard; whom at first +She play'd about with slight and sprightly talk, +And vivid smiles, and faintly-venom'd points +Of slander, glancing here and grazing there; +And yielding to his kindlier moods, the Seer +Would watch her at her petulance, and play, +Ev'n when they seem'd unloveable, and laugh +As those that watch a kitten; thus he grew +Tolerant of what he half disdain'd, and she, +Perceiving that she was but half disdain'd, +Began to break her sports with graver fits, +Turn red or pale, would often when they met +Sigh fully, or all-silent gaze upon him +With such a fixt devotion, that the old man, +Tho' doubtful, felt the flattery, and at times +Would flatter his own wish in age for love, +And half believe her true: for thus at times +He waver'd; but that other clung to him, +Fixt in her will, and so the seasons went." + + +Vivien is modern enough--if any type of character is modern: at all +events there is no such Blanche Amory of a girl in the old legends +and romances. In these Merlin fatigues the lady by his love; she +learns his arts, and gets rid of him as she can. His forebodings in +the Idyll contain a magnificent image:- + + + "There lay she all her length and kiss'd his feet, +As if in deepest reverence and in love. +A twist of gold was round her hair; a robe +Of samite without price, that more exprest +Than hid her, clung about her lissome limbs, +In colour like the satin-shining palm +On sallows in the windy gleams of March: +And while she kiss'd them, crying, 'Trample me, +Dear feet, that I have follow'd thro' the world, +And I will pay you worship; tread me down +And I will kiss you for it'; he was mute: +So dark a forethought roll'd about his brain, +As on a dull day in an Ocean cave +The blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall +In silence." + + +We think of the blinded Cyclops groping round his cave, like "the +blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall." + +The richness, the many shining contrasts and immortal lines in +Vivien, seem almost too noble for a subject not easily redeemed, and +the picture of the ideal Court lying in full corruption. Next to +Elaine, Jowett wrote that he "admired Vivien the most (the naughty +one), which seems to me a work of wonderful power and skill. It is +most elegant and fanciful. I am not surprised at your Delilah +beguiling the wise man; she is quite equal to it." The dramatic +versatility of Tennyson's genius, his power of creating the most +various characters, is nowhere better displayed than in the contrast +between the Vivien and the Elaine. Vivien is a type, her adventure +is of a nature, which he has not elsewhere handled. Thackeray, who +admired the Idylls so enthusiastically, might have recognised in +Vivien a character not unlike some of his own, as dark as Becky +Sharp, more terrible in her selfishness than that Beatrix Esmond who +is still a paragon, and, in her creator's despite, a queen of hearts. +In Elaine, on the other hand, Tennyson has drawn a girl so innocently +passionate, and told a tale of love that never found his earthly +close, so delicately beautiful, that we may perhaps place this Idyll +the highest of his poems on love, and reckon it the gem of the +Idylls, the central diamond in the diamond crown. Reading Elaine +once more, after an interval of years, one is captivated by its +grace, its pathos, its nobility. The poet had touched on some +unidentified form of the story, long before, in The Lady of Shalott. +That poem had the mystery of romance, but, in human interest, could +not compete with Elaine, if indeed any poem of Tennyson's can be +ranked with this matchless Idyll. + +The mere invention, and, as we may say, charpentage, are of the first +order. The materials in Malory, though beautiful, are simple, and +left a field for the poet's invention. {16} + +Arthur, with the Scots and Northern knights, means to encounter all +comers at a Whitsuntide tourney. Guinevere is ill, and cannot go to +the jousts, while Lancelot makes excuse that he is not healed of a +wound. "Wherefore the King was heavy and passing wroth, and so he +departed towards Winchester." The Queen then blamed Lancelot: +people will say they deceive Arthur. "Madame," said Sir Lancelot, "I +allow your wit; it is of late come that ye were wise." In the Idyll +Guinevere speaks as if their early loves had been as conspicuous as, +according to George Buchanan, were those of Queen Mary and Bothwell. +Lancelot will go to the tourney, and, despite Guinevere's warning, +will take part against Arthur and his own fierce Northern kinsmen. +He rides to Astolat--"that is, Gylford"--where Arthur sees him. He +borrows the blank shield of "Sir Torre," and the company of his +brother Sir Lavaine. Elaine "cast such a love unto Sir Lancelot that +she would never withdraw her love, wherefore she died." At her +prayer, and for better disguise (as he had never worn a lady's +favour), Lancelot carried her scarlet pearl-embroidered sleeve in his +helmet, and left his shield in Elaine's keeping. The tourney passes +as in the poem, Gawain recognising Lancelot, but puzzled by the +favour he wears. The wounded Lancelot "thought to do what he might +while he might endure." When he is offered the prize he is so sore +hurt that he "takes no force of no honour." He rides into a wood, +where Lavaine draws forth the spear. Lavaine brings Lancelot to the +hermit, once a knight. "I have seen the day," says the hermit, "I +would have loved him the worse, because he was against my lord, King +Arthur, for some time. I was one of the fellowship of the Round +Table, but I thank God now I am otherwise disposed." Gawain, seeking +the wounded knight, comes to Astolat, where Elaine declares "he is +the man in the world that I first loved, and truly he is the last +that ever I shall love." Gawain, on seeing the shield, tells Elaine +that the wounded knight is Lancelot, and she goes to seek him and +Lavaine. Gawain does not pay court to Elaine, nor does Arthur rebuke +him, as in the poem. When Guinevere heard that Lancelot bore another +lady's favour, "she was nigh out of her mind for wrath," and +expressed her anger to Sir Bors, for Gawain had spoken of the maid of +Astolat. Bors tells this to Lancelot, who is tended by Elaine. +"'But I well see,' said Sir Bors, 'by her diligence about you that +she loveth you entirely.' 'That me repenteth,' said Sir Lancelot. +Said Sir Bors, 'Sir, she is not the first that hath lost her pain +upon you, and that is the more pity.'" When Lancelot recovers, and +returns to Astolat, she declares her love with the frankness of +ladies in mediaeval romance. "Have mercy upon me and suffer me not +to die for thy love." Lancelot replies with the courtesy and the +offers of service which became him. "Of all this," said the maiden, +"I will none; for but if ye will wed me, or be my paramour at the +least, wit you well, Sir Lancelot, my good days are done." + +This was a difficult pass for the poet, living in other days of other +manners. His art appears in the turn which he gives to Elaine's +declaration:- + + + "But when Sir Lancelot's deadly hurt was whole, +To Astolat returning rode the three. +There morn by morn, arraying her sweet self +In that wherein she deem'd she look'd her best, +She came before Sir Lancelot, for she thought +'If I be loved, these are my festal robes, +If not, the victim's flowers before he fall.' +And Lancelot ever prest upon the maid +That she should ask some goodly gift of him +For her own self or hers; 'and do not shun +To speak the wish most near to your true heart; +Such service have ye done me, that I make +My will of yours, and Prince and Lord am I +In mine own land, and what I will I can.' +Then like a ghost she lifted up her face, +But like a ghost without the power to speak. +And Lancelot saw that she withheld her wish, +And bode among them yet a little space +Till he should learn it; and one morn it chanced +He found her in among the garden yews, +And said, 'Delay no longer, speak your wish, +Seeing I go to-day': then out she brake: +'Going? and we shall never see you more. +And I must die for want of one bold word.' +'Speak: that I live to hear,' he said, 'is yours.' +Then suddenly and passionately she spoke: +'I have gone mad. I love you: let me die.' +'Ah, sister,' answer'd Lancelot, 'what is this?' +And innocently extending her white arms, +'Your love,' she said, 'your love--to be your wife.' +And Lancelot answer'd, 'Had I chosen to wed, +I had been wedded earlier, sweet Elaine: +But now there never will be wife of mine.' +'No, no' she cried, 'I care not to be wife, +But to be with you still, to see your face, +To serve you, and to follow you thro' the world.' +And Lancelot answer'd, 'Nay, the world, the world, +All ear and eye, with such a stupid heart +To interpret ear and eye, and such a tongue +To blare its own interpretation--nay, +Full ill then should I quit your brother's love, +And your good father's kindness.' And she said, +'Not to be with you, not to see your face - +Alas for me then, my good days are done.'" + + +So she dies, and is borne down Thames to London, the fairest corpse, +"and she lay as though she had smiled." Her letter is read. "Ye +might have showed her," said the Queen, "some courtesy and gentleness +that might have preserved her life;" and so the two are reconciled. + +Such, in brief, is the tender old tale of true love, with the shining +courtesy of Lavaine and the father of the maid, who speak no word of +anger against Lancelot. "For since first I saw my lord, Sir +Lancelot," says Lavaine, "I could never depart from him, nor nought I +will, if I may follow him: she doth as I do." To the simple and +moving story Tennyson adds, by way of ornament, the diamonds, the +prize of the tourney, and the manner of their finding:- + + + "For Arthur, long before they crown'd him King, +Roving the trackless realms of Lyonnesse, +Had found a glen, gray boulder and black tarn. +A horror lived about the tarn, and clave +Like its own mists to all the mountain side: +For here two brothers, one a king, had met +And fought together; but their names were lost; +And each had slain his brother at a blow; +And down they fell and made the glen abhorr'd: +And there they lay till all their bones were bleach'd, +And lichen'd into colour with the crags: +And he, that once was king, had on a crown +Of diamonds, one in front, and four aside. +And Arthur came, and labouring up the pass, +All in a misty moonshine, unawares +Had trodden that crown'd skeleton, and the skull +Brake from the nape, and from the skull the crown +Roll'd into light, and turning on its rims +Fled like a glittering rivulet to the tarn: +And down the shingly scaur he plunged, and caught, +And set it on his head, and in his heart +Heard murmurs, 'Lo, thou likewise shalt be King.'" + + +The diamonds reappear in the scene of Guinevere's jealousy:- + + + "All in an oriel on the summer side, +Vine-clad, of Arthur's palace toward the stream, +They met, and Lancelot kneeling utter'd, 'Queen, +Lady, my liege, in whom I have my joy, +Take, what I had not won except for you, +These jewels, and make me happy, making them +An armlet for the roundest arm on earth, +Or necklace for a neck to which the swan's +Is tawnier than her cygnet's: these are words: +Your beauty is your beauty, and I sin +In speaking, yet O grant my worship of it +Words, as we grant grief tears. Such sin in words, +Perchance, we both can pardon: but, my Queen, +I hear of rumours flying thro' your court. +Our bond, as not the bond of man and wife, +Should have in it an absoluter trust +To make up that defect: let rumours be: +When did not rumours fly? these, as I trust +That you trust me in your own nobleness, +I may not well believe that you believe.' + + While thus he spoke, half turn'd away, the Queen +Brake from the vast oriel-embowering vine +Leaf after leaf, and tore, and cast them off, +Till all the place whereon she stood was green; +Then, when he ceased, in one cold passive hand +Received at once and laid aside the gems +There on a table near her, and replied: + + 'It may be, I am quicker of belief +Than you believe me, Lancelot of the Lake. +Our bond is not the bond of man and wife. +This good is in it, whatsoe'er of ill, +It can be broken easier. I for you +This many a year have done despite and wrong +To one whom ever in my heart of hearts +I did acknowledge nobler. What are these? +Diamonds for me! they had been thrice their worth +Being your gift, had you not lost your own. +To loyal hearts the value of all gifts +Must vary as the giver's. Not for me! +For her! for your new fancy. Only this +Grant me, I pray you: have your joys apart. +I doubt not that however changed, you keep +So much of what is graceful: and myself +Would shun to break those bounds of courtesy +In which as Arthur's Queen I move and rule: +So cannot speak my mind. An end to this! +A strange one! yet I take it with Amen. +So pray you, add my diamonds to her pearls; +Deck her with these; tell her, she shines me down: +An armlet for an arm to which the Queen's +Is haggard, or a necklace for a neck +O as much fairer--as a faith once fair +Was richer than these diamonds--hers not mine - +Nay, by the mother of our Lord himself, +Or hers or mine, mine now to work my will - +She shall not have them.' + + Saying which she seized, +And, thro' the casement standing wide for heat, +Flung them, and down they flash'd, and smote the stream. +Then from the smitten surface flash'd, as it were, +Diamonds to meet them, and they past away. +Then while Sir Lancelot leant, in half disdain +At love, life, all things, on the window ledge, +Close underneath his eyes, and right across +Where these had fallen, slowly past the barge +Whereon the lily maid of Astolat +Lay smiling, like a star in blackest night." + + +This affair of the diamonds is the chief addition to the old tale, in +which we already see the curse of lawless love, fallen upon the +jealous Queen and the long-enduring Lancelot. "This is not the first +time," said Sir Lancelot, "that ye have been displeased with me +causeless, but, madame, ever I must suffer you, but what sorrow I +endure I take no force" (that is, "I disregard"). + +The romance, and the poet, in his own despite, cannot but make +Lancelot the man we love, not Arthur or another. Human nature +perversely sides with Guinevere against the Blameless King:- + + + "She broke into a little scornful laugh: +'Arthur, my lord, Arthur, the faultless King, +That passionate perfection, my good lord - +But who can gaze upon the Sun in heaven? +He never spake word of reproach to me, +He never had a glimpse of mine untruth, +He cares not for me: only here to-day +There gleam'd a vague suspicion in his eyes: +Some meddling rogue has tamper'd with him--else +Rapt in this fancy of his Table Round, +And swearing men to vows impossible, +To make them like himself: but, friend, to me +He is all fault who hath no fault at all: +For who loves me must have a touch of earth; +The low sun makes the colour: I am yours, +Not Arthur's, as ye know, save by the bond." + + +It is not the beautiful Queen who wins us, our hearts are with "the +innocence of love" in Elaine. But Lancelot has the charm that +captivated Lavaine; and Tennyson's Arthur remains + + +"The moral child without the craft to rule, +Else had he not lost me." + + +Indeed the romance of Malory makes Arthur deserve "the pretty popular +name such manhood earns" by his conduct as regards Guinevere when she +is accused by her enemies in the later chapters. Yet Malory does not +finally condone the sin which baffles Lancelot's quest of the Holy +Grail. + +Tennyson at first was in doubt as to writing on the Grail, for +certain respects of reverence. When he did approach the theme it was +in a method of extreme condensation. The romances on the Grail +outrun the length even of mediaeval poetry and prose. They are +exceedingly confused, as was natural, if that hypothesis which +regards the story as a Christianised form of obscure Celtic myth be +correct. Sir Percivale's sister, in the Idyll, has the first vision +of the Grail:- + + +"Sweet brother, I have seen the Holy Grail: +For, waked at dead of night, I heard a sound +As of a silver horn from o'er the hills +Blown, and I thought, 'It is not Arthur's use +To hunt by moonlight'; and the slender sound +As from a distance beyond distance grew +Coming upon me--O never harp nor horn, +Nor aught we blow with breath, or touch with hand, +Was like that music as it came; and then +Stream'd thro' my cell a cold and silver beam, +And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail, +Rose-red with beatings in it, as if alive, +Till all the white walls of my cell were dyed +With rosy colours leaping on the wall; +And then the music faded, and the Grail +Past, and the beam decay'd, and from the walls +The rosy quiverings died into the night. +So now the Holy Thing is here again +Among us, brother, fast thou too and pray, +And tell thy brother knights to fast and pray, +That so perchance the vision may be seen +By thee and those, and all the world be heal'd." + + +Galahad, son of Lancelot and the first Elaine (who became Lancelot's +mistress by art magic), then vows himself to the Quest, and, after +the vision in hall at Camelot, the knights, except Arthur, follow his +example, to Arthur's grief. "Ye follow wandering fires!" Probably, +or perhaps, the poet indicates dislike of hasty spiritual +enthusiasms, of "seeking for a sign," and of the mysticism which +betokens want of faith. The Middle Ages, more than many readers +know, were ages of doubt. Men desired the witness of the senses to +the truth of what the Church taught, they wished to see that naked +child of the romance "smite himself into" the wafer of the Sacrament. +The author of the Imitatio Christi discourages such vain and too +curious inquiries as helped to rend the Church, and divided +Christendom into hostile camps. The Quest of the actual Grail was a +knightly form of theological research into the unsearchable; +undertaken, often in a secular spirit of adventure, by sinful men. +The poet's heart is rather with human things:- + + + "'O brother,' ask'd Ambrosius,--'for in sooth +These ancient books--and they would win thee--teem, +Only I find not there this Holy Grail, +With miracles and marvels like to these, +Not all unlike; which oftentime I read, +Who read but on my breviary with ease, +Till my head swims; and then go forth and pass +Down to the little thorpe that lies so close, +And almost plaster'd like a martin's nest +To these old walls--and mingle with our folk; +And knowing every honest face of theirs +As well as ever shepherd knew his sheep, +And every homely secret in their hearts, +Delight myself with gossip and old wives, +And ills and aches, and teethings, lyings-in, +And mirthful sayings, children of the place, +That have no meaning half a league away: +Or lulling random squabbles when they rise, +Chafferings and chatterings at the market-cross, +Rejoice, small man, in this small world of mine, +Yea, even in their hens and in their eggs."' + + +This appears to be Tennyson's original reading of the Quest of the +Grail. His own mysticism, which did not strive, or cry, or seek +after marvels, though marvels might come unsought, is expressed in +Arthur's words:- + + + "'"And spake I not too truly, O my knights? +Was I too dark a prophet when I said +To those who went upon the Holy Quest, +That most of them would follow wandering fires, +Lost in the quagmire?--lost to me and gone, +And left me gazing at a barren board, +And a lean Order--scarce return'd a tithe - +And out of those to whom the vision came +My greatest hardly will believe he saw; +Another hath beheld it afar off, +And leaving human wrongs to right themselves, +Cares but to pass into the silent life. +And one hath had the vision face to face, +And now his chair desires him here in vain, +However they may crown him otherwhere. + + '"And some among you held, that if the King +Had seen the sight he would have sworn the vow: +Not easily, seeing that the King must guard +That which he rules, and is but as the hind +To whom a space of land is given to plow +Who may not wander from the allotted field +Before his work be done; but, being done, +Let visions of the night or of the day +Come, as they will; and many a time they come, +Until this earth he walks on seems not earth, +This light that strikes his eyeball is not light, +This air that smites his forehead is not air +But vision--yea, his very hand and foot - +In moments when he feels he cannot die, +And knows himself no vision to himself, +Nor the high God a vision, nor that One +Who rose again: ye have seen what ye have seen." + + 'So spake the King: I knew not all he meant.'" + + +The closing lines declare, as far as the poet could declare them, +these subjective experiences of his which, in a manner rarely +parallelled, coloured and formed his thought on the highest things. +He introduces them even into this poem on a topic which, because of +its sacred associations, he for long did not venture to touch. + +In Pelleas and Ettarre--which deals with the sorrows of one of the +young knights who fill up the gaps left at the Round Table by the +mischances of the Quest--it would be difficult to trace a Celtic +original. For Malory, not Celtic legend, supplied Tennyson with the +germinal idea of a poem which, in the romance, has no bearing on the +final catastrophe. Pelleas, a King of the Isles, loves the beautiful +Ettarre, "a great lady," and for her wins at a tourney the prize of +the golden circlet. But she hates and despises him, and Sir Gawain +is a spectator when, as in the poem, the felon knights of Ettarre +bind and insult their conqueror, Pelleas. Gawain promises to win the +love of Ettarre for Pelleas, and, as in the poem, borrows his arms +and horse, and pretends to have slain him. But in place of turning +Ettarre's heart towards Pelleas, Gawain becomes her lover, and +Pelleas, detecting them asleep, lays his naked sword on their necks. +He then rides home to die; but Nimue (Vivien), the Lady of the Lake, +restores him to health and sanity. His fever gone, he scorns +Ettarre, who, by Nimue's enchantment, now loves him as much as she +had hated him. Pelleas weds Nimue, and Ettarre dies of a broken +heart. Tennyson, of course, could not make Nimue (his Vivien) do +anything benevolent. He therefore closes his poem by a repetition of +the effect in the case of Balin. Pelleas is driven desperate by the +treachery of Gawain, the reported infidelity of Guinevere, and the +general corruption of the ideal. A shadow falls on Lancelot and +Guinevere, and Modred sees that his hour is drawing nigh. In spite +of beautiful passages this is not one of the finest of the Idylls, +save for the study of the fierce, hateful, and beautiful grande dame, +Ettarre. The narrative does little to advance the general plot. In +the original of Malory it has no connection with the Lancelot cycle, +except as far as it reveals the treachery of Gawain, the gay and +fair-spoken "light of love," brother of the traitor Modred. A +simpler treatment of the theme may be read in Mr Swinburne's +beautiful poem, The Tale of Balen. + +It is in The Last Tournament that Modred finds the beginning of his +opportunity. The brief life of the Ideal has burned itself out, as +the year, in its vernal beauty when Arthur came, is burning out in +autumn. The poem is purposely autumnal, with the autumn, not of +mellow fruitfulness, but of the "flying gold of the ruined woodlands" +and the dank odours of decay. In that miserable season is held the +Tourney of the Dead Innocence, with the blood-red prize of rubies. +With a wise touch Tennyson has represented the Court as fallen not +into vice only and crime, but into positive vulgarity and bad taste. +The Tournament is a carnival of the "smart" and the third-rate. +Courtesy is dead, even Tristram is brutal, and in Iseult hatred of +her husband is as powerful as love of her lover. The satire strikes +at England, where the world has never been corrupt with a good grace. +It is a passage of arms neither gentle nor joyous that Lancelot +presides over:- + + + "The sudden trumpet sounded as in a dream +To ears but half-awaked, then one low roll +Of Autumn thunder, and the jousts began: +And ever the wind blew, and yellowing leaf +And gloom and gleam, and shower and shorn plume +Went down it. Sighing weariedly, as one +Who sits and gazes on a faded fire, +When all the goodlier guests are past away, +Sat their great umpire, looking o'er the lists. +He saw the laws that ruled the tournament +Broken, but spake not; once, a knight cast down +Before his throne of arbitration cursed +The dead babe and the follies of the King; +And once the laces of a helmet crack'd, +And show'd him, like a vermin in its hole, +Modred, a narrow face: anon he heard +The voice that billow'd round the barriers roar +An ocean-sounding welcome to one knight, +But newly-enter'd, taller than the rest, +And armour'd all in forest green, whereon +There tript a hundred tiny silver deer, +And wearing but a holly-spray for crest, +With ever-scattering berries, and on shield +A spear, a harp, a bugle--Tristram--late +From overseas in Brittany return'd, +And marriage with a princess of that realm, +Isolt the White--Sir Tristram of the Woods - +Whom Lancelot knew, had held sometime with pain +His own against him, and now yearn'd to shake +The burthen off his heart in one full shock +With Tristram ev'n to death: his strong hands gript +And dinted the gilt dragons right and left, +Until he groan'd for wrath--so many of those, +That ware their ladies' colours on the casque, +Drew from before Sir Tristram to the bounds, +And there with gibes and flickering mockeries +Stood, while he mutter'd, 'Craven crests! O shame! +What faith have these in whom they sware to love? +The glory of our Round Table is no more.' + + So Tristram won, and Lancelot gave, the gems, +Not speaking other word than 'Hast thou won? +Art thou the purest, brother? See, the hand +Wherewith thou takest this, is red!' to whom +Tristram, half plagued by Lancelot's languorous mood, +Made answer, 'Ay, but wherefore toss me this +Like a dry bone cast to some hungry hound? +Let be thy fair Queen's fantasy. Strength of heart +And might of limb, but mainly use and skill, +Are winners in this pastime of our King. +My hand--belike the lance hath dript upon it - +No blood of mine, I trow; but O chief knight, +Right arm of Arthur in the battlefield, +Great brother, thou nor I have made the world; +Be happy in thy fair Queen as I in mine.' + + And Tristram round the gallery made his horse +Caracole; then bow'd his homage, bluntly saying, +'Fair damsels, each to him who worships each +Sole Queen of Beauty and of love, behold +This day my Queen of Beauty is not here.' +And most of these were mute, some anger'd, one +Murmuring, 'All courtesy is dead,' and one, +'The glory of our Round Table is no more.' + + Then fell thick rain, plume droopt and mantle clung, +And pettish cries awoke, and the wan day +Went glooming down in wet and weariness: +But under her black brows a swarthy one +Laugh'd shrilly, crying, 'Praise the patient saints, +Our one white day of Innocence hath past, +Tho' somewhat draggled at the skirt. So be it. +The snowdrop only, flowering thro' the year, +Would make the world as blank as Winter-tide. +Come--let us gladden their sad eyes, our Queen's +And Lancelot's, at this night's solemnity +With all the kindlier colours of the field.'" + + +Arthur's last victory over a robber knight is ingloriously squalid:- + + + "He ended: Arthur knew the voice; the face +Wellnigh was helmet-hidden, and the name +Went wandering somewhere darkling in his mind. +And Arthur deign'd not use of word or sword, +But let the drunkard, as he stretch'd from horse +To strike him, overbalancing his bulk, +Down from the causeway heavily to the swamp +Fall, as the crest of some slow-arching wave, +Heard in dead night along that table-shore, +Drops flat, and after the great waters break +Whitening for half a league, and thin themselves, +Far over sands marbled with moon and cloud, +From less and less to nothing; thus he fell +Head-heavy; then the knights, who watch'd him, roar'd +And shouted and leapt down upon the fall'n; +There trampled out his face from being known, +And sank his head in mire, and slimed themselves: +Nor heard the King for their own cries, but sprang +Thro' open doors, and swording right and left +Men, women, on their sodden faces, hurl'd +The tables over and the wines, and slew +Till all the rafters rang with woman-yells, +And all the pavement stream'd with massacre: +Then, echoing yell with yell, they fired the tower, +Which half that autumn night, like the live North, +Red-pulsing up thro' Alioth and Alcor, +Made all above it, and a hundred meres +About it, as the water Moab saw +Come round by the East, and out beyond them flush'd +The long low dune, and lazy-plunging sea." + + +Guinevere is one of the greatest of the Idylls. Malory makes +Lancelot more sympathetic; his fight, unarmed, in Guinevere's +chamber, against the felon knights, is one of his most spirited +scenes. Tennyson omits this, and omits all the unpardonable +behaviour of Arthur as narrated in Malory. Critics have usually +condemned the last parting of Guinevere and Arthur, because the King +doth preach too much to an unhappy woman who has no reply. The +position of Arthur is not easily redeemable: it is difficult to +conceive that a noble nature could be, or should be, blind so long. +He does rehabilitate his Queen in her own self-respect, perhaps, by +assuring her that he loves her still:- + + +"Let no man dream but that I love thee still." + + +Had he said that one line and no more, we might have loved him +better. In the Idylls we have not Malory's last meeting of Lancelot +and Guinevere, one of the scenes in which the wandering composite +romance ends as nobly as the Iliad. + +The Passing of Arthur, except for a new introductory passage of great +beauty and appropriateness, is the Morte d'Arthur, first published in +1842:- + + +"So all day long the noise of battle roll'd +Among the mountains by the winter sea." + + +The year has run its course, spring, summer, gloomy autumn, and dies +in the mist of Arthur's last wintry battle in the west - + + +"And the new sun rose, bringing the new year." + + +The splendid and sombre procession has passed, leaving us to muse as +to how far the poet has fulfilled his own ideal. There could be no +new epic: he gave a chain of heroic Idylls. An epic there could not +be, for the Iliad and Odyssey have each a unity of theme, a narrative +compressed into a few days in the former, in the latter into forty +days of time. The tragedy of Arthur's reign could not so be +condensed; and Tennyson chose the only feasible plan. He has left a +work, not absolutely perfect, indeed, but such as he conceived, after +many tentative essays, and such as he desired to achieve. His fame +may not rest chiefly on the Idylls, but they form one of the fairest +jewels in the crown that shines with unnumbered gems, each with its +own glory. + + + +CHAPTER VIII.--ENOCH ARDEN. THE DRAMAS. + + + +The success of the first volume of the Idylls recompensed the poet +for the slings and arrows that gave Maud a hostile welcome. His next +publication was the beautiful Tithonus, a fit pendant to the Ulysses, +and composed about the same date (1833-35). "A quarter of a century +ago," Tennyson dates it, writing in 1860 to the Duke of Argyll. He +had found it when "ferreting among my old books," he said, in search +of something for Thackeray, who was establishing the Cornhill +Magazine. What must the wealth of the poet have been, who, +possessing Tithonus in his portfolio, did not take the trouble to +insert it in the volumes of 1842! Nobody knows how many poems of +Tennyson's never even saw pen and ink, being composed unwritten, and +forgotten. At this time we find him recommending Mr Browning's Men +and Women to the Duke, who, like many Tennysonians, does not seem to +have been a ready convert to his great contemporary. The Duke and +Duchess urged the Laureate to attempt the topic of the Holy Grail, +but he was not in the mood. Indeed the vision of the Grail in the +early Sir Galahad is doubtless happier than the allegorical handling +of a theme so obscure, remote, and difficult, in the Idylls. He +wrote his Boadicea, a piece magnificent in itself, but of difficult +popular access, owing to the metrical experiment. + +In the autumn of 1860 he revisited Cornwall with F. T. Palgrave, Mr +Val Prinsep, and Mr Holman Hunt. They walked in the rain, saw +Tintagel and the Scilly Isles, and were feted by an enthusiastic +captain of a little river steamer, who was more interested in "Mr +Tinman and Mr Pancake" than the Celtic boatman of Ardtornish. The +winter was passed at Farringford, and the Northern Farmer was written +there, a Lincolnshire reminiscence, in the February of 1861. In +autumn the Pyrenees were visited by Tennyson in company with Arthur +Clough and Mr Dakyns of Clifton College. At Cauteretz in August, and +among memories of the old tour with Arthur Hallam, was written All +along the Valley. The ways, however, in Auvergne were "foul," and +the diet "unhappy." The dedication of the Idylls was written on the +death of the Prince Consort in December, and in January 1862 the Ode +for the opening of an exhibition. The poet was busy with his +"Fisherman," Enoch Arden. The volume was published in 1864, and Lord +Tennyson says it has been, next to In Memoriam, the most popular of +his father's works. One would have expected the one volume +containing the poems up to 1842 to hold that place. The new book, +however, mainly dealt with English, contemporary, and domestic +themes--"the poetry of the affections." An old woman, a district +visitor reported, regarded Enoch Arden as "more beautiful" than the +other tracts which were read to her. It is indeed a tender and +touching tale, based on a folk-story which Tennyson found current in +Brittany as well as in England. Nor is the unseen and unknown +landscape of the tropic isle less happily created by the poet's +imagination than the familiar English cliffs and hazel copses:- + + + "The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns +And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven, +The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes, +The lightning flash of insect and of bird, +The lustre of the long convolvuluses +That coil'd around the stately stems, and ran +Ev'n to the limit of the land, the glows +And glories of the broad belt of the world, +All these he saw; but what he fain had seen +He could not see, the kindly human face, +Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard +The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl, +The league-long roller thundering on the reef, +The moving whisper of huge trees that branch'd +And blossom'd in the zenith, or the sweep +Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave, +As down the shore he ranged, or all day long +Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge, +A shipwreck'd sailor, waiting for a sail: +No sail from day to day, but every day +The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts +Among the palms and ferns and precipices; +The blaze upon the waters to the east; +The blaze upon his island overhead; +The blaze upon the waters to the west; +Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven, +The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again +The scarlet shafts of sunrise--but no sail." + + +Aylmer's Field somewhat recalls the burden of Maud, the curse of +purse-proud wealth, but is too gloomy to be a fair specimen of +Tennyson's art. In Sea Dreams (first published in 1860) the awful +vision of crumbling faiths is somewhat out of harmony with its +environment:- + + + "But round the North, a light, +A belt, it seem'd, of luminous vapour, lay, +And ever in it a low musical note +Swell'd up and died; and, as it swell'd, a ridge +Of breaker issued from the belt, and still +Grew with the growing note, and when the note +Had reach'd a thunderous fulness, on those cliffs +Broke, mixt with awful light (the same as that +Living within the belt) whereby she saw +That all those lines of cliffs were cliffs no more, +But huge cathedral fronts of every age, +Grave, florid, stern, as far as eye could see, +One after one: and then the great ridge drew, +Lessening to the lessening music, back, +And past into the belt and swell'd again +Slowly to music: ever when it broke +The statues, king or saint or founder fell; +Then from the gaps and chasms of ruin left +Came men and women in dark clusters round, +Some crying, 'Set them up! they shall not fall!' +And others, 'Let them lie, for they have fall'n.' +And still they strove and wrangled: and she grieved +In her strange dream, she knew not why, to find +Their wildest wailings never out of tune +With that sweet note; and ever as their shrieks +Ran highest up the gamut, that great wave +Returning, while none mark'd it, on the crowd +Broke, mixt with awful light, and show'd their eyes +Glaring, and passionate looks, and swept away +The men of flesh and blood, and men of stone, +To the waste deeps together. + + 'Then I fixt +My wistful eyes on two fair images, +Both crown'd with stars and high among the stars, - +The Virgin Mother standing with her child +High up on one of those dark minster-fronts - +Till she began to totter, and the child +Clung to the mother, and sent out a cry +Which mixt with little Margaret's, and I woke, +And my dream awed me: --well--but what are dreams?" + + +The passage is rather fitted for a despairing mood of Arthur, in the +Idylls, than for the wife of the city clerk ruined by a pious rogue. + +The Lucretius, later published, is beyond praise as a masterly study +of the great Roman sceptic, whose heart is at eternal odds with his +Epicurean creed. Nascent madness, or fever of the brain drugged by +the blundering love philtre, is not more cunningly treated in the mad +scenes of Maud. No prose commentary on the De Rerum Natura, however +long and learned, conveys so clearly as this concise study in verse +the sense of magnificent mingled ruin in the mind and poem of the +Roman. + +The "Experiments in Quantity" were, perhaps, suggested by Mr Matthew +Arnold's Lectures on the Translating of Homer. Mr Arnold believed in +a translation into English hexameters. His negative criticism of +other translators and translations was amusing and instructive: he +had an easy game to play with the Yankee-doodle metre of F. W. +Newman, the ponderous blank verse of Cowper, the tripping and +clipping couplets of Pope, the Elizabethan fantasies of Chapman. But +Mr Arnold's hexameters were neither musical nor rapid: they only +exhibited a new form of failure. As the Prince of Abyssinia said to +his tutor, "Enough; you have convinced me that no man can be a poet," +so Mr Arnold went some way to prove that no man can translate Homer. + +Tennyson had the lowest opinion of hexameters as an English metre for +serious purposes. + + +"These lame hexameters the strong-wing'd music of Homer!" + + +Lord Tennyson says, "German hexameters he disliked even more than +English." Indeed there is not much room for preference. Tennyson's +Alcaics (Milton) were intended to follow the Greek rather than the +Horatian model, and resulted, at all events, in a poem worthy of the +"mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies." The specimen of the Iliad in +blank verse, beautiful as it is, does not, somehow, reproduce the +music of Homer. It is entirely Tennysonian, as in + + +"Roll'd the rich vapour far into the heaven." + + +The reader, in that one line, recognises the voice and trick of the +English poet, and is far away from the Chian:- + + +"As when in heaven the stars about the moon +Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid, +And every height comes out, and jutting peak +And valley, and the immeasurable heavens +Break open to their highest, and all the stars +Shine, and the Shepherd gladdens in his heart: +So many a fire between the ships and stream +Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy, +A thousand on the plain; and close by each +Sat fifty in the blaze of burning fire; +And eating hoary grain and pulse the steeds, +Fixt by their cars, waited the golden dawn." + + +This is excellent, is poetry, escapes the conceits of Pope (who never +"wrote with his eye on the object"), but is pure Tennyson. We have +not yet, probably we never shall have, an adequate rendering of the +Iliad into verse, and prose translations do not pretend to be +adequate. When parents and dominies have abolished the study of +Greek, something, it seems, will have been lost to the world,-- +something which even Tennyson could not restore in English. He +thought blank verse the proper equivalent; but it is no equivalent. +One even prefers his own prose:- + + +Nor did Paris linger in his lofty halls, but when he had girt on his +gorgeous armour, all of varied bronze, then he rushed thro' the city, +glorying in his airy feet. And as when a stall-kept horse, that is +barley-fed at the manger, breaketh his tether, and dasheth thro' the +plain, spurning it, being wont to bathe himself in the fair-running +river, rioting, and reareth his head, and his mane flieth back on +either shoulder, and he glorieth in his beauty, and his knees bear +him at the gallop to the haunts and meadows of the mares; so ran the +son of Priam, Paris, from the height of Pergamus, all in arms, +glittering like the sun, laughing for light-heartedness, and his +swift feet bare him. + + +In February 1865 Tennyson lost the mother whose portrait he drew in +Isabel,--"a thing enskied and sainted." + +In the autumn of 1865 the Tennysons went on a Continental tour, and +visited Waterloo, Weimar, and Dresden; in September they entertained +Emma I., Queen of the Sandwich Islands. The months passed quietly at +home or in town. The poet had written his Lucretius, and, to please +Sir George Grove, wrote The Song of the Wrens, for music. Tennyson +had not that positive aversion to music which marked Dr Johnson, +Victor Hugo, Theophile Gautier, and some other poets. Nay, he liked +Beethoven, which places him higher in the musical scale than Scott, +who did not rise above a Border lilt or a Jacobite ditty. The Wren +songs, entitled The Window, were privately printed by Sir Ivor Guest +in 1867, were set to music by Sir Arthur Sullivan, and published by +Strahan in December 1870. "A puppet," Tennyson called the song-book, +"whose only merit is, perhaps, that it can dance to Mr Sullivan's +instrument. I am sorry that my puppet should have to dance at all in +the dark shadow of these days" (the siege of Paris), "but the music +is now completed, and I am bound by my promise." The verses are +described as "partly in the old style," but the true old style of the +Elizabethan and cavalier days is lost. + +In the summer of 1867 the Tennysons moved to a farmhouse near +Haslemere, at that time not a centre of literary Londoners. "Sandy +soil and heather-scented air" allured them, and the result was the +purchase of land, and the building of Aldworth, Mr Knowles being the +architect. In autumn Tennyson visited Lyme Regis, and, like all +other travellers thither, made a pilgrimage to the Cobb, sacred to +Louisa Musgrove. The poet now began the study of Hebrew, having a +mind to translate the Book of Job, a vision unfulfilled. In 1868 he +thought of publishing his boyish piece, The Lover's Tale, but +delayed. An anonymously edited piracy of this and other poems was +perpetrated in 1875, limited, at least nominally, to fifty copies. + +In July Longfellow visited Tennyson. "The Longfellows and he talked +much of spiritualism, for he was greatly interested in that subject, +but he suspended his judgment, and thought that, if in such +manifestations there is anything, 'Pucks, not the spirits of dead +men, reveal themselves.'" This was Southey's suggestion, as regards +the celebrated disturbances in the house of the Wesleys. "Wit might +have much to say, wisdom, little," said Sam Wesley. Probably the +talk about David Dunglas Home, the "medium" then in vogue, led to the +discussion of "spiritualism." We do not hear that Tennyson ever had +the curiosity to see Home, whom Mr Browning so firmly detested. + +In September The Holy Grail was begun: it was finished "in about a +week. It came like a breath of inspiration." The subject had for +many years been turned about in the poet's mind, which, of course, +was busy in these years of apparent inactivity. At this time (August +1868) Tennyson left his old publishers, the Moxons, for Mr Strahan, +who endured till 1872. Then he was succeeded by Messrs H. S. King & +Co., who gave place (1879) to Messrs Kegan Paul & Co., while in 1884 +Messrs Macmillan became, and continue to be, the publishers. A few +pieces, except Lucretius (Macmillan's Magazine, May 1868) +unimportant, appeared in serials. + +Very early in 1869 The Coming of Arthur was composed, while Tennyson +was reading Browning's The Ring and the Book. He and his great +contemporary were on terms of affectionate friendship, though +Tennyson, perhaps, appreciated less of Browning than Browning of +Tennyson. Meanwhile "Old Fitz" kept up a fire of unsympathetic +growls at Browning and all his works. "I have been trying in vain to +read it" (The Ring and the Book), "and yet the Athenaeum tells me it +is wonderfully fine." FitzGerald's ply had been taken long ago; he +wanted verbal music in poetry (no exorbitant desire), while, in +Browning, carmina desunt. Perhaps, too, a personal feeling, as if +Browning was Tennyson's rival, affected the judgment of the author of +Omar Khayyam. We may almost call him "the author." + +The Holy Grail, with the smaller poems, such as Lucretius, was +published at the end of 1869. FitzGerald appears to have preferred +The Northern Farmer, "the substantial rough-spun nature I knew," to +all the visionary knights in the airy Quest. To compare "--" +(obviously Browning) with Tennyson, was "to compare an old Jew's +curiosity shop with the Phidian Marbles." Tennyson's poems "being +clear to the bottom as well as beautiful, do not seem to cockney eyes +so deep as muddy waters." + +In November 1870 The Last Tournament was begun; it was finished in +May 1871. Conceivably the vulgar scandals of the last days of the +French Imperial regime may have influenced Tennyson's picture of the +corruption of Arthur's Court; but the Empire did not begin, like the +Round Table, with aspirations after the Ideal. In the autumn of the +year Tennyson entertained, and was entertained by, Mr Huxley. In +their ideas about ultimate things two men could not vary more widely, +but each delighted in the other's society. In the spring of 1872 +Tennyson visited Paris and the ruins of the Louvre. He read Victor +Hugo, and Alfred de Musset, whose comedies he admired. The little +that we hear of his opinion of the other great poet runs to this +effect, "Victor Hugo is an unequal genius, sometimes sublime; he +reminds one that there is but one step between the sublime and the +ridiculous," but the example by which Tennyson illustrated this was +derived from one of the poet's novels. In these we meet not only the +sublime and the ridiculous, but passages which leave us in some +perplexity as to their true category. One would have expected Hugo's +lyrics to be Tennyson's favourites, but only Gastibelza is mentioned +in that character. At this time Tennyson was vexed by + + +"Art with poisonous honey stolen from France," + + +a phrase which cannot apply to Hugo. Meanwhile Gareth was being +written, and the knight's song for The Coming of Arthur. Gareth and +Lynette, with minor pieces, appeared in 1872. Balin and Balan was +composed later, to lead up to Vivien, to which, perhaps, Balin and +Balan was introduction sufficient had it been the earlier written. +But the Idylls have already been discussed as arranged in sequence. +The completion of the Idylls, with the patriotic epilogue, was +followed by the offer of a baronetcy. Tennyson preferred that he and +his wife "should remain plain Mr and Mrs," though "I hope that I have +too much of the old-world loyalty not to wear my lady's favours +against all comers, should you think that it would be more agreeable +to her Majesty that I should do so." + +The Idylls ended, Tennyson in 1874 began to contemplate a drama, +choosing the topic, perhaps neither popular nor in an Aristotelian +sense tragic, of Mary Tudor. This play was published, and put on the +stage by Sir Henry Irving in 1875. Harold followed in 1876, The Cup +in 1881 (at the Lyceum), The Promise of May (at the Globe) in 1882, +Becket in 1884, with The Foresters in 1892. It seems best to +consider all the dramatic period of Tennyson's work, a period reached +so strangely late in his career, in the sequence of the Plays. The +task is one from which I shrink, as conscious of entire ignorance of +the stage and of lack of enthusiasm for the drama. Great dramatic +authors have, almost invariably, had long practical knowledge of the +scenes and of what is behind them. Shakespeare and his +contemporaries, Moliere and his contemporaries, had lived their lives +on the boards and in the foyer, actors themselves, or in daily touch +with actors and actresses. In the present day successful playwrights +appear to live much in the world of the players. They have practical +knowledge of the conventions and conditions which the stage imposes. +Neither Browning nor Mr Swinburne (to take great names) has had, it +seems, much of this practical and daily experience; their dramas have +been acted but rarely, if at all, and many examples prove that +neither poetical genius nor the genius for prose fiction can enable +men to produce plays which hold their own on the boards. This may be +the fault of public taste, or partly of public taste, partly of +defect in practical knowledge on the side of the authors. Of the +stage, by way of practice, Tennyson had known next to nothing, yet +his dramas were written to be acted, and acted some of them were. +"For himself, he was aware," says his biographer, "that he wanted +intimate knowledge of the mechanical details necessary for the modern +stage, although in early and middle life he had been a constant +playgoer, and would keenly follow the action of a play, criticising +the characterisation, incidents, scenic effects, situations, +language, and dramatic points." He was quite prepared to be "edited" +for acting purposes by the players. Miss Mary Anderson says that "he +was ready to sacrifice even his MOST beautiful lines for the sake of +a real dramatic effect." + +This proved unusual common-sense in a poet. Modern times and manners +are notoriously unfavourable to the serious drama. In the age of the +Greek tragedians, as in the days of "Eliza and our James," reading +was not very common, and life was much more passed in public than +among ourselves, when people go to the play for light recreation, or +to be shocked. So various was the genius of Tennyson, that had he +devoted himself early to the stage, and had he been backed by a +manager with the enterprise and intelligence of Sir Henry Irving, it +is impossible to say how much he might have done to restore the +serious drama. But we cannot regret that he was occupied in his +prime with other things, nor can we expect to find his noblest and +most enduring work in the dramatic experiments of his latest years. +It is notable that, in his opinion, "the conditions of the dramatic +art are much more complex than they were." For example, we have "the +star system," which tends to allot what is, or was, technically +styled "the fat," to one or two popular players. Now, a poet like +Tennyson will inevitably distribute large quantities of what is most +excellent to many characters, and the consequent difficulties may be +appreciated by students of our fallen nature. The poet added that to +be a first-rate historical playwright means much more work than +formerly, seeing that "exact history" has taken the part of the +"chance chronicle." + +This is a misfortune. The dramas of the Attic stage, with one or two +exceptions, are based on myth and legend, not on history, and even in +the Persae, grounded on contemporary events, AEschylus introduced the +ghost of Darius, not vouched for by "exact history." Let us conceive +Shakespeare writing Macbeth in an age of "exact history." Hardly any +of the play would be left. Fleance and Banquo must go. Duncan +becomes a young man, and far from "gracious." Macbeth appears as the +defender of the legitimist prince, Lulach, against Duncan, a usurper. +Lady Macbeth is a pattern to her sex, and her lord is a clement and +sagacious ruler. The witches are ruled out of the piece. +Difficulties arise about the English aid to Malcolm. History, in +fact, declines to be dramatic. Liberties must be taken. In his +plays of the Mary Stuart cycle, Mr Swinburne telescopes the affair of +Darnley into that of Chastelard, which was much earlier. He makes +Mary Beaton (in love with Chastelard) a kind of avenging fate, who +will never leave the Queen till her head falls at Fotheringay; +though, in fact, after a flirtation with Randolph, Mary Beaton +married Ogilvy of Boyne (really in love with Lady Bothwell), and not +one of the four Maries was at Fotheringay. An artist ought to be +allowed to follow legend, of its essence dramatic, or to manipulate +history as he pleases. Our modern scrupulosity is pedantic. But +Tennyson read a long list of books for his Queen Mary, though it does +not appear that he made original researches in MSS. These labours +occupied 1874 and 1875. Yet it would be foolish to criticise his +Queen Mary as if we were criticising "exact history." "The play's +the thing." + +The poet thought that "Bloody Mary" "had been harshly judged by the +verdict of popular tradition." So have most characters to whom +popular dislike affixes the popular epithet--"Bloody Claverse," +"Bloody Mackenzie," "Bloody Balfour." Mary had the courage of the +Tudors. She "edified all around her by her cheerfulness, her piety, +and her resignation to the will of Providence," in her last days +(Lingard). Camden calls her "a queen never praised enough for the +purity of her morals, her charity to the poor" (she practised as a +district visitor), "and her liberality to the nobles and the clergy." +She was "pious, merciful, pure, and ever to be praised, if we +overlook her erroneous opinions in religion," says Godwin. She had +been grievously wronged from her youth upwards. In Elizabeth she had +a sister and a rival, a constant intriguer against her, and a +kinswoman far from amiable. Despite "the kindness and attention of +Philip" (Lingard), affairs of State demanded his absence from +England. The disappointment as to her expected child was cruel. She +knew that she had become unpopular, and she could not look for the +success of her Church, to which she was sincerely attached. M. +Auguste Filon thought that Queen Mary might secure dramatic rank for +Tennyson, "if a great actress arose who conceived a passion for the +part of Mary." But that was not to be expected. Mary was middle- +aged, plain, and in aspect now terrible, now rueful. No great +actress will throw herself with passion into such an ungrateful part. +"Throughout all history," Tennyson said, "there was nothing more +mournful than the final tragedy of this woman." MOURNFUL it is, but +not tragic. There is nothing grand at the close, as when Mary Stuart +conquers death and evil fame, redeeming herself by her courage and +her calm, and extending over unborn generations that witchery which +her enemies dreaded more than an army with banners. + +Moreover, popular tradition can never forgive the fires of +Smithfield. It was Mary Tudor's misfortune that she had the power to +execute, on a great scale, that faculty of persecution to the death +for which her Presbyterian and other Protestant opponents pined in +vain. Mr Froude says of her, "For the first and last time the true +Ultramontane spirit was dominant in England, the genuine conviction +that, as the orthodox prophets and sovereigns of Israel slew the +worshippers of Baal, so were Catholic rulers called upon, as their +first duty, to extirpate heretics as the enemies of God and man." +That was precisely the spirit of Knox and other Presbyterian +denouncers of death against "Idolaters" (Catholics). But the +Scottish preachers were always thwarted: Mary and her advisers had +their way, as, earlier, Latimer had preached against sufferers at the +stake. To the stake, which he feared so greatly, Cranmer had sent +persons not of his own fleeting shade of theological opinion. These +men had burned Anabaptists, but all that is lightly forgotten by +Protestant opinion. Under Mary (whoever may have been primarily +responsible) Cranmer and Latimer were treated as they had treated +others. Moreover, some two hundred poor men and women had dared the +fiery death. The persecution was on a scale never forgiven or +forgotten, since Mary began cerdonibus esse timenda. Mary was not +essentially inclement. Despite Renard, the agent of the Emperor, she +spared that lord of fluff and feather, Courtenay, and she spared +Elizabeth. Lady Jane she could not save, the girl who was a queen by +grace of God and of her own royal nature. But Mary will never be +pardoned by England. "Few men or women have lived less capable of +doing knowingly a wrong thing," says Mr Froude, a great admirer of +Tennyson's play. Yet, taking Mr Froude's own view, Mary's abject and +superannuated passion for Philip; her ecstasies during her supposed +pregnancy; "the forlorn hours when she would sit on the ground with +her knees drawn to her face," with all her "symptoms of hysterical +derangement, leave little room, as we think of her, for other +feelings than pity." Unfortunately, feelings of pity for a person so +distraught, so sourly treated by fortune, do not suffice for tragedy. +When we contemplate Antigone or OEdipus, it is not with a sentiment +of pity struggling against abhorrence. + +For these reasons the play does not seem to have a good dramatic +subject. The unity is given by Mary herself and her fortunes, and +these are scarcely dramatic. History prevents the introduction of +Philip till the second scene of the third act. His entrance is +manque; he merely accompanies Cardinal Pole, who takes command of the +scene, and Philip does not get in a word till after a long +conversation between the Queen and the Cardinal. Previously Philip +had only crossed the stage in a procession, yet when he does appear +he is bereft of prominence. The interest as regards him is +indicated, in Act I. scene v., by Mary's kissing his miniature. Her +blighted love for him is one main motive of the tragedy, but his own +part appears too subordinate in the play as published. The interest +is scattered among the vast crowd of characters; and Mr R. H. Hutton +remarked at the time that he "remains something of a cold, cruel, and +sensual shadow." We are more interested in Wyatt, Cranmer, Gardiner, +and others; or at least their parts are more interesting. Yet in no +case does the interest of any character, except of Mary and +Elizabeth, remain continuous throughout the play. Tennyson himself +thought that "the real difficulty of the drama is to give sufficient +relief to its intense sadness. . . . Nothing less than the holy calm +of the meek and penitent Cranmer can be adequate artistic relief." +But not much relief can be drawn from a man about to be burned alive, +and history does not tempt us to keen sympathy with the recanting +archbishop, at least if we agree with Macaulay rather than with +Froude. + +I venture to think that historical tradition, as usual, offered a +better motive than exact history. Following tradition, we see in +Mary a cloud of hateful gloom, from which England escapes into the +glorious dawn of "the Gospel light," and of Elizabeth, who might be +made a triumphantly sympathetic character. That is the natural and +popular course which the drama might take. But Tennyson's history is +almost critical and scientific. Points of difficult and debated +evidence (as to Elizabeth's part in Wyatt's rebellion) are discussed. +There is no contest of day and darkness, of Truth and Error. The +characters are in that perplexed condition about creeds which was +their actual state after the political and social and religious chaos +produced by Henry VIII. Gardiner is a Catholic, but not an +Ultramontane; Lord William Howard is a Catholic, but not a fanatic; +we find a truculent Anabaptist, or Socialist, and a citizen whose +pride is his moderation. The native uncritical tendency of the drama +is to throw up hats and halloo for Elizabeth and an open Bible. In +place of this, Cecil delivers a well-considered analysis of the +character of Elizabeth + + + "Eliz. God guide me lest I lose the way. +[Exit Elizabeth. + Cecil. Many points weather'd, many perilous ones, +At last a harbour opens; but therein +Sunk rocks--they need fine steering--much it is +To be nor mad, nor bigot--have a mind - +Nor let Priests' talk, or dream of worlds to be, +Miscolour things about her--sudden touches +For him, or him--sunk rocks; no passionate faith - +But--if let be--balance and compromise; +Brave, wary, sane to the heart of her--a Tudor +School'd by the shadow of death--a Boleyn, too, +Glancing across the Tudor--not so well." + + +This is excellent as historical criticism, in the favourable sense; +but the drama, by its nature, demands something not critical but +triumphant and one-sided. The character of Elizabeth is one of the +best in the play, as her soliloquy (Act III. scene v.) is one of the +finest of the speeches. We see her courage, her coquetry, her +dissimulation, her arrogance. But while this is the true Elizabeth, +it is not the idealised Elizabeth whom English loyalty created, lived +for, and died for. Mr Froude wrote, "You have given us the greatest +of all your works," an opinion which the world can never accept. +"You have reclaimed one more section of English History from the +wilderness, and given it a form in which it will be fixed for ever. +No one since Shakespeare has done that." But Mr Froude had done it, +and Tennyson's reading of "the section" is mainly that of Mr Froude. +Mr Gladstone found that Cranmer and Gardiner "are still in a +considerable degree mysteries to me." A mystery Cranmer must remain. +Perhaps the "crowds" and "Voices" are not the least excellent of the +characters, Tennyson's humour finding an opportunity in them, and in +Joan and Tib. His idyllic charm speaks in the words of Lady Clarence +to the fevered Queen; and there is dramatic genius in her reply:- + + + "Mary. What is the strange thing happiness? Sit down here: +Tell me thine happiest hour. + Lady Clarence. I will, if that +May make your Grace forget yourself a little. +There runs a shallow brook across our field +For twenty miles, where the black crow flies five, +And doth so bound and babble all the way +As if itself were happy. It was May-time, +And I was walking with the man I loved. +I loved him, but I thought I was not loved. +And both were silent, letting the wild brook +Speak for us--till he stoop'd and gather'd one +From out a bed of thick forget-me-nots, +Look'd hard and sweet at me, and gave it me. +I took it, tho' I did not know I took it, +And put it in my bosom, and all at once +I felt his arms about me, and his lips - + Mary. O God! I have been too slack, too slack; +There are Hot Gospellers even among our guards - +Nobles we dared not touch. We have but burnt +The heretic priest, workmen, and women and children. +Wet, famine, ague, fever, storm, wreck, wrath, - +We have so play'd the coward; but by God's grace, +We'll follow Philip's leading, and set up +The Holy Office here--garner the wheat, +And burn the tares with unquenchable fire!" + + +The conclusion, in the acting edition, printed in the Biography, +appears to be an improvement on that in the text as originally +published. Unhappy as the drama essentially is, the welcome which Mr +Browning gave both to the published work and to the acted play--"a +complete success": "conception, execution, the whole and the parts, +I see nowhere the shadow of a fault"--offers "relief" in actual human +nature. "He is the greatest-brained poet in England," Tennyson said, +on a later occasion. "Violets fade, he has given me a crown of +gold." + +Before writing Harold (1876) the poet "studied many recent plays," +and re-read AEschylus and Sophocles. For history he went to the +Bayeux tapestry, the Roman de Rou, Lord Lytton, and Freeman. +Students of a recent controversy will observe that, following +Freeman, he retains the famous palisade, so grievously battered by +the axe-strokes of Mr Horace Round. Harold is a piece more +compressed, and much more in accordance with the traditions of the +drama, than Queen Mary. The topic is tragic indeed: the sorrow +being that of a great man, a great king, the bulwark of a people that +fell with his fall. Moreover, as the topic is treated, the play is +rich in the irony usually associated with the name of Sophocles. +Victory comes before a fall. Harold, like Antigone, is torn between +two duties--his oath and the claims of his country. His ruin comes +from what Aristotle would call his [Greek text which cannot be +reproduced], his fault in swearing the oath to William. The hero +himself; recking little, after a superstitious moment, of the +concealed relics over which he swore, deems his offence to lie in +swearing a vow which he never meant to keep. The persuasions which +urge him to this course are admirably presented: England, Edith, his +brother's freedom, were at stake. Casuistry, or even law, would have +absolved him easily; an oath taken under duresse is of no avail. But +Harold's "honour rooted in dishonour stood," and he cannot so readily +absolve himself. Bruce and the bishops who stood by Bruce had no +such scruples: they perjured themselves often, on the most sacred +relics, especially the bishops. But Harold rises above the mediaeval +and magical conception of the oath, and goes to his doom conscious of +a stain on his honour, of which only a deeper stain, that of +falseness to his country, could make him clean. This is a truly +tragic stroke of destiny. The hero's character is admirably noble, +patient, and simple. The Confessor also is as true in art as to +history, and his vision of the fall and rise of England is a noble +passage. In Aldwyth we have something of Vivien, with a grain of +conscience, and the part of Edith Swan's-neck has a restrained and +classic pathos in contrast with the melancholy of Wulfnoth. The +piece, as the poet said, is a "tragedy of doom," of deepening and +darkening omens, as in the Odyssey and Njal's Saga. The battle +scene, with the choruses of the monks, makes a noble close. + +FitzGerald remained loyal, but it was to "a fairy Prince who came +from other skies than these rainy ones," and "the wretched critics," +as G. H. Lewes called them, seem to have been unfriendly. In fact +(besides the innate wretchedness of all critics), they grudged the +time and labour given to the drama, in an undramatic age. Harold had +not what FitzGerald called "the old champagne flavour" of the vintage +of 1842. + +Becket was begun in 1876, printed in 1879, and published in 1884. +Before that date, in 1880, Tennyson produced one of the volumes of +poetry which was more welcome than a play to most of his admirers. +The intervening years passed in the Isle of Wight, at Aldworth, in +town, and in summer tours, were of no marked biographical interest. +The poet was close on three score and ten--he reached that limit in +1879. The days darkened around him, as darken they must: in the +spring of 1879 he lost his favourite brother, himself a poet of +original genius, Charles Tennyson Turner. In May of the same year he +published The Lover's Tale, which has been treated here among his +earliest works. His hours, and (to some extent) his meals, were +regulated by Sir Andrew Clark. He planted trees, walked, read, +loitered in his garden, and kept up his old friendships, while he +made that of the great Gordon. Compliments passed between him and +Victor Hugo, who had entertained Lionel Tennyson in Paris, and wrote: +"Je lis avec emotion vos vers superbes; c'est un reflet de gloire que +vous m'envoyez." Mr Matthew Arnold's compliment was very like Mr +Arnold's humour: "Your father has been our most popular poet for +over forty years, and I am of opinion that he fully deserves his +reputation": such was "Mat's sublime waggery." Tennyson heaped +coals of fire on the other poet, bidding him, as he liked to be +bidden, to write more poetry, not "prose things." Tennyson lived +much in the society of Browning and George Eliot, and made the +acquaintance of Renan. In December 1879 Mr and Mrs Kendal produced +The Falcon, which ran for sixty-seven nights; it is "an exquisite +little poem in action," as Fanny Kemble said. During a Continental +tour Tennyson visited Catullus's Sirmio: "here he made his Frater +Ave atque Vale," and the poet composed his beautiful salutation to +the + + +"Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago." + + +In 1880 Ballads and other Poems proved that, like Titian, the great +poet was not to be defeated by the years. The First Quarrel was in +his most popular English style. Rizpah deserved and received the +splendid panegyric of Mr Swinburne. The Revenge is probably the +finest of the patriotic pieces, and keeps green the memory of an +exploit the most marvellous in the annals of English seamen. The +Village Wife is a pendant worthy of The Northern Farmer. The poem In +the Children's Hospital caused some irritation at the moment, but +there was only one opinion as to the Defence of Lucknow and the +beautiful re-telling of the Celtic Voyage of Maeldune. The fragment +of Homeric translation was equally fortunate in choice of subject and +in rendering. + +In the end of 1880 the poet finished The Cup, which had been worked +on occasionally since he completed The Falcon in 1880. The piece was +read by the author to Sir Henry Irving and his company, and it was +found that the manuscript copy needed few alterations to fit it for +the stage. The scenery and the acting of the protagonists are not +easily to be forgotten. The play ran for a hundred and thirty +nights. Sir Henry Irving had thought that Becket (then unpublished) +would prove too expensive, and could only be a succes d'estime. +Tennyson had found out that "the worst of writing for the stage is, +you must keep some actor always in your mind." To this necessity +authors like Moliere and Shakespeare were, of course, resigned and +familiar; they knew exactly how to deal with all their means. But +this part of the business of play-writing must always be a cross to +the poet who is not at one with the world of the stage. + +In The Cup Miss Ellen Terry made the strongest impression, her part +being noble and sympathetic, while Sir Henry Irving had the +ungrateful part of the villain. To be sure, he was a villain of much +complexity; and Tennyson thought that his subtle blend of Roman +refinement and intellectuality, and barbarian, self-satisfied +sensuality, was not "hit off." Synorix is, in fact, half-Greek, +half-Celt, with a Roman education, and the "blend" is rather too +remote for successful representation. The traditional villain, from +Iago downwards, is not apt to utter such poetry as this:- + + +"O Thou, that dost inspire the germ with life, +The child, a thread within the house of birth, +And give him limbs, then air, and send him forth +The glory of his father--Thou whose breath +Is balmy wind to robe our bills with grass, +And kindle all our vales with myrtle-blossom, +And roll the golden oceans of our grain, +And sway the long grape-bunches of our vines, +And fill all hearts with fatness and the lust +Of plenty--make me happy in my marriage!" + + +The year 1881 brought the death of another of the old Cambridge +friends, James Spedding, the biographer of Bacon; and Carlyle also +died, a true friend, if rather intermittent in his appreciation of +poetry. The real Carlyle did appreciate it, but the Carlyle of +attitude was too much of the iron Covenanter to express what he felt. +The poem Despair irritated the earnest and serious readers of "know- +nothing books." The poem expressed, dramatically, a mood like +another, a human mood not so very uncommon. A man ruined in this +world's happiness curses the faith of his youth, and the unfaith of +his reading and reflection, and tries to drown himself. This is one +conclusion of the practical syllogism, and it is a free country. +However, there were freethinkers who did not think that Tennyson's +kind of thinking ought to be free. Other earnest persons objected to +"First drink a health," in the re-fashioned song of Hands all Round. +They might have remembered a royal health drunk in water an hour +before the drinkers swept Mackay down the Pass of Killiecrankie. The +poet did not specify the fluid in which the toast was to be carried, +and the cup might be that which "cheers but not inebriates." "The +common cup," as the remonstrants had to be informed, "has in all ages +been the sacred symbol of unity." + +The Promise of May was produced in November 1882, and the poet was +once more so unfortunate as to vex the susceptibilities of advanced +thinkers. The play is not a masterpiece, and yet neither the gallery +gods nor the Marquis of Queensberry need have felt their withers +wrung. The hero, or villain, Edgar, is a perfectly impossible +person, and represents no kind of political, social, or economical +thinker. A man would give all other bliss and all his worldly wealth +for this, to waste his whole strength in one kick upon this perfect +prig. He employs the arguments of evolution and so forth to justify +the seduction of a little girl of fifteen, and later, by way of +making amends, proposes to commit incest by marrying her sister. +There have been evolutionists, to be sure, who believed in +promiscuity, like Mr Edgar, as preferable to monogamy. But this only +proves that an evolutionist may fail to understand evolution. There +be also such folk as Stevenson calls "squirradicals"--squires who say +that "the land is the people's." Probably no advocate of +promiscuity, and no squirradical, was present at the performances of +The Promise of May. But people of advanced minds had got it into +their heads that their doctrines were to be attacked, so they went +and made a hubbub in the sacred cause of freedom of thought and +speech. The truth is, that controversial topics, political topics, +ought not to be brought into plays, much less into sermons. Tennyson +meant Edgar for "nothing thorough, nothing sincere." He is that +venomous thing, the prig-scoundrel: he does not suit the stage, and +his place, if anywhere, is in the novel. Advocates of marriage with +a deceased wife's sister might have applauded Edgar for wishing to +marry the sister of a mistress assumed to be deceased, but no other +party in the State wanted anything except the punching of Edgar's +head by Farmer Dobson. + +In 1883 died Edward FitzGerald, the most kind, loyal, and, as he +said, crotchety of old and dear Cambridge friends. He did not live +to see the delightful poem which Tennyson had written for him. In +almost his latest letter he had remarked, superfluously, that when he +called the task of translating The Agamemnon "work for a poet," he +"was not thinking of Mr Browning." + +In the autumn of 1883 Tennyson was taken, with Mr Gladstone, by Sir +Donald Currie, for a cruise round the west coast of Scotland, to the +Orkneys, and to Copenhagen. The people of Kirkwall conferred on the +poet and the statesman the freedom of the burgh, and Mr Gladstone, in +an interesting speech, compared the relative chances of posthumous +fame of the poet and the politician. Pericles is not less remembered +than Sophocles, though Shakespeare is more in men's minds than Cecil. +Much depends, as far as the statesmen are considered, on contemporary +historians. It is Thucydides who immortalises Pericles. But it is +improbable that the things which Mr Gladstone did, and attempted, +will be forgotten more rapidly than the conduct and characters of, +say, Burleigh or Lethington. + +In 1884, after this voyage, with its royal functions and celebrations +at Copenhagen, a peerage was offered to the poet. He "did not want +to alter his plain Mr," and he must have known that, whether he +accepted or refused, the chorus of blame would be louder than that of +applause. Scott had desired "such grinning honour as Sir Walter +hath"; the title went well with the old name, and pleased his love of +old times. Tennyson had been blamed "by literary men" for thrice +evading a baronetcy, and he did not think that a peerage would make +smooth the lives of his descendants. But he concluded, "Why should I +be selfish and not suffer an honour (as Gladstone says) to be done to +literature in my name?" Politically, he thought that the Upper +House, while it lasts, partly supplied the place of the American +"referendum." He voted in July 1884 for the extension of the +franchise, and in November stated his views to Mr Gladstone in verse. +In prose he wrote to Mr Gladstone, "I have a strong conviction that +the more simple the dealings of men with men, as well as of man with +man, are--the better," a sentiment which, perhaps, did not always +prevail with his friend. The poet's reflections on the horror of +Gordon's death are not recorded. He introduced the idea of the +Gordon Home for Boys, and later supported it by a letter, "Have we +forgotten Gordon?" to the Daily Telegraph. They who cannot forget +Gordon must always be grateful to Tennyson for providing this +opportunity of honouring the greatest of an illustrious clan, and of +helping, in their degree, a scheme which was dear to the heroic +leader. + +The poet, very naturally, was most averse to personal appearance in +public matters. Mankind is so fashioned that the advice of a poet is +always regarded as unpractical, and is even apt to injure the cause +which he advocates. Happily there cannot be two opinions about the +right way of honouring Gordon. Tennyson's poem, The Fleet, was also +in harmony with the general sentiment. + +In the last month of 1884 Becket was published. The theme of Fair +Rosamund had appealed to the poet in youth, and he had written part +of a lyric which he judiciously left unpublished. It is given in his +Biography. In 1877 he had visited Canterbury, and had traced the +steps of Becket to his place of slaughter in the Cathedral. The poem +was printed in 1879, but not published till seven years later. In +1879 Sir Henry Irving had thought the play too costly to be produced +with more than a succes d'estime; but in 1891 he put it on the stage, +where it proved the most successful of modern poetic dramas. As +published it is, obviously, far too long for public performance. It +is not easy to understand why dramatic poets always make their works +so much too long. The drama seems, by its very nature, to have a +limit almost as distinct as the limit of the sonnet. It is easy to +calculate how long a play for the stage ought to be, and we might +think that a poet would find the natural limit serviceable to his +art, for it inculcates selection, conciseness, and concentration. +But despite these advantages of the natural form of the drama, modern +poets, at least, constantly overflow their banks. The author ruit +profusus, and the manager has to reduce the piece to feasible +proportions, such as it ought to have assumed from the first. + +Becket has been highly praised by Sir Henry Irving himself, for its +"moments of passion and pathos, . . . which, when they exist, atone +to an audience for the endurance of long acts." But why should the +audience have such long acts to endure? The reader, one fears, is +apt to use his privilege of skipping. The long speeches of Walter +Map and the immense period of Margery tempt the student to exercise +his agility. A "chronicle play" has the privilege of wandering, but +Becket wanders too far and too long. The political details of the +quarrel between Church and State, with its domestic and international +complexities, are apt to fatigue the attention. Inevitable and +insoluble as the situation was, neither protagonist is entirely +sympathetic, whether in the play or in history. The struggle in +Becket between his love of the king and his duty to the Church (or +what he takes to be his duty) is nobly presented, and is truly +dramatic, while there is grotesque and terrible relief in the banquet +of the Beggars. In the scene of the assassination the poet "never +stoops his wing," and there are passages of tender pathos between +Henry and Rosamund, while Becket's keen memories of his early days, +just before his death, are moving. + + + "Becket. I once was out with Henry in the days +When Henry loved me, and we came upon +A wild-fowl sitting on her nest, so still +I reach'd my hand and touch'd; she did not stir; +The snow had frozen round her, and she sat +Stone-dead upon a heap of ice-cold eggs. +Look! how this love, this mother, runs thro' all +The world God made--even the beast--the bird! + John of Salisbury. Ay, still a lover of the beast and bird? +But these arm'd men--will you not hide yourself? +Perchance the fierce De Brocs from Saltwood Castle, +To assail our Holy Mother lest she brood +Too long o'er this hard egg, the world, and send +Her whole heart's heat into it, till it break +Into young angels. Pray you, hide yourself. + Becket. There was a little fair-hair'd Norman maid +Lived in my mother's house: if Rosamund is +The world's rose, as her name imports her--she +Was the world's lily. + John of Salisbury. Ay, and what of her? + Becket. She died of leprosy." + + +But the part of Rosamund, her innocent ignorance especially, is not +very readily intelligible, not quite persuasive, and there is almost +a touch of the burlesque in her unexpected appearance as a monk. To +weave that old and famous story of love into the terribly complex +political intrigue was a task almost too great. The character of +Eleanor is perhaps more successfully drawn in the Prologue than in +the scene where she offers the choice of the dagger or the bowl, and +is interrupted, in a startlingly unexpected manner, by the Archbishop +himself. The opportunities for scenic effects are magnificent +throughout, and must have contributed greatly to the success on the +stage. Still one cannot but regard the published Becket as rather +the marble from which the statue may be hewn than as the statue +itself. There are fine scenes, powerful and masterly drawing of +character in Henry, Eleanor, and Becket, but there is a want of +concentration, due, perhaps, to the long period of time covered by +the action. So, at least, it seems to a reader who has admitted his +sense of incompetency in the dramatic region. The acuteness of the +poet's power of historical intuition was attested by Mr J. R. Green +and Mr Bryce. "One cannot imagine," said Mr Bryce, "a more vivid, a +more perfectly faithful picture than it gives both of Henry and +Thomas." Tennyson's portraits of these two "go beyond and perfect +history." The poet's sympathy ought, perhaps, to have been, if not +with the false and ruffianly Henry, at least with Henry's side of the +question. For Tennyson had made Harold leave + + + "To England +My legacy of war against the Pope +From child to child, from Pope to Pope, from age to age, +Till the sea wash her level with her shores, +Or till the Pope be Christ's." + + + +CHAPTER IX.--LAST YEARS. + + + +The end of 1884 saw the publication of Tiresias and other Poems, +dedicated to "My good friend, Robert Browning," and opening with the +beautiful verses to one who never was Mr Browning's friend, Edward +FitzGerald. The volume is rich in the best examples of Tennyson's +later work. Tiresias, the monologue of the aged seer, blinded by +excess of light when he beheld Athene unveiled, and under the curse +of Cassandra, is worthy of the author who, in youth, wrote OEnone and +Ulysses. Possibly the verses reflect Tennyson's own sense of public +indifference to the voice of the poet and the seer. But they are of +much earlier date than the year of publication:- + + + "For when the crowd would roar +For blood, for war, whose issue was their doom, +To cast wise words among the multitude +Was flinging fruit to lions; nor, in hours +Of civil outbreak, when I knew the twain +Would each waste each, and bring on both the yoke +Of stronger states, was mine the voice to curb +The madness of our cities and their kings. + Who ever turn'd upon his heel to hear +My warning that the tyranny of one +Was prelude to the tyranny of all? +My counsel that the tyranny of all +Led backward to the tyranny of one? + This power hath work'd no good to aught that lives." + + +The conclusion was a favourite with the author, and his blank verse +never reached a higher strain:- + + + "But for me, +I would that I were gather'd to my rest, +And mingled with the famous kings of old, +On whom about their ocean-islets flash +The faces of the Gods--the wise man's word, +Here trampled by the populace underfoot, +There crown'd with worship--and these eyes will find +The men I knew, and watch the chariot whirl +About the goal again, and hunters race +The shadowy lion, and the warrior-kings, +In height and prowess more than human, strive +Again for glory, while the golden lyre +Is ever sounding in heroic ears +Heroic hymns, and every way the vales +Wind, clouded with the grateful incense-fume +Of those who mix all odour to the Gods +On one far height in one far-shining fire." + + +Then follows the pathetic piece on FitzGerald's death, and the +prayer, not unfulfilled - + + + "That, when I from hence + Shall fade with him into the unknown, +My close of earth's experience + May prove as peaceful as his own." + + +The Ancient Sage, with its lyric interludes, is one of Tennyson's +meditations on the mystery of the world and of existence. Like the +poet himself, the Sage finds a gleam of light and hope in his own +subjective experiences of some unspeakable condition, already +recorded in In Memoriam. The topic was one on which he seems to have +spoken to his friends with freedom:- + + +"And more, my son! for more than once when I +Sat all alone, revolving in myself +The word that is the symbol of myself, +The mortal limit of the Self was loosed, +And past into the Nameless, as a cloud +Melts into Heaven. I touch'd my limbs, the limbs +Were strange not mine--and yet no shade of doubt, +But utter clearness, and thro' loss of Self +The gain of such large life as match'd with ours +Were Sun to spark--unshadowable in words, +Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world." + + +The poet's habit of + + + "Revolving in myself +The word that is the symbol of myself" - + + +that is, of dwelling on the sound of his own name, was familiar to +the Arabs. M. Lefebure has drawn my attention to a passage in the +works of a mediaeval Arab philosopher, Ibn Khaldoun: {17} "To arrive +at the highest degree of inspiration of which he is capable, the +diviner should have recourse to the use of certain phrases marked by +a peculiar cadence and parallelism. Thus he emancipates his mind +from the influence of the senses, and is enabled to attain an +imperfect contact with the spiritual world." Ibn Khaldoun regards +the "contact" as extremely "imperfect." He describes similar efforts +made by concentrating the gaze on a mirror, a bowl of water, or the +like. Tennyson was doubtless unaware that he had stumbled +accidentally on a method of "ancient sages." Psychologists will +explain his experience by the word "dissociation." It is not +everybody, however, who can thus dissociate himself. The temperament +of genius has often been subject to such influence, as M. Lefebure +has shown in the modern instances of George Sand and Alfred de +Musset: we might add Shelley, Goethe, and even Scott. + +The poet's versatility was displayed in the appearance with these +records of "weird seizures", of the Irish dialect piece To-morrow, +the popular Spinster's Sweet-Arts, and the Locksley Hall Sixty Years +After. The old fire of the versification is unabated, but the hero +has relapsed on the gloom of the hero of Maud. He represents +himself, of course, not Tennyson, or only one of the moods of +Tennyson, which were sometimes black enough. A very different mood +chants the Charge of the Heavy Brigade, and speaks of + + +"Green Sussex fading into blue + With one gray glimpse of sea." + + +The lines To Virgil were written at the request of the Mantuans, by +the most Virgilian of all the successors of the + + +"Wielder of the stateliest measure + ever moulded by the lips of man." + + +Never was Tennyson more Virgilian than in this unmatched panegyric, +the sum and flower of criticism of that + + +"Golden branch amid the shadows, + kings and realms that pass to rise no more." + + +Hardly less admirable is the tribute to Catullus, and the old poet is +young again in the bird-song of Early Spring. The lines on Poets and +their Bibliographies, with The Dead Prophet, express Tennyson's +lifelong abhorrence of the critics and biographers, whose joy is in +the futile and the unimportant, in personal gossip and the sweepings +of the studio, the salvage of the wastepaper basket. The Prefatory +Poem to my Brother's Sonnets is not only touching in itself, but +proves that the poet can "turn to favour and to prettiness" such an +affliction as the ruinous summer of 1879. + +The year 1880 brought deeper distress in the death of the poet's son +Lionel, whose illness, begun in India, ended fatally in the Red Sea. +The interest of the following years was mainly domestic. The poet's +health, hitherto robust, was somewhat impaired in 1888, but his vivid +interest in affairs and in letters was unabated. He consoled himself +with Virgil, Keats, Wordsworth, Gibbon, Euripides, and Mr Leaf's +speculations on the composite nature of the Iliad, in which +Coleridge, perhaps alone among poets, believed. "You know," said +Tennyson to Mr Leaf; "I never liked that theory of yours about the +many poets." It would be at least as easy to prove that there were +many authors of Ivanhoe, or perhaps it would be a good deal more +easy. However, he admitted that three lines which occur both in the +Eighth and the Sixteenth Books of the Iliad are more appropriate in +the later book. Similar examples might be found in his own poems. +He still wrote, in the intervals of a malady which brought him "as +near death as a man could be without dying." He was an example of +the great physical strength which, on the whole, seems usually to +accompany great mental power. The strength may be dissipated by +passion, or by undue labour, as in cases easily recalled to memory, +but neither cause had impaired the vigour of Tennyson. Like Goethe, +he lived out all his life; and his eightieth birthday was cheered +both by public and private expressions of reverence and affection. + +Of Tennyson's last three years on earth we may think, in his own +words, that his + + + "Life's latest eve endured +Nor settled into hueless grey." + + +Nature was as dear to him and as inspiring as of old; men and affairs +and letters were not slurred by his intact and energetic mind. His +Demeter and other Poems, with the dedication to Lord Dufferin, +appeared in the December of the year. The dedication was the lament +for the dead son and the salutation to the Viceroy of India, a piece +of resigned and manly regret. The Demeter and Persephone is a modern +and tender study of the theme of the most beautiful Homeric Hymn. +The ancient poet had no such thought of the restored Persephone as +that which impels Tennyson to describe her + + +"Faint as a climate-changing bird that flies +All night across the darkness, and at dawn +Falls on the threshold of her native land." + + +The spring, the restored Persephone, comes more vigorous and joyous +to the shores of the AEgean than to ours. All Tennyson's own is +Demeter's awe of those "imperial disimpassioned eyes" of her +daughter, come from the bed and the throne of Hades, the Lord of many +guests. The hymn, happy in its ending, has no thought of the grey +heads of the Fates, and their answer to the goddess concerning "fate +beyond the Fates," and the breaking of the bonds of Hades. The +ballad of Owd Roa is one of the most spirited of the essays in +dialect to which Tennyson had of late years inclined. Vastness +merely expresses, in terms of poetry, Tennyson's conviction that, +without immortality, life is a series of worthless contrasts. An +opposite opinion may be entertained, but a man has a right to express +his own, which, coming from so great a mind, is not undeserving of +attention; or, at least, is hardly deserving of reproof. The poet's +idea is also stated thus in The Ring, in terms which perhaps do not +fall below the poetical; or, at least, do not drop into "the utterly +unpoetical":- + + +"The Ghost in Man, the Ghost that once was Man, +But cannot wholly free itself from Man, +Are calling to each other thro' a dawn +Stranger than earth has ever seen; the veil +Is rending, and the Voices of the day +Are heard across the Voices of the dark. +No sudden heaven, nor sudden hell, for man, +But thro' the Will of One who knows and rules - +And utter knowledge is but utter love - +AEonian Evolution, swift or slow, +Thro' all the Spheres--an ever opening height, +An ever lessening earth." + + +The Ring is, in fact, a ghost story based on a legend told by Mr +Lowell about a house near where he had once lived; one of those +houses vexed by + + +"A footstep, a low throbbing in the walls, +A noise of falling weights that never fell, +Weird whispers, bells that rang without a hand, +Door-handles turn'd when none was at the door, +And bolted doors that open'd of themselves." + + +These phenomena were doubtless caused by rats and water-pipes, but +they do not destroy the pity and the passion of the tale. The lines +to Mary Boyle are all of the normal world, and worthy of a poet's +youth and of the spring. Merlin and the Gleam is the spiritual +allegory of the poet's own career:- + + +"Arthur had vanish'd +I knew not whither, +The king who loved me, +And cannot die." + + +So at last + + + "All but in Heaven +Hovers The Gleam," + + +whither the wayfarer was soon to follow. There is a marvellous hope +and pathos in the melancholy of these all but the latest songs, +reminiscent of youth and love, and even of the dim haunting memories +and dreams of infancy. No other English poet has thus rounded all +his life with music. Tennyson was in his eighty-first year, when +there "came in a moment" the crown of his work, the immortal lyric, +Crossing the Bar. It is hardly less majestic and musical in the +perfect Greek rendering by his brother-in-law, Mr Lushington. For +once at least a poem has been "poured from the golden to the silver +cup" without the spilling of a drop. The new book's appearance was +coincident with the death of Mr Browning, "so loving and +appreciative," as Lady Tennyson wrote; a friend, not a rival, however +the partisans of either poet might strive to stir emulation between +two men of such lofty and such various genius. + + + +CHAPTER X.--1890. + + + +In the year 1889 the poet's health had permitted him to take long +walks on the sea-shore and along the cliffs, one of which, by reason +of its whiteness, he had named "Taliessin," "the splendid brow." His +mind ran on a poem founded on an Egyptian legend (of which the source +is not mentioned), telling how "despair and death came upon him who +was mad enough to try to probe the secret of the universe." He also +thought of a drama on Tristram, who, in the Idylls, is treated with +brevity, and not with the sympathy of the old writer who cries, "God +bless Tristram the knight: he fought for England!" But early in +1890 Tennyson suffered from a severe attack of influenza. In May Mr +Watts painted his portrait, and + + +"Divinely through all hindrance found the man." + + +Tennyson was a great admirer of Miss Austen's novels: "The realism +and life-likeness of Miss Austen's Dramatis Personae come nearest to +those of Shakespeare. Shakespeare, however, is a sun to which Jane +Austen, though a bright and true little world, is but an asteroid." +He was therefore pleased to find apple-blossoms co-existing with ripe +strawberries on June 28, as Miss Austen has been blamed, by minute +philosophers, for introducing this combination in the garden party in +Emma. The poet, like most of the good and great, read novels +eagerly, and excited himself over the confirmation of an adult male +in a story by Miss Yonge. Of Scott, "the most chivalrous literary +figure of the century, and the author with the widest range since +Shakespeare," he preferred Old Mortality, and it is a good choice. +He hated "morbid and introspective tales, with their oceans of sham +philosophy." At this time, with catholic taste, he read Mr Stevenson +and Mr Meredith, Miss Braddon and Mr Henry James, Ouida and Mr Thomas +Hardy; Mr Hall Caine and Mr Anstey; Mrs Oliphant and Miss Edna Lyall. +Not everybody can peruse all of these very diverse authors with +pleasure. He began his poem on the Roman gladiatorial combats; +indeed his years, fourscore and one, left his intellectual eagerness +as unimpaired as that of Goethe. "A crooked share," he said to the +Princess Louise, "may make a straight furrow." "One afternoon he had +a long waltz with M- in the ballroom." Speaking of + + +"All the charm of all the Muses + Often flowering in a lonely word" + + +in Virgil, he adduced, rather strangely, the cunctantem ramum, said +of the Golden Bough, in the Sixth AEneid. The choice is odd, because +the Sibyl has just told AEneas that, if he be destined to pluck the +branch of gold, ipse volens facilisque sequetur, "it will come off of +its own accord," like the sacred ti branches of the Fijians, which +bend down to be plucked for the Fire rite. Yet, when the predestined +AEneas tries to pluck the bough of gold, it yields reluctantly +(cunctantem), contrary to what the Sibyl has foretold. Mr Conington, +therefore, thought the phrase a slip on the part of Virgil. "People +accused Virgil of plagiarising," he said, "but if a man made it his +own there was no harm in that (look at the great poets, Shakespeare +included)." Tennyson, like Virgil, made much that was ancient his +own; his verses are often, and purposefully, a mosaic of classical +reminiscences. But he was vexed by the hunters after remote and +unconscious resemblances, and far-fetched analogies between his lines +and those of others. He complained that, if he said that the sun +went down, a parallel was at once cited from Homer, or anybody else, +and he used a very powerful phrase to condemn critics who detected +such repetitions. "The moanings of the homeless sea,"--"moanings" +from Horace, "homeless" from Shelley. "As if no one else had ever +heard the sea moan except Horace!" Tennyson's mixture of memory and +forgetfulness was not so strange as that of Scott, and when he +adapted from the Greek, Latin, or Italian, it was of set purpose, +just as it was with Virgil. The beautiful lines comparing a girl's +eyes to bottom agates that seem to + + + "Wave and float +In crystal currents of clear running seas," + + +he invented while bathing in Wales. It was his habit, to note down +in verse such similes from nature, and to use them when he found +occasion. But the higher criticism, analysing the simile, detected +elements from Shakespeare and from Beaumont and Fletcher. + +In June 1891 the poet went on a tour in Devonshire, and began his +Akbar, and probably wrote June Bracken and Heather; or perhaps it was +composed when "we often sat on the top of Blackdown to watch the +sunset." He wrote to Mr Kipling - + + +"The oldest to the youngest singer + That England bore" + + +(to alter Mr Swinburne's lines to Landor), praising his Flag of +England. Mr Kipling replied as "the private to the general." + +Early in 1892 The Foresters was successfully produced at New York by +Miss Ada Rehan, the music by Sir Arthur Sullivan, and the scenery +from woodland designs by Whymper. Robin Hood (as we learn from Mark +Twain) is a favourite hero with the youth of America. Mr Tom Sawyer +himself took, in Mark Twain's tale, the part of the bold outlaw. + +The Death of OEnone was published in 1892, with the dedication to the +Master of Balliol - + + + "Read a Grecian tale retold +Which, cast in later Grecian mould, + Quintus Calaber +Somewhat lazily handled of old." + + +Quintus Calaber, more usually called Quintus Smyrnaeus, is a writer +of perhaps the fourth century of our era. About him nothing, or next +to nothing, is known. He told, in so late an age, the conclusion of +the Tale of Troy, and (in the writer's opinion) has been unduly +neglected and disdained. His manner, I venture to think, is more +Homeric than that of the more famous and doubtless greater +Alexandrian poet of the Argonautic cycle, Apollonius Rhodius, his +senior by five centuries. His materials were probably the ancient +and lost poems of the Epic Cycle, and the story of the death of +OEnone may be from the Little Iliad of Lesches. Possibly parts of +his work may be textually derived from the Cyclics, but the topic is +very obscure. In Quintus, Paris, after encountering evil omens on +his way, makes a long speech, imploring the pardon of the deserted +OEnone. She replies, not with the Tennysonian brevity; she sends him +back to the helpless arms of her rival, Helen. Paris dies on the +hills; never did Helen see him returning. The wood-nymphs bewail +Paris, and a herdsman brings the bitter news to Helen, who chants her +lament. But remorse falls on OEnone. She does not go + + + "Slowly down +By the long torrent's ever-deepened roar," + + +but rushes "swift as the wind to seek and spring upon the pyre of her +lord." Fate and Aphrodite drive her headlong, and in heaven Selene, +remembering Endymion, bewails the lot of her sister in sorrow. +OEnone reaches the funeral flame, and without a word or a cry leaps +into her husband's arms, the wild Nymphs wondering. The lovers are +mingled in one heap of ashes, and these are bestowed in one vessel of +gold and buried in a howe. This is the story which the poet +rehandled in his old age, completing the work of his happy youth when +he walked with Hallam in the Pyrenean hills, that were to him as Ida. +The romance of OEnone and her death condone, as even Homer was apt to +condone, the sins of beautiful Paris, whom the nymphs lament, despite +the evil that he has wrought. The silence of the veiled OEnone, as +she springs into her lover's last embrace, is perhaps more affecting +and more natural than Tennyson's + + + "She lifted up a voice +Of shrill command, 'Who burns upon the pyre?'" + + +The St Telemachus has the old splendour and vigour of verse, and, +though written so late in life, is worthy of the poet's prime:- + + + "Eve after eve that haggard anchorite +Would haunt the desolated fane, and there +Gaze at the ruin, often mutter low +'Vicisti Galilaee'; louder again, +Spurning a shatter'd fragment of the God, +'Vicisti Galilaee!' but--when now +Bathed in that lurid crimson--ask'd 'Is earth +On fire to the West? or is the Demon-god +Wroth at his fall?' and heard an answer 'Wake +Thou deedless dreamer, lazying out a life +Of self-suppression, not of selfless love.' +And once a flight of shadowy fighters crost +The disk, and once, he thought, a shape with wings +Came sweeping by him, and pointed to the West, +And at his ear he heard a whisper 'Rome,' +And in his heart he cried 'The call of God!' +And call'd arose, and, slowly plunging down +Thro' that disastrous glory, set his face +By waste and field and town of alien tongue, +Following a hundred sunsets, and the sphere +Of westward-wheeling stars; and every dawn +Struck from him his own shadow on to Rome. + Foot-sore, way-worn, at length he touch'd his goal, +The Christian city." + + +Akbar's Dream may be taken, more or less, to represent the poet's own +theology of a race seeking after God, if perchance they may find Him, +and the closing Hymn was a favourite with Tennyson. He said, "It is +a magnificent metre":- + + +"HYMN. + +I. + +Once again thou flamest heavenward, once again we see thee rise. +Every morning is thy birthday gladdening human hearts and eyes. + Every morning here we greet it, bowing lowly down before thee, +Thee the Godlike, thee the changeless in thine ever-changing skies. + +II. + +Shadow-maker, shadow-slayer, arrowing light from clime to clime, +Hear thy myriad laureates hail thee monarch in their woodland rhyme. + Warble bird, and open flower, and, men, below the dome of azure +Kneel adoring Him the Timeless in the flame that measures Time!" + + +In this final volume the poet cast his handful of incense on the +altar of Scott, versifying the tale of Il Bizarro, which the dying +Sir Walter records in his Journal in Italy. The Churchwarden and the +Curate is not inferior to the earlier peasant poems in its expression +of shrewdness, humour, and superstition. A verse of Poets and +Critics may be taken as the poet's last word on the old futile +quarrel:- + + +"This thing, that thing is the rage, +Helter-skelter runs the age; +Minds on this round earth of ours +Vary like the leaves and flowers, + Fashion'd after certain laws; +Sing thou low or loud or sweet, +All at all points thou canst not meet, + Some will pass and some will pause. + +What is true at last will tell: +Few at first will place thee well; +Some too low would have thee shine, +Some too high--no fault of thine - + Hold thine own, and work thy will! +Year will graze the heel of year, +But seldom comes the poet here, + And the Critic's rarer still." + + +Still the lines hold good - + + +"Some too low would have thee shine, +Some too high--no fault of thine." + + +The end was now at hand. A sense of weakness was felt by the poet on +September 3, 1892: on the 28th his family sent for Sir Andrew Clark; +but the patient gradually faded out of life, and expired on Thursday, +October 6, at 1.35 A.M. To the very last he had Shakespeare by him, +and his windows were open to the sun; on the last night they were +flooded by the moonlight. The description of the final scenes must +be read in the Biography by the poet's son. "His patience and quiet +strength had power upon those who were nearest and dearest to him; we +felt thankful for the love and the utter peace of it all." "The life +after death," Tennyson had said just before his fatal illness, "is +the cardinal point of Christianity. I believe that God reveals +Himself in every individual soul; and my idea of Heaven is the +perpetual ministry of one soul to another." He had lived the life of +heaven upon earth, being in all his work a minister of things +honourable, lovely, consoling, and ennobling to the souls of others, +with a ministry which cannot die. His body sleeps next to that of +his friend and fellow-poet, Robert Browning, in front of Chaucer's +monument in the Abbey. + + + +CHAPTER XI.--LAST CHAPTER. + + + +"O, that Press will get hold of me now," Tennyson said when he knew +that his last hour was at hand. He had a horror of personal tattle, +as even his early poems declare - + + +"For now the Poet cannot die, + Nor leave his music as of old, + But round him ere he scarce be cold +Begins the scandal and the cry." + + +But no "carrion-vulture" has waited + + +"To tear his heart before the crowd." + + +About Tennyson, doubtless, there is much anecdotage: most of the +anecdotes turn on his shyness, his really exaggerated hatred of +personal notoriety, and the odd and brusque things which he would say +when alarmed by effusive strangers. It has not seemed worth while to +repeat more than one or two of these legends, nor have I sought +outside the Biography by his son for more than the biographer chose +to tell. The readers who are least interested in poetry are most +interested in tattle about the poet. It is the privilege of genius +to retain the freshness and simplicity, with some of the foibles, of +the child. When Tennyson read his poems aloud he was apt to be moved +by them, and to express frankly his approbation where he thought it +deserved. Only very rudimentary psychologists recognised conceit in +this freedom; and only the same set of persons mistook shyness for +arrogance. Effusiveness of praise or curiosity in a stranger is apt +to produce bluntness of reply in a Briton. "Don't talk d-d nonsense, +sir," said the Duke of Wellington to the gushing person who piloted +him, in his old age, across Piccadilly. Of Tennyson Mr Palgrave +says, "I have known him silenced, almost frozen, before the eager +unintentional eyes of a girl of fifteen. And under the stress of +this nervous impulse compelled to contradict his inner self +(especially when under the terror of leonisation . . . ), he was +doubtless at times betrayed into an abrupt phrase, a cold +unsympathetic exterior; a moment's 'defect of the rose.'" Had he not +been sensitive in all things, he would have been less of a poet. The +chief criticism directed against his mode of life is that he WAS +sensitive and reserved, but he could and did make himself pleasant in +the society of les pauvres d'esprit. Curiosity alarmed him, and +drove him into his shell: strangers who met him in that mood carried +away false impressions, which developed into myths. As the Master of +Balliol has recorded, despite his shyness "he was extremely +hospitable, often inviting not only his friends, but the friends of +his friends, and giving them a hearty welcome. For underneath a +sensitive exterior he was thoroughly genial if he was understood." +In these points he was unlike his great contemporary, Browning; for +instance, Tennyson never (I think) was the Master's guest at Balliol, +mingling, like Browning, with the undergraduates, to whom the +Master's hospitality was freely extended. Yet, where he was +familiar, Tennyson was a gay companion, not shunning jest or even +paradox. "As Dr Johnson says, every man may be judged of by his +laughter": but no Boswell has chronicled the laughters of Tennyson. +"He never, or hardly ever, made puns or witticisms" (though one pun, +at least, endures in tradition), "but always lived in an attitude of +humour." Mr Jowett writes (and no description of the poet is better +than his) - + + +If I were to describe his outward appearance, I should say that he +was certainly unlike any one else whom I ever saw. A glance at some +of Watts' portraits of him will give, better than any description +which can be expressed in words, a conception of his noble mien and +look. He was a magnificent man, who stood before you in his native +refinement and strength. The unconventionality of his manners was in +keeping with the originality of his figure. He would sometimes say +nothing, or a word or two only, to the stranger who approached him, +out of shyness. He would sometimes come into the drawing-room +reading a book. At other times, especially to ladies, he was +singularly gracious and benevolent. He would talk about the +accidents of his own life with an extraordinary freedom, as at the +moment they appeared to present themselves to his mind, the days of +his boyhood that were passed at Somersby, and the old school of +manners which he came across in his own neighbourhood: the days of +the "apostles" at Cambridge: the years which he spent in London; the +evenings enjoyed at the Cock Tavern, and elsewhere, when he saw +another side of life, not without a kindly and humorous sense of the +ridiculous in his fellow-creatures. His repertory of stories was +perfectly inexhaustible; they were often about slight matters that +would scarcely bear repetition, but were told with such lifelike +reality, that they convulsed his hearers with laughter. Like most +story-tellers, he often repeated his favourites; but, like children, +his audience liked hearing them again and again, and he enjoyed +telling them. It might be said of him that he told more stories than +any one, but was by no means the regular story-teller. In the +commonest conversation he showed himself a man of genius. + + +To this description may be added another by Mr F. T. Palgrave:- + + +Every one will have seen men, distinguished in some line of work, +whose conversation (to take the old figure) either "smelt too +strongly of the lamp," or lay quite apart from their art or craft. +What, through all these years, struck me about Tennyson, was that +whilst he never deviated into poetical language as such, whether in +rhetoric or highly coloured phrase, yet throughout the substance of +his talk the same mode of thought, the same imaginative grasp of +nature, the same fineness and gentleness in his view of character, +the same forbearance and toleration, the aurea mediocritas despised +by fools and fanatics, which are stamped on his poetry, were +constantly perceptible: whilst in the easy and as it were unsought +choiceness, the conscientious and truth-loving precision of his +words, the same personal identity revealed itself. What a strange +charm lay here, how deeply illuminating the whole character, as in +prolonged intercourse it gradually revealed itself! Artist and man, +Tennyson was invariably true to himself, or rather, in Wordsworth's +phrase, he "moved altogether"; his nature and his poetry being +harmonious aspects of the same soul; as botanists tell us that flower +and fruit are but transformations of root and stem and leafage. We +read how, in mediaeval days, conduits were made to flow with claret. +But this was on great occasions only. Tennyson's fountain always ran +wine. + +Once more: In Mme. Recamier's salon, I have read, at the time when +conversation was yet a fine art in Paris, guests famous for esprit +would sit in the twilight round the stove, whilst each in turn let +fly some sparkling anecdote or bon-mot, which rose and shone and died +out into silence, till the next of the elect pyrotechnists was ready. +Good things of this kind, as I have said, were plentiful in +Tennyson's repertory. But what, to pass from the materials to the +method of his conversation, eminently marked it was the continuity of +the electric current. He spoke, and was silent, and spoke again: +but the circuit was unbroken; there was no effort in taking up the +thread, no sense of disjunction. Often I thought, had he never +written a line of the poems so dear to us, his conversation alone +would have made him the most interesting companion known to me. From +this great and gracious student of humanity, what less, indeed, could +be expected? And if, as a converser, I were to compare him with +Socrates, as figured for us in the dialogues of his great disciple, I +think that I should have the assent of that eminently valued friend +of Tennyson's, whose long labour of love has conferred English +citizenship upon Plato. + + +We have called him shy and sensitive in daily intercourse with +strangers, and as to criticism, he freely confessed that a midge of +dispraise could sting, while applause gave him little pleasure. Yet +no poet altered his verses so much in obedience to censure unjustly +or irritatingly stated, yet in essence just. He readily rejected +some of his "Juvenilia" on Mr Palgrave's suggestion. The same friend +tells how well he took a rather fierce attack on an unpublished +piece, when Mr Palgrave "owned that he could not find one good line +in it." Very few poets, or even versifiers (fiercer they than poets +are), would have continued to show their virgin numbers to a friend +so candid, as Tennyson did. Perhaps most of the genus irritabile +will grant that spoken criticism, if unfavourable, somehow annoys and +stirs opposition in an author; probably because it confirms his own +suspicions about his work. Such criticism is almost invariably just. +But Campbell, when Rogers offered a correction, "bounced out of the +room, with a 'Hang it! I should like to see the man who would dare +to correct me.'" + +Mr Jowett justly recognised in the life of Tennyson two circumstances +which made him other than, but for these, he would have been. He had +intended to do with the Arthurian subject what he never did, "in some +way or other to have represented in it the great religions of the +world. . . . It is a proof of Tennyson's genius that he should have +thus early grasped the great historical aspect of religion." His +intention was foiled, his early dream was broken, by the death of +Arthur Hallam, and by the coldness and contempt with which, at the +same period, his early poems were received. + +Mr Jowett (who had a firm belief in the "great work") regretted the +change of plan as to the Arthurian topic, regretted it the more from +his own interest in the History of Religion. But we need not share +the regrets. The early plan for the Arthur (which Mr Jowett never +saw) has been published, and certainly the scheme could not have been +executed on these lines. {18} Moreover, as the Master observed, the +work would have been premature in Tennyson's youth, and, indeed, it +would still be premature. The comparative science of religious +evolution is even now very tentative, and does not yield materials of +sufficient stability for an epic, even if such an epic could be +forced into the mould of the Arthur legends, a feat perhaps +impossible, and certainly undesirable. A truly fantastic allegory +must have been the result, and it is fortunate that the poet +abandoned the idea in favour of more human themes. Moreover, he +recognised very early that his was not a Muse de longue haleine; that +he must be "short." We may therefore feel certain that his early +sorrow and discouragement were salutary to him as a poet, and as a +man. He became more sympathetic, more tender, and was obliged to put +forth that stoical self-control, and strenuous courage and endurance, +through which alone his poetic career was rendered possible. "He had +the susceptibility of a child or a woman," says his friend; "he had +also" (it was a strange combination) "the strength of a giant or of a +god." Without these qualities he must have broken down between 1833 +and 1842 into a hypochondriac, or a morose, if majestic, failure. +Poor, obscure, and unhappy, he overcame the world, and passed from +darkness into light. The "poetic temperament" in another not gifted +with his endurance and persistent strength would have achieved ruin. + +Most of us remember Taine's parallel between Tennyson and Alfred de +Musset. The French critic has no high approval of Tennyson's +"respectability" and long peaceful life, as compared with the wrecked +life and genius of Musset, l'enfant perdu of love, wine, and song. +This is a theory like another, and is perhaps attractive to the +young. The poet must have strong passions, or how can he sing of +them: he must be tossed and whirled in the stress of things, like +Shelley's autumn leaves; - + + +"Ghosts from an enchanter fleeing." + + +Looking at Burns, Byron, Musset, or even at Shelley's earlier years, +youth sees in them the true poets, "sacred things," but also "light," +as Plato says, inspired to break their wings against the nature of +existence, and the flammantia maenia mundi. But this is almost a +boyish idea, this idea that the true poet is the slave of the +passions, and that the poet who dominates them has none, and is but a +staid domestic animal, an ass browsing the common, as somebody has +written about Wordsworth. Certainly Tennyson's was no "passionless +perfection." He, like others, was tempted to beat with ineffectual +wings against the inscrutable nature of life. He, too, had his dark +hour, and was as subject to temptation as they who yielded to the +stress and died, or became unhappy waifs, "young men with a splendid +past." He must have known, no less than Musset, the attractions of +many a paradis artificiel, with its bright visions, its houris, its +offers of oblivion of pain. "He had the look of one who had suffered +greatly," Mr Palgrave writes in his record of their first meeting in +1842. But he, like Goethe, Scott, and Victor Hugo, had strength as +well as passion and emotion; he came unscorched through the fire that +has burned away the wings of so many other great poets. This was no +less fortunate for the world than for himself. Of his prolonged dark +hour we know little in detail, but we have seen that from the first +he resisted the Tempter; Ulysses is his Retro Sathanas! + +About "the mechanism of genius" in Tennyson Mr Palgrave has told us a +little; more appears incidentally in his biography. "It was his way +that when we had entered on some scene of special beauty or grandeur, +after enjoying it together, he should always withdraw wholly from +sight, and study the view, as it were, in a little artificial +solitude." + +Tennyson's poems, Mr Palgrave says, often arose in a kind of point de +repere (like those forms and landscapes which seem to spring from a +floating point of light, beheld with closed eyes just before we +sleep). "More than once he said that his poems sprang often from a +'nucleus,' some one word, maybe, or brief melodious phrase, which had +floated through the brain, as it were, unbidden. And perhaps at once +while walking they were presently wrought into a little song. But if +he did not write it down at once the lyric fled from him +irrecoverably." He believed himself thus to have lost poems as good +as his best. It seems probable that this is a common genesis of +verses, good or bad, among all who write. Like Dickens, and like +most men of genius probably, he saw all the scenes of his poems "in +his mind's eye." Many authors do this, without the power of making +their readers share the vision; but probably few can impart the +vision who do not themselves "visualise" with distinctness. We have +seen, in the cases of The Holy Grail and other pieces, that Tennyson, +after long meditating a subject, often wrote very rapidly, and with +little need of correction. He was born with "style"; it was a gift +of his genius rather than the result of conscious elaboration. Yet +he did use "the file," of which much is now written, especially for +the purpose of polishing away the sibilants, so common in our +language. In the nine years of silence which followed the little +book of 1833 his poems matured, and henceforth it is probable that he +altered his verses little, if we except the modifications in The +Princess. Many slight verbal touches were made, or old readings were +restored, but important changes, in the way of omission or addition, +became rare. + +Of nature Tennyson was scrupulously observant till his very latest +days, eagerly noting, not only "effects," as a painter does, but +their causes, botanical or geological. Had man been scientific from +the beginning he would probably have evolved no poetry at all; +material things would not have been endowed by him with life and +passion; he would have told himself no stories of the origins of +stars and flowers, clouds and fire, winds and rainbows. Modern poets +have resented, like Keats and Wordsworth, the destruction of the old +prehistoric dreams by the geologist and by other scientific +characters. But it was part of Tennyson's poetic originality to see +the beautiful things of nature at once with the vision of early +poetic men, and of moderns accustomed to the microscope, telescope, +spectrum analysis, and so forth. Thus Tennyson received a double +delight from the sensible universe, and it is a double delight that +he communicates to his readers. His intellect was thus always +active, even in apparent repose. His eyes rested not from observing, +or his mind from recording and comparing, the beautiful familiar +phenomena of earth and sky. In the matter of the study of books we +have seen how deeply versed he was in certain of the Greek, Roman, +and Italian classics. Mr Jowett writes: "He was what might be +called a good scholar in the university or public-school sense of the +term, . . . yet I seem to remember that he had his favourite +classics, such as Homer, and Pindar, and Theocritus. . . . He was +also a lover of Greek fragments. But I am not sure whether, in later +life, he ever sat down to read consecutively the greatest works of +AEschylus and Sophocles, although he used occasionally to dip into +them." The Greek dramatists, in fact, seem to have affected +Tennyson's work but slightly, while he constantly reminds us of +Virgil, Homer, Theocritus, and even Persius and Horace. Mediaeval +French, whether in poetry or prose, and the poetry of the "Pleiad" +seems to have occupied little of his attention. Into the oriental +literatures he dipped--pretty deeply for his Akbar; and even his +Locksley Hall owed something to Sir William Jones's version of "the +old Arabian Moallakat." The debt appears to be infinitesimal. He +seems to have been less closely familiar with Elizabethan poetry than +might have been expected: a number of his obiter dicta on all kinds +of literary points are recorded in the Life by Mr Palgrave. "Sir +Walter Scott's short tale, My Aunt Margaret's Mirror (how little +known!), he once spoke of as the finest of all ghost or magical +stories." Lord Tennyson adds, "The Tapestried Chamber also he +greatly admired." Both are lost from modern view among the short +pieces of the last volumes of the Waverley novels. Of the poet's +interest in and attitude towards the more obscure pyschological and +psychical problems--to popular science foolishness--enough has been +said, but the remarks of Professor Tyndall have not been cited:- + + +My special purpose in introducing this poem, however, was to call +your attention to a passage further on which greatly interested me. +The poem is, throughout, a discussion between a believer in +immortality and one who is unable to believe. The method pursued is +this. The Sage reads a portion of the scroll, which he has taken +from the hands of his follower, and then brings his own arguments to +bear upon that portion, with a view to neutralising the scepticism of +the younger man. Let me here remark that I read the whole series of +poems published under the title "Tiresias," full of admiration for +their freshness and vigour. Seven years after I had first read them +your father died, and you, his son, asked me to contribute a chapter +to the book which you contemplate publishing. I knew that I had some +small store of references to my interview with your father carefully +written in ancient journals. On the receipt of your request, I +looked up the account of my first visit to Farringford, and there, to +my profound astonishment, I found described that experience of your +father's which, in the mouth of the Ancient Sage, was made the ground +of an important argument against materialism and in favour of +personal immortality eight-and-twenty years afterwards. In no other +poem during all these years is, to my knowledge, this experience once +alluded to. I had completely forgotten it, but here it was recorded +in black and white. If you turn to your father's account of the +wonderful state of consciousness superinduced by thinking of his own +name, and compare it with the argument of the Ancient Sage, you will +see that they refer to one and the same phenomenon. + + + And more, my son! for more than once when I +Sat all alone, revolving in myself +The word that is the symbol of myself, +The mortal limit of the Self was loosed, +And past into the Nameless, as a cloud +Melts into heaven. I touch'd my limbs, the limbs +Were strange, not mine--and yet no shade of doubt, +But utter clearness, and thro' loss of Self +The gain of such large life as match'd with ours +Were Sun to spark--unshadowable in words, +Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world. + + +Any words about Tennyson as a politician are apt to excite the +sleepless prejudice which haunts the political field. He probably, +if forced to "put a name to it," would have called himself a Liberal. +But he was not a social agitator. He never set a rick on fire. "He +held aloof, in a somewhat detached position, from the great social +seethings of his age" (Mr Frederic Harrison). But in youth he helped +to extinguish some flaming ricks. He spoke of the "many-headed +beast" (the reading public) in terms borrowed from Plato. He had no +higher esteem for mobs than Shakespeare or John Knox professed, while +his theory of tyrants (in the case of Napoleon III. about 1852) was +that of Liberals like Mr Swinburne and Victor Hugo. Though to modern +enlightenment Tennyson may seem as great a Tory as Dr Johnson, yet he +had spoken his word in 1852 for the freedom of France, and for +securing England against the supposed designs of a usurper (now +fallen). He really believed, obsolete as the faith may be, in +guarding our own, both on land and sea. Perhaps no Continental or +American critic has ever yet dispraised a poetical fellow-countryman +merely for urging the duties of national union and national defence. +A critic, however, writes thus of Tennyson: "When our poet descends +into the arena of party polemics, in such things as Riflemen, Form! +Hands all Round, . . . The Fleet, and other topical pieces dear to +the Jingo soul, it is not poetry but journalism." I doubt whether +the desirableness of the existence of a volunteer force and of a +fleet really is within the arena of PARTY polemics. If any party +thinks that we ought to have no volunteers, and that it is our duty +to starve the fleet, what is that party's name? Who cries, "Down +with the Fleet! Down with National Defence! Hooray for the +Disintegration of the Empire!"? + +Tennyson was not a party man, but he certainly would have opposed any +such party. If to defend our homes and this England be "Jingoism," +Tennyson, like Shakespeare, was a Jingo. But, alas! I do not know +the name of the party which opposes Tennyson, and which wishes the +invader to trample down England--any invader will do for so +philanthropic a purpose. Except when resisting this unnamed party, +the poet seldom or never entered "the arena of party polemics." +Tennyson could not have exclaimed, like Squire Western, "Hurrah for +old England! Twenty thousand honest Frenchmen have landed in Kent!" +He undeniably did write verses (whether poetry or journalism) tending +to make readers take an unfavourable view of honest invaders. If to +do that is to be a "Jingo," and if such conduct hurts the feelings of +any great English party, then Tennyson was a Jingo and a partisan, +and was, so far, a rhymester, like Mr Kipling. Indeed we know that +Tennyson applauded Mr Kipling's The English Flag. So the worst is +out, as we in England count the worst. In America and on the +continent of Europe, however, a poet may be proud of his country's +flag without incurring rebuke from his countrymen. Tennyson did not +reckon himself a party man; he believed more in political evolution +than in political revolution, with cataclysms. He was neither an +Anarchist nor a Home Ruler, nor a politician so generous as to wish +England to be laid defenceless at the feet of her foes. + +If these sentiments deserve censure, in Tennyson, at least, they +claim our tolerance. He was not born in a generation late enough to +be truly Liberal. Old prejudices about "this England," old words +from Henry V. and King John, haunted his memory and darkened his +vision of the true proportions of things. We draw in prejudice with +our mother's milk. The mother of Tennyson had not been an Agnostic +or a Comtist; his father had not been a staunch true-blue anti- +Englander. Thus he inherited a certain bias in favour of faith and +fatherland, a bias from which he could never emancipate himself. But +tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner. Had Tennyson's birth been +later, we might find in him a more complete realisation of our poetic +ideal--might have detected less to blame or to forgive. + +With that apology we must leave the fame of Tennyson as a politician +to the clement consideration of an enlightened posterity. I do not +defend his narrow insularities, his Jingoism, or the appreciable +percentage of faith which blushing analysis may detect in his honest +doubt: these things I may regret or condemn, but we ought not to let +them obscure our view of the Poet. He was led away by bad examples. +Of all Jingoes Shakespeare is the most unashamed, and next to him are +Drayton, Scott, and Wordsworth, with his + + +"Oh, for one hour of that Dundee!" + + +In the years which followed the untoward affair of Waterloo young +Tennyson fell much under the influence of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, +and the other offenders, and these are extenuating circumstances. By +a curious practical paradox, where the realms of poetry and politics +meet, the Tory critics seem milder of mood and more Liberal than the +Liberal critics. Thus Mr William Morris was certainly a very +advanced political theorist; and in theology Mr Swinburne has written +things not easily reconcilable with orthodoxy. Yet we find Divine- +Right Tories, who in literature are fervent admirers of these two +poets, and leave their heterodoxies out of account. But many Liberal +critics appear unable quite to forgive Tennyson because he did not +wish to starve the fleet, and because he held certain very ancient, +if obsolete, beliefs. Perhaps a general amnesty ought to be passed, +as far as poets are concerned, and their politics and creeds should +be left to silence, where "beyond these voices there is peace." + +One remark, I hope, can excite no prejudice. The greatest of the +Gordons was a soldier, and lived in religion. But the point at which +Tennyson's memory is blended with that of Gordon is the point of +sympathy with the neglected poor. It is to his wise advice, and to +affection for Gordon, that we owe the Gordon training school for poor +boys,--a good school, and good boys come out of that academy. + +The question as to Tennyson's precise rank in the glorious roll of +the Poets of England can never be determined by us, if in any case or +at any time such determinations can be made. We do not, or should +not, ask whether Virgil or Lucretius, whether AEschylus or Sophocles, +is the greater poet. The consent of mankind seems to place Homer and +Shakespeare and Dante high above all. For the rest no prize-list can +be settled. If influence among aliens is the test, Byron probably +takes, among our poets, the next rank after Shakespeare. But +probably there is no possible test. In certain respects Shelley, in +many respects Milton, in some Coleridge, in some Burns, in the +opinion of a number of persons Browning, are greater poets than +Tennyson. But for exquisite variety and varied exquisiteness +Tennyson is not readily to be surpassed. At one moment he pleases +the uncritical mass of readers, in another mood he wins the verdict +of the raffine. It is a success which scarce any English poet but +Shakespeare has excelled. His faults have rarely, if ever, been +those of flat-footed, "thick-ankled" dulness; of rhetoric, of common- +place; rather have his defects been the excess of his qualities. A +kind of John Bullishness may also be noted, especially in derogatory +references to France, which, true or untrue, are out of taste and +keeping. But these errors could be removed by the excision of half- +a-dozen lines. His later work (as the Voyage of Maeldune) shows a +just appreciation of ancient Celtic literature. A great critic, F. +T. Palgrave, has expressed perhaps the soundest appreciation of +Tennyson:- + + +It is for "the days that remain" to bear witness to his real place in +the great hierarchy, amongst whom Dante boldly yet justly ranked +himself. But if we look at Tennyson's work in a twofold aspect,-- +HERE, on the exquisite art in which, throughout, his verse is +clothed, the lucid beauty of the form, the melody almost audible as +music, the mysterious skill by which the words used constantly strike +as the INEVITABLE words (and hence, unforgettable), the subtle +allusive touches, by which a secondary image is suggested to enrich +the leading thought, as the harmonic "partials" give richness to the +note struck upon the string; THERE, when we think of the vast +fertility in subject and treatment, united with happy selection of +motive, the wide range of character, the dramatic force of +impersonation, the pathos in every variety, the mastery over the +comic and the tragic alike, above all, perhaps, those phrases of +luminous insight which spring direct from imaginative observation of +Humanity, true for all time, coming from the heart to the heart,--his +work will probably be found to lie somewhere between that of Virgil +and Shakespeare: having its portion, if I may venture on the phrase, +in the inspiration of both. + + +A professed enthusiast for Tennyson can add nothing to, and take +nothing from, these words of one who, though his friend, was too +truly a critic to entertain the admiration that goes beyond idolatry. + + + +Footnotes: + +{1} Macmillan & Co. + +{2} To the present writer, as to others, The Lover's Tale appeared +to be imitative of Shelley, but if Tennyson had never read Shelley, +cadit quaestio. + +{3} F. W. H. Myers, Science and a Future Life, p. 133. + +{4} The writer knew this edition before he knew Tennyson's poems. + +{5} The author of the spiteful letters was an unpublished anonymous +person. + +{6} The Lennox MSS. + +{7} Spencer and Gillen, Natives of Central Australia, pp. 388, 389. + +{8} Tennyson, Ruskin, and Mill, pp. 11, 12. + +{9} Life, p. 37, 1899. + +{10} Poem omitted from In Memoriam. Life, p. 257, 1899. + +{11} Mr Harrison, Tennyson, Ruskin, and Mill, p. 5. + +{12} The English reader may consult Mr Rhys's The Arthurian Legend, +Oxford, 1891, and Mr Nutt's Studies of the Legend of the Holy Grail, +which will direct him to other authorities and sources. + +{13} I have summarised, with omissions, Miss Jessie L. Watson's +sketch in King Arthur and his Knights. Nutt, 1899. The learning of +the subject is enormous; Dr Sommer's Le Mort d'Arthur, the second +volume may be consulted. Nutt, 1899. + +{14} [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]. He is referred to in +inscriptions, e.g. Berlin, Corpus, iii. 4774, V. 732, 733, 1829, +2143-46; xii. 405. See also Ausonius (Leipsic, 1886, pp. 52, 59), +cited by Rhys, The Arthurian Legend p. 159, note 4. + +{15} Brebeuf; Relations des Jesuites, 1636, pp. 100-102. + +{16} Malory, xviii. 8 et seq. + +{17} Notices et Extraits des MSS. de la Bibliotheque Imperiale, I. +xix. pp. 643-645. + +{18} See the Life, 1899, p. 521. + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Alfred Tennyson, by Andrew Lang** + diff --git a/old/alftn10.zip b/old/alftn10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..66d9b87 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/alftn10.zip |
