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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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