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diff --git a/3654-h/3654-h.htm b/3654-h/3654-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..053fc40 --- /dev/null +++ b/3654-h/3654-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,7385 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Alfred Tennyson, by Andrew Lang</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} + div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +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: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALFRED TENNYSON*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from the 1901 William Blackwood and Sons edition +by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/coverb.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Book cover" +title= +"Book cover" + src="images/covers.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<h1>ALFRED TENNYSON</h1> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br +/> +ANDREW LANG</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS<br /> +EDINBURGH AND LONDON<br /> +MCMI</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<h2>INTRODUCTION.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">In</span> writing this brief sketch of the +Life of Tennyson, and this attempt to appreciate his work, I have +rested almost entirely on the Biography by Lord Tennyson (with +his kind permission) and on the text of the Poems. As to +the Life, doubtless current anecdotes, not given in the +Biography, are known to me, and to most people. But as they +must also be familiar to the author of the Biography, I have not +thought it desirable to include what he rejected. The works +of the “localisers” I have not read: Tennyson +disliked these researches, as a rule, and they appear to be +unessential, and often hazardous. The professed +commentators I have not consulted. It appeared better to +give one’s own impressions of the Poems, unaffected by the +impressions of others, except in one or two cases where matters +of fact rather than of taste seemed to be in question. Thus +on two or three points I have ventured to differ from a +distinguished living critic, and have given the reasons for my +dissent. Professor Bradley’s <i>Commentary on In +Memoriam</i> <a name="citation1"></a><a href="#footnote1" +class="citation">[1]</a> came out after this sketch was in +print. Many of the comments cited by Mr Bradley from his +predecessors appear to justify my neglect of these curious +inquirers. The “difficulties” which they raise +are not likely, as a rule, to present themselves to persons who +read poetry “for human pleasure.”</p> +<p>I have not often dwelt on parallels to be found in the works +of earlier poets. In many cases Tennyson deliberately +reproduced passages from Greek, Latin, and old Italian writers, +just as Virgil did in the case of Homer, Theocritus, Apollonius +Rhodius, and others. There are, doubtless, instances in +which a phrase is unconsciously reproduced by automatic memory, +from an English poet. But I am less inclined than Mr +Bradley to think that unconscious reminiscence is more common in +Tennyson than in the poets generally. I have not closely +examined Keats and Shelley, for example, to see how far they were +influenced by unconscious memory. But Scott, confessedly, +was apt to reproduce the phrases of others, and once unwittingly +borrowed from a poem by the valet of one of his friends! I +believe that many of the alleged borrowings in Tennyson are +either no true parallels at all or are the unavoidable +coincidences of expression which must inevitably occur. The +poet himself stated, in a lively phrase, his opinion of the +hunters after parallels, and I confess that I am much of his +mind. They often remind me of Mr Punch’s parody on an +unfriendly review of Alexander Smith—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Most <i>women</i> have <i>no character</i> +at all.”—<span class="smcap">Pope</span>.</p> +<p>“No <i>character</i> that servant <i>woman</i> +asked.”—<span class="smcap">Smith</span>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>I have to thank Mr Edmund Gosse and Mr Vernon Rendall for +their kindness in reading my proof-sheets. They have saved +me from some errors, but I may have occasionally retained matter +which, for one reason or another, did not recommend itself to +them. In no case are they responsible for the opinions +expressed, or for the critical estimates. They are those of +a Tennysonian, and, no doubt, would be other than they are if the +writer were younger than he is. It does not follow that +they would necessarily be more correct, though probably they +would be more in vogue. The point of view must shift with +each generation of readers, as ideas or beliefs go in or out of +fashion, are accepted, rejected, or rehabilitated. To one +age Tennyson may seem weakly superstitious; to another needlessly +sceptical. After all, what he must live by is, not his +opinions, but his poetry. The poetry of Milton survives his +ideas; whatever may be the fate of the ideas of Tennyson his +poetry must endure.</p> +<h2>CONTENTS.</h2> +<table> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"> </p> +</td> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">I.</p> +</td> +<td><p>BOYHOOD—CAMBRIDGE—EARLY POEMS.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page1">1</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">II.</p> +</td> +<td><p>POEMS OF 1831–1833.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page22">22</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">III.</p> +</td> +<td><p>1837–1842.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page35">35</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">IV.</p> +</td> +<td><p>1842–848—THE PRINCESS.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page46">46</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">V.</p> +</td> +<td><p>IN MEMORIAM.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page61">61</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">VI.</p> +</td> +<td><p>AFTER IN MEMORIAM.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page81">81</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">VII.</p> +</td> +<td><p>THE IDYLLS OF THE KING.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page103">103</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">VIII</p> +</td> +<td><p>ENOCH ARDEN. THE DRAMAS.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page158">158</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">IX.</p> +</td> +<td><p>LAST YEARS.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page194">194</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">X.</p> +</td> +<td><p>1890.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page203">203</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XI.</p> +</td> +<td><p>LAST CHAPTER.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page212">212</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +<h2><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 1</span>I<br /> +BOYHOOD—CAMBRIDGE—EARLY POEMS.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> life and work of Tennyson +present something like the normal type of what, in circumstances +as fortunate as mortals may expect, the life and work of a modern +poet ought to be. A modern poet, one says, because even +poetry is now affected by the division of labour. We do not +look to the poet for a large share in the practical activities of +existence: we do not expect him, like Æschylus and +Sophocles, Theognis and Alcæus, to take a conspicuous part +in politics and war; or even, as in the Age of Anne, to shine +among wits and in society. Life has become, perhaps, too +specialised for such multifarious activities. Indeed, even +in ancient days, as a Celtic proverb and as the picture of life +in the Homeric epics prove, the poet was already a man +apart—not foremost among statesmen and rather backward +among warriors. If we agree with a not unpopular opinion, +the poet ought to be a kind of “Titanic” force, +wrecking himself on his own passions and on the nature of things, +as did Byron, Burns, Marlowe, and Musset. But +Tennyson’s career followed lines really more normal, the +lines of the life of Wordsworth, wisdom and self-control +directing the course of a long, sane, sound, and fortunate +existence. The great physical strength which is commonly +the basis of great mental vigour was not ruined in Tennyson by +poverty and passion, as in the case of Burns, nor in forced +literary labour, as in those of Scott and Dickens. For long +he was poor, like Wordsworth and Southey, but never +destitute. He made his early effort: he had his time of +great sorrow, and trial, and apparent failure. With +practical wisdom he conquered circumstances; he became eminent; +he outlived reaction against his genius; he died in the fulness +of a happy age and of renown. This full-orbed life, with +not a few years of sorrow and stress, is what Nature seems to +intend for the career of a divine minstrel. If Tennyson +missed the “one crowded hour of glorious life,” he +had not to be content in “an age without a name.”</p> +<p>It was not Tennyson’s lot to illustrate any modern +theory of the origin of genius. Born in 1809 of a +Lincolnshire family, long connected with the soil but +inconspicuous in history, Tennyson had nothing Celtic in his +blood, as far as pedigrees prove. This is unfortunate for +one school of theorists. His mother (genius is presumed to +be derived from mothers) had a genius merely for moral excellence +and for religion. She is described in the poem of +<i>Isabel</i>, and was “a remarkable and saintly +woman.” In the male line, the family was not (as the +families of genius ought to be) brief of life and +unhealthy. “The Tennysons never die,” said the +sister who was betrothed to Arthur Hallam. The father, a +clergyman, was, says his grandson, “a man of great +ability,” and his “excellent library” was an +element in the education of his family. “My father +was a poet,” Tennyson said, “and could write regular +verse very skilfully.” In physical type the sons were +tall, strong, and unusually dark: Tennyson, when abroad, was not +taken for an Englishman; at home, strangers thought him +“foreign.” Most of the children had the +temperament, and several of the sons had some of the +accomplishments, of genius: whence derived by way of heredity is +a question beyond conjecture, for the father’s +accomplishment was not unusual. As Walton says of the poet +and the angler, they “were born to be so”: we know no +more.</p> +<p>The region in which the paternal hamlet of Somersby lies, +“a land of quiet villages, large fields, grey hillsides, +and noble tall-towered churches, on the lower slope of a +Lincolnshire wold,” does not appear to have been rich in +romantic legend and tradition. The folk-lore of +Lincolnshire, of which examples have been published, does seem to +have a peculiar poetry of its own, but it was rather the humorous +than the poetical aspect of the country-people that Tennyson +appears to have known. In brief, we have nothing to inform +us as to how genius came into that generation of Tennysons which +was born between 1807 and 1819. A source and a cause there +must have been, but these things are hidden, except from popular +science.</p> +<p>Precocity is not a sign of genius, but genius is perhaps +always accompanied by precocity. This is especially notable +in the cases of painting, music, and mathematics; but in the +matter of literature genius may chiefly show itself in +acquisition, as in Sir Walter Scott, who when a boy knew much, +but did little that would attract notice. As a child and a +boy young Tennyson was remarked both for acquisition and +performance. His own reminiscences of his childhood varied +somewhat in detail. In one place we learn that at the age +of eight he covered a slate with blank verse in the manner of +Jamie Thomson, the only poet with whom he was then +acquainted. In another passage he says, “The first +poetry that moved me was my own at five years old. When I +was eight I remember making a line I thought grander than +Campbell, or Byron, or Scott. I rolled it out, it was +this—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘With slaughterous sons of thunder rolled +the flood’—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>great nonsense, of course, but I thought it fine!”</p> +<p>It <i>was</i> fine, and was thoroughly Tennysonian. +Scott, Campbell, and Byron probably never produced a line with +the qualities of this nonsense verse. “Before I could +read I was in the habit on a stormy day of spreading my arms to +the wind and crying out, ‘I hear a voice that’s +speaking in the wind,’ and the words ‘far, far +away’ had always a strange charm for me.” A +late lyric has this overword, <i>Far</i>, <i>far away</i>!</p> +<p>A boy of eight who knew the contemporary poets was more or +less precocious. Tennyson also knew Pope, and wrote +hundreds of lines in Pope’s measure. At twelve the +boy produced an epic, in Scott’s manner, of some six +thousand lines. He “never felt himself more truly +inspired,” for the sense of “inspiration” (as +the late Mr Myers has argued in an essay on the “Mechanism +of Genius”) has little to do with the actual value of the +product. At fourteen Tennyson wrote a drama in blank +verse. A chorus from this play (as one guesses), a piece +from “an unpublished drama written very early,” is +published in the volume of 1830:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“The varied earth, the moving heaven,<br /> + The rapid waste of roving sea,<br /> +The fountain-pregnant mountains riven<br /> + To shapes of wildest anarchy,<br /> +By secret fire and midnight storms<br /> + That wander round their windy cones.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>These lines are already Tennysonian. There is the +classical transcript, “the varied earth,” +<i>dædala tellus</i>. There is the geological +interest in the forces that shape the hills. There is the +use of the favourite word “windy,” and later in the +piece—</p> +<blockquote><p>“The troublous autumn’s <i>sallow</i> +gloom.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The young poet from boyhood was original in his manner.</p> +<p>Byron made him <i>blasé</i> at fourteen. Then +Byron died, and Tennyson scratched on a rock “Byron is +dead,” on “a day when the whole world seemed darkened +for me.” Later he considered Byron’s poetry +“too much akin to rhetoric.” “Byron is +not an artist or a thinker, or a creator in the higher sense, but +a strong personality; he is endlessly clever, and is now unduly +depreciated.” He “did give the world another +heart and new pulses, and so we are kept going.” But +“he was dominated by Byron till he was seventeen, when he +put him away altogether.”</p> +<p>In his boyhood, despite the sufferings which he endured for a +while at school at Louth; despite bullying from big boys and +masters, Tennyson would “shout his verses to the +skies.” “Well, Arthur, I mean to be +famous,” he used to say to one of his brothers. He +observed nature very closely by the brook and the thundering +sea-shores: he was never a sportsman, and his angling was in the +manner of the lover of <i>The Miller’s Daughter</i>. +He was seventeen (1826) when <i>Poems by Two Brothers</i> +(himself and his brother Frederick) was published with the date +1827. These poems contain, as far as I have been able to +discover, nothing really Tennysonian. What he had done in +his own manner was omitted, “being thought too much out of +the common for the public taste.” The young poet had +already saving common-sense, and understood the public. +Fragments of the true gold are found in the volume of 1830, +others are preserved in the Biography. The ballad suggested +by <i>The Bride of Lammermoor</i> was not unworthy of Beddoes, +and that novel, one cannot but think, suggested the opening +situation in <i>Maud</i>, where the hero is a modern Master of +Ravenswood in his relation to the rich interloping family and the +beautiful daughter. To this point we shall return. It +does not appear that Tennyson was conscious in <i>Maud</i> of the +suggestion from Scott, and the coincidence may be merely +accidental.</p> +<p><i>The Lover’s Tale</i>, published in 1879, was mainly a +work of the poet’s nineteenth year. A few copies had +been printed for friends. One of these, with errors of the +press, and without the intended alterations, was pirated by an +unhappy man in 1875. In old age Tennyson brought out the +work of his boyhood. “It was written before I had +ever seen Shelley, though it is called Shelleyan,” he said; +and indeed he believed that his work had never been imitative, +after his earliest efforts in the manner of Thomson and of +Scott. The only things in <i>The Lover’s Tale</i> +which would suggest that the poet here followed Shelley are the +Italian scene of the story, the character of the versification, +and the extraordinary luxuriance and exuberance of the imagery. +<a name="citation7"></a><a href="#footnote7" +class="citation">[7]</a> As early as 1868 Tennyson heard +that written copies of <i>The Lover’s Tale</i> were in +circulation. He then remarked, as to the exuberance of the +piece: “Allowance must be made for abundance of +youth. It is rich and full, but there are mistakes in it. . +. . The poem is the breath of young love.”</p> +<p>How truly Tennysonian the manner is may be understood even +from the opening lines, full of the original cadences which were +to become so familiar:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Here far away, seen from the topmost +cliff,<br /> +Filling with purple gloom the vacancies<br /> +Between the tufted hills, the sloping seas<br /> +Hung in mid-heaven, and half way down rare sails,<br /> +White as white clouds, floated from sky to sky.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The narrative in parts one and two (which alone were written +in youth) is so choked with images and descriptions as to be +almost obscure. It is the story, practically, of a love +like that of Paul and Virginia, but the love is not returned by +the girl, who prefers the friend of the narrator. Like the +hero of <i>Maud</i>, the speaker has a period of madness and +illusion; while the third part, “The Golden +Supper”—suggested by a story of Boccaccio, and +written in maturity—is put in the mouth of another +narrator, and is in a different style. The discarded lover, +visiting the vault which contains the body of his lady, finds her +alive, and restores her to her husband. The whole finished +legend is necessarily not among the author’s +masterpieces. But perhaps not even Keats in his earliest +work displayed more of promise, and gave more assurance of +genius. Here and there come turns and phrases, “all +the charm of all the Muses,” which remind a reader of +things later well known in pieces more mature. Such lines +are—</p> +<blockquote><p> “Strange to me and +sweet,<br /> +Sweet through strange years,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Like to a low-hung and a fiery sky<br /> +Hung round with <i>ragged rims</i> and burning folds.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Like sounds without the twilight realm of +dreams,<br /> +Which wander round the bases of the hills.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>We also note close observation of nature in the curious +phrase—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Cries of the partridge like a rusty key<br +/> +Turned in a lock.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Of this kind was Tennyson’s adolescent vein, when he +left</p> +<blockquote><p> “The poplars four<br /> +That stood beside his father’s door,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>the Somersby brook, and the mills and granges, the seas of the +Lincolnshire coast, and the hills and dales among the wolds, for +Cambridge. He was well read in old and contemporary English +literature, and in the classics. Already he was acquainted +with the singular trance-like condition to which his poems +occasionally allude, a subject for comment later. He +matriculated at Trinity, with his brother Charles, on February +20, 1828, and had an interview of a not quite friendly sort with +a proctor before he wore the gown.</p> +<p>That Tennyson should go to Cambridge, not to Oxford, was part +of the nature of things, by which Cambridge educates the majority +of English poets, whereas Oxford has only “turned +out” a few—like Shelley. At that time, as in +Macaulay’s day, the path of university honours at Cambridge +lay through Mathematics, and, except for his prize poem in 1829, +Tennyson took no honours at all. His classical reading was +pursued as literature, not as a course of grammar and +philology. No English poet, at least since Milton, had been +better read in the classics; but Tennyson’s studies did not +aim at the gaining of academic distinction. His aspect was +such that Thompson, later Master of Trinity, on first seeing him +come into hall, said, “That man must be a +poet.” Like Byron, Shelley, and probably Coleridge, +Tennyson looked the poet that he was: “Six feet high, +broad-chested, strong-limbed, his face Shakespearian and with +deep eyelids, his forehead ample, crowned with dark wavy hair, +his head finely poised.”</p> +<p>Not much is recorded of Tennyson as an undergraduate. In +our days efforts would have been made to enlist so promising a +recruit in one of the college boats; but rowing was in its +infancy. It is a peculiarity of the universities that +little flocks of men of unusual ability come up at intervals +together, breaking the monotony of idlers, prize scholars, and +honours men. Such a group appeared at Balliol in Matthew +Arnold’s time, and rather later, at various colleges, in +the dawn of Pre-Raphaelitism. The Tennysons—Alfred, +Frederick, and Charles—were members of such a set. +There was Arthur Hallam, son of the historian, from Eton; there +was Spedding, the editor and biographer of Bacon; Milnes (Lord +Houghton), Blakesley (Dean of Lincoln), Thompson, Merivale, +Trench (a poet, and later, Archbishop of Dublin), Brookfield, +Buller, and, after Tennyson the greatest, Thackeray, a +contemporary if not an “Apostle.” Charles +Buller’s, like Hallam’s, was to be an +“unfulfilled renown.” Of Hallam, whose name is +for ever linked with his own, Tennyson said that he would have +been a great man, but not a great poet; “he was as near +perfection as mortal man could be.” His scanty +remains are chiefly notable for his divination of Tennyson as a +great poet; for the rest, we can only trust the author of <i>In +Memoriam</i> and the verdict of tradition.</p> +<p>The studies of the poet at this time included original +composition in Greek and Latin verse, history, and a theme that +he alone has made poetical, natural science. All poetry has +its roots in the age before natural science was more than a +series of nature-myths. The poets have usually, like Keats, +regretted the days when</p> +<blockquote><p>“There was an awful rainbow once in +heaven,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>when the hills and streams were not yet “dispeopled of +their dreams.” Tennyson, on the other hand, was +already finding material for poetry in the world as seen through +microscope and telescope, and as developed through +“æonian” processes of evolution. In a +notebook, mixed with Greek, is a poem on the Moon—not the +moon of Selene, “the orbed Maiden,” but of +astronomical science. <i>In Memoriam</i> recalls the +conversations on labour and politics, discussions of the age of +the Reform Bill, of rick-burning (expected to “make taters +cheaper”), and of Catholic emancipation; also the +emancipation of such negroes as had not yet tasted the blessings +of freedom. In politics Tennyson was what he remained, a +patriot, a friend of freedom, a foe of disorder. His +politics, he said, were those “of Shakespeare, Bacon, and +every sane man.” He was one of the Society of +Apostles, and characteristically contributed an essay on +Ghosts. Only the preface survives: it is not written in a +scientific style; but bids us “not assume that any vision +<i>is</i> baseless.” Perhaps the author went on to +discuss “veridical hallucinations,” but his ideas +about these things must be considered later.</p> +<p>It was by his father’s wish that Tennyson competed for +the English prize poem. The theme, Timbuctoo, was not +inspiring. Thackeray wrote a good parody of the ordinary +prize poem in Pope’s metre:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“I see her sons the hill of glory mount,<br +/> +And sell their sugars on their own account;<br /> +Prone to her feet the prostrate nations come,<br /> +Sue for her rice and barter for her rum.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Tennyson’s work was not much more serious: he merely +patched up an old piece, in blank verse, on the battle of +Armageddon. The poem is not destitute of Tennysonian +cadence, and ends, not inappropriately, with “All was +night.” Indeed, all <i>was</i> night.</p> +<p>An ingenious myth accounts for Tennyson’s success: At +Oxford, says Charles Wordsworth, the author was more likely to +have been rusticated than rewarded. But already (1829) +Arthur Hallam told Mr Gladstone that Tennyson “promised +fair to be the greatest poet of our generation, perhaps of our +century.”</p> +<p>In 1830 Tennyson published the first volume of which he was +sole author. Browning’s <i>Pauline</i> was of the +year 1833. It was the very dead hours of the Muses. +The great Mr Murray had ceased, as one despairing of song, to +publish poetry. Bulwer Lytton, in the preface to <i>Paul +Clifford</i> (1830), announced that poetry, with every other form +of literature except the Novel, was unremunerative and +unread. Coleridge and Scott were silent: indeed Sir Walter +was near his death; Wordsworth had shot his bolt, though an arrow +or two were left in the quiver. Keats, Shelley, and Byron +were dead; Milman’s brief vogue was departing. It +seemed as if novels alone could appeal to readers, so great a +change in taste had been wrought by the sixteen years of Waverley +romances. The slim volume of Tennyson was naturally +neglected, though Leigh Hunt reviewed it in the +<i>Tatler</i>. Hallam’s comments in the +<i>Englishman’s Magazine</i>, though enthusiastic (as was +right and natural), were judicious. “The author +imitates no one.” Coleridge did not read all the +book, but noted “things of a good deal of beauty. The +misfortune is that he has begun to write verses without very well +understanding what metre is.” As Tennyson said in +1890, “So I, an old man, who get a poem or poems every day, +might cast a casual glance at a book, and seeing something which +I could not scan or understand, might possibly decide against the +book without further consideration.” As a rule, the +said books are worthless. The number of versifiers makes it +hard, indeed, for the poet to win recognition. One little +new book of rhyme is so like another, and almost all are of so +little interest!</p> +<p>The rare book that differs from the rest has a +<i>bizarrerie</i> with its originality, and in the poems of 1830 +there was, assuredly, more than enough of the bizarre. +There were no hyphens in the double epithets, and words like +“tendriltwine” seemed provokingly affected. A +kind of lusciousness, like that of Keats when under the influence +of Leigh Hunt, may here and there be observed. Such faults +as these catch the indifferent eye when a new book is first +opened, and the volume of 1830 was probably condemned by almost +every reader of the previous generation who deigned to afford it +a glance. Out of fifty-six pieces only twenty-three were +reprinted in the two volumes of 1842, which won for Tennyson the +general recognition of the world of letters. Five or six of +the pieces then left out were added as <i>Juvenilia</i> in the +collected works of 1871, 1872. The whole mass deserves the +attention of students of the poet’s development.</p> +<p>This early volume may be said to contain, in the germ, all the +great original qualities of Tennyson, except the humour of his +rural studies and the elaboration of his Idylls. For +example, in <i>Mariana</i> we first note what may be called his +perfection and accomplishment. The very few alterations +made later are verbal. The moated grange of Mariana in +<i>Measure for Measure</i>, and her mood of desertion and +despair, are elaborated by a precision of truth and with a +perfection of harmony worthy of Shakespeare himself, and minutely +studied from the natural scenes in which the poet was born. +If these verses alone survived out of the wreck of Victorian +literature, they would demonstrate the greatness of the author as +clearly as do the fragments of Sappho. <i>Isabel</i> (a +study of the poet’s mother) is almost as remarkable in its +stately dignity; while <i>Recollections of the Arabian Nights</i> +attest the power of refined luxury in romantic description, and +herald the unmatched beauty of <i>The Lotos-Eaters</i>. +<i>The Poet</i>, again, is a picture of that which Tennyson +himself was to fulfil; and <i>Oriana</i> is a revival of romance, +and of the ballad, not limited to the ballad form as in its +prototype, <i>Helen of Kirkconnell</i>. Curious and +exquisite experiment in metre is indicated in the <i>Leonine +Elegiacs</i>, in <i>Claribel</i>, and several other poems. +Qualities which were not for long to find public expression, +speculative powers brooding, in various moods, on ultimate and +insoluble questions, were attested by <i>The Mystic</i>, and +<i>Supposed Confessions of a Second-rate Sensitive Mind not in +Unity with Itself</i>, an unlucky title of a remarkable +performance. “In this, the most agitated of all his +poems, we find the soul urging onward</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Thro’ utter dark a full-sail’d +skiff,<br /> +Unpiloted i’ the echoing dance<br /> +Of reboant whirlwinds;’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and to the question, ‘Why not believe, then?’ we +have as answer a simile of the sea, which cannot slumber like a +mountain tarn, or</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Draw down into his vexed pools<br /> +All that blue heaven which hues and paves’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>the tranquil inland mere.” <a name="citation16"></a><a +href="#footnote16" class="citation">[16]</a></p> +<p>The poet longs for the faith of his infant days and of his +mother—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Thy mild deep eyes upraised, that knew<br +/> +The beauty and repose of faith,<br /> +And the clear spirit shining thro’.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>That faith is already shaken, and the long struggle for belief +has already begun.</p> +<p>Tennyson, according to Matthew Arnold, was not <i>un esprit +puissant</i>. Other and younger critics, who have attained +to a cock-certain mood of negation, are apt to blame him because, +in fact, he did not finally agree with their opinions. If a +man is necessarily a weakling or a hypocrite because, after +trying all things, he is not an atheist or a materialist, then +the reproach of insincerity or of feebleness of mind must rest +upon Tennyson. But it is manifest that, almost in boyhood, +he had already faced the ideas which, to one of his character, +almost meant despair: he had not kept his eyes closed. To +his extremely self-satisfied accusers we might answer, in lines +from this earliest volume (<i>The Mystic</i>):—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Ye scorn him with an undiscerning scorn;<br +/> +Ye cannot read the marvel in his eye,<br /> +The still serene abstraction.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>He would behold</p> +<blockquote><p>“One shadow in the midst of a great +light,<br /> +One reflex from eternity on time,<br /> +One mighty countenance of perfect calm,<br /> +Awful with most invariable eyes.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>His mystic of these boyish years—</p> +<blockquote><p> “Often lying broad awake, +and yet<br /> +Remaining from the body, and apart<br /> +In intellect and power and will, hath heard<br /> +Time flowing in the middle of the night,<br /> +And all things creeping to a day of doom.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In this poem, never republished by the author, is an attempt +to express an experience which in later years he more than once +endeavoured to set forth in articulate speech, an experience +which was destined to colour his finial speculations on ultimate +problems of God and of the soul. We shall later have to +discuss the opinion of an eminent critic, Mr Frederic Harrison, +that Tennyson’s ideas, theological, evolutionary, and +generally speculative, “followed, rather than created, the +current ideas of his time.” “The train of +thought” (in <i>In Memoriam</i>), writes Mr Harrison, +“is essentially that with which ordinary English readers +had been made familiar by F. D. Maurice, Professor Jowett, Dr +Martineau, <i>Ecce Homo</i>, <i>Hypatia</i>.” Of +these influences only Maurice, and Maurice only orally, could +have reached the author of <i>The Mystic</i> and the <i>Supposed +Confessions</i>. <i>Ecce Homo</i>, <i>Hypatia</i>, Mr +Jowett, were all in the bosom of the future when <i>In +Memoriam</i> was written. Now, <i>The Mystic</i> and the +<i>Supposed Confessions</i> are prior to <i>In Memoriam</i>, +earlier than 1830. Yet they already contain the chief +speculative tendencies of <i>In Memoriam</i>; the growing doubts +caused by evolutionary ideas (then familiar to Tennyson, though +not to “ordinary English readers”), the longing for a +return to childlike faith, and the mystical experiences which +helped Tennyson to recover a faith that abode with him. In +these things he was original. Even as an undergraduate he +was not following “a train of thought made familiar” +by authors who had not yet written a line, and by books which had +not yet been published.</p> +<p>So much, then, of the poet that was to be and of the +philosopher existed in the little volume of the +undergraduate. In <i>The Mystic</i> we notice a phrase, two +words long, which was later to be made familiar, “Daughters +of time, divinely tall,” reproduced in the picture of +Helen:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“A daughter of the Gods, divinely tall,<br +/> + And most divinely fair.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The reflective pieces are certainly of more interest now +(though they seem to have satisfied the poet less) than the +gallery of airy fairy Lilians, Adelines, Rosalinds, and +Eleänores:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Daughters of dreams and of +stories,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>like</p> +<blockquote><p>“Faustine, Fragoletta, Dolores,<br /> +Félise, and Yolande, and Juliette.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Cambridge, which he was soon to leave, did not satisfy the +poet. Oxford did not satisfy Gibbon, or later, Shelley; and +young men of genius are not, in fact, usually content with +universities which, perhaps, are doing their best, but are +neither governed nor populated by minds of the highest and most +original class.</p> +<blockquote><p> “You that do profess to +teach<br /> +And teach us nothing, feeding not the heart.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The universities, in fact, teach a good deal of that which can +be learned, but the best things cannot be taught. The +universities give men leisure, books, and companionship, to learn +for themselves. All tutors cannot be, and at that time few +dreamed of being, men like Jowett and T. H. Green, Gamaliels at +whose feet undergraduates sat with enthusiasm, “did +<i>eagerly</i> frequent,” like Omar Khayyám. +In later years Tennyson found closer relations between dons and +undergraduates, and recorded his affection for his +university. She had supplied him with such companionship as +is rare, and permitted him to “catch the blossom of the +flying terms,” even if tutors and lecturers were creatures +of routine, <i>terriblement enfonces dans la matière</i>, +like the sire of Madelon and Cathos, that honourable citizen.</p> +<p>Tennyson just missed, by going down, a visit of Wordsworth to +Cambridge. The old enthusiast of revolution was justifying +passive obedience: thirty years had turned the almost Jacobin +into an almost Jacobite. Such is the triumph of time. +In the summer of 1830 Tennyson, with Hallam, visited the +Pyrenees. The purpose was political—to aid some +Spanish rebels. The fruit is seen in <i>Œnone</i> and +<i>Mariana in the South</i>.</p> +<p>In March 1831 Tennyson lost his father. “He slept +in the dead man’s bed, earnestly desiring to see his ghost, +but no ghost came.” “You see,” he said, +“ghosts do not generally come to imaginative people;” +a remark very true, though ghosts are attributed to +“imagination.” Whatever causes these phantasms, +it is not the kind of <i>phantasia</i> which is consciously +exercised by the poet. Coleridge had seen far too many +ghosts to believe in them; and Coleridge and Donne apart, with +the hallucinations of Goethe and Shelley, who met themselves, +what poet ever did “see a ghost”? One who saw +Tennyson as he wandered alone at this period called him “a +mysterious being, seemingly lifted high above other mortals, and +having a power of intercourse with the spirit world not granted +to others.” But it was the world of the poet, not of +the “medium.”</p> +<p>The Tennysons stayed on at the parsonage for six years. +But, anticipating their removal, Arthur Hallam in 1831 dealt in +prophecy about the identification in the district of places in +his friend’s poems—“critic after critic will +trace the wanderings of the brook,” as,—in fact, +critic after critic has done. Tennyson disliked—these +“localisers.” The poet’s walks were +shared by Arthur Hallam, then affianced to his sister Emily.</p> +<h2><a name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 22</span>II.<br +/> +POEMS OF 1831–1833.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">By</span> 1832 most of the poems of +Tennyson’s second volume were circulating in MS. among his +friends, and no poet ever had friends more encouraging. +Perhaps bards of to-day do not find an eagerness among their +acquaintance for effusions in manuscript, or in +proof-sheets. The charmed volume appeared at the end of the +year (dated 1833), and Hallam denounced as “infamous” +Lockhart’s review in the <i>Quarterly</i>. Infamous +or not, it is extremely diverting. How Lockhart could miss +the great and abundant poetry remains a marvel. Ten years +later the Scorpion repented, and invited Sterling to review any +book he pleased, for the purpose of enabling him to praise the +two volumes of 1842, which he did gladly. Lockhart hated +all affectation and “preciosity,” of which the new +book was not destitute. He had been among +Wordsworth’s most ardent admirers when Wordsworth had few, +but the memories of the war with the “Cockney School” +clung to him, the war with Leigh Hunt, and now he gave himself up +to satire. Probably he thought that the poet was a member +of a London clique. There is really no excuse for Lockhart, +except that he <i>did</i> repent, that much of his banter was +amusing, and that, above all, his censures were accepted by the +poet, who altered, later, many passages of a fine absurdity +criticised by the infamous reviewer. One could name great +prose-writers, historians, who never altered the wondrous errors +to which their attention was called by critics. +Prose-writers have been more sensitively attached to their +glaring blunders in verifiable facts than was this very sensitive +poet to his occasional lapses in taste.</p> +<p><i>The Lady of Shalott</i>, even in its early form, was more +than enough to give assurance of a poet. In effect it is +even more poetical, in a mysterious way, if infinitely less +human, than the later treatment of the same or a similar legend +in <i>Elaine</i>. It has the charm of Coleridge, and an +allegory of the fatal escape from the world of dreams and shadows +into that of realities may have been really present to the mind +of the young poet, aware that he was “living in +phantasy.” The alterations are usually for the +better. The daffodil is not an aquatic plant, as the poet +seems to assert in the first form—</p> +<blockquote><p>“The yellow-leavèd water-lily,<br /> +The green sheathed daffodilly,<br /> +Tremble in the water chilly,<br /> + Round about Shalott.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Nobody can prefer to keep</p> +<blockquote><p>“Though the squally east wind keenly<br /> +Blew, with folded arms serenely<br /> +By the water stood the queenly<br /> + Lady of Shalott.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>However stoical the Lady may have been, the reader is too +seriously sympathetic with her inevitable discomfort—</p> +<blockquote><p>“All raimented in snowy white<br /> +That loosely flew,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>as she was. The original conclusion was distressing; we +were dropped from the airs of mysterious romance:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“They crossed themselves, their stars they +blest,<br /> +Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire, and guest;<br /> +There lay a parchment on her breast,<br /> +That puzzled more than all the rest<br /> + The well-fed wits at Camelot.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Hitherto we have been “puzzled,” but as with the +sublime incoherences of a dream. Now we meet well-fed wits, +who say, “Bless my stars!” as perhaps we should also +have done in the circumstances—a dead lady arriving, in a +very cold east wind, alone in a boat, for “her blood was +frozen slowly,” as was natural, granting the weather and +the lady’s airy costume. It is certainly matter of +surprise that the young poet’s vision broke up in this +humorous manner. And, after all, it is less surprising that +the Scorpion, finding such matter in a new little book by a new +young man, was more sensitive to the absurdity than to the +romance. But no lover of poetry should have been blind to +the almost flawless excellence of <i>Mariana in the South</i>, +inspired by the landscape of the Provençal tour with +Arthur Hallam. In consequence of Lockhart’s censures, +or in deference to the maturer taste of the poet, <i>The +Miller’s Daughter</i> was greatly altered before +1842. It is one of the earliest, if not the very earliest, +of Tennyson’s domestic English idylls, poems with +conspicuous beauties, but not without sacrifices to that Muse of +the home affections on whom Sir Barnes Newcome delivered his +famous lecture. The seventh stanza perhaps hardly deserved +to be altered, as it is, so as to bring in “minnows” +where “fish” had been the reading, and where +“trout” would best recall an English chalk +stream. To the angler the rising trout, which left the poet +cold, is at least as welcome as the “reflex of a beauteous +form.” “Every woman seems an angel at the +water-side,” said “that good old angler, now with +God,” Thomas Todd Stoddart, and so “the long and +listless boy” found it to be. It is no wonder that +the mother was “<i>slowly</i> brought to yield consent to +my desire.” The domestic affections, in fact, do not +adapt themselves so well to poetry as the passion, unique in +Tennyson, of <i>Fatima</i>. The critics who hunt for +parallels or plagiarisms will note—</p> +<blockquote><p>“O Love, O fire! once he drew<br /> +With one long kiss my whole soul thro’<br /> +My lips,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and will observe Mr Browning’s</p> +<blockquote><p> “Once he kissed<br /> +My soul out in a fiery mist.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>As to <i>Œnone</i>, the scenery of that earliest of the +classical idylls is borrowed from the Pyrenees and the tour with +Hallam. “It is possible that the poem may have been +suggested by Beattie’s <i>Judgment of Paris</i>,” +says Mr Collins; it is also possible that the tale which</p> +<blockquote><p> “Quintus Calaber<br /> +Somewhat lazily handled of old”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>may have reached Tennyson’s mind from an older writer +than Beattie. He is at least as likely to have been +familiar with Greek myth as with the lamented +“Minstrel.” The form of 1833, greatly altered +in 1842, contained such unlucky phrases as “cedar +shadowy,” and “snowycoloured,” +“marblecold,” “violet-eyed”—easy +spoils of criticism. The alterations which converted a +beautiful but faulty into a beautiful and flawless poem perhaps +obscure the significance of Œnone’s “I will not +die alone,” which in the earlier volume directly refers to +the foreseen end of all as narrated in Tennyson’s late +piece, <i>The Death of Œnone</i>. The whole poem +brings to mind the glowing hues of Titian and the famous Homeric +lines on the divine wedlock of Zeus and Hera.</p> +<p>The allegory or moral of <i>The Palace of Art</i> does not +need explanation. Not many of the poems owe more to +revision. The early stanza about Isaiah, with fierce +Ezekiel, and “Eastern Confutzee,” did undeniably +remind the reader, as Lockhart said, of <i>The Groves of +Blarney</i>.</p> +<blockquote><p>“With statues gracing that noble place +in,<br /> + All haythen goddesses most rare,<br /> +Petrarch, Plato, and Nebuchadnezzar,<br /> + All standing naked in the open air.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In the early version the Soul, being too much “up to +date,”</p> +<blockquote><p>“Lit white streams of dazzling +gas,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>like Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Thus her intense, untold delight,<br /> +In deep or vivid colour, smell, and sound,<br /> + Was flattered day and night.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Lockhart was not fond of Sir Walter’s experiments in +gas, the “smell” gave him no “deep, untold +delight,” and his “infamous review” was biassed +by these circumstances.</p> +<p>The volume of 1833 was in nothing more remarkable than in its +proof of the many-sidedness of the author. He offered +mediæval romance, and classical perfection touched with the +romantic spirit, and domestic idyll, of which <i>The May +Queen</i> is probably the most popular example. The +“mysterious being,” conversant with “the +spiritual world,” might have been expected to disdain +topics well within the range of Eliza Cook. He did not +despise but elevated them, and thereby did more to introduce +himself to the wide English public than he could have done by a +century of <i>Fatimas</i> or <i>Lotos-Eaters</i>. On the +other hand, a taste more fastidious, or more perverse, will +scarcely be satisfied with pathos which in process of time has +come to seem “obvious.” The pathos of early +death in the prime of beauty is less obvious in Homer, where +Achilles is to be the victim, or in the laments of the Anthology, +where we only know that the dead bride or maiden was fair; but +the poor May Queen is of her nature rather commonplace.</p> +<blockquote><p>“That good man, the clergyman, has told me +words of peace,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>strikes a note rather resembling the Tennysonian parody of +Wordsworth—</p> +<blockquote><p>“A Mr Wilkinson, a clergyman.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><i>The Lotos-Eaters</i>, of course, is at the opposite pole of +the poet’s genius. A few plain verses of the +<i>Odyssey</i>, almost bald in their reticence, are the <i>point +de repère</i> of the most magical vision expressed in the +most musical verse. Here is the languid charm of Spenser, +enriched with many classical memories, and pictures of natural +beauty gorgeously yet delicately painted. After the +excision of some verses, rather fantastical, in 1842, the poem +became a flawless masterpiece,—one of the eternal +possessions of song.</p> +<p>On the other hand, the opening of <i>The Dream of Fair +Women</i> was marred in 1833 by the grotesque introductory verses +about “a man that sails in a balloon.” Young as +Tennyson was, these freakish passages are a psychological marvel +in the work of one who did not lack the saving sense of +humour. The poet, wafted on the wing and “pinion that +the Theban eagle bear,” cannot conceivably be likened to an +aeronaut waving flags out of a balloon—except in a spirit +of self-mockery which was not Tennyson’s. His +remarkable self-discipline in excising the fantastic and +superfluous, and reducing his work to its classical perfection of +thought and form, is nowhere more remarkable than in this +magnificent vision. It is probably by mere accidental +coincidence of thought that, in the verses <i>To J. S.</i> (James +Spedding), Tennyson reproduces the noble speech on the +warrior’s death which Sir Walter Scott places in the lips +of the great Dundee: “It is the memory which the soldier +leaves behind him, like the long train of light that follows the +sunken sun, <i>that</i> is all that is worth caring for,” +the light which lingers eternally on the hills of Atholl. +Tennyson’s lines are a close parallel:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“His memory long will live alone<br /> + In all our hearts, as mournful light<br /> +That broods above the fallen sun,<br /> + And dwells in heaven half the night.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Though Tennyson disliked the exhibition of “the chips of +the workshop,” we have commented on them, on the early +readings of the early volumes. They may be regarded more +properly as the sketches of a master than as “chips,” +and do more than merely engage the idle curiosity of the fanatics +of first editions. They prove that the poet was studious of +perfection, and wisely studious, for his alterations, unlike +those of some authors, were almost invariably for the better, the +saner, the more mature in taste. The early readings are +also worth notice, because they partially explain, by their +occasionally fantastic and humourless character, the lack of +early and general recognition of the poet’s genius. +The native prejudice of mankind is not in favour of a new +poet. Of new poets there are always so many, most of them +bad, that nature has protected mankind by an armour of +suspiciousness. The world, and Lockhart, easily found good +reasons for distrusting this new claimant of the ivy and the +bays: moreover, since about 1814 there had been a reaction +against new poetry. The market was glutted. Scott had +set everybody on reading, and too many on writing, novels. +The great reaction of the century against all forms of literature +except prose fiction had begun. Near the very date of +Tennyson’s first volume Bulwer Lytton, as we saw, had +frankly explained that he wrote novels because nobody would look +at anything else. Tennyson had to overcome this universal, +or all but universal, indifference to new poetry, and, after +being silent for ten years, overcome it he did—a remarkable +victory of art and of patient courage. Times were even +worse for poets than to-day. Three hundred copies of the +new volume were sold! But Tennyson’s friends were not +puffers in league with pushing publishers.</p> +<p>Meanwhile the poet in 1833 went on quietly and undefeated with +his work. He composed <i>The Gardener’s Daughter</i>, +and was at work on the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i>, suppressed +till the ninth year, on the Horatian plan. Many poems were +produced (and even written out, which a number of his pieces +never were), and were left in manuscript till they appeared in +the Biography. Most of these are so little worthy of the +author that the marvel is how he came to write them—in what +uninspired hours. Unlike Wordsworth, he could weed the +tares from his wheat. His studies were in Greek, German, +Italian, history (a little), and chemistry, botany, and +electricity—“cross-grained Muses,” these +last.</p> +<p>It was on September 15, 1833, that Arthur Hallam died. +Unheralded by sign or symptom of disease as it was, the news fell +like a thunderbolt from a serene sky. Tennyson’s and +Hallam’s love had been “passing the love of +women.” A blow like this drives a man on the rocks of +the ultimate, the insoluble problems of destiny. “Is +this the end?” Nourished as on the milk of lions, on +the elevating and strengthening doctrines of popular science, +trained from childhood to forego hope and attend evening +lectures, the young critics of our generation find Tennyson a +weakling because he had hopes and fears concerning the ultimate +renewal of what was more than half his life—his +friendship.</p> +<blockquote><p>“That faith I fain would keep,<br /> + That hope I’ll not forego:<br /> +Eternal be the sleep—<br /> + Unless to waken so,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>wrote Lockhart, and the verses echoed ceaselessly in the +widowed heart of Carlyle. These men, it is part of the duty +of critics later born to remember, were not children or cowards, +though they dreamed, and hoped, and feared. We ought to +make allowance for failings incident to an age not yet fully +enlightened by popular science, and still undivorced from +spiritual ideas that are as old as the human race, and perhaps +not likely to perish while that race exists. Now and then +even scientific men have been mistaken, especially when they have +declined to examine evidence, as in this problem of the +transcendental nature of the human spirit they usually do. +At all events Tennyson was unconvinced that death is the end, and +shortly after the fatal tidings arrived from Vienna he began to +write fragments in verse preluding to the poem of <i>In +Memoriam</i>. He also began, in a mood of great misery, +<i>The Two Voices</i>; <i>or</i>, <i>Thoughts of a +Suicide</i>. The poem seems to have been partly done by +September 1834, when Spedding commented on it, and on the +beautiful <i>Sir Galahad</i>, “intended for something of a +male counterpart to <i>St Agnes</i>.” The <i>Morte +d’Arthur</i> Tennyson then thought “the best thing I +have managed lately.” Very early in 1835 many stanzas +of <i>In Memoriam</i> had taken form. “I do not wish +to be dragged forward in any shape before the reading public at +present,” wrote the poet, when he heard that Mill desired +to write on him. His <i>Œnone</i> he had brought to +its new perfection, and did not desire comments on work now +several years old. He also wrote his <i>Ulysses</i> and his +<i>Tithonus</i>.</p> +<p>If ever the term “morbid” could have been applied +to Tennyson, it would have been in the years immediately +following the death of Arthur Hallam. But the application +would have been unjust. True, the poet was living out of +the world; he was unhappy, and he was, as people say, +“doing nothing.” He was so poor that he sold +his Chancellor’s prize gold medal, and he did not</p> +<blockquote><p> “Scan his whole horizon<br +/> +In quest of what he could clap eyes on,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>in the way of money-making, which another poet describes as +the normal attitude of all men as well as of pirates. A +careless observer would have thought that the poet was +dawdling. But he dwelt in no Castle of Indolence; he +studied, he composed, he corrected his verses: like Sir Walter in +Liddesdale, “he was making himsel’ a’ the +time.” He did not neglect the movements of the great +world in that dawn of discontent with the philosophy of +commercialism. But it was not his vocation to plunge into +the fray, and on to platforms.</p> +<p>It is a very rare thing anywhere, especially in England, for a +man deliberately to choose poetry as the duty of his life, and to +remain loyal, as a consequence, to the bride of St +Francis—Poverty. This loyalty Tennyson maintained, +even under the temptation to make money in recognised ways +presented by his new-born love for his future wife, Miss Emily +Sellwood. They had first met in 1830, when she, a girl of +seventeen, seemed to him like “a Dryad or an Oread +wandering here.” But admiration became the affection +of a lifetime when Tennyson met Miss Sellwood as bridesmaid to +her sister, the bride of his brother Charles, in 1836. The +poet could not afford to marry, and, like the hero of <i>Locksley +Hall</i>, he may have asked himself, “What is that which I +should do?” By 1840 he had done nothing tangible and +lucrative, and correspondence between the lovers was +forbidden. That neither dreamed of Tennyson’s +deserting poetry for a more normal profession proved of great +benefit to the world. The course is one which could only be +justified by the absolute certainty of possessing genius.</p> +<h2><a name="page35"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +35</span>III.<br /> +1837–1842.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">In</span> 1837 the Tennysons left the old +rectory; till 1840 they lived at High Beech in Epping Forest, and +after a brief stay at Tunbridge Wells went to Boxley, near +Maidstone.</p> +<p>It appears that at last the poet had “beat his music +out,” though his friends “still tried to cheer +him.” But the man who wrote <i>Ulysses</i> when his +grief was fresh could not be suspected of declining into a +hypochondriac. “If I mean to make my mark at all, it +must be by shortness,” he said at this time; “for the +men before me had been so diffuse, and most of the big things, +except <i>King Arthur</i>, had been done.” The age +had not <i>la tête épique</i>: Poe had announced the +paradox that there is no such thing as a long poem, and even in +dealing with Arthur, Tennyson followed the example of Theocritus +in writing, not an epic, but epic idylls. Long poems suit +an age of listeners, for which they were originally composed, or +of leisure and few books. At present epics are read for +duty’s sake, not for the only valid reason, “for +human pleasure,” in FitzGerald’s phrase.</p> +<p>Between 1838 and 1840 Tennyson made some brief tours in +England with FitzGerald, and, coming from Coventry, wrote +<i>Godiva</i>. His engagement with Miss Sellwood seemed to +be adjourned <i>sine die</i>, as they were forbidden to +correspond.</p> +<p>By 1841 Tennyson was living at Mablethorpe on the Lincolnshire +coast; working at his volumes of 1842, much urged by FitzGerald +and American admirers, who had heard of the poet through +Emerson. Moxon was to be the publisher, himself something +of a poet; but early in 1842 he had not yet received the +MS. Perhaps Emerson heard of Tennyson through Carlyle, who, +says Sterling, “said more in your praise than in any +one’s except Cromwell, and an American backwoodsman who has +killed thirty or forty people with a bowie-knife.” +Carlyle at this time was much attached to Lockhart, editor of the +<i>Quarterly Review</i>, and it may have been Carlyle who +converted Lockhart to admiration of his old victim. Carlyle +had very little more appreciation of Keats than had Byron, or (in +early days) Lockhart, and it was probably as much the man of +heroic physical mould, “a life-guardsman spoilt by making +poetry,” and the unaffected companion over a pipe, as the +poet, that attracted him in Tennyson. As we saw, when the +two triumphant volumes of 1842 did appear, Lockhart asked +Sterling to review whatever book he pleased (meaning the Poems) +in the <i>Quarterly</i>. The praise of Sterling may seem +lukewarm to us, especially when compared with that of Spedding in +the <i>Edinburgh</i>. But Sterling, and Lockhart too, were +obliged to “gang warily.” Lockhart had, to his +constant annoyance, “a partner, Mr Croker,” and I +have heard from the late Dean Boyle that Mr Croker was much +annoyed by even the mild applause yielded in the <i>Quarterly</i> +to the author of the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i>.</p> +<p>While preparing the volumes of 1842 at Boxley, +Tennyson’s life was divided between London and the society +of his brother-in-law, Mr Edmund Lushington, the great Greek +scholar and Professor of Greek at Glasgow University. There +was in Mr Lushington’s personal aspect, and noble +simplicity of manner and character, something that strongly +resembled Tennyson himself. Among their common friends were +Lord Houghton (Monckton Milnes), Mr Lear of the <i>Book of +Nonsense</i> (“with such a pencil, such a pen”), Mr +Venables (who at school modified the profile of Thackeray), and +Lord Kelvin. In town Tennyson met his friends at The Cock, +which he rendered classic; among them were Thackeray, Forster, +Maclise, and Dickens. The times were stirring: social +agitation, and “Carol philosophy” in Dickens, with +growls from Carlyle, marked the period. There was also a +kind of optimism in the air, a prophetic optimism, not yet +fulfilled.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Fly, happy happy sails, and bear the +Press!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>That mission no longer strikes us as exquisitely +felicitous. “The mission of the Cross,” and of +the missionaries, means international complications; and +“the markets of the Golden Year” are precisely the +most fruitful causes of wars and rumours of wars:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “Sea and air are dark<br +/> +With great contrivances of Power.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Tennyson’s was not an unmitigated optimism, and had no +special confidence in</p> +<blockquote><p>“The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings<br +/> + That every sophister can lime.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>His political poetry, in fact, was very unlike the socialist +chants of Mr William Morris, or <i>Songs before +Sunrise</i>. He had nothing to say about</p> +<blockquote><p>“The blood on the hands of the King,<br /> + And the lie on the lips of the Priest.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The hands of Presidents have not always been unstained; nor +are statements of a mythical nature confined to the lips of the +clergy. The poet was anxious that freedom should +“broaden down,” but “slowly,” not with +indelicate haste. Persons who are more in a hurry will +never care for the political poems, and it is certain that +Tennyson did not feel sympathetically inclined towards the +Iberian patriot who said that his darling desire was “to +cut the throats of all the <i>curés</i>,” like some +Covenanters of old. “Mais vous connaissez mon +cœur”—“and a pretty black one it +is,” thought young Tennyson. So cautious in youth, +during his Pyrenean tour with Hallam in 1830, Tennyson could not +become a convinced revolutionary later. We must accept him +with his limitations: nor must we confuse him with the hero of +his <i>Locksley Hall</i>, one of the most popular, and most +parodied, of the poems of 1842: full of beautiful images and +“confusions of a wasted youth,” a youth dramatically +conceived, and in no way autobiographical.</p> +<p>In so marvellous a treasure of precious things as the volumes +of 1842, perhaps none is more splendid, perfect, and perdurable +than the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i>. It had been written +seven years earlier, and pronounced by the poet “not +bad.” Tennyson was never, perhaps, a very deep +Arthurian student. A little cheap copy of Malory was his +companion. <a name="citation39"></a><a href="#footnote39" +class="citation">[39]</a> He does not appear to have gone +deeply into the French and German “literature of the +subject.” Malory’s compilation (1485) from +French and English sources, with the <i>Mabinogion</i> of Lady +Charlotte Guest, sufficed for him as materials. The whole +poem, enshrined in the memory of all lovers of verse, is richly +studded, as the hilt of Excalibur, with classical memories. +“A faint Homeric echo” it is not, nor a Virgilian +echo, but the absolute voice of old romance, a thing that might +have been chanted by</p> +<blockquote><p>“The lonely maiden of the Lake”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>when</p> +<blockquote><p>“Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the +deeps,<br /> +Upon the hidden bases of the hills.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Perhaps the most exquisite adaptation of all are the lines +from the <i>Odyssey</i>—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Where falls not hail nor rain, nor any +snow.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“Softly through the flutes of the Grecians” came +first these Elysian numbers, then through Lucretius, then through +Tennyson’s own <i>Lucretius</i>, then in Mr +Swinburne’s <i>Atalanta in Calydon</i>:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Lands indiscoverable in the unheard-of +west<br /> +Round which the strong stream of a sacred sea<br /> +Rolls without wind for ever, and the snow<br /> +There shows not her white wings and windy feet,<br /> +Nor thunder nor swift rain saith anything,<br /> +Nor the sun burns, but all things rest and thrive.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>So fortunate in their transmission through poets have been the +lines of “the Ionian father of the rest,” the +greatest of them all.</p> +<p>In the variety of excellences which marks Tennyson, the new +English idylls of 1842 hold their prominent place. Nothing +can be more exquisite and more English than the picture of +“the garden that I love.” Theocritus cannot be +surpassed; but the idyll matches to the seventh of his, where it +is most closely followed, and possesses such a picture of a girl +as the Sicilian never tried to paint.</p> +<p><i>Dora</i> is another idyll, resembling the work of a +Wordsworth in a clime softer than that of the Fells. The +lays of Edwin Morris and Edward Bull are not among the more +enduring of even the playful poems. The <i>St Simeon +Stylites</i> appears “made to the hand” of the author +of <i>Men and Women</i> rather than of Tennyson. The +grotesque vanity of the anchorite is so remote from us, that we +can scarcely judge of the truth of the picture, though the East +has still her parallels to St Simeon. From the almost, +perhaps quite, incredible ascetic the poet lightly turns to +“society verse” lifted up into the air of poetry, in +the charm of <i>The Talking Oak</i>, and the happy flitting +sketches of actual history; and thence to the strength and +passion of <i>Love and Duty</i>. Shall</p> + +<blockquote><p> “Sin +itself be found<br /> +The cloudy porch oft opening on the Sun?”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>That this is the province of sin is a pretty popular modern +moral. But Honour is the better part, and here was a poet +who had the courage to say so; though, to be sure, the words ring +strange in an age when highly respectable matrons assure us that +“passion,” like charity, covers a multitude of +sins. <i>Love and Duty</i>, we must admit, is “early +Victorian.”</p> +<p>The <i>Ulysses</i> is almost a rival to the <i>Morte +d’Arthur</i>. It is of an early date, after Arthur +Hallam’s death, and Thackeray speaks of the poet chanting +his</p> +<blockquote><p>“Great Achilles whom we knew,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>as if he thought that this was in Cambridge days. But it +is later than these. Tennyson said, “<i>Ulysses</i> +was written soon after Arthur Hallam’s death, and gave my +feeling about the need of going forward, and braving the struggle +of life, perhaps more simply than anything in <i>In +Memoriam</i>.” Assuredly the expression is more +simple, and more noble, and the personal emotion more dignified +for the classic veil. When the plaintive Pessimist +(“‘proud of the title,’ as the Living Skeleton +said when they showed him”) tells us that “not to +have been born is best,” we may answer with +Ulysses—</p> +<blockquote><p> “Life piled on life<br /> +Were all too little.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The Ulysses of Tennyson, of course, is Dante’s Ulysses, +not Homer’s Odysseus, who brought home to Ithaca not one of +his mariners. His last known adventure, the journey to the +land of men who knew not the savour of salt, Odysseus was to make +on foot and alone; so spake the ghost of Tiresias within the +poplar pale of Persephone.</p> +<p><i>The Two Voices</i> expresses the contest of doubts and +griefs with the spirit of endurance and joy which speaks alone in +<i>Ulysses</i>. The man who is unhappy, but does not want +to put an end to himself, has certainly the better of the +argument with the despairing Voice. The arguments of +“that barren Voice” are, indeed, remarkably deficient +in cogency and logic, if we can bring ourselves to strip the +discussion of its poetry. The original title, <i>Thoughts +of a Suicide</i>, was inappropriate. The suicidal +suggestions are promptly faced and confuted, and the mood of the +author is throughout that of one who thinks life worth +living:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Whatever crazy sorrow saith,<br /> +No life that breathes with human breath<br /> +Has ever truly long’d for death.</p> +<p>’Tis life whereof our nerves are scant,<br /> +Oh life, not death, for which we pant;<br /> +More life, and fuller, that I want.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This appears to be a satisfactory reply to the persons who eke +out a livelihood by publishing pessimistic books, and hooting, as +the great Alexandre Dumas says, at the great drama of Life.</p> +<p>With <i>The Day-Dream</i> (of The Sleeping Beauty) Tennyson +again displays his matchless range of powers. Verse of +Society rises into a charmed and musical fantasy, passing from +the Berlin-wool work of the period</p> +<blockquote><p>(“Take the broidery frame, and add<br /> +A crimson to the quaint Macaw”)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>into the enchanted land of the fable: princes immortal, +princesses eternally young and fair. The <i>St Agnes</i> +and <i>Sir Galahad</i>, companion pieces, contain the romance, as +<i>St Simeon Stylites</i> shows the repulsive side of asceticism; +for the saint and the knight are young, beautiful, and eager as +St Theresa in her childhood. It has been said, I do not +know on what authority, that the poet had no recollection of +composing <i>Sir Galahad</i>, any more than Scott remembered +composing <i>The Bride of Lammermoor</i>, or Thackeray parts of +<i>Pendennis</i>. The haunting of Tennyson’s mind by +the Arthurian legends prompted also the lovely fragment on the +Queen’s last Maying, <i>Sir Launcelot and Queen +Guinevere</i>, a thing of perfect charm and music. The +ballads of <i>Lady Clare</i> and <i>The Lord of Burleigh</i> are +not examples of the poet in his strength; for his power and +fantasy we must turn to <i>The Vision of Sin</i>, where the early +passages have the languid voluptuous music of <i>The +Lotos-Eaters</i>, with the ethical element superadded, while the +portion beginning—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Wrinkled ostler, grim and thin!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>is in parts reminiscent of Burns’s <i>Jolly +Beggars</i>. In <i>Break</i>, <i>Break</i>, <i>Break</i>, +we hear a note prelusive to <i>In Memoriam</i>, much of which was +already composed.</p> +<p>The Poems of 1842 are always vocal in the memories of all +readers of English verse. None are more familiar, at least +to men of the generations which immediately followed +Tennyson’s. FitzGerald was apt to think that the poet +never again attained the same level, and I venture to suppose +that he never rose above it. For FitzGerald’s +opinion, right or wrong, it is easy to account. He had seen +all the pieces in manuscript; they were his cherished possession +before the world knew them. <i>C’est mon homme</i>, +he might have said of Tennyson, as Boileau said of +Molière. Before the public awoke FitzGerald had +“discovered Tennyson,” and that at the age most open +to poetry and most enthusiastic in friendship. Again, the +Poems of 1842 were <i>short</i>, while <i>The Princess</i>, +<i>Maud</i>, and <i>The Idylls of the King</i> were relatively +long, and, with <i>In Memoriam</i>, possessed unity of +subject. They lacked the rich, the unexampled variety of +topic, treatment, and theme which marks the Poems of 1842. +These were all reasons why FitzGerald should think that the two +slim green volumes held the poet’s work at its highest +level. Perhaps he was not wrong, after all.</p> +<h2><a name="page46"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 46</span>IV.<br +/> +1842–848—THE PRINCESS.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> Poems, and such criticisms as +those of Spedding and Sterling, gave Tennyson his place. +All the world of letters heard of him. Dean Bradley tells +us how he took Oxford by storm in the days of the +undergraduateship of Clough and Matthew Arnold. Probably +both of these young writers did not share the undergraduate +enthusiasm. Mr Arnold, we know, did not reckon Tennyson +<i>un esprit puissant</i>. Like Wordsworth (who thought +Tennyson “decidedly the first of our living poets, . . . he +has expressed in the strongest terms his gratitude to my +writings”), Arnold was no fervent admirer of his +contemporaries. Besides, if Tennyson’s work is +“a criticism of Life,” the moral criticism, so far, +was hidden in flowers, like the sword of Aristogiton at the +feast. But, on the whole, Tennyson had won the young men +who cared for poetry, though Sir Robert Peel had never heard of +him: and to win the young, as Theocritus desired to do, is more +than half the battle. On September 8, 1842, the poet was +able to tell Mr Lushington that “500 of my books are sold; +according to Moxon’s brother, I have made a +sensation.” The sales were not like those of +<i>Childe Harold</i> or <i>Marmion</i>; but for some twenty years +new poetry had not sold at all. Novels had come in about +1814, and few wanted or bought recent verse. But Carlyle +was converted. He spoke no more of a spoiled +guardsman. “If you knew what my relation has been to +the thing called ‘English Poetry’ for many years +back, you would think such a fact” (his pleasure in the +book) “surprising.” Carlyle had been living (as +Mrs Carlyle too well knew) in Oliver Cromwell, a hero who +probably took no delight in <i>Lycidas</i> or <i>Comus</i>, in +Lovelace or Carew. “I would give all my poetry to +have made one song like that,” said Tennyson of +Lovelace’s <i>Althea</i>. But Noll would have +disregarded them all alike, and Carlyle was full of the spirit of +the Protector. To conquer him was indeed a victory for +Tennyson; while Dickens, not a reading man, expressed his +“earnest and sincere homage.”</p> +<p>But Tennyson was not successful in the modern way. +Nobody “interviewed” him. His photograph, of +course, with disquisitions on his pipes and slippers, did not +adorn the literary press. His literary income was not +magnified by penny-a-liners. He did not become a lion; he +never would roar and shake his mane in drawing-rooms. +Lockhart held that Society was the most agreeable form of the +stage: the dresses and actresses incomparably the +prettiest. But Tennyson liked Society no better than did +General Gordon. He had friends enough, and no desire for +new acquaintances. Indeed, his fortune was shattered at +this time by a strange investment in wood-carving by +machinery. Ruskin had only just begun to write, and +wood-carving by machinery was still deemed an enterprise at once +philanthropic and æsthetic. “My father’s +worldly goods were all gone,” says Lord Tennyson. The +poet’s health suffered extremely: he tried a fashionable +“cure” at Cheltenham, where he saw miracles of +healing, but underwent none. In September 1845 Peel was +moved by Lord Houghton to recommend the poet for a pension +(£200 annually). “I have done nothing slavish +to get it: I never even solicited for it either by myself or +others.” Like Dr Johnson, he honourably accepted what +was offered in honour. For some reason many persons who +write in the press are always maddened when such good fortune, +however small, however well merited, falls to a brother in +letters. They, of course, were “causelessly +bitter.” “Let them rave!”</p> +<p>If few of the rewards of literary success arrived, the +penalties at once began, and only ceased with the poet’s +existence. “If you only knew what a nuisance these +volumes of verse are! Rascals send me theirs per post from +America, and I have more than once been knocked up out of bed to +pay three or four shillings for books of which I can’t get +through one page, for of all books the most insipid reading is +second-rate verse.”</p> +<p>Would that versifiers took the warning! Tennyson had not +sent his little firstlings to Coleridge and Wordsworth: they are +only the hopeless rhymers who bombard men of letters with their +lyrics and tragedies.</p> +<p>Mr Browning was a sufferer. To one young twitterer he +replied in the usual way. The bard wrote acknowledging the +letter, but asking for a definite criticism. “I do +not think myself a Shakespeare or a Milton, but I <i>know</i> I +am better than Mr Coventry Patmore or Mr Austin +Dobson.” Mr Browning tried to procrastinate: he was +already deeply engaged with earlier arrivals of volumes of +song. The poet was hurt, not angry; he had expected other +things from Mr Browning: <i>he</i> ought to know his duty to +youth. At the intercession of a relation Mr Browning now +did his best, and the minstrel, satisfied at last, repeated his +conviction of his superiority to the authors of <i>The Angel in +the House</i> and <i>Beau Brocade</i>. Probably no man, not +even Mr Gladstone, ever suffered so much from minstrels as +Tennyson. He did not suffer them gladly.</p> +<p>In 1846 the Poems reached their fourth edition. Sir +Edward Bulwer Lytton (bitten by what fly who knows?) attacked +Tennyson in <i>The New Timon</i>, a forgotten satire. We do +not understand the ways of that generation. The cheap and +spiteful <i>genre</i> of satire, its forged morality, its sham +indignation, its appeal to the ape-like passions, has gone +out. Lytton had suffered many things (not in verse) from +Jeames Yellowplush: I do not know that he hit back at Thackeray, +but he “passed it on” to Thackeray’s old +college companion. Tennyson, for once, replied (in +<i>Punch</i>: the verses were sent thither by John Forster); the +answer was one of magnificent contempt. But he soon decided +that</p> +<blockquote><p>“The noblest answer unto such<br /> +Is perfect stillness when they brawl.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Long afterwards the poet dedicated a work to the son of Lord +Lytton. He replied to no more satirists. <a +name="citation50"></a><a href="#footnote50" +class="citation">[50]</a> Our difficulty, of course, is to +conceive such an attack coming from a man of Lytton’s +position and genius. He was no hungry hack, and could, and +did, do infinitely better things than “stand in a false +following” of Pope. Probably Lytton had a false idea +that Tennyson was a rich man, a branch of his family being +affluent, and so resented the little pension. The poet was +so far from rich in 1846, and even after the publication of +<i>The Princess</i>, that his marriage had still to be deferred +for four years.</p> +<p>On reading <i>The Princess</i> afresh one is impressed, +despite old familiarity, with the extraordinary influence of its +beauty. Here are, indeed, the best words best placed, and +that curious felicity of style which makes every line a marvel, +and an eternal possession. It is as if Tennyson had taken +the advice which Keats gave to Shelley, “Load every rift +with ore.” To choose but one or two examples, how the +purest and freshest impression of nature is re-created in mind +and memory by the picture of Melissa with</p> +<blockquote><p> “All her thoughts as fair +within her eyes,<br /> +As bottom agates seen to wave and float<br /> +In crystal currents of clear morning seas.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The lyric, “Tears, idle tears,” is far beyond +praise: once read it seems like a thing that has always existed +in the world of poetic archetypes, and has now been not so much +composed as discovered and revealed. The many pictures and +similitudes in <i>The Princess</i> have a magical +gorgeousness:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “From +the illumined hall<br /> +Long lanes of splendour slanted o’er a press<br /> +Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes,<br /> +And rainbow robes, and gems and gem-like eyes,<br /> +And gold and golden heads; they to and fro<br /> +Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, some pale.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The “small sweet Idyll” from</p> +<blockquote><p>“A volume of the poets of her +land”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>pure Theocritus. It has been admirably rendered into +Greek by Mr Gilbert Murray. The exquisite beauties of style +are not less exquisitely blended in the confusions of a dream, +for a dream is the thing most akin to <i>The Princess</i>. +Time does not exist in the realm of Gama, or in the ideal +university of Ida. We have a bookless North, severed but by +a frontier pillar from a golden and learned South. The +arts, from architecture to miniature-painting, are in their +highest perfection, while knights still tourney in armour, and +the quarrel of two nations is decided as in the gentle and joyous +passage of arms at Ashby de la Zouche. Such confusions are +purposefully dream-like: the vision being a composite thing, as +dreams are, haunted by the modern scene of the holiday in the +park, the “gallant glorious chronicle,” the Abbey, +and that “old crusading knight austere,” Sir +Ralph. The seven narrators of the scheme are like the +“split personalities” of dreams, and the whole scheme +is of great technical skill. The earlier editions lacked +the beautiful songs of the ladies, and that additional trait of +dream, the strange trance-like seizures of the Prince: +“fallings from us, vanishings,” in Wordsworthian +phrase; instances of “dissociation,” in modern +psychological terminology. Tennyson himself, like Shelley +and Wordsworth, had experience of this kind of dreaming awake +which he attributes to his Prince, to strengthen the shadowy yet +brilliant character of his romance. It is a thing of normal +and natural <i>points de repère</i>; of daylight +suggestion, touched as with the magnifying and intensifying +elements of haschish-begotten phantasmagoria. In the same +way opium raised into the region of brilliant vision that passage +of Purchas which Coleridge was reading before he dreamed <i>Kubla +Khan</i>. But in Tennyson the effects were deliberately +sought and secured.</p> +<p>One might conjecture, though Lord Tennyson says nothing on the +subject, that among the suggestions for <i>The Princess</i> was +the opening of <i>Love’s Labour’s Lost</i>. +Here the King of Navarre devises the College of Recluses, which +is broken up by the arrival of the Princess of France, Rosaline, +and the other ladies:—</p> +<blockquote><p><i>King</i>. Our Court shall be a little +Academe,<br /> +Still and contemplative in living art.<br /> +You three, Biron, Domain, and Longaville,<br /> +Have sworn for three years’ term to live with me,<br /> +My fellow-scholars, and to keep those statutes.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p><i>Biron</i>. That is, to live and study here three +years.<br /> +But there are other strict observances;<br /> +As, not to see a woman in that term.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p>[<i>Reads</i>] ‘That no woman shalt come within a +mile of my Court:’ Hath this been proclaimed?</p> +<p><i>Long</i>. Four days ago.</p> +<p><i>Biron</i>. Let’s see the penalty. +[<i>Reads</i>] ‘On pain of losing her +tongue.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The Princess then arrives with her ladies, as the Prince does +with Cyril and Florian, as Charles did, with Buckingham, in +Spain. The conclusion of Shakespeare is Tennyson’s +conclusion—</p> +<blockquote><p>“We cannot cross the cause why we are +born.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The later poet reverses the attitude of the sexes in +<i>Love’s Labour’s Lost</i>: it is the women who make +and break the vow; and the women in <i>The Princess</i> insist on +the “grand, epic, homicidal” scenes, while the men +are debarred, more or less, from a sportive treatment of the +subject. The tavern catch of Cyril; the laughable pursuit +of the Prince by the feminine Proctors; the draggled appearance +of the adventurers in female garb, are concessions to the humour +of the situation. Shakespeare would certainly have given us +the song of Cyril at the picnic, and comic enough the effect +would have been on the stage. It may be a gross employment, +but <i>The Princess</i>, with the pretty chorus of girl +undergraduates,</p> +<blockquote><p>“In colours gayer than the morning +mist,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>went reasonably well in opera. Merely considered as a +romantic fiction, <i>The Princess</i> presents higher proofs of +original narrative genius than any other such attempt by its +author.</p> +<p>The poem is far from being deficient in that human interest +which Shelley said that it was as vain to ask from <i>him</i>, as +to seek to buy a leg of mutton at a gin-shop. The +characters, the protagonists, with Cyril, Melissa, Lady Blanche, +the child Aglaia, King Gama, the other king, Arac, and the +hero’s mother—beautifully studied from the mother of +the poet—are all sufficiently human. But they seem to +waver in the magic air, “as all the golden autumn woodland +reels” athwart the fires of autumn leaves. For these +reasons, and because of the designed fantasy of the whole +composition, <i>The Princess</i> is essentially a poem for the +true lovers of poetry, of Spenser and of Coleridge. The +serious motive, the question of Woman, her wrongs, her rights, +her education, her capabilities, was not “in the air” +in 1847. To be sure it had often been “in the +air.” The Alexandrian Platonists, the Renaissance, +even the age of Anne, had their emancipated and learned +ladies. Early Greece had Sappho, Corinna, and Erinna, the +first the chief of lyric poets, even in her fragments, the two +others applauded by all Hellas. The French Revolution had +begotten Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and her <i>Vindication of the +Rights of Women</i>, and in France George Sand was prominent and +emancipated enough while the poet wrote. But, the question +of love apart, George Sand was “very, very woman,” +shining as a domestic character and fond of needlework. +England was not excited about the question which has since +produced so many disputants, inevitably shrill, and has not been +greatly meddled with by women of genius, George Eliot or Mrs +Oliphant. The poem, in the public indifference as to +feminine education, came rather prematurely. We have now +ladies’ colleges, not in haunts remote from man, but by the +sedged banks of Cam and Cherwell. There have been no +revolutionary results: no boys have spied these chaste nests, +with echoing romantic consequences. The beauty and +splendour of the Princess’s university have not arisen in +light and colour, and it is only at St Andrews that girls wear +the academic and becoming costume of the scarlet gown. The +real is far below the ideal, but the real in 1847 seemed +eminently remote, or even impossible.</p> +<p>The learned Princess herself was not on our level as to +knowledge and the past of womankind. She knew not of their +masterly position in the law of ancient Egypt. +Gynæocracy and matriarchy, the woman the head of the savage +or prehistoric group, were things hidden from her. She +“glanced at the Lycian custom,” but not at the +Pictish, a custom which would have suited George Sand to a +marvel. She maligned the Hottentots.</p> +<blockquote><p>“The highest is the measure of the man,<br +/> +And not the Kaffir, Hottentot, Malay.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The Hottentots had long ago anticipated the Princess and her +shrill modern sisterhood. If we take the Greeks, or even +ourselves, we may say, with Dampier (1689), “The Hodmadods, +though a nasty people, yet are gentlemen to these” as +regards the position of women. Let us hear Mr Hartland: +“In every Hottentot’s house the wife is +supreme. Her husband, poor fellow, though he may wield wide +power and influence out of doors, at home dare not even take a +mouthful of sour-milk out of the household vat without her +permission . . . The highest oath a man can take is to swear by +his eldest sister, and if he abuses this name he forfeits to her +his finest goods and sheep.”</p> +<p>However, in 1847 England had not yet thought of imitating the +Hodmadods. Consequently, and by reason of the purely +literary and elaborately fantastical character of <i>The +Princess</i>, it was not of a nature to increase the poet’s +fame and success. “My book is out, and I hate it, and +so no doubt will you,” Tennyson wrote to FitzGerald, who +hated it and said so. “Like Carlyle, I gave up all +hopes of him after <i>The Princess</i>,” indeed it was not +apt to conciliate Carlyle. “None of the songs had the +old champagne flavour,” said Fitz; and Lord Tennyson adds, +“Nothing either by Thackeray or by my father met +FitzGerald’s approbation unless he had first seen it in +manuscript.” This prejudice was very human. +Lord Tennyson remarks, as to the poet’s meaning in this +work, born too early, that “the sooner woman finds out, +before the great educational movement begins, that ‘woman +is not undeveloped man, but diverse,’ the better it will be +for the progress of the world.”</p> +<p>But probably the “educational movement” will not +make much difference to womankind on the whole. The old +Platonic remark that woman “does the same things as man, +but not so well,” will eternally hold good, at least in the +arts, and in letters, except in rare cases of genius. A new +Jeanne d’Arc, the most signal example of absolute genius in +history, will not come again; and the ages have waited vainly for +a new Sappho or a new Jane Austen. Literature, poetry, +painting, have always been fields open to woman. But two +names exhaust the roll of women of the highest rank in +letters—Sappho and Jane Austen. And “when did +woman ever yet invent?” In “arts of +government” Elizabeth had courage, and just saving sense +enough to yield to Cecil at the eleventh hour, and escape the +fate of “her sister and her foe,” the beautiful +unhappy queen who told her ladies that she dared to look on +whatever men dared to do, and herself would do it if her strength +so served her.” <a name="citation58"></a><a +href="#footnote58" class="citation">[58]</a> “The +foundress of the Babylonian walls” is a myth; “the +Rhodope that built the Pyramid” is not a creditable myth; +for exceptions to Knox’s “Monstrous Regiment of +Women” we must fall back on “The Palmyrene that +fought Aurelian,” and the revered name of the greatest of +English queens, Victoria. Thus history does not encourage +the hope that a man-like education will raise many women to the +level of the highest of their sex in the past, or even that the +enormous majority of women will take advantage of the opportunity +of a man-like education. A glance at the numerous +periodicals designed for the reading of women depresses optimism, +and the Princess’s prophecy of</p> +<blockquote><p>“Two plummets dropped for one to sound the +abyss<br /> +Of science, and the secrets of the mind,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>is not near fulfilment. Fortunately the sex does not +“love the Metaphysics,” and perhaps has not yet +produced even a manual of Logic. It must suffice man and +woman to</p> +<blockquote><p> “Walk this world<br /> +Yoked in all exercise of noble end,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>of a more practical character, while woman is at liberty</p> +<blockquote><p> “To live and learn and +be<br /> +All that not harms distinctive womanhood.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This was the conclusion of the poet who had the most +chivalrous reverence for womanhood. This is the +<i>eirenicon</i> of that old strife between the women and the +men—that war in which both armies are captured. It +may not be acceptable to excited lady combatants, who think man +their foe, when the real enemy is (what Porson damned) the Nature +of Things.</p> +<p>A new poem like <i>The Princess</i> would soon reach the +public of our day, so greatly increased are the uses of +advertisement. But <i>The Princess</i> moved slowly from +edition to revised and improved edition, bringing neither money +nor much increase of fame. The poet was living with his +family at Cheltenham, where among his new acquaintances were +Sydney Dobell, the poet of a few exquisite pieces, and F. W. +Robertson, later so popular as a preacher at Brighton. +Meeting him for the first time, and knowing Robertson’s +“wish to pluck the heart from my mystery, from pure +nervousness I would only talk of beer.” This kind of +shyness beset Tennyson. A lady tells me that as a girl (and +a very beautiful girl) she and her sister, and a third, <i>nec +diversa</i>, met the poet, and expected high discourse. But +his speech was all of that wingless insect which “gets +there, all the same,” according to an American lyrist; the +insect which fills Mrs Carlyle’s letters with bulletins of +her success or failure in domestic campaigns.</p> +<p>Tennyson kept visiting London, where he saw Thackeray and the +despair of Carlyle, and at Bath House he was too modest to be +introduced to the great Duke whose requiem he was to sing so +nobly. Oddly enough Douglas Jerrold enthusiastically +assured Tennyson, at a dinner of a Society of Authors, that +“you are the one who will live.” To that end, +humanly speaking, he placed himself under the celebrated Dr Gully +and his “water-cure,” a foible of that period. +In 1848 he made a tour to King Arthur’s Cornish bounds, and +another to Scotland, where the Pass of Brander disappointed him: +perhaps he saw it on a fine day, and, like Glencoe, it needs +tempest and mist lit up by the white fires of many +waterfalls. By bonny Doon he “fell into a passion of +tears,” for he had all of Keats’s sentiment for +Burns: “There never was immortal poet if he be not +one.” Of all English poets, the warmest in the praise +of Burns have been the two most unlike himself—Tennyson and +Keats. It was the songs that Tennyson preferred; Wordsworth +liked the <i>Cottar’s Saturday Night</i>.</p> +<h2><a name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 61</span>V.<br +/> +IN MEMORIAM.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">In</span> May 1850 a few, copies of <i>In +Memoriam</i> were printed for friends, and presently the poem was +published without author’s name. The pieces had been +composed at intervals, from 1833 onwards. It is to be +observed that the “section about evolution” was +written some years before 1844, when the ingenious hypotheses of +Robert Chambers, in <i>Vestiges of Creation</i>, were given to +the world, and caused a good deal of talk. Ten years, +again, after <i>In Memoriam</i>, came Darwin’s <i>Origin of +Species</i>. These dates are worth observing. The +theory of evolution, of course in a rude mythical shape, is at +least as old as the theory of creation, and is found among the +speculations of the most backward savages. The Arunta of +Central Australia, a race remote from the polite, have a +hypothesis of evolution which postulates only a few rudimentary +forms of life, a marine environment, and the minimum of +supernormal assistance in the way of stimulating the primal forms +in the direction of more highly differentiated +developments. “The rudimentary forms, +<i>Inapertwa</i>, were in reality stages in the transformation of +various plants and animals into human beings. . . . They +had no distinct limbs or organs of sight, hearing, or +smell.” They existed in a kind of lumps, and were set +free from the cauls which enveloped them by two beings called +Ungambikula, “a word which means ‘out of +nothing,’ or ‘self-existing.’ Men descend +from lower animals thus evolved.” <a +name="citation62"></a><a href="#footnote62" +class="citation">[62]</a></p> +<p>This example of the doctrine of evolution in an early shape is +only mentioned to prove that the idea has been familiar to the +human mind from the lowest known stage of culture. Not less +familiar has been the theory of creation by a kind of supreme +being. The notion of creation, however, up to 1860, held +the foremost place in modern European belief. But Lamarck, +the elder Darwin, Monboddo, and others had submitted hypotheses +of evolution. Now it was part of the originality of +Tennyson, as a philosophic poet, that he had brooded from boyhood +on these early theories of evolution, in an age when they were +practically unknown to the literary, and were not patronised by +the scientific, world. In November 1844 he wrote to Mr +Moxon, “I want you to get me a book which I see advertised +in the <i>Examiner</i>: it seems to contain many speculations +with which I have been familiar for years, and on which I have +written more than one poem.” This book was +<i>Vestiges of Creation</i>. These poems are the stanzas in +<i>In Memoriam</i> about “the greater ape,” and about +Nature as careless of the type: “all shall go.” +The poetic and philosophic originality of Tennyson thus faced the +popular inferences as to the effect of the doctrine of evolution +upon religious beliefs long before the world was moved in all its +deeps by Darwin’s <i>Origin of Species</i>. Thus the +geological record is inconsistent, we learned, with the record of +the first chapters of Genesis. If man is a differentiated +monkey, and if a monkey has no soul, or future life (which is +taken for granted), where are man’s title-deeds to these +possessions? With other difficulties of an obvious kind, +these presented themselves to the poet with renewed force when +his only chance of happiness depended on being able to believe in +a future life, and reunion with the beloved dead. Unbelief +had always existed. We hear of atheists in the <i>Rig +Veda</i>. In the early eighteenth century, in the age of +Swift—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Men proved, as sure as God’s in +Gloucester,<br /> +That Moses was a great impostor.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>distrust of Moses increased with the increase of hypotheses of +evolution. But what English poet, before Tennyson, ever +attempted “to lay the spectres of the mind”; ever +faced world-old problems in their most recent aspects? I am +not acquainted with any poet who attempted this task, and, +whatever we may think of Tennyson’s success, I do not see +how we can deny his originality.</p> +<p>Mr Frederic Harrison, however, thinks that neither “the +theology nor the philosophy of <i>In Memoriam</i> are new, +original, with an independent force and depth of their +own.” “They are exquisitely graceful +re-statements of the theology of the Broad Churchman of the +school of F. D. Maurice and Jowett—a combination of +Maurice’s somewhat illogical piety with Jowett’s +philosophy of mystification.” The piety of Maurice +may be as illogical as that of Positivism is logical, and the +philosophy of the Master of Balliol may be whatever Mr Harrison +pleases to call it. But as Jowett’s earliest work +(except an essay on Etruscan religion) is of 1855, one does not +see how it could influence Tennyson before 1844. And what +had the Duke of Argyll written on these themes some years before +1844? The late Duke, to whom Mr Harrison refers in this +connection, was born in 1823. His philosophic ideas, if +they were to influence Tennyson’s <i>In Memoriam</i>, must +have been set forth by him at the tender age of seventeen, or +thereabouts. Mr Harrison’s sentence is, “But +does <i>In Memoriam</i> teach anything, or transfigure any idea +which was not about that time” (the time of writing was +mainly 1833–1840) “common form with F. D. Maurice, +with Jowett, C. Kingsley, F. Robertson, Stopford Brooke, Mr +Ruskin, and the Duke of Argyll, Bishops Westcott and Boyd +Carpenter?”</p> +<p>The dates answer Mr Harrison. Jowett did not publish +anything till at least fifteen years after Tennyson wrote his +poems on evolution and belief. Dr Boyd Carpenter’s +works previous to 1840 are unknown to bibliography. F. W. +Robertson was a young parson at Cheltenham. Ruskin had not +published the first volume of <i>Modern Painters</i>. His +Oxford prize poem is of 1839. Mr Stopford Brooke was at +school. The Duke of Argyll was being privately educated: +and so with the rest, except the contemporary Maurice. How +can Mr Harrison say that, in the time of <i>In Memoriam</i>, +Tennyson was “in touch with the ideas of Herschel, Owen, +Huxley, Darwin, and Tyndall”? <a name="citation65"></a><a +href="#footnote65" class="citation">[65]</a> When Tennyson +wrote the parts of <i>In Memoriam</i> which deal with science, +nobody beyond their families and friends had heard of Huxley, +Darwin, and Tyndall. They had not developed, much less had +they published, their “general ideas.” Even in +his journal of the <i>Cruise of the Beagle</i> Darwin’s +ideas were religious, and he naïvely admired the works of +God. It is strange that Mr Harrison has based his +criticism, and his theory of Tennyson’s want of +originality, on what seems to be a historical error. He +cites parts of <i>In Memoriam</i>, and remarks, “No one can +deny that all this is exquisitely beautiful; that these eternal +problems have never been clad in such inimitable grace . . . But +the train of thought is essentially that with which ordinary +English readers have been made familiar by F. D. Maurice, +Professor Jowett, <i>Ecce Homo</i>, <i>Hypatia</i>, and now by +Arthur Balfour, Mr Drummond, and many valiant companies of +<i>Septem</i> [why <i>Septem</i>?] <i>contra +Diabolum</i>.” One must keep repeating the historical +verity that the ideas of <i>In Memoriam</i> could not have been +“made familiar by” authors who had not yet published +anything, or by books yet undreamed of and unborn, such as +<i>Ecce Homo</i> and Jowett’s work on some of St +Paul’s Epistles. If these books contain the ideas of +<i>In Memoriam</i>, it is by dint of repetition and borrowing +from <i>In Memoriam</i>, or by coincidence. The originality +was Tennyson’s, for we cannot dispute the evidence of +dates.</p> +<p>When one speaks of “originality” one does not mean +that Tennyson discovered the existence of the ultimate +problems. But at Cambridge (1828–1830) he had voted +“No” in answer to the question discussed by +“the Apostles,” “Is an intelligible +[intelligent?] First Cause deducible from the phenomena of the +universe?” <a name="citation66"></a><a href="#footnote66" +class="citation">[66]</a> He had also propounded the theory +that “the development of the human body might possibly be +traced from the radiated vermicular molluscous and vertebrate +organisms,” thirty years before Darwin published <i>The +Origin of Species</i>. To be concerned so early with such +hypotheses, and to face, in poetry, the religious or irreligious +inferences which may be drawn from them, decidedly constitutes +part of the poetic originality of Tennyson. His attitude, +as a poet, towards religious doubt is only so far not original, +as it is part of the general reaction from the freethinking of +the eighteenth century. Men had then been freethinkers +<i>avec délices</i>. It was a joyous thing to be an +atheist, or something very like one; at all events, it was +glorious to be “emancipated.” Many still find +it glorious, as we read in the tone of Mr Huxley, when he +triumphs and tramples over pious dukes and bishops. Shelley +said that a certain schoolgirl “would make a dear little +atheist.” But by 1828–1830 men were less joyous +in their escape from all that had hitherto consoled and fortified +humanity. Long before he dreamed of <i>In Memoriam</i>, in +the <i>Poems chiefly Lyrical</i> of 1830 Tennyson had +written—</p> +<blockquote><p>“‘Yet,’ said I, in my morn of +youth,<br /> +The unsunn’d freshness of my strength,<br /> +When I went forth in quest of truth,<br /> +‘It is man’s privilege to doubt.’ . . .<br /> + Ay me! I fear<br /> +All may not doubt, but everywhere<br /> +Some must clasp Idols. Yet, my God,<br /> +Whom call I Idol? Let Thy dove<br /> +Shadow me over, and my sins<br /> +Be unremember’d, and Thy love<br /> +Enlighten me. Oh teach me yet<br /> +Somewhat before the heavy clod<br /> +Weighs on me, and the busy fret<br /> +Of that sharp-headed worm begins<br /> +In the gross blackness underneath.</p> +<p>Oh weary life! oh weary death!<br /> +Oh spirit and heart made desolate!<br /> +Oh damnèd vacillating state!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Now the philosophy of <i>In Memoriam</i> may be, indeed is, +regarded by robust, first-rate, and far from sensitive minds, as +a “damnèd vacillating state.” The poet +is not so imbued with the spirit of popular science as to be sure +that he knows everything: knows that there is nothing but atoms +and ether, with no room for God or a soul. He is far from +that happy cock-certainty, and consequently is exposed to the +contempt of the cock-certain. The poem, says Mr Harrison, +“has made Tennyson the idol of the Anglican +clergyman—the world in which he was born and the world in +which his life was ideally passed—the idol of all cultured +youth and of all æsthetic women. It is an honourable +post to fill”—that of idol. “The argument +of <i>In Memoriam</i> apparently is . . . that we should faintly +trust the larger hope.” That, I think, is not the +argument, not the conclusion of the poem, but is a casual +expression of one mood among many moods.</p> +<p>The argument and conclusion of <i>In Memoriam</i> are the +argument and conclusion of the life of Tennyson, and of the love +of Tennyson, that immortal passion which was a part of himself, +and which, if aught of us endure, is living yet, and must live +eternally. From the record of his Life by his son we know +that his trust in “the larger hope” was not +“faint,” but strengthened with the years. There +are said to have been less hopeful intervals.</p> +<p>His faith is, of course, no argument for others,—at +least it ought not to be. We are all the creatures of our +bias, our environment, our experience, our emotions. The +experience of Tennyson was unlike the experience of most +men. It yielded him subjective grounds for belief. He +“opened a path unto many,” like Yama, the Vedic being +who discovered the way to death. But Tennyson’s path +led not to death, but to life spiritual, and to hope, and he did +“give a new impulse to the thought of his age,” as +other great poets have done. Of course it may be an impulse +to wrong thought. As the philosophical Australian black +said, “We shall know when we are dead.”</p> +<p>Mr Harrison argues as if, unlike Tennyson, Byron, Wordsworth, +Shelley, and Burns produced “original ideas fresh from +their own spirit, and not derived from contemporary +thinkers.” I do not know what original ideas these +great poets discovered and promulgated; their ideas seem to have +been “in the air.” These poets “made them +current coin.” Shelley thought that he owed many of +his ideas to Godwin, a contemporary thinker. Wordsworth has +a debt to Plato, a thinker not contemporary. Burns’s +democratic independence was “in the air,” and had +been, in Scotland, since Elder remarked on it in a letter to +Ingles in 1515. It is not the ideas, it is the expression +of the ideas, that marks the poet. Tennyson’s ideas +are relatively novel, though as old as Plotinus, for they are +applied to a novel, or at least an unfamiliar, mental +situation. Doubt was abroad, as it always is; but, for +perhaps the first time since Porphyry wrote his letter to +Abammon, the doubters desired to believe, and said, “Lord, +help Thou my unbelief.” To robust, not sensitive +minds, very much in unity with themselves, the attitude seems +contemptible, or at best decently futile. Yet I cannot +think it below the dignity of mankind, conscious that it is not +omniscient. The poet does fail in logic (<i>In +Memoriam</i>, cxx.) when he says—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Let him, the wiser man who springs<br /> + Hereafter, up from childhood shape<br /> + His action like the greater ape,<br /> +But I was <i>born</i> to other things.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>I am not well acquainted with the habits of the greater ape, +but it would probably be unwise, and perhaps indecent, to imitate +him, even if “we also are his offspring.” We +might as well revert to polyandry and paint, because our Celtic +or Pictish ancestors, if we had any, practised the one and wore +the other. However, petulances like the verse on the +greater ape are rare in <i>In Memoriam</i>. To declare that +“I would not stay” in life if science proves us to be +“cunning casts in clay,” is beneath the courage of +the Stoical philosophy.</p> +<p>Theologically, the poem represents the struggle with doubts +and hopes and fears, which had been with Tennyson from his +boyhood, as is proved by the volume of 1830. But the doubts +had exerted, probably, but little influence on his happiness till +the sudden stroke of loss made life for a time seem almost +unbearable unless the doubts were solved. They <i>were</i> +solved, or stoically set aside, in the <i>Ulysses</i>, written in +the freshness of grief, with the conclusion that we must be</p> +<blockquote><p> “Strong +in will<br /> +To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But the gnawing of grief till it becomes a physical pain, the +fever fits of sorrow, the aching <i>desiderium</i>, bring back in +many guises the old questions. These require new attempts +at answers, and are answered, “the sad mechanic +exercise” of verse allaying the pain. This is the +genesis of <i>In Memoriam</i>, not originally written for +publication but produced at last as a monument to friendship, and +as a book of consolation.</p> +<p>No books of consolation can console except by sympathy; and in +<i>In Memoriam</i> sympathy and relief have been found, and will +be found, by many. Another, we feel, has trodden our dark +and stony path, has been shadowed by the shapes of dread which +haunt our valley of tribulation: a mind almost infinitely greater +than ours has been our fellow-sufferer. He has emerged from +the darkness of the shadow of death into the light, whither, as +it seems to us, we can scarcely hope to come. It is the +sympathy and the example, I think, not the speculations, mystical +or scientific, which make <i>In Memoriam</i>, in more than name, +a book of consolation: even in hours of the sharpest distress, +when its technical beauties and wonderful pictures seem shadowy +and unreal, like the yellow sunshine and the woods of that autumn +day when a man learned that his friend was dead. No, it was +not the speculations and arguments that consoled or encouraged +us. We did not listen to Tennyson as to Mr Frederic +Harrison’s glorified Anglican clergyman. We could not +murmur, like the Queen of the May—</p> +<blockquote><p>“That good man, the Laureate, has told us +words of peace.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>What we valued was the poet’s companionship. There +was a young reader to whom <i>All along the Valley</i> came as a +new poem in a time of recent sorrow.</p> +<blockquote><p>“The two-and-thirty years were a mist that +rolls away,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>said the singer of <i>In Memoriam</i>, and in that hour it +seemed as if none could endure for two-and-thirty years the +companionship of loss. But the years have gone by, and have +left</p> +<blockquote><p> “Ever young the face that +dwells<br /> +With reason cloister’d in the brain.” <a +name="citation72"></a><a href="#footnote72" +class="citation">[72]</a></p> +</blockquote> +<p>In this way to many <i>In Memoriam</i> is almost a life-long +companion: we walk with Great-heart for our guide through the +valley Perilous.</p> +<p>In this respect <i>In Memoriam</i> is unique, for neither to +its praise nor dispraise is it to be compared with the other +famous elegies of the world. These are brief outbursts of +grief—real, as in the hopeless words of Catullus over his +brother’s tomb; or academic, like Milton’s +<i>Lycidas</i>. We are not to suppose that Milton was +heart-broken by the death of young Mr King, or that Shelley was +greatly desolated by the death of Keats, with whom his personal +relations had been slight, and of whose poetry he had spoken +evil. He was nobly stirred as a poet by a poet’s +death—like Mr Swinburne by the death of Charles Baudelaire; +but neither Shelley nor Mr Swinburne was lamenting <i>dimidium +animæ suæ</i>, or mourning for a friend</p> +<blockquote><p> “Dear as +the mother to the son,<br /> +More than my brothers are to me.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The passion of <i>In Memoriam</i> is personal, is acute, is +life-long, and thus it differs from the other elegies. +Moreover, it celebrates a noble object, and thus is unlike the +ambiguous affection, real or dramatic, which informs the sonnets +of Shakespeare. So the poem stands alone, cloistered; not +fiery with indignation, not breaking into actual prophecy, like +Shelley’s <i>Adonais</i>; not capable, by reason even of +its meditative metre, of the organ music of <i>Lycidas</i>. +Yet it is not to be reckoned inferior to these because its aim +and plan are other than theirs.</p> +<p>It is far from my purpose to “class” Tennyson, or +to dispute about his relative greatness when compared with +Wordsworth or Byron, Coleridge, Shelley, or Burns. He rated +one song of Lovelace above all his lyrics, and, in fact, could no +more have written the Cavalier’s <i>To Althea from +Prison</i> than Lovelace could have written the <i>Morte +d’Arthur</i>. “It is not reasonable, it is not +fair,” says Mr Harrison, after comparing <i>In Memoriam</i> +with <i>Lycidas</i>, “to compare Tennyson with +Milton,” and it is not reasonable to compare Tennyson with +any poet whatever. Criticism is not the construction of a +class list. But we may reasonably say that <i>In +Memoriam</i> is a noble poem, an original poem, a poem which +stands alone in literature. The wonderful beauty, ever +fresh, howsoever often read, of many stanzas, is not denied by +any critic. The marvel is that the same serene certainty of +art broods over even the stanzas which must have been conceived +while the sorrow was fresh. The second piece,</p> +<blockquote><p>“Old yew, which graspest at the +stones,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>must have been composed soon after the stroke fell. Yet +it is as perfect as the proem of 1849. As a rule, the +poetical expression of strong emotion appears usually to clothe +the memory of passion when it has been softened by time. +But here already “the rhythm, phrasing, and articulation +are entirely faultless, exquisitely clear, melodious, and +rare.” <a name="citation74"></a><a href="#footnote74" +class="citation">[74]</a> It were superfluous labour to +point at special beauties, at the exquisite rendering of nature; +and copious commentaries exist to explain the course of the +argument, if a series of moods is to be called an argument. +One may note such a point as that (xiv.) where the poet says +that, were he to meet his friend in life,</p> +<blockquote><p>“I should not feel it to be +strange.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It may have happened to many to mistake, for a section of a +second, the face of a stranger for the face seen only in dreams, +and to find that the recognition brings no surprise.</p> +<p>Pieces of a character apart from the rest, and placed in a +designed sequence, are xcii., xciii., xcv. In the first the +poet says—</p> +<blockquote><p>“If any vision should reveal<br /> + Thy likeness, I might count it vain<br /> + As but the canker of the brain;<br /> +Yea, tho’ it spake and made appeal</p> +<p>To chances where our lots were cast<br /> + Together in the days behind,<br /> + I might but say, I hear a wind<br /> +Of memory murmuring the past.</p> +<p>Yea, tho’ it spake and bared to view<br /> + A fact within the coming year;<br /> + And tho’ the months, revolving near,<br /> +Should prove the phantom-warning true,</p> +<p>They might not seem thy prophecies,<br /> + But spiritual presentiments,<br /> + And such refraction of events<br /> +As often rises ere they rise.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The author thus shows himself <i>difficile</i> as to +recognising the personal identity of a phantasm; nor is it easy +to see what mode of proving his identity would be left to a +spirit. The poet, therefore, appeals to some perhaps less +satisfactory experience:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Descend, and touch, and enter; hear<br /> + The wish too strong for words to name;<br /> + That in this blindness of the frame<br /> +My Ghost may feel that thine is near.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The third poem is the crown of <i>In Memoriam</i>, expressing +almost such things as are not given to man to utter:—</p> +<blockquote><p> And all at once it seem’d +at last<br /> +The living soul was flash’d on mine,</p> +<p>And mine in this was wound, and whirl’d<br /> + About empyreal heights of thought,<br /> + And came on that which is, and caught<br /> +The deep pulsations of the world,</p> +<p>Æonian music measuring out<br /> + The steps of Time—the shocks of +Chance—<br /> + The blows of Death. At length my trance<br /> +Was cancell’d, stricken thro’ with doubt.</p> +<p>Vague words! but ah, how hard to frame<br /> + In matter-moulded forms of speech,<br /> + Or ev’n for intellect to reach<br /> +Thro’ memory that which I became.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Experiences like this, subjective, and not matter for +argument, were familiar to Tennyson. Jowett said, “He +was one of those who, though not an upholder of miracles, thought +that the wonders of Heaven and Earth were never far absent from +us.” In <i>The Mystic</i>, Tennyson, when almost a +boy, had shown familiarity with strange psychological and +psychical conditions. Poems of much later life also deal +with these, and, more or less consciously, his philosophy was +tinged, and his confidence that we are more than “cunning +casts in clay” was increased, by phenomena of experience, +which can only be evidence for the mystic himself, if even for +him. But this dim aspect of his philosophy, of course, is +“to the Greeks foolishness.”</p> +<p>His was a philosophy of his own; not a philosophy for +disciples, and “those that eddy round and +round.” It was the sum of his reflection on the mass +of his impressions. I have shown, by the aid of dates, that +it was not borrowed from Huxley, Mr Stopford Brooke, or the late +Duke of Argyll. But, no doubt, many of the ideas were +“in the air,” and must have presented themselves to +minds at once of religious tendency, and attracted by the +evolutionary theories which had always existed as floating +speculations, till they were made current coin by the genius and +patient study of Darwin. That Tennyson’s opinions +between 1830 and 1840 were influenced by those of F. D. Maurice +is reckoned probable by Canon Ainger, author of the notice of the +poet in <i>The Dictionary of National Biography</i>. In the +Life of Maurice, Tennyson does not appear till 1850, and the two +men were not at Cambridge together. But Maurice’s +ideas, as they then existed, may have reached Tennyson orally +through Hallam and other members of the Trinity set, who knew +personally the author of <i>Letters to a Quaker</i>. +However, this is no question of scientific priority: to myself it +seems that Tennyson “beat his music out” for himself, +as perhaps most people do. Like his own Sir Percivale, +“I know not all he meant.”</p> +<p>Among the opinions as to <i>In Memoriam</i> current at the +time of its publication Lord Tennyson notices those of Maurice +and Robertson. They “thought that the poet had made a +definite step towards the unification of the highest religion and +philosophy with the progressive science of the day.” +Neither science nor religion stands still; neither stands now +where it then did. Conceivably they are travelling on paths +which will ultimately coincide; but this opinion, of course, must +seem foolishness to most professors of science. Bishop +Westcott was at Cambridge when the book appeared: he is one of Mr +Harrison’s possible sources of Tennyson’s +ideas. He recognised the poet’s “splendid faith +(in the face of every difficulty) in the growing purpose of the +sum of life, and in the noble destiny of the individual +man.” Ten years later Professor Henry Sidgwick, a +mind sufficiently sceptical, found in some lines of <i>In +Memoriam</i> “the indestructible and inalienable minimum of +faith which humanity cannot give up because it is necessary for +life; and which I know that I, at least so far as the man in me +is deeper than the methodical thinker, cannot give +up.” But we know that many persons not only do not +find an irreducible minimum of faith “necessary for +life,” but are highly indignant and contemptuous if any one +else ventures to suggest the logical possibility of any faith at +all.</p> +<p>The mass of mankind will probably never be convinced +unbelievers—nay, probably the backward or forward swing of +the pendulum will touch more convinced belief. But there +always have been, since the <i>Rishis</i> of India sang, superior +persons who believe in nothing not material—whatever the +material may be. Tennyson was, it is said, +“impatient” of these <i>esprits forts</i>, and they +are impatient of him. It is an error to be impatient: we +know not whither the <i>logos</i> may lead us, or later +generations; and we ought not to be irritated with others because +it leads them into what we think the wrong path. It is +unfortunate that a work of art, like <i>In Memoriam</i>, should +arouse theological or anti-theological passions. The poet +only shows us the paths by which his mind travelled: they may not +be the right paths, nor is it easy to trace them on a +philosophical chart. He escaped from Doubting Castle. +Others may “take that for a hermitage,” and be happy +enough in the residence. We are all determined by our bias: +Tennyson’s is unconcealed. His poem is not a tract: +it does not aim at the conversion of people with the contrary +bias, it is irksome, in writing about a poet, to be obliged to +discuss a philosophy which, certainly, is not stated in the +manner of Spinoza, but is merely the equilibrium of contending +forces in a single mind.</p> +<p>The most famous review of <i>In Memoriam</i> is that which +declared that “these touching lines evidently come from the +full heart of the widow of a military man.” This is +only equalled, if equalled, by a recent critique which treated a +fresh edition of <i>Jane Eyre</i> as a new novel, “not +without power, in parts, and showing some knowledge of Yorkshire +local colour.”</p> +<h2><a name="page81"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 81</span>VI.<br +/> +AFTER <i>IN MEMORIAM</i>.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">On</span> June 13 Tennyson married, at +Shiplake, the object of his old, long-tried, and constant +affection. The marriage was still +“imprudent,”—eight years of then uncontested +supremacy in English poetry had not brought a golden +harvest. Mr Moxon appears to have supplied £300 +“in advance of royalties.” The sum, so +contemptible in the eyes of first-rate modern novelists, was a +competence to Tennyson, added to his little pension and the +<i>épaves</i> of his patrimony. “The peace of +God came into my life when I married her,” he said in later +days. The poet made a charming copy of verses to his +friend, the Rev. Mr Rawnsley, who tied the knot, as he and his +bride drove to the beautiful village of Pangbourne. Thence +they went to the stately Clevedon Court, the seat of Sir Abraham +Elton, hard by the church where Arthur Hallam sleeps. The +place is very ancient and beautiful, and was a favourite haunt of +Thackeray. They passed on to Lynton, and to Glastonbury, +where a collateral ancestor of Mrs Tennyson’s is buried +beside King Arthur’s grave, in that green valley of +Avilion, among the apple-blossoms. They settled for a while +at Tent Lodge on Coniston Water, in a land of hospitable +Marshalls.</p> +<p>After their return to London, on the night of November 18, +Tennyson dreamed that Prince Albert came and kissed him, and that +he himself said, “Very kind, but very German,” which +was very like him. Next day he received from Windsor the +offer of the Laureateship. He doubted, and hesitated, but +accepted. Since Wordsworth’s death there had, as +usual, been a good deal of banter about the probable new +Laureate: examples of competitive odes exist in <i>Bon +Gaultier</i>. That by Tennyson is Anacreontic, but he was +not really set on kissing the Maids of Honour, as he is made to +sing. Rogers had declined, on the plea of extreme old age; +but it was worthy of the great and good Queen not to overlook the +Nestor of English poets. For the rest, the Queen looked for +“a name bearing such distinction in the literary world as +to do credit to the appointment.” In the previous +century the great poets had rarely been Laureates. But +since Sir Walter Scott declined the bays in favour of Southey, +for whom, again, the tale of bricks in the way of Odes was +lightened, and when Wordsworth succeeded Southey, the office +became honourable. Tennyson gave it an increase of renown, +while, though in itself of merely nominal value, it served his +poems, to speak profanely, as an advertisement. New +editions of his books were at once in demand; while few readers +had ever heard of Mr Browning, already his friend, and already +author of <i>Men and Women</i>.</p> +<p>The Laureateship brought the poet acquainted with the Queen, +who was to be his debtor in later days for encouragement and +consolation. To his Laureateship we owe, among other good +things, the stately and moving <i>Ode on the Death of the Duke of +Wellington</i>, a splendid heroic piece, unappreciated at the +moment. But Tennyson was, of course, no Birthday +poet. Since the exile of the House of Stuart our kings in +England have not maintained the old familiarity with many classes +of their subjects. Literature has not been fashionable at +Court, and Tennyson could in no age have been a courtier. +We hear the complaint, every now and then, that official honours +are not conferred (except the Laureateship) on men of +letters. But most of them probably think it rather +distinguished not to be decorated, or to carry titles borne by +many deserving persons unvisited by the Muses. Even the +appointment to the bays usually provokes a great deal of jealous +and spiteful feeling, which would only be multiplied if official +honours were distributed among men of the pen. Perhaps +Tennyson’s laurels were not for nothing in the chorus of +dispraise which greeted the <i>Ode on the Duke of Wellington</i>, +and <i>Maud</i>.</p> +<p>The year 1851 was chiefly notable for a tour to Italy, made +immortal in the beautiful poem of <i>The Daisy</i>, in a measure +of the poet’s own invention. The next year, following +on the <i>Coup d’état</i> and the rise of the new +French empire, produced patriotic appeals to Britons to +“guard their own,” which to a great extent former +alien owners had been unsuccessful in guarding from +Britons. The Tennysons had lost their first child at his +birth: perhaps he is remembered in <i>The Grandmother</i>, +“the babe had fought for his life.” In August +1852 the present Lord Tennyson was born, and Mr Maurice was asked +to be godfather. The Wellington Ode was of November, and +was met by “the almost universal depreciation of the +press,”—why, except because, as I have just +suggested, Tennyson was Laureate, it is impossible to +imagine. The verses were worthy of the occasion: more they +could not be.</p> +<p>In the autumn of 1853 the poet visited Ardtornish on the Sound +of Mull, a beautiful place endeared to him who now writes by the +earliest associations. It chanced to him to pass his +holidays there just when Tennyson and Mr Palgrave had +left—“Mr Tinsmith and Mr Pancake,” as Robert +the boatman, a very black Celt, called them. Being then +nine years of age, I heard of a poet’s visit, and asked, +“A real poet, like Sir Walter Scott?” with whom I +then supposed that “the Muse had gone away.” +“Oh, not like Sir Walter Scott, of course,” my mother +told me, with loyalty unashamed. One can think of the poet +as Mrs Sellar, his hostess, describes him, beneath the limes of +the avenue at Acharn, planted, Mrs Sellar says, by a cousin of +Flora Macdonald. I have been told that the lady who planted +the lilies, if not the limes, was the famed Jacobite, Miss Jennie +Cameron, mentioned in <i>Tom Jones</i>. An English +engraving of 1746 shows the Prince between these two beauties, +Flora and Jennie.</p> +<p>“No one,” says Mrs Sellar, “could have been +more easy, simple, and delightful,” and indeed it is no +marvel that in her society and that of her husband, the Greek +professor, and her cousin, Miss Cross, and in such scenes, +“he blossomed out in the most genial manner, making us all +feel as if he were an old friend.”</p> +<p>In November Tennyson took a house at Farringford, “as it +was beautiful and far from the haunts of men.” There +he settled to a country existence in the society of his wife, his +two children (the second, Lionel, being in 1854 the baby), and +there he composed <i>Maud</i>, while the sound of the guns, in +practice for the war of the Crimea, boomed from the coast. +In May Tennyson saw the artists, of schools oddly various, who +illustrated his poems. Millais, Rossetti, and Holman Hunt +gave the tone to the art, but Mr Horsley, Creswick, and Mulgrave +were also engaged. While <i>Maud</i> was being composed +Tennyson wrote <i>The Charge of the Light Brigade</i>; a famous +poem, not in a manner in which he was born to excel—at +least in my poor opinion. “Some one <i>had</i> +blundered,” and that line was the first fashioned and the +keynote of the poem; but, after all, “blundered” is +not an exquisite rhyme to “hundred.” The poem, +in any case, was most welcome to our army in the Crimea, and is a +spirited piece for recitation.</p> +<p>In January 1855 <i>Maud</i> was finished; in April the poet +copied it out for the press, and refreshed himself by reading a +very different poem, <i>The Lady of the Lake</i>. The +author, Sir Walter, had suffered, like the hero of <i>Maud</i>, +by an unhappy love affair, which just faintly colours <i>The Lady +of the Lake</i> by a single allusion, in the description of +Fitz-James’s dreams:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Then,—from my couch may heavenly +might<br /> +Chase that worst phantom of the night!—<br /> +Again returned the scenes of youth,<br /> +Of confident undoubting truth;<br /> +Again his soul he interchanged<br /> +With friends whose hearts were long estranged.<br /> +They come, in dim procession led,<br /> +The cold, the faithless, and the dead;<br /> +As warm each hand, each brow as gay,<br /> +As if they parted yesterday.<br /> +And doubt distracts him at the view—<br /> +Oh, were his senses false or true?<br /> +Dreamed he of death, or broken vow,<br /> +Or is it all a vision now?”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>We learn from Lady Louisa Stuart, to whom Scott read these +lines, that they referred to his lost love. I cite the +passage because the extreme reticence of Scott, in his undying +sorrow, is in contrast with what Tennyson, after reading <i>The +Lady of the Lake</i>, was putting into the mouth of his +complaining lover in <i>Maud</i>.</p> +<p>We have no reason to suppose that Tennyson himself had ever to +bewail a faithless love. To be sure, the hero of +<i>Locksley Hall</i> is in this attitude, but then <i>Locksley +Hall</i> is not autobiographical. Less dramatic and +impersonal in appearance are the stanzas—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Come not, when I am dead,<br /> + To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave;”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and</p> +<blockquote><p>“Child, if it were thine error or thy +crime<br /> + I care no longer, being all unblest.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>No biographer tells us whether this was a personal complaint +or a mere set of verses on an imaginary occasion. In <i>In +Memoriam</i> Tennyson speaks out concerning the loss of a +friend. In <i>Maud</i>, as in <i>Locksley Hall</i>, he +makes his hero reveal the agony caused by the loss of a +mistress. There is no reason to suppose that the poet had +ever any such mischance, but many readers have taken <i>Locksley +Hall</i> and <i>Maud</i> for autobiographical revelations, like +<i>In Memoriam</i>. They are, on the other hand, +imaginative and dramatic. They illustrate the pangs of +disappointed love of woman, pangs more complex and more rankling +than those inflicted by death. In each case, however, the +poet, who has sung so nobly the happiness of fortunate wedded +loves, has chosen a hero with whom we do not readily +sympathise—a Hamlet in miniature,</p> +<blockquote><p>“With a heart of furious fancies,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>as in the old mad song. This choice, thanks to the +popular misconception, did him some harm. As a +“monodramatic Idyll,” a romance in many rich lyric +measures, <i>Maud</i> was at first excessively unpopular. +“Tennyson’s <i>Maud</i> is Tennyson’s +Maudlin,” said a satirist, and “morbid,” +“mad,” “rampant,” and “rabid +bloodthirstiness of soul,” were among the amenities of +criticism. Tennyson hated war, but his hero, at least, +hopes that national union in a national struggle will awake a +nobler than the commercial spirit. Into the rights and +wrongs of our quarrel with Russia we are not to go. +Tennyson, rightly or wrongly, took the part of his country, and +must “thole the feud” of those high-souled citizens +who think their country always in the wrong—as perhaps it +very frequently is. We are not to expect a tranquil absence +of bias in the midst of military excitement, when very laudable +sentiments are apt to misguide men in both directions. In +any case, political partisanship added to the enemies of the +poem, which was applauded by Henry Taylor, Ruskin, George +Brimley, and Jowett, while Mrs Browning sent consoling words from +Italy. The poem remained a favourite with the author, who +chose passages from it often, when persuaded to read aloud by +friends; and modern criticism has not failed to applaud the +splendour of the verse and the subtlety of the mad scenes, the +passion of the love lyrics.</p> +<p>These merits have ceased to be disputed, but, though a loyal +Tennysonian, I have never quite been able to reconcile myself to +<i>Maud</i> as a whole. The hero is an unwholesome young +man, and not of an original kind. He is <i>un beau +ténébreux</i> of 1830. I suppose it has been +observed that he is merely The Master of Ravenswood in modern +costume, and without Lady Ashton. Her part is taken by +Maud’s brother. The situations of the hero and of the +Master (whose acquaintance Thackeray never renewed after he lost +his hat in the Kelpie Flow) are nearly identical. The +families and fathers of both have been ruined by “the gray +old wolf,” and by Sir William Ashton, representing the +house of Stair. Both heroes live dawdling on, hard by their +lost ancestral homes. Both fall in love with the daughters +of the enemies of their houses. The loves of both are +baffled, and end in tragedy. Both are concerned in a duel, +though the Master, on his way to the ground, “stables his +steed in the Kelpie Flow,” and the wooer in <i>Maud</i> +shoots Lucy Ashton’s brother,—I mean the brother of +Maud,—though duelling in England was out of date. +Then comes an interval of madness, and he recovers amid the +patriotic emotions of the ill-fated Crimean expedition. +Both lovers are gloomy, though the Master has better cause, for +the Tennysonian hero is more comfortably provided for than Edgar +with his “man and maid,” his Caleb and Mysie. +Finally, both <i>The Bride of Lammermoor</i>, which affected +Tennyson so potently in boyhood</p> +<blockquote><p>(“<i>A merry merry bridal</i>,<br /> +<i>A merry merry day</i>”),</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and <i>Maud</i>, excel in passages rather than as wholes.</p> +<p>The hero of <i>Maud</i>, with his clandestine wooing of a girl +of sixteen, has this apology, that the match had been, as it +were, predestined, and desired by the mother of the lady. +Still, the brother did not ill to be angry; and the peevishness +of the hero against the brother and the parvenu lord and rival +strikes a jarring note. In England, at least, the general +sentiment is opposed to this moody, introspective kind of young +man, of whom Tennyson is not to be supposed to approve. We +do not feel certain that his man and maid were “ever ready +to slander and steal.” That seems to be part of his +jaundiced way of looking at everything and everybody. He +has even a bad word for the “man-god” of modern +days,—</p> +<blockquote><p>“The man of science himself is fonder of +glory, and vain,<br /> +An eye well-practised in nature, a spirit bounded and +poor.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><i>Rien n’est sacré</i> for this cynic, who +thinks himself a Stoic. Thus <i>Maud</i> was made to be +unpopular with the author’s countrymen, who conceived a +prejudice against Maud’s lover, described by Tennyson as +“a morbid poetic soul, . . . an egotist with the makings of +a cynic.” That he is “raised to sanity” +(still in Tennyson’s words) “by a pure and holy love +which elevates his whole nature,” the world failed to +perceive, especially as the sanity was only a brief lucid +interval, tempered by hanging about the garden to meet a girl of +sixteen, unknown to her relations. Tennyson added that +“different phases of passion in one person take the place +of different characters,” to which critics replied that +they wanted different characters, if only by way of relief, and +did not care for any of the phases of passion. The learned +Monsieur Janet has maintained that love is a disease like +another, and that nobody falls in love when in perfect health of +mind and body. This theory seems open to exception, but the +hero of Maud is unhealthy enough. At best and last, he only +helps to give a martial force a +“send-off”:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“I stood on a giant deck and mixed my +breath<br /> +With a loyal people shouting a battle-cry.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>He did not go out as a volunteer, and probably the Crimean +winters brought him back to his original estate of cynical +gloom—and very naturally.</p> +<p>The reconciliation with Life is not like the reconciliation of +<i>In Memoriam</i>. The poem took its rise in old lines, +and most beautiful lines, which Tennyson had contributed in 1837 +to a miscellany:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“O that ’twere possible,<br /> + After long grief and pain,<br /> +To find the arms of my true love<br /> + Round me once again.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Thence the poet, working back to find the origin of the +situation, encountered the ideas and the persons of +<i>Maud</i>.</p> +<p>I have tried to state the sources, in the general mind, of the +general dislike of <i>Maud</i>. The public, “driving +at practice,” disapproved of the “criticism of +life” in the poem; confused the suffering narrator with the +author, and neglected the poetry. “No modern +poem,” said Jowett, “contains more lines that ring in +the ears of men. I do not know any verse out of Shakespeare +in which the ecstacy of love soars to such a height.” +With these comments we may agree, yet may fail to follow Jowett +when he says, “No poem since Shakespeare seems to show +equal power of the same kind, or equal knowledge of human +nature.” Shakespeare could not in a narrative poem +have preferred the varying passions of one character to the +characters of many persons.</p> +<p>Tennyson was “nettled at first,” his son says, +“by these captious remarks of the ‘indolent +reviewers,’ but afterwards he would take no notice of them +except to speak of them in a half-pitiful, half-humorous, +half-mournful manner.” The besetting sin and error of +the critics was, of course, to confound Tennyson’s hero +with himself, as if we confused Dickens with Pip.</p> +<p>Like <i>Aurora Leigh</i>, <i>Lucile</i>, and other works, +<i>Maud</i> is under the disadvantage of being, practically, a +novel of modern life in verse. Criticised as a tale of +modern life (and it was criticised in that character), it could +not be very highly esteemed. But the essence of +<i>Maud</i>, of course, lies in the poetical vehicle. +Nobody can cavil at the impressiveness of the opening +stanzas—</p> +<blockquote><p>“I hate the dreadful hollow behind the +little wood”;</p> +</blockquote> +<p>with the keynotes of colour and of desolation struck; the lips +of the hollow “dabbled with blood-red heath,” the +“red-ribb’d ledges,” and “the flying gold +of the ruin’d woodlands”; and the contrast in the +picture of the child Maud—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Maud the delight of the village, the +ringing joy of the Hall.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The poem abounds in lines which live in the memory, as in the +vernal description—</p> +<blockquote><p>“A million emeralds break from the +ruby-budded lime”;</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and the voice heard in the garden singing</p> +<blockquote><p>“A passionate ballad gallant and +gay,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>as Lovelace’s <i>Althea</i>, and the lines on the +far-off waving of a white hand, “betwixt the cloud and the +moon.” The lyric of</p> +<blockquote><p>“Birds in the high Hall-garden<br /> + When twilight was falling,<br /> +Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud,<br /> + They were crying and calling,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>was a favourite of the poet.</p> +<p>“What birds were these?” he is said to have asked +a lady suddenly, when reading to a silent company.</p> +<p>“Nightingales,” suggested a listener, who did not +probably remember any other fowl that is vocal in the dusk.</p> +<p>“No, they were rooks,” answered the poet.</p> +<p>“Come into the Garden, Maud,” is as fine a +love-song as Tennyson ever wrote, with a triumphant ring, and a +soaring exultant note. Then the poem drops from its height, +like a lark shot high in heaven; tragedy comes, and remorse, and +the beautiful interlude of the</p> +<blockquote><p> “lovely shell,<br /> +Small and pure as a pearl.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Then follows the exquisite</p> +<blockquote><p>“O that ’twere possible,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and the dull consciousness of the poem of madness, with its +dumb gnawing confusion of pain and wandering memory; the hero +being finally left, in the author’s words, “sane but +shattered.”</p> +<p>Tennyson’s letters of the time show that the critics +succeeded in wounding him: it was not a difficult thing to +do. <i>Maud</i> was threatened with a broadside from +“that pompholygous, broad-blown Apollodorus, the gifted +X.” People who have read Aytoun’s diverting +<i>Firmilian</i>, where Apollodorus plays his part, and who +remember “gifted Gilfillan” in <i>Waverley</i>, know +who the gifted X. was. But X. was no great authority south +of Tay.</p> +<p>Despite the almost unanimous condemnation by public critics, +the success of <i>Maud</i> enabled Tennyson to buy Farringford, +so he must have been better appreciated and understood by the +world than by the reviewers.</p> +<p>In February 1850 Tennyson returned to his old Arthurian +themes, “the only big thing not done,” for Milton had +merely glanced at Arthur, Dryden did not</p> +<blockquote><p>“Raise the Table Round again,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and Blackmore has never been reckoned adequate. +<i>Vivien</i> was first composed as <i>Merlin and Nimue</i>, and +then <i>Geraint and Enid</i> was adapted from the +<i>Mabinogion</i>, the Welsh collection of <i>Märchen</i> +and legends, things of widely different ages, now rather Celtic, +or Brythonic, now amplifications made under the influence of +mediæval French romance. <i>Enid</i> was finished in +Wales in August, and Tennyson learned Welsh enough to be able to +read the <i>Mabinogion</i>, which is much more of Welsh than many +Arthurian critics possess. The two first Idylls were +privately printed in the summer of 1857, being very rare and much +desired of collectors in this embryonic shape. In July +<i>Guinevere</i> was begun, in the middle, with Arthur’s +valedictory address to his erring consort. In autumn +Tennyson visited the late Duke of Argyll at Inveraray: he was +much attached to the Duke—unlike Professor Huxley. +Their love of nature, the Duke being as keen-eyed as the poet was +short-sighted, was one tie of union. The Indian Mutiny, or +at least the death of Havelock, was the occasion of lines which +the author was too wise to include in any of his volumes: the +poem on Lucknow was of later composition.</p> +<p><i>Guinevere</i> was completed in March 1858; and Tennyson met +Mr Swinburne, then very young. “What I particularly +admired in him was that he did not press upon me any verses of +his own.” Tennyson would have found more to admire if +he had pressed for a sight of the verses. Neither he nor Mr +Matthew Arnold was very encouraging to young poets: they had no +sons in Apollo, like Ben Jonson. But both were kept in a +perpetual state of apprehension by the army of versifiers who +send volumes by post, to whom that can only be said what Tennyson +did say to one of them, “As an amusement to yourself and +your friends, the writing it” (verse) “is all very +well.” It is the friends who do not find it amusing, +while the stranger becomes the foe. The psychology of these +pests of the Muses is bewildering. They do not seem to read +poetry, only to write it and launch it at unoffending +strangers. If they bought each other’s books, all of +them could afford to publish.</p> +<p>The Master of Balliol, the most adviceful man, if one may use +the term, of his age, appears to have advised Tennyson to publish +the <i>Idylls</i> at once. There had been years of silence +since <i>Maud</i>, and the Master suspected that +“mosquitoes” (reviewers) were the cause. +“There is a note needed to show the good side of human +nature and to condone its frailties which Thackeray will never +strike.” To others it seems that Thackeray was +eternally striking this note: at that time in General Lambert, +his wife, and daughters, not to speak of other characters in +<i>The Virginians</i>. Who does not condone the frailties +of Captain Costigan, and F. B., and the Chevalier Strong? +In any case, Tennyson took his own time, he was (1858) only +beginning <i>Elaine</i>. There is no doubt that Tennyson +was easily pricked by unsympathetic criticism, even from the most +insignificant source, and, as he confessed, he received little +pleasure from praise. All authors, without exception, are +sensitive. A sturdier author wrote that he would sometimes +have been glad to meet his assailant “where the muir-cock +was bailie.” We know how testily Wordsworth replied +in defence to the gentlest comments by Lamb.</p> +<p>The Master of Balliol kept insisting, “As to the +critics, their power is not really great. . . . One drop of +natural feeling in poetry or the true statement of a single new +fact is already felt to be of more value than all the critics put +together.” Yet even critics may be in the right, and +of all great poets, Tennyson listened most obediently to their +censures, as we have seen in the case of his early poems. +His prolonged silences after the attacks of 1833 and 1855 were +occupied in work and reflection: Achilles was not merely sulking +in his tent, as some of his friends seem to have supposed. +An epic in a series of epic idylls cannot be dashed off like a +romantic novel in rhyme; and Tennyson’s method was always +one of waiting for maturity of conception and execution.</p> +<p>Mrs Tennyson, doubtless by her lord’s desire, asked the +Master (then tutor of Balliol) to suggest themes. Old age +was suggested, and is treated in <i>The Grandmother</i>. +Other topics were not handled. “I hold most +strongly,” said the Master, “that it is the duty of +every one who has the good fortune to know a man of genius to do +any trifling service they can to lighten his work.” +To do every service in his power to every man was the +Master’s life-long practice. He was not much at home, +his letters show, with Burns, to whom he seems to have attributed +<i>John Anderson</i>, <i>my jo</i>, <i>John</i>, while he tells +an anecdote of Burns composing <i>Tam o’ Shanter</i> with +emotional tears, which, if true at all, is true of the making of +<i>To Mary in Heaven</i>. If Burns wept over <i>Tam +o’ Shanter</i>, the tears must have been tears of +laughter.</p> +<p>The first four <i>Idylls of the King</i> were prepared for +publication in the spring of 1859; while Tennyson was at work +also on <i>Pelleas and Ettarre</i>, and the Tristram cycle. +In autumn he went on a tour to Lisbon with Mr F. T. Palgrave and +Mr Craufurd Grove. Returning, he fell eagerly to reading an +early copy of Darwin’s <i>Origin of Species</i>, the crown +of his own early speculations on the theory of evolution. +“Your theory does not make against Christianity?” he +asked Darwin later (1868), who replied, “No, certainly +not.” But Darwin has stated the waverings of his own +mind in contact with a topic too high for <i>a priori</i> +reasoning, and only to be approached, if at all, on the strength +of the scientific method applied to facts which science, so far, +neglects, or denies, or “explains away,” rather than +explains.</p> +<p>The <i>Idylls</i>, unlike <i>Maud</i>, were well received by +the press, better by the public, and best of all by friends like +Thackeray, the Duke of Argyll, the Master of Balliol, and Clough, +while Ruskin showed some reserve. The letter from Thackeray +I cannot deny myself the pleasure of citing from the Biography: +it was written “in an ardour of claret and +gratitude,” but posted some six weeks later:—</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="smcap">Folkestone</span>, <i>September</i>.<br /> +36 <span class="smcap">Onslow Square</span>, <i>October</i>.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">My dear old Alfred</span>,—I owe you +a letter of happiness and thanks. Sir, about three weeks +ago, when I was ill in bed, I read the Idylls of the King, and I +thought, “Oh, I must write to him now, for this pleasure, +this delight, this splendour of happiness which I have been +enjoying.” But I should have blotted the sheets, +’tis ill writing on one’s back. The letter full +of gratitude never went as far as the post-office, and how comes +it now?</p> +<p>D’abord, a bottle of claret. (The landlord of the +hotel asked me down to the cellar and treated me.) Then +afterwards sitting here, an old magazine, Fraser’s +Magazine, 1850, and I come on a poem out of The Princess which +says, “I hear the horns of Elfland blowing, +blowing,”—no, it’s “the horns of Elfland +faintly blowing” (I have been into my bedroom to fetch my +pen and it has made that blot), and, reading the lines, which +only one man in the world could write, I thought about the other +horns of Elfland blowing in full strength, and Arthur in gold +armour, and Guinevere in gold hair, and all those knights and +heroes and beauties and purple landscapes and misty gray lakes in +which you have made me live. They seem like facts to me, +since about three weeks ago (three weeks or a month was it?) when +I read the book. It is on the table yonder, and I +don’t like, somehow, to disturb it, but the delight and +gratitude! You have made me as happy as I was as a child +with the Arabian Nights,—every step I have walked in +Elfland has been a sort of Paradise to me. (The landlord +gave two bottles of his claret and I think I drank the most) and +here I have been lying back in the chair and thinking of those +delightful Idylls, my thoughts being turned to you: what could I +do but be grateful to that surprising genius which has made me so +happy? Do you understand that what I mean is all true, and +that I should break out were you sitting opposite with a pipe in +your mouth? Gold and purple and diamonds, I say, gentlemen, +and glory and love and honour, and if you haven’t given me +all these why should I be in such an ardour of gratitude? +But I have had out of that dear book the greatest delight that +has ever come to me since I was a young man; to write and think +about it makes me almost young, and this I suppose is what +I’m doing, like an after-dinner speech.</p> +<p><i>P.S.</i>—I thought the “Grandmother” +quite as fine. How can you at 50 be doing things as well as +at 35?</p> +<p>October 16th.—(I should think six weeks after the +writing of the above.)</p> +<p>The rhapsody of gratitude was never sent, and for a peculiar +reason: just about the time of writing I came to an arrangement +with Smith & Elder to edit their new magazine, and to have a +contribution from T. was the publishers’ and editor’s +highest ambition. But to ask a man for a favour, and to +praise and bow down before him in the same page, seemed to be so +like hypocrisy, that I held my hand, and left this note in my +desk, where it has been lying during a little +French-Italian-Swiss tour which my girls and their papa have been +making.</p> +<p>Meanwhile S. E. & Co. have been making their own proposals +to you, and you have replied not favourably, I am sorry to hear; +but now there is no reason why you should not have my homages, +and I am just as thankful for the Idylls, and love and admire +them just as much, as I did two months ago when I began to write +in that ardour of claret and gratitude. If you can’t +write for us you can’t. If you can by chance some +day, and help an old friend, how pleased and happy I shall +be! This however must be left to fate and your convenience: +I don’t intend to give up hope, but accept the good fortune +if it comes. I see one, two, three quarterlies advertised +to-day, as all bringing laurels to laureatus. He will not +refuse the private tribute of an old friend, will he? You +don’t know how pleased the girls were at Kensington +t’other day to hear you quote their father’s little +verses, and he too I daresay was not disgusted. He sends +you and yours his very best regards in this most heartfelt and +artless</p> +<p style="text-align: right">(note of admiration)!<br /> +Always yours, my dear Alfred,<br /> +W. M. <span class="smcap">Thackeray</span>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Naturally this letter gave Tennyson more pleasure than all the +converted critics with their favourable reviews. The Duke +of Argyll announced the conversion of Macaulay. The Master +found <i>Elaine</i> “the fairest, sweetest, purest love +poem in the English language.” As to the whole, +“The allegory in the distance <i>greatly strengthens</i>, +<i>also elevates</i>, <i>the meaning of the poem</i>.”</p> +<p>Ruskin, like some other critics, felt “the art and +finish in these poems a little more than I like to feel +it.” Yet <i>Guinevere</i> and <i>Elaine</i> had been +rapidly written and little corrected. I confess to the +opinion that what a man does most easily is, as a rule, what he +does best. We know that the “art and finish” of +Shakespeare were spontaneous, and so were those of +Tennyson. Perfection in art is sometimes more sudden than +we think, but then “the long preparation for it,—that +unseen germination, <i>that</i> is what we ignore and +forget.” But he wisely kept his pieces by him for a +long time, restudying them with a fresh eye. The +“unreality” of the subject also failed to please +Ruskin, as it is a stumbling-block to others. He wanted +poems on “the living present,” a theme not selected +by Homer, Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Virgil, or the Greek +dramatists, except (among surviving plays) in the <i>Persæ +of</i> Æschylus. The poet who can transfigure the hot +present is fortunate, but most, and the greatest, have visited +the cool quiet purlieus of the past.</p> +<h2><a name="page103"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +103</span>VII.<br /> +THE IDYLLS OF THE KING.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> Idylls may probably be best +considered in their final shape: they are not an epic, but a +series of heroic <i>idyllia</i> of the same genre as the heroic +<i>idyllia</i> of Theocritus. He wrote long after the +natural age of national epic, the age of Homer. He saw the +later literary epic rise in the <i>Argonautica</i> of Apollonius +Rhodius, a poem with many beauties, if rather an archaistic and +elaborate revival as a whole. The time for long narrative +poems, Theocritus appears to have thought, was past, and he only +ventured on the heroic <i>idyllia</i> of Heracles, and certain +adventures of the Argonauts. Tennyson, too, from the first +believed that his pieces ought to be short. Therefore, +though he had a conception of his work as a whole, a conception +long mused on, and sketched in various lights, he produced no +epic, only a series of epic <i>idyllia</i>. He had a +spiritual conception, “an allegory in the distance,” +an allegory not to be insisted upon, though its presence was to +be felt. No longer, as in youth, did Tennyson intend Merlin +to symbolise “the sceptical understanding” (as if one +were to “break into blank the gospel of” Herr Kant), +or poor Guinevere to stand for the Blessed Reformation, or the +Table Round for Liberal Institutions. Mercifully Tennyson +never actually allegorised Arthur in that fashion. Later he +thought of a musical masque of Arthur, and sketched a +<i>scenario</i>. Finally Tennyson dropped both the allegory +of Liberal principles and the musical masque in favour of the +series of heroic idylls. There was only a “parabolic +drift” in the intention. “There is no single +fact or incident in the Idylls, however seemingly mystical, which +cannot be explained without any mystery or allegory +whatever.” The Idylls ought to be read (and the right +readers never dream of doing anything else) as romantic poems, +just like Browning’s <i>Childe Roland</i>, in which the +wrong readers (the members of the Browning Society) sought for +mystic mountains and marvels. Yet Tennyson had his own +interpretation, “a dream of man coming into practical life +and ruined by one sin.” That was his +“interpretation,” or “allegory in the +distance.”</p> +<p>People may be heard objecting to the suggestion of any +spiritual interpretation of the Arthur legends, and even to the +existence of elementary morality among the Arthurian knights and +ladies. There seems to be a notion that “bold bawdry +and open manslaughter,” as Roger Ascham said, are the +staple of Tennyson’s sources, whether in the mediæval +French, the Welsh, or in Malory’s compilation, chiefly from +French sources. Tennyson is accused of +“Bowdlerising” these, and of introducing gentleness, +courtesy, and conscience into a literature where such qualities +were unknown. I must confess myself ignorant of any early +and popular, or “primitive” literature, in which +human virtues, and the human conscience, do not play their +part. Those who object to Tennyson’s handling of the +great Arthurian cycle, on the ground that he is too refined and +too moral, must either never have read or must long have +forgotten even Malory’s romance. Thus we read, in a +recent novel, that Lancelot was an <i>homme aux bonnes +fortunes</i>, whereas Lancelot was the most loyal of lovers.</p> +<p>Among other critics, Mr Harrison has objected that the +Arthurian world of Tennyson “is not quite an ideal +world. Therein lies the difficulty. The scene, though +not of course historic, has certain historic suggestions and +characters.” It is not apparent who the historic +characters are, for the real Arthur is but a historic +phantasm. “But then, in the midst of so much realism, +the knights, from Arthur downwards, talk and act in ways with +which we are familiar in modern ethical and psychological novels, +but which are as impossible in real mediæval knights as a +Bengal tiger or a Polar bear would be in a +drawing-room.” I confess to little acquaintance with +modern ethical novels; but real mediæval knights, and still +more the knights of mediæval romance, were capable of very +ethical actions. To halt an army for the protection and +comfort of a laundress was a highly ethical action. Perhaps +Sir Redvers Buller would do it: Bruce did. Mr Harrison +accuses the ladies of the Idylls of soul-bewildering casuistry, +like that of women in <i>Middlemarch</i> or <i>Helbeck of +Bannisdale</i>. Now I am not reminded by Guinevere, and +Elaine, and Enid, of ladies in these ethical novels. But +the women of the mediæval <i>Cours d’Amour</i> (the +originals from whom the old romancers drew) were nothing if not +casuists. “Spiritual delicacy” (as they +understood it) was their delight.</p> +<p>Mr Harrison even argues that Malory’s men lived +hot-blooded lives in fierce times, “before an idea had +arisen in the world of ‘reverencing conscience,’ +‘leading sweet lives,’” and so on. But he +admits that they had “fantastic ideals of +‘honour’ and ‘love.’” As to +“fantastic,” that is a matter of opinion, but to have +ideals and to live in accordance with them is to “reverence +conscience”, which the heroes of the romances are said by +Mr Harrison never to have had an idea of doing. They are +denied even “amiable words and courtliness.” +Need one say that courtliness is the dominant note of +mediæval knights, in history as in romance? With +discourtesy Froissart would “head the count of +crimes.” After a battle, he says, Scots knights and +English would thank each other for a good fight, “not like +the Germans.” “And now, I dare say,” said +Malory’s Sir Ector, “thou, Sir Lancelot, wast the +curtiest knight that ever bare shield, . . . and thou wast the +meekest man and the gentlest that ever ate in hall among +ladies.” Observe Sir Lancelot in the difficult pass +where the Lily Maid offers her love: “Jesu defend me, for +then I rewarded your father and your brother full evil for their +great goodness. . . . But because, fair damsel, that ye +love me as ye say ye do, I will, for your good will and kindness, +show you some goodness, . . . and always while I live to be your +true knight.” Here are “amiable words and +courtesy.” I cannot agree with Mr Harrison that +Malory’s book is merely “a fierce lusty +epic.” That was not the opinion of its printer and +publisher, Caxton. He produced it as an example of +“the gentle and virtuous deeds that some knights used in +these days, . . . noble and renowned acts of humanity, +gentleness, and chivalry. For herein may be seen noble +chivalry, courtesy, humanity, friendliness, love, cowardice, +murder, hate, virtue, and sin. Do after the good and leave +the evil.”</p> +<p>In reaction against the bold-faced heroines and sensual amours +of some of the old French romances, an ideal of exaggerated +asceticism, of stainless chastity, notoriously pervades the +portion of Malory’s work which deals with the Holy +Grail. Lancelot is distraught when he finds that, by dint +of enchantment, he has been made false to Guinevere (Book XI. +chap. viii.) After his dreaming vision of the Holy Grail, +with the reproachful Voice, Sir Lancelot said, “My sin and +my wickedness have brought me great dishonour, . . . and now I +see and understand that my old sin hindereth and shameth +me.” He was human, the Lancelot of Malory, and +“fell to his old love again,” with a heavy heart, and +with long penance at the end. How such good knights can be +deemed conscienceless and void of courtesy one knows not, except +by a survival of the Puritanism of Ascham. But Tennyson +found in the book what is in the book—honour, conscience, +courtesy, and the hero—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Whose honour rooted in dishonour stood,<br +/> +And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Malory’s book, which was Tennyson’s chief source, +ends by being the tragedy of the conscience of Lancelot. +Arthur is dead, or “In Avalon he groweth old.” +The Queen and Lancelot might sing, as Lennox reports that Queen +Mary did after Darnley’s murder—</p> +<blockquote><p>“<i>Weel is me</i><br /> +<i>For I am free</i>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“Why took they not their pastime?” Because +conscience forbade, and Guinevere sends her lover far from her, +and both die in religion. Thus Malory’s “fierce +lusty epic” is neither so lusty nor so fierce but that it +gives Tennyson his keynote: the sin that breaks the fair +companionship, and is bitterly repented.</p> +<p>“The knights are almost too polite to kill each +other,” the critic urges. In Malory they are +sometimes quite too polite to kill each other. Sir Darras +has a blood-feud against Sir Tristram, and Sir Tristram is in his +dungeon. Sir Darras said, “Wit ye well that Sir +Darras shall never destroy such a noble knight as thou art in +prison, howbeit that thou hast slain three of my sons, whereby I +was greatly aggrieved. But now shalt thou go and thy +fellows. . . . All that ye did,” said Sir Darras, +“was by force of knighthood, and that was the cause I would +not put you to death” (Book IX. chap. xl.)</p> +<p>Tennyson is accused of “emasculating the fierce lusty +epic into a moral lesson, as if it were to be performed in a +drawing-room by an academy of young ladies”—presided +over, I daresay, by “Anglican clergymen.” I +know not how any one who has read the <i>Morte d’Arthur</i> +can blame Tennyson in the matter. Let Malory and his +sources be blamed, if to be moral is to be culpable. A few +passages apart, there is no coarseness in Malory; that there are +conscience, courtesy, “sweet lives,” “keeping +down the base in man,” “amiable words,” and all +that Tennyson gives, and, in Mr Harrison’s theory, gives +without authority in the romance, my quotations from Malory +demonstrate. They are chosen at a casual opening of his +book. That there “had not arisen in the world” +“the idea of reverencing conscience” before the close +of the fifteenth century <span class="GutSmall">A.D.</span> is an +extraordinary statement for a critic of history to offer.</p> +<p>Mr Harrison makes his protest because “in the conspiracy +of silence into which Tennyson’s just fame has hypnotised +the critics, it is bare honesty to admit defects.” I +think I am not hypnotised, and I do not regard the Idylls as the +crown of Tennyson’s work. But it is not his +“defect” to have introduced generosity, gentleness, +conscience, and chastity where no such things occur in his +sources. Take Sir Darras: his position is that of Priam +when he meets Achilles, who slew his sons, except that Priam +comes as a suppliant; Sir Darras has Tristram in his hands, and +may slay him. He is “too polite,” as Mr +Harrison says: he is too good a Christian, or too good a +gentleman. One would not have given a tripod for the life +of Achilles had he fallen into the hands of Priam. But +between 1200 <span class="GutSmall">B.C.</span> (or so) and the +date of Malory, new ideas about “living sweet lives” +had arisen. Where and when do they not arise? A +British patrol fired on certain Swazis in time of truce. +Their lieutenant, who had been absent when this occurred, rode +alone to the stronghold of the Swazi king, Sekukoeni, and gave +himself up, expecting death by torture. “Go, +sir,” said the king; “we too are +gentlemen.” The idea of a “sweet life” of +honour had dawned even on Sekukoeni: it lights up Malory’s +romance, and is reflected in Tennyson’s Idylls, doubtless +with some modernism of expression.</p> +<p>That the Idylls represent no real world is certain. That +Tennyson modernises and moralises too much, I willingly admit; +what I deny is that he introduces gentleness, courtesy, and +conscience where his sources have none. Indeed this is not +a matter of critical opinion, but of verifiable fact. Any +one can read Malory and judge for himself. But the world in +which the Idylls move could not be real. For more than a +thousand years different races, different ages, had taken hold of +the ancient Celtic legends and spiritualised them after their own +manner, and moulded them to their own ideals. There may +have been a historical Arthur, <i>Comes Britanniæ</i>, +after the Roman withdrawal. <i>Ye Amherawdyr Arthur</i>, +“the Emperor Arthur,” may have lived and fought, and +led the Brythons to battle. But there may also have been a +Brythonic deity, or culture hero, of the same, or of a similar +name, and myths about him may have been assigned to a real +Arthur. Again, the Arthur of the old Welsh legends was by +no means the blameless king—even in comparatively late +French romances he is not blameless. But the process of +idealising him went on: still incomplete in Malory’s +compilation, where he is often rather otiose and far from +royal. Tennyson, for his purpose, completed the +idealisation.</p> +<p>As to Guinevere, she was not idealised in the old Welsh +rhyme—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Guinevere, Giant Ogurvan’s +daughter,<br /> +Naughty young, more naughty later.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Of Lancelot, and her passion for him, the old Welsh has +nothing to say. Probably Chrétien de Troyes, by a +happy blunder or misconception, gave Lancelot his love and his +pre-eminent part. Lancelot was confused with Peredur, and +Guinevere with the lady of whom Peredur was in quest. The +Elaine who becomes by Lancelot the mother of Galahad “was +Lancelot’s rightful consort, as one recognises in her name +that of Elen, the Empress, whom the story of Peredur” +(Lancelot, by the confusion) “gives that hero to +wife.” The second Elaine, the maid of Astolat, is +another refraction from the original Elen. As to the Grail, +it may be a Christianised rendering of one or another of the +magical and mystic caldrons of Welsh or Irish legend. There +is even an apparent Celtic source of the mysterious fisher king +of the Grail romance. <a name="citation112"></a><a +href="#footnote112" class="citation">[112]</a></p> +<p>A sketch of the evolution of the Arthurian legends might run +thus:—</p> +<p class="gutindent">Sixth to eighth century, growth of myth +about an Arthur, real, or supposed to be real.</p> +<p class="gutindent">Tenth century, the Duchies of Normandy and +Brittany are in close relations; by the eleventh century Normans +know Celtic Arthurian stories.</p> +<p class="gutindent">After, 1066, Normans in contact with the +Celtic peoples of this island are in touch with the Arthur +tales.</p> +<p class="gutindent">1130–1145, works on Arthurian matter +by Geoffrey of Monmouth.</p> +<p class="gutindent">1155, Wace’s French translation of +Geoffrey.</p> +<p class="gutindent">1150–1182, Chrétien de Troyes +writes poems on Arthurian topics.</p> +<p class="gutindent">French prose romances on Arthur, from, say, +1180 to 1250. Those romances reach Wales, and modify, in +translations, the original Welsh legends, or, in part, supplant +them.</p> +<p class="gutindent">Amplifications and recastings are +numerous. In 1485 Caxton publishes Malory’s +selections from French and English sources, the whole being +Tennyson’s main source, <i>Le Mort d’Arthur</i>. <a +name="citation113"></a><a href="#footnote113" +class="citation">[113]</a></p> +<p>Thus the Arthur stories, originally Celtic, originally a mass +of semi-pagan legend, myth, and <i>märchen</i>, have been +retold and rehandled by Norman, Englishman, and Frenchman, taking +on new hues, expressing new ideals—religious, chivalrous, +and moral. Any poet may work his will on them, and +Tennyson’s will was to retain the chivalrous courtesy, +generosity, love, and asceticism, while dimly or brightly veiling +or illuminating them with his own ideals. After so many +processes, from folk-tale to modern idyll, the Arthurian world +could not be real, and real it is not. Camelot lies +“out of space, out of time,” though the colouring is +mainly that of the later chivalry, and “the gleam” on +the hues is partly derived from Celtic fancy of various dates, +and is partly Tennysonian.</p> +<p>As the Idylls were finally arranged, the first, <i>The Coming +of Arthur</i>, is a remarkable proof of Tennyson’s +ingenuity in construction. Tales about the birth of Arthur +varied. In Malory, Uther Pendragon, the Bretwalda (in later +phrase) of Britain, besieges the Duke of Tintagil, who has a fair +wife, Ygerne, in another castle. Merlin magically puts on +Uther the shape of Ygerne’s husband, and as her husband she +receives him. On that night Arthur is begotten by Uther, +and the Duke of Tintagil, his mother’s husband, is slain in +a sortie. Uther weds Ygerne; both recognise Arthur as their +child. However, by the Celtic custom of fosterage the +infant is intrusted to Sir Ector as his <i>dalt</i>, or +foster-child, and Uther falls in battle. Arthur is later +approven king by the adventure of drawing from the stone the +magic sword that no other king could move. This adventure +answers to Sigmund’s drawing the sword from the Branstock, +in the Volsunga Saga, “Now men stand up, and none would +fain be the last to lay hand to the sword,” apparently +stricken into the pillar by Woden. “But none who came +thereto might avail to pull it out, for in nowise would it come +away howsoever they tugged at it, but now up comes Sigmund, King +Volsung’s son, and sets hand to the sword, and pulls it +from the stock, even as if it lay loose before him.” +The incident in the Arthurian as in the Volsunga legend is on a +par with the Golden Bough, in the sixth book of the +<i>Æneid</i>. Only the predestined champion, such as +Æneas, can pluck, or break, or cut the bough—</p> +<blockquote><p> “Ipse volens facilisque +sequetu<br /> +Si te fata vocant.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>All this ancient popular element in the Arthur story is +disregarded by Tennyson. He does not make Uther approach +Ygerne in the semblance of her lord, as Zeus approached Alcmena +in the semblance of her husband, Amphitryon. He neglects +the other ancient test of the proving of Arthur by his success in +drawing the sword. The poet’s object is to enfold the +origin and birth of Arthur in a spiritual mystery. This is +deftly accomplished by aid of the various versions of the tale +that reach King Leodogran when Arthur seeks the hand of his +daughter Guinevere, for Arthur’s title to the crown is +still disputed, so Leodogran makes inquiries. The answers +first leave it dubious whether Arthur is son of Gorloïs, +husband of Ygerne, or of Uther, who slew Gorloïs and married +her:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Enforced she was to wed him in her +tears.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The Celtic custom of fosterage is overlooked, and Merlin gives +the child to Anton, not as the customary <i>dalt</i>, but to +preserve the babe from danger. Queen Bellicent then tells +Leodogran, from the evidence of Bleys, Merlin’s master in +necromancy, the story of Arthur’s miraculous advent.</p> +<blockquote><p>“And down the wave and in the flame was +borne<br /> +A naked babe, and rode to Merlin’s feet,<br /> +Who stoopt and caught the babe, and cried ‘The King!<br /> +Here is an heir for Uther!’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But Merlin, when asked by Bellicent to corroborate the +statement of Bleys, merely</p> +<blockquote><p>“Answer’d in riddling triplets of old +time.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Finally, Leodogran’s faith is confirmed by a +vision. Thus doubtfully, amidst rumour and portent, cloud +and spiritual light, comes Arthur: “from the great +deep” he comes, and in as strange fashion, at the end, +“to the great deep he goes”—a king to be +accepted in faith or rejected by doubt. Arthur and his +ideal are objects of belief. All goes well while the +knights hold that</p> +<blockquote><p>“The King will follow Christ, and we the +King,<br /> +In whom high God hath breathed a secret thing.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In history we find the same situation in the France of +1429—</p> +<blockquote><p>“The King will follow Jeanne, and we the +King.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>While this faith held, all went well; when the king ceased to +follow, the spell was broken,—the Maid was martyred. +In this sense the poet conceives the coming of Arthur, a sign to +be spoken against, a test of high purposes, a belief redeeming +and ennobling till faith fails, and the little rift within the +lute, the love of Lancelot and Guinevere, makes discord of the +music. As matter of legend, it is to be understood that +Guinevere did not recognise Arthur when first he rode below her +window—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Since he neither wore on helm or shield<br +/> +The golden symbol of his kinglihood.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But Lancelot was sent to bring the bride—</p> +<blockquote><p> “And return’d<br /> +Among the flowers, in May, with Guinevere.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Then their long love may have begun, as in the story of +Tristram sent to bring Yseult to be the bride of King Mark. +In Malory, however, Lancelot does not come on the scene till +after Arthur’s wedding and return from his conquering +expedition to Rome. Then Lancelot wins renown, +“wherefore Queen Guinevere had him in favour above all +other knights; and in certain he loved the Queen again above all +other ladies damosels of his life.” Lancelot, as we +have seen, is practically a French creation, adopted to +illustrate the chivalrous theory of love, with its bitter +fruit. Though not of the original Celtic stock of legend, +Sir Lancelot makes the romance what it is, and draws down the +tragedy that originally turned on the sin of Arthur himself, the +sin that gave birth to the traitor Modred. But the +mediæval romancers disguised that form of the story, and +the process of idealising Arthur reached such heights in the +middle ages that Tennyson thought himself at liberty to paint the +<i>Flos Regum</i>, “the blameless King.” He +followed the <i>Brut ab Arthur</i>. “In short, God +has not made since Adam was, the man more perfect than +Arthur.” This is remote from the Arthur of the oldest +Celtic legends, but justifies the poet in adapting Arthur to the +ideal hero of the Idylls:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Ideal manhood closed in real man,<br /> +Rather than that grey king, whose name, a ghost,<br /> +Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain-peak,<br /> +And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still; or him<br /> +Of Geoffrey’s book, or him of Malleor’s, one<br /> +Touched by the adulterous finger of a time<br /> +That hovered between war and wantonness,<br /> +And crownings and dethronements.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The poetical beauties of <i>The Coming of Arthur</i> excel +those of <i>Gareth and Lynette</i>. The sons of Lot and +Bellicent seem to have been originally regarded as the incestuous +offspring of Arthur and his sister, the wife of King Lot. +Next it was represented that Arthur was ignorant of the +relationship. Mr Rhys supposes that the mythical scandal +(still present in Malory as a sin of ignorance) arose from +blending the Celtic Arthur (as Culture Hero) with an older divine +personage, such as Zeus, who marries his sister Hera. +Marriages of brother and sister are familiar in the Egyptian +royal house, and that of the Incas. But the poet has a +perfect right to disregard a scandalous myth which, obviously +crystallised later about the figure of the mythical Celtic +Arthur, was an incongruous accretion to his legend. Gareth, +therefore, is merely Arthur’s nephew, not son, in the poem, +as are Gawain and the traitor Modred. The story seems to be +rather mediæval French than Celtic—a mingling of the +spirit of <i>fabliau</i> and popular fairy tale. The poet +has added to its lightness, almost frivolity, the description of +the unreal city of Camelot, built to music, as when</p> +<blockquote><p>“Ilion, like a mist, rose into +towers.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>He has also brought in the allegory of Death, which, when +faced, proves to be “a blooming boy” behind the +mask. The courtesy and prowess of Lancelot lead up to the +later development of his character.</p> +<p>In <i>The Marriage of Geraint</i>, a rumour has already risen +about Lancelot and the Queen, darkening the Court, and +presaging</p> +<blockquote><p>“The world’s loud whisper breaking +into storm.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>For this reason Geraint removes Enid from Camelot to his own +land—the poet thus early leading up to the sin and the doom +of Lancelot. But this motive does not occur in the Welsh +story of Enid and Geraint, which Tennyson has otherwise followed +with unwonted closeness. The tale occurs in French romances +in various forms, but it appears to have returned, by way of +France and coloured with French influences, to Wales, where it is +one of the later Mabinogion. The characters are Celtic, and +Nud, father of Edyrn, Geraint’s defeated antagonist, +appears to be recognised by Mr Rhys as “the Celtic +Zeus.” The manners and the tournaments are +French. In the Welsh tale Geraint and Enid are bedded in +Arthur’s own chamber, which seems to be a symbolic +commutation of the <i>jus primæ noctis</i> a custom of +which the very existence is disputed. This unseemly +antiquarian detail, of course, is omitted in the Idyll.</p> +<p>An abstract of the Welsh tale will show how closely Tennyson +here follows his original. News is brought into +Arthur’s Court of the appearance of a white stag. The +king arranges a hunt, and Guinevere asks leave to go and watch +the sport. Next morning she cannot be wakened, though the +tale does not aver, like the Idyll, that she was</p> +<blockquote><p>“Lost in sweet dreams, and dreaming of her +love<br /> +For Lancelot.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Guinevere wakes late, and rides through a ford of Usk to the +hunt. Geraint follows, “a golden-hilted sword was at +his side, and a robe and a surcoat of satin were upon him, and +two shoes of leather upon his feet, and around him was a scarf of +blue purple, at each corner of which was a golden +apple”:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“But Guinevere lay late into the morn,<br /> +Lost in sweet dreams, and dreaming of her love<br /> +For Lancelot, and forgetful of the hunt;<br /> +But rose at last, a single maiden with her,<br /> +Took horse, and forded Usk, and gain’d the wood;<br /> +There, on a little knoll beside it, stay’d<br /> +Waiting to hear the hounds; but heard instead<br /> +A sudden sound of hoofs, for Prince Geraint,<br /> +Late also, wearing neither hunting-dress<br /> +Nor weapon, save a golden-hilted brand,<br /> +Came quickly flashing thro’ the shallow ford<br /> +Behind them, and so gallop’d up the knoll.<br /> +A purple scarf, at either end whereof<br /> +There swung an apple of the purest gold,<br /> +Sway’d round about him, as he gallop’d up<br /> +To join them, glancing like a dragon-fly<br /> +In summer suit and silks of holiday.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The encounter with the dwarf, the lady, and the knight +follows. The prose of the Mabinogi may be compared with the +verse of Tennyson:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Geraint,” said Gwenhwyvar, +“knowest thou the name of that tall knight +yonder?” “I know him not,” said he, +“and the strange armour that he wears prevents my either +seeing his face or his features.” “Go, +maiden,” said Gwenhwyvar, “and ask the dwarf who that +knight is.” Then the maiden went up to the dwarf; and +the dwarf waited for the maiden, when he saw her coming towards +him. And the maiden inquired of the dwarf who the knight +was. “I will not tell thee,” he answered. +“Since thou art so churlish as not to tell me,” said +she, “I will ask him himself.” “Thou +shalt not ask him, by my faith,” said he. +“Wherefore?” said she. “Because thou art +not of honour sufficient to befit thee to speak to my +Lord.” Then the maiden turned her horse’s head +towards the knight, upon which the dwarf struck her with the whip +that was in his hand across the face and the eyes, until the +blood flowed forth. And the maiden, through the hurt she +received from the blow, returned to Gwenhwyvar, complaining of +the pain. “Very rudely has the dwarf treated +thee,” said Geraint. “I will go myself to know +who the knight is.” “Go,” said +Gwenhwyvar. And Geraint went up to the dwarf. +“Who is yonder knight?” said Geraint. “I +will not tell thee,” said the dwarf. “Then will +I ask him himself,” said he. “That wilt thou +not, by my faith,” said the dwarf; “thou art not +honourable enough to speak with my Lord.” Said +Geraint, “I have spoken with men of equal rank with +him.” And he turned his horse’s head towards +the knight; but the dwarf overtook him, and struck him as he had +done the maiden, so that the blood coloured the scarf that +Geraint wore. Then Geraint put his hand upon the hilt of +his sword, but he took counsel with himself, and considered that +it would be no vengeance for him to slay the dwarf, and to be +attacked unarmed by the armed knight, so he returned to where +Gwenhwyvar was.</p> +<p> “And while they listen’d for the +distant hunt,<br /> +And chiefly for the baying of Cavall,<br /> +King Arthur’s hound of deepest mouth, there rode<br /> +Full slowly by a knight, lady, and dwarf;<br /> +Whereof the dwarf lagg’d latest, and the knight<br /> +Had vizor up, and show’d a youthful face,<br /> +Imperious, and of haughtiest lineaments.<br /> +And Guinevere, not mindful of his face<br /> +In the King’s hall, desired his name, and sent<br /> +Her maiden to demand it of the dwarf;<br /> +Who being vicious, old and irritable,<br /> +And doubling all his master’s vice of pride,<br /> +Made answer sharply that she should not know.<br /> +‘Then will I ask it of himself,’ she said.<br /> +‘Nay, by my faith, thou shalt not,’ cried the +dwarf;<br /> +‘Thou art not worthy ev’n to speak of him’;<br +/> +And when she put her horse toward the knight,<br /> +Struck at her with his whip, and she return’d<br /> +Indignant to the Queen; whereat Geraint<br /> +Exclaiming, ‘Surely I will learn the name,’<br /> +Made sharply to the dwarf, and ask’d it of him,<br /> +Who answer’d as before; and when the Prince<br /> +Had put his horse in motion toward the knight,<br /> +Struck at him with his whip, and cut his cheek.<br /> +The Prince’s blood spirted upon the scarf,<br /> +Dyeing it; and his quick, instinctive hand<br /> +Caught at the hilt, as to abolish him:<br /> +But he, from his exceeding manfulness<br /> +And pure nobility of temperament,<br /> +Wroth to be wroth at such a worm, refrain’d<br /> +From ev’n a word.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The self-restraint of Geraint, who does not slay the +dwarf,</p> +<blockquote><p> “From his exceeding +manfulness<br /> +And pure nobility of temperament,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>may appear “too polite,” and too much in accord +with the still undiscovered idea of “leading sweet +lives.” However, the uninvented idea does occur in +the Welsh original: “Then Geraint put his hand upon the +hilt of his sword, but he took counsel with himself, and +considered that it would be no vengeance for him to slay the +dwarf,” while he also reflects that he would be +“attacked unarmed by the armed knight.” Perhaps +Tennyson may be blamed for omitting this obvious motive for +self-restraint. Geraint therefore follows the knight in +hope of finding arms, and arrives at the town all busy with +preparations for the tournament of the sparrow-hawk. This +was a challenge sparrow-hawk: the knight had won it twice, and if +he won it thrice it would be his to keep. The rest, in the +tale, is exactly followed in the Idyll. Geraint is +entertained by the ruined Yniol. The youth bears the +“costrel” full of “good purchased mead” +(the ruined Earl not brewing for himself), and Enid carries the +manchet bread in her veil, “old, and beginning to be worn +out.” All Tennyson’s own is the beautiful +passage—</p> +<blockquote><p> “And while he waited in +the castle court,<br /> +The voice of Enid, Yniol’s daughter, rang<br /> +Clear thro’ the open casement of the hall,<br /> +Singing; and as the sweet voice of a bird,<br /> +Heard by the lander in a lonely isle,<br /> +Moves him to think what kind of bird it is<br /> +That sings so delicately clear, and make<br /> +Conjecture of the plumage and the form;<br /> +So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint;<br /> +And made him like a man abroad at morn<br /> +When first the liquid note beloved of men<br /> +Comes flying over many a windy wave<br /> +To Britain, and in April suddenly<br /> +Breaks from a coppice gemm’d with green and red,<br /> +And he suspends his converse with a friend,<br /> +Or it may be the labour of his hands,<br /> +To think or say, ‘There is the nightingale’;<br /> +So fared it with Geraint, who thought and said,<br /> +‘Here, by God’s grace, is the one voice for +me.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Yniol frankly admits in the tale that he was in the wrong in +the quarrel with his nephew. The poet, however, gives him +the right, as is natural. The combat is exactly followed in +the Idyll, as is Geraint’s insistence in carrying his bride +to Court in her faded silks. Geraint, however, leaves Court +with Enid, not because of the scandal about Lancelot, but to do +his duty in his own country. He becomes indolent and +uxorious, and Enid deplores his weakness, and awakes his +suspicions, thus:—</p> +<blockquote><p>And one morning in the summer time they were upon +their couch, and Geraint lay upon the edge of it. And Enid +was without sleep in the apartment which had windows of +glass. And the sun shone upon the couch. And the +clothes had slipped from off his arms and his breast, and he was +asleep. Then she gazed upon the marvellous beauty of his +appearance, and she said, “Alas, and am I the cause that +these arms and this breast have lost their glory and the warlike +fame which they once so richly enjoyed!” And as she +said this, the tears dropped from her eyes, and they fell upon +his breast. And the tears she shed, and the words she had +spoken, awoke him; and another thing contributed to awaken him, +and that was the idea that it was not in thinking of him that she +spoke thus, but that it was because she loved some other man more +than him, and that she wished for other society, and thereupon +Geraint was troubled in his mind, and he called his squire; and +when he came to him, “Go quickly,” said he, +“and prepare my horse and my arms, and make them +ready. And do thou arise,” said he to Enid, +“and apparel thyself; and cause thy horse to be accoutred, +and clothe thee in the worst riding-dress that thou hast in thy +possession. And evil betide me,” said he, “if +thou returnest here until thou knowest whether I have lost my +strength so completely as thou didst say. And if it be so, +it will then be easy for thee to seek the society thou didst wish +for of him of whom thou wast thinking.” So she arose, +and clothed herself in her meanest garments. “I know +nothing, Lord,” said she, “of thy +meaning.” “Neither wilt thou know at this +time,” said he.</p> +<p> “At last, it chanced that on a summer +morn<br /> +(They sleeping each by either) the new sun<br /> +Beat thro’ the blindless casement of the room,<br /> +And heated the strong warrior in his dreams;<br /> +Who, moving, cast the coverlet aside,<br /> +And bared the knotted column of his throat,<br /> +The massive square of his heroic breast,<br /> +And arms on which the standing muscle sloped,<br /> +As slopes a wild brook o’er a little stone,<br /> +Running too vehemently to break upon it.<br /> +And Enid woke and sat beside the couch,<br /> +Admiring him, and thought within herself,<br /> +Was ever man so grandly made as he?<br /> +Then, like a shadow, past the people’s talk<br /> +And accusation of uxoriousness<br /> +Across her mind, and bowing over him,<br /> +Low to her own heart piteously she said:</p> +<p> ‘O noble breast and all-puissant +arms,<br /> +Am I the cause, I the poor cause that men<br /> +Reproach you, saying all your force is gone?<br /> +I <i>am</i> the cause, because I dare not speak<br /> +And tell him what I think and what they say.<br /> +And yet I hate that he should linger here;<br /> +I cannot love my lord and not his name.<br /> +Far liefer had I gird his harness on him,<br /> +And ride with him to battle and stand by,<br /> +And watch his mightful hand striking great blows<br /> +At caitiffs and at wrongers of the world.<br /> +Far better were I laid in the dark earth,<br /> +Not hearing any more his noble voice,<br /> +Not to be folded more in these dear arms,<br /> +And darken’d from the high light in his eyes,<br /> +Than that my lord thro’ me should suffer shame.<br /> +Am I so bold, and could I so stand by,<br /> +And see my dear lord wounded in the strife,<br /> +Or maybe pierced to death before mine eyes,<br /> +And yet not dare to tell him what I think,<br /> +And how men slur him, saying all his force<br /> +Is melted into mere effeminacy?<br /> +O me, I fear that I am no true wife.’</p> +<p> Half inwardly, half audibly she spoke,<br /> +And the strong passion in her made her weep<br /> +True tears upon his broad and naked breast,<br /> +And these awoke him, and by great mischance<br /> +He heard but fragments of her later words,<br /> +And that she fear’d she was not a true wife.<br /> +And then he thought, ‘In spite of all my care,<br /> +For all my pains, poor man, for all my pains,<br /> +She is not faithful to me, and I see her<br /> +Weeping for some gay knight in Arthur’s hall.’<br /> +Then tho’ he loved and reverenced her too much<br /> +To dream she could be guilty of foul act,<br /> +Right thro’ his manful breast darted the pang<br /> +That makes a man, in the sweet face of her<br /> +Whom he loves most, lonely and miserable.<br /> +At this he hurl’d his huge limbs out of bed,<br /> +And shook his drowsy squire awake and cried,<br /> +‘My charger and her palfrey’; then to her,<br /> +‘I will ride forth into the wilderness;<br /> +For tho’ it seems my spurs are yet to win,<br /> +I have not fall’n so low as some would wish.<br /> +And thou, put on thy worst and meanest dress<br /> +And ride with me.’ And Enid ask’d, amazed,<br +/> +‘If Enid errs, let Enid learn her fault.’<br /> +But he, ‘I charge thee, ask not, but obey.’<br /> +Then she bethought her of a faded silk,<br /> +A faded mantle and a faded veil,<br /> +And moving toward a cedarn cabinet,<br /> +Wherein she kept them folded reverently<br /> +With sprigs of summer laid between the folds,<br /> +She took them, and array’d herself therein,<br /> +Remembering when first he came on her<br /> +Drest in that dress, and how he loved her in it,<br /> +And all her foolish fears about the dress,<br /> +And all his journey to her, as himself<br /> +Had told her, and their coming to the court.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Tennyson’s</p> +<blockquote><p>“Arms on which the standing muscle +sloped,<br /> +As slopes a wild brook o’er a little stone,<br /> +Running too vehemently to break upon it,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>is suggested perhaps by Theocritus—“The muscles on +his brawny arms stood out like rounded rocks that the winter +torrent has rolled and worn smooth, in the great swirling +stream” (Idyll xxii.)</p> +<p>The second part of the poem follows the original less +closely. Thus Limours, in the tale, is not an old suitor of +Enid; Edyrn does not appear to the rescue; certain cruel games, +veiled in a magic mist, occur in the tale, and are omitted by the +poet; “Gwyffert petit, so called by the Franks, whom the +Cymry call the Little King,” in the tale, is not a +character in the Idyll, and, generally, the gross Celtic +exaggerations of Geraint’s feats are toned down by +Tennyson. In other respects, as when Geraint eats the +mowers’ dinner, the tale supplies the materials. But +it does not dwell tenderly on the reconciliation. The tale +is more or less in the vein of “patient Grizel,” and +he who told it is more concerned with the fighting than with +<i>amoris redintegratio</i>, and the sufferings of Enid. +The Idyll is enriched with many beautiful pictures from nature, +such as this:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“But at the flash and motion of the man<br +/> +They vanish’d panic-stricken, like a shoal<br /> +Of darting fish, that on a summer morn<br /> +Adown the crystal dykes at Camelot<br /> +Come slipping o’er their shadows on the sand,<br /> +But if a man who stands upon the brink<br /> +But lift a shining hand against the sun,<br /> +There is not left the twinkle of a fin<br /> +Betwixt the cressy islets white in flower;<br /> +So, scared but at the motion of the man,<br /> +Fled all the boon companions of the Earl,<br /> +And left him lying in the public way.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In <i>Balin and Balan</i> Tennyson displays great constructive +power, and remarkable skill in moulding the most recalcitrant +materials. Balin or Balyn, according to Mr Rhys, is the +Belinus of Geoffrey of Monmouth, “whose name represents the +Celtic divinity described in Latin as Apollo Belenus or +Belinus.” <a name="citation129a"></a><a +href="#footnote129a" class="citation">[129a]</a> In +Geoffrey, Belinus, euphemerised, or reduced from god to hero, has +a brother, Brennius, the Celtic Brân, King of Britain from +Caithness to the Humber. Belinus drives Brân into +exile. “Thus it is seen that Belinus or Balyn was, +mythologically speaking, the natural enemy” (as Apollo +Belinus, the radiant god) “of the dark divinity Brân +or Balan.”</p> +<p>If this view be correct, the two brothers answer to the good +and bad principles of myths like that of the Huron Iouskeha the +Sun, and Anatensic the Moon, or rather Taouiscara and Iouskeha, +the hostile brothers, Black and White. <a +name="citation129b"></a><a href="#footnote129b" +class="citation">[129b]</a> These mythical brethren are, in +Malory, two knights of Northumberland, Balin the wild and +Balan. Their adventures are mixed up with a hostile Lady of +the Lake, whom Balin slays in Arthur’s presence, with a +sword which none but Balin can draw from sheath; and with an evil +black-faced knight Garlon, invisible at will, whom Balin slays in +the castle of the knight’s brother, King Pellam. +Pursued from room to room by Pellam, Balin finds himself in a +chamber full of relics of Joseph of Arimathea. There he +seizes a spear, the very spear with which the Roman soldier +pierced the side of the Crucified, and wounds Pellam. The +castle falls in ruins “through that dolorous +stroke.” Pellam becomes the maimed king, who can only +be healed by the Holy Grail. Apparently Celtic myths of +obscure antiquity have been adapted in France, and interwoven +with fables about Joseph of Arimathea and Christian +mysteries. It is not possible here to go into the +complicated learning of the subject. In Malory, Balin, +after dealing the dolorous stroke, borrows a strange shield from +a knight, and, thus accoutred, meets his brother Balan, who does +not recognise him. They fight, both die and are buried in +one tomb, and Galahad later achieves the adventure of winning +Balin’s sword. “Thus endeth the tale of Balyn +and of Balan, two brethren born in Northumberland, good +knights,” says Malory, simply, and unconscious of the +strange mythological medley under the coat armour of romance.</p> +<p>The materials, then, seemed confused and obdurate, but +Tennyson works them into the course of the fatal love of Lancelot +and Guinevere, and into the spiritual texture of the +Idylls. Balin has been expelled from Court for the wildness +that gives him his name, <i>Balin le Sauvage</i>. He had +buffeted a squire in hall. He and Balan await all +challengers beside a well. Arthur encounters and dismounts +them. Balin devotes himself to self-conquest. Then +comes tidings that Pellam, of old leagued with Lot against +Arthur, has taken to religion, collects relics, claims descent +from Joseph of Arimathea, and owns the sacred spear that pierced +the side of Christ. But Garlon is with him, the knight +invisible, who appears to come from an Irish source, or at least +has a parallel in Irish legend. This Garlon has an +unknightly way of killing men by viewless blows from the +rear. Balan goes to encounter Garlon. Balin remains, +learning courtesy, modelling himself on Lancelot, and gaining +leave to bear Guinevere’s Crown Matrimonial for his +cognisance,—which, of course, Balan does not +know,—</p> +<blockquote><p>“As golden earnest of a better +life.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But Balin sees reason to think that Lancelot and Guinevere +love even too well.</p> +<blockquote><p> “Then chanced, one +morning, that Sir Balin sat<br /> +Close-bower’d in that garden nigh the hall.<br /> +A walk of roses ran from door to door;<br /> +A walk of lilies crost it to the bower:<br /> +And down that range of roses the great Queen<br /> +Came with slow steps, the morning on her face;<br /> +And all in shadow from the counter door<br /> +Sir Lancelot as to meet her, then at once,<br /> +As if he saw not, glanced aside, and paced<br /> +The long white walk of lilies toward the bower.<br /> +Follow’d the Queen; Sir Balin heard her ‘Prince,<br +/> +Art thou so little loyal to thy Queen,<br /> +As pass without good morrow to thy Queen?’<br /> +To whom Sir Lancelot with his eyes on earth,<br /> +‘Fain would I still be loyal to the Queen.’<br /> +‘Yea so,’ she said, ‘but so to pass me +by—<br /> +So loyal scarce is loyal to thyself,<br /> +Whom all men rate the king of courtesy.<br /> +Let be: ye stand, fair lord, as in a dream.’</p> +<p> Then Lancelot with his hand among the +flowers,<br /> +‘Yea—for a dream. Last night methought I saw<br +/> +That maiden Saint who stands with lily in hand<br /> +In yonder shrine. All round her prest the dark,<br /> +And all the light upon her silver face<br /> +Flow’d from the spiritual lily that she held.<br /> +Lo! these her emblems drew mine eyes—away:<br /> +For see, how perfect-pure! As light a flush<br /> +As hardly tints the blossom of the quince<br /> +Would mar their charm of stainless maidenhood.’</p> +<p> ‘Sweeter to me,’ she said, +‘this garden rose<br /> +Deep-hued and many-folded sweeter still<br /> +The wild-wood hyacinth and the bloom of May.<br /> +Prince, we have ridd’n before among the flowers<br /> +In those fair days—not all as cool as these,<br /> +Tho’ season-earlier. Art thou sad? or sick?<br /> +Our noble King will send thee his own leech—<br /> +Sick? or for any matter anger’d at me?’</p> +<p> Then Lancelot lifted his large eyes; they +dwelt<br /> +Deep-tranced on hers, and could not fall: her hue<br /> +Changed at his gaze: so turning side by side<br /> +They past, and Balin started from his bower.</p> +<p> ‘Queen? subject? but I see not what I +see.<br /> +Damsel and lover? hear not what I hear.<br /> +My father hath begotten me in his wrath.<br /> +I suffer from the things before me, know,<br /> +Learn nothing; am not worthy to be knight;<br /> +A churl, a clown!’ and in him gloom on gloom<br /> +Deepen’d: he sharply caught his lance and shield,<br /> +Nor stay’d to crave permission of the King,<br /> +But, mad for strange adventure, dash’d away.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Balin is “disillusioned,” his faith in the Ideal +is shaken if not shattered. He rides at adventure. +Arriving at the half-ruined castle of Pellam, that dubious +devotee, he hears Garlon insult Guinevere, but restrains +himself. Next day, again insulted for bearing “the +crown scandalous” on his shield, he strikes Garlon down, is +pursued, seizes the sacred spear, and escapes. Vivien meets +him in the woods, drops scandal in his ears, and so maddens him +that he defaces his shield with the crown of Guinevere. Her +song, and her words,</p> +<blockquote><p> “This +fire of Heaven,<br /> +This old sun-worship, boy, will rise again,<br /> +And beat the cross to earth, and break the King<br /> +And all his Table,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>might be forced into an allegory of the revived pride of life, +at the Renaissance and after. The maddened yells of Balin +strike the ear of Balan, who thinks he has met the foul knight +Garlon, that</p> +<blockquote><p>“Tramples on the goodly shield to show<br /> +His loathing of our Order and the Queen.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>They fight, fatally wound, and finally recognise each other: +Balan trying to restore Balin’s faith in Guinevere, who is +merely slandered by Garlon and Vivien. Balin acknowledges +that his wildness has been their common bane, and they die, +“either locked in either’s arms.”</p> +<p>There is nothing in Malory, nor in any other source, so far as +I am aware, which suggested to Tennyson the <i>clou</i> of the +situation—the use of Guinevere’s crown as a +cognisance by Balin. This device enables the poet to weave +the rather confused and unintelligible adventures of Balin and +Balan into the scheme, and to make it a stage in the progress of +his fable. That Balin was reckless and wild Malory bears +witness, but his endeavours to conquer himself and reach the +ideal set by Lancelot are Tennyson’s addition, with all the +tragedy of Balin’s disenchantment and despair. The +strange fantastic house of Pellam, full of the most sacred +things,</p> +<blockquote><p>“In which he scarce could spy the Christ for +Saints,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>yet sheltering the human fiend Garlon, is supplied by Malory, +whose predecessors probably blended more than one myth of the old +Cymry into the romance, washed over with Christian +colouring. As Malory tells this part of the tale it is +perhaps more strange and effective than in the Idyll. The +introduction of Vivien into this adventure is wholly due to +Tennyson: her appearance here leads up to her triumph in the poem +which follows, <i>Merlin and Vivien</i>.</p> +<p>The nature and origin of Merlin are something of a +mystery. Hints and rumours of Merlin, as of Arthur, stream +from hill and grave as far north as Tweedside. If he was a +historical person, myths of magic might crystallise round him, as +round Virgil in Italy. The process would be the easier in a +country where the practices of Druidry still lingered, and +revived after the retreat of the Romans. The mediæval +romancers invented a legend that Merlin was a virgin-born child +of Satan. In Tennyson he may be guessed to represent the +fabled esoteric lore of old religions, with their vague +pantheisms, and such magic as the <i>tapas</i> of Brahmanic +legends. He is wise with a riddling evasive wisdom: the +builder of Camelot, the prophet, a shadow of Druidry clinging to +the Christian king. His wisdom cannot avail him: if he +beholds “his own mischance with a glassy +countenance,” he cannot avoid his shapen fate. He +becomes assotted of Vivien, and goes open-eyed to his doom.</p> +<p>The enchantress, Vivien, is one of that dubious company of +Ladies of the Lake, now friendly, now treacherous. Probably +these ladies are the fairies of popular Celtic tradition, taken +up into the more elaborate poetry of Cymric literature and +mediæval romance. Mr Rhys traces Vivien, or Nimue, or +Nyneue, back, through a series of palæographic changes and +errors, to Rhiannon, wife of Pwyll, a kind of lady of the lake he +thinks, but the identification is not very satisfactory. +Vivien is certainly “one of the damsels of the lake” +in Malory, and the damsels of the lake seem to be lake fairies, +with all their beguilements and strange unstable loves. +“And always Merlin lay about the lady to have her +maidenhood, and she was ever passing weary of him, and fain would +have been delivered of him, for she was afraid of him because he +was a devil’s son. . . . So by her subtle working she +made Merlin to go under that stone to let her wit of the marvels +there, but she wrought so there for him that he came never out +for all the craft he could do. And so she departed and left +Merlin.” The sympathy of Malory is not with the +enchanter. In the Idylls, as finally published, Vivien is +born on a battlefield of death, with a nature perverted, and an +instinctive hatred of the good. Wherefore she leaves the +Court of King Mark to make mischief in Camelot. She is, in +fact, the ideal minx, a character not elsewhere treated by +Tennyson:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “She hated all the +knights, and heard in thought<br /> +Their lavish comment when her name was named.<br /> +For once, when Arthur walking all alone,<br /> +Vext at a rumour issued from herself<br /> +Of some corruption crept among his knights,<br /> +Had met her, Vivien, being greeted fair,<br /> +Would fain have wrought upon his cloudy mood<br /> +With reverent eyes mock-loyal, shaken voice,<br /> +And flutter’d adoration, and at last<br /> +With dark sweet hints of some who prized him more<br /> +Than who should prize him most; at which the King<br /> +Had gazed upon her blankly and gone by:<br /> +But one had watch’d, and had not held his peace:<br /> +It made the laughter of an afternoon<br /> +That Vivien should attempt the blameless King.<br /> +And after that, she set herself to gain<br /> +Him, the most famous man of all those times,<br /> +Merlin, who knew the range of all their arts,<br /> +Had built the King his havens, ships, and halls,<br /> +Was also Bard, and knew the starry heavens;<br /> +The people call’d him Wizard; whom at first<br /> +She play’d about with slight and sprightly talk,<br /> +And vivid smiles, and faintly-venom’d points<br /> +Of slander, glancing here and grazing there;<br /> +And yielding to his kindlier moods, the Seer<br /> +Would watch her at her petulance, and play,<br /> +Ev’n when they seem’d unloveable, and laugh<br /> +As those that watch a kitten; thus he grew<br /> +Tolerant of what he half disdain’d, and she,<br /> +Perceiving that she was but half disdain’d,<br /> +Began to break her sports with graver fits,<br /> +Turn red or pale, would often when they met<br /> +Sigh fully, or all-silent gaze upon him<br /> +With such a fixt devotion, that the old man,<br /> +Tho’ doubtful, felt the flattery, and at times<br /> +Would flatter his own wish in age for love,<br /> +And half believe her true: for thus at times<br /> +He waver’d; but that other clung to him,<br /> +Fixt in her will, and so the seasons went.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Vivien is modern enough—if any type of character is +modern: at all events there is no such Blanche Amory of a girl in +the old legends and romances. In these Merlin fatigues the +lady by his love; she learns his arts, and gets rid of him as she +can. His forebodings in the Idyll contain a magnificent +image:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “There lay she all her +length and kiss’d his feet,<br /> +As if in deepest reverence and in love.<br /> +A twist of gold was round her hair; a robe<br /> +Of samite without price, that more exprest<br /> +Than hid her, clung about her lissome limbs,<br /> +In colour like the satin-shining palm<br /> +On sallows in the windy gleams of March:<br /> +And while she kiss’d them, crying, ‘Trample me,<br /> +Dear feet, that I have follow’d thro’ the world,<br +/> +And I will pay you worship; tread me down<br /> +And I will kiss you for it’; he was mute:<br /> +So dark a forethought roll’d about his brain,<br /> +As on a dull day in an Ocean cave<br /> +The blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall<br /> +In silence.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>We think of the blinded Cyclops groping round his cave, like +“the blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall.”</p> +<p>The richness, the many shining contrasts and immortal lines in +<i>Vivien</i>, seem almost too noble for a subject not easily +redeemed, and the picture of the ideal Court lying in full +corruption. Next to <i>Elaine</i>, Jowett wrote that he +“admired <i>Vivien</i> the most (the naughty one), which +seems to me a work of wonderful power and skill. It is most +elegant and fanciful. I am not surprised at your Delilah +beguiling the wise man; she is quite equal to it.” +The dramatic versatility of Tennyson’s genius, his power of +creating the most various characters, is nowhere better displayed +than in the contrast between the <i>Vivien</i> and the +<i>Elaine</i>. Vivien is a type, her adventure is of a +nature, which he has not elsewhere handled. Thackeray, who +admired the Idylls so enthusiastically, might have recognised in +Vivien a character not unlike some of his own, as dark as Becky +Sharp, more terrible in her selfishness than that Beatrix Esmond +who is still a paragon, and, in her creator’s despite, a +queen of hearts. In Elaine, on the other hand, Tennyson has +drawn a girl so innocently passionate, and told a tale of love +that never found his earthly close, so delicately beautiful, that +we may perhaps place this Idyll the highest of his poems on love, +and reckon it the gem of the Idylls, the central diamond in the +diamond crown. Reading <i>Elaine</i> once more, after an +interval of years, one is captivated by its grace, its pathos, +its nobility. The poet had touched on some unidentified +form of the story, long before, in <i>The Lady of +Shalott</i>. That poem had the mystery of romance, but, in +human interest, could not compete with <i>Elaine</i>, if indeed +any poem of Tennyson’s can be ranked with this matchless +Idyll.</p> +<p>The mere invention, and, as we may say, <i>charpentage</i>, +are of the first order. The materials in Malory, though +beautiful, are simple, and left a field for the poet’s +invention. <a name="citation139"></a><a href="#footnote139" +class="citation">[139]</a></p> +<p>Arthur, with the Scots and Northern knights, means to +encounter all comers at a Whitsuntide tourney. Guinevere is +ill, and cannot go to the jousts, while Lancelot makes excuse +that he is not healed of a wound. “Wherefore the King +was heavy and passing wroth, and so he departed towards +Winchester.” The Queen then blamed Lancelot: people +will say they deceive Arthur. “Madame,” said +Sir Lancelot, “I allow your wit; it is of late come that ye +were wise.” In the Idyll Guinevere speaks as if their +early loves had been as conspicuous as, according to George +Buchanan, were those of Queen Mary and Bothwell. Lancelot +will go to the tourney, and, despite Guinevere’s warning, +will take part against Arthur and his own fierce Northern +kinsmen. He rides to Astolat—“that is, +Gylford”—where Arthur sees him. He borrows the +blank shield of “Sir Torre,” and the company of his +brother Sir Lavaine. Elaine “cast such a love unto +Sir Lancelot that she would never withdraw her love, wherefore +she died.” At her prayer, and for better disguise (as +he had never worn a lady’s favour), Lancelot carried her +scarlet pearl-embroidered sleeve in his helmet, and left his +shield in Elaine’s keeping. The tourney passes as in +the poem, Gawain recognising Lancelot, but puzzled by the favour +he wears. The wounded Lancelot “thought to do what he +might while he might endure.” When he is offered the +prize he is so sore hurt that he “takes no force of no +honour.” He rides into a wood, where Lavaine draws +forth the spear. Lavaine brings Lancelot to the hermit, +once a knight. “I have seen the day,” says the +hermit, “I would have loved him the worse, because he was +against my lord, King Arthur, for some time. I was one of +the fellowship of the Round Table, but I thank God now I am +otherwise disposed.” Gawain, seeking the wounded +knight, comes to Astolat, where Elaine declares “he is the +man in the world that I first loved, and truly he is the last +that ever I shall love.” Gawain, on seeing the +shield, tells Elaine that the wounded knight is Lancelot, and she +goes to seek him and Lavaine. Gawain does not pay court to +Elaine, nor does Arthur rebuke him, as in the poem. When +Guinevere heard that Lancelot bore another lady’s favour, +“she was nigh out of her mind for wrath,” and +expressed her anger to Sir Bors, for Gawain had spoken of the +maid of Astolat. Bors tells this to Lancelot, who is tended +by Elaine. “‘But I well see,’ said Sir +Bors, ‘by her diligence about you that she loveth you +entirely.’ ‘That me repenteth,’ said Sir +Lancelot. Said Sir Bors, ‘Sir, she is not the first +that hath lost her pain upon you, and that is the more +pity.’” When Lancelot recovers, and returns to +Astolat, she declares her love with the frankness of ladies in +mediæval romance. “Have mercy upon me and +suffer me not to die for thy love.” Lancelot replies +with the courtesy and the offers of service which became +him. “Of all this,” said the maiden, “I +will none; for but if ye will wed me, or be my paramour at the +least, wit you well, Sir Lancelot, my good days are +done.”</p> +<p>This was a difficult pass for the poet, living in other days +of other manners. His art appears in the turn which he +gives to Elaine’s declaration:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “But when Sir +Lancelot’s deadly hurt was whole,<br /> +To Astolat returning rode the three.<br /> +There morn by morn, arraying her sweet self<br /> +In that wherein she deem’d she look’d her best,<br /> +She came before Sir Lancelot, for she thought<br /> +‘If I be loved, these are my festal robes,<br /> +If not, the victim’s flowers before he fall.’<br /> +And Lancelot ever prest upon the maid<br /> +That she should ask some goodly gift of him<br /> +For her own self or hers; ‘and do not shun<br /> +To speak the wish most near to your true heart;<br /> +Such service have ye done me, that I make<br /> +My will of yours, and Prince and Lord am I<br /> +In mine own land, and what I will I can.’<br /> +Then like a ghost she lifted up her face,<br /> +But like a ghost without the power to speak.<br /> +And Lancelot saw that she withheld her wish,<br /> +And bode among them yet a little space<br /> +Till he should learn it; and one morn it chanced<br /> +He found her in among the garden yews,<br /> +And said, ‘Delay no longer, speak your wish,<br /> +Seeing I go to-day’: then out she brake:<br /> +‘Going? and we shall never see you more.<br /> +And I must die for want of one bold word.’<br /> +‘Speak: that I live to hear,’ he said, ‘is +yours.’<br /> +Then suddenly and passionately she spoke:<br /> +‘I have gone mad. I love you: let me die.’<br +/> +‘Ah, sister,’ answer’d Lancelot, ‘what is +this?’<br /> +And innocently extending her white arms,<br /> +‘Your love,’ she said, ‘your love—to be +your wife.’<br /> +And Lancelot answer’d, ‘Had I chosen to wed,<br /> +I had been wedded earlier, sweet Elaine:<br /> +But now there never will be wife of mine.’<br /> +‘No, no’ she cried, ‘I care not to be wife,<br +/> +But to be with you still, to see your face,<br /> +To serve you, and to follow you thro’ the world.’<br +/> +And Lancelot answer’d, ‘Nay, the world, the world,<br +/> +All ear and eye, with such a stupid heart<br /> +To interpret ear and eye, and such a tongue<br /> +To blare its own interpretation—nay,<br /> +Full ill then should I quit your brother’s love,<br /> +And your good father’s kindness.’ And she +said,<br /> +‘Not to be with you, not to see your face—<br /> +Alas for me then, my good days are done.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>So she dies, and is borne down Thames to London, the fairest +corpse, “and she lay as though she had smiled.” +Her letter is read. “Ye might have showed her,” +said the Queen, “some courtesy and gentleness that might +have preserved her life;” and so the two are +reconciled.</p> +<p>Such, in brief, is the tender old tale of true love, with the +shining courtesy of Lavaine and the father of the maid, who speak +no word of anger against Lancelot. “For since first I +saw my lord, Sir Lancelot,” says Lavaine, “I could +never depart from him, nor nought I will, if I may follow him: +she doth as I do.” To the simple and moving story +Tennyson adds, by way of ornament, the diamonds, the prize of the +tourney, and the manner of their finding:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “For Arthur, long before +they crown’d him King,<br /> +Roving the trackless realms of Lyonnesse,<br /> +Had found a glen, gray boulder and black tarn.<br /> +A horror lived about the tarn, and clave<br /> +Like its own mists to all the mountain side:<br /> +For here two brothers, one a king, had met<br /> +And fought together; but their names were lost;<br /> +And each had slain his brother at a blow;<br /> +And down they fell and made the glen abhorr’d:<br /> +And there they lay till all their bones were bleach’d,<br +/> +And lichen’d into colour with the crags:<br /> +And he, that once was king, had on a crown<br /> +Of diamonds, one in front, and four aside.<br /> +And Arthur came, and labouring up the pass,<br /> +All in a misty moonshine, unawares<br /> +Had trodden that crown’d skeleton, and the skull<br /> +Brake from the nape, and from the skull the crown<br /> +Roll’d into light, and turning on its rims<br /> +Fled like a glittering rivulet to the tarn:<br /> +And down the shingly scaur he plunged, and caught,<br /> +And set it on his head, and in his heart<br /> +Heard murmurs, ‘Lo, thou likewise shalt be +King.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The diamonds reappear in the scene of Guinevere’s +jealousy:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “All in an oriel on the +summer side,<br /> +Vine-clad, of Arthur’s palace toward the stream,<br /> +They met, and Lancelot kneeling utter’d, ‘Queen,<br +/> +Lady, my liege, in whom I have my joy,<br /> +Take, what I had not won except for you,<br /> +These jewels, and make me happy, making them<br /> +An armlet for the roundest arm on earth,<br /> +Or necklace for a neck to which the swan’s<br /> +Is tawnier than her cygnet’s: these are words:<br /> +Your beauty is your beauty, and I sin<br /> +In speaking, yet O grant my worship of it<br /> +Words, as we grant grief tears. Such sin in words,<br /> +Perchance, we both can pardon: but, my Queen,<br /> +I hear of rumours flying thro’ your court.<br /> +Our bond, as not the bond of man and wife,<br /> +Should have in it an absoluter trust<br /> +To make up that defect: let rumours be:<br /> +When did not rumours fly? these, as I trust<br /> +That you trust me in your own nobleness,<br /> +I may not well believe that you believe.’</p> +<p> While thus he spoke, half turn’d away, +the Queen<br /> +Brake from the vast oriel-embowering vine<br /> +Leaf after leaf, and tore, and cast them off,<br /> +Till all the place whereon she stood was green;<br /> +Then, when he ceased, in one cold passive hand<br /> +Received at once and laid aside the gems<br /> +There on a table near her, and replied:</p> +<p> ‘It may be, I am quicker of belief<br +/> +Than you believe me, Lancelot of the Lake.<br /> +Our bond is not the bond of man and wife.<br /> +This good is in it, whatsoe’er of ill,<br /> +It can be broken easier. I for you<br /> +This many a year have done despite and wrong<br /> +To one whom ever in my heart of hearts<br /> +I did acknowledge nobler. What are these?<br /> +Diamonds for me! they had been thrice their worth<br /> +Being your gift, had you not lost your own.<br /> +To loyal hearts the value of all gifts<br /> +Must vary as the giver’s. Not for me!<br /> +For her! for your new fancy. Only this<br /> +Grant me, I pray you: have your joys apart.<br /> +I doubt not that however changed, you keep<br /> +So much of what is graceful: and myself<br /> +Would shun to break those bounds of courtesy<br /> +In which as Arthur’s Queen I move and rule:<br /> +So cannot speak my mind. An end to this!<br /> +A strange one! yet I take it with Amen.<br /> +So pray you, add my diamonds to her pearls;<br /> +Deck her with these; tell her, she shines me down:<br /> +An armlet for an arm to which the Queen’s<br /> +Is haggard, or a necklace for a neck<br /> +O as much fairer—as a faith once fair<br /> +Was richer than these diamonds—hers not mine—<br /> +Nay, by the mother of our Lord himself,<br /> +Or hers or mine, mine now to work my will—<br /> +She shall not have them.’</p> +<p> Saying which she +seized,<br /> +And, thro’ the casement standing wide for heat,<br /> +Flung them, and down they flash’d, and smote the stream.<br +/> +Then from the smitten surface flash’d, as it were,<br /> +Diamonds to meet them, and they past away.<br /> +Then while Sir Lancelot leant, in half disdain<br /> +At love, life, all things, on the window ledge,<br /> +Close underneath his eyes, and right across<br /> +Where these had fallen, slowly past the barge<br /> +Whereon the lily maid of Astolat<br /> +Lay smiling, like a star in blackest night.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This affair of the diamonds is the chief addition to the old +tale, in which we already see the curse of lawless love, fallen +upon the jealous Queen and the long-enduring Lancelot. +“This is not the first time,” said Sir Lancelot, +“that ye have been displeased with me causeless, but, +madame, ever I must suffer you, but what sorrow I endure I take +no force” (that is, “I disregard”).</p> +<p>The romance, and the poet, in his own despite, cannot but make +Lancelot the man we love, not Arthur or another. Human +nature perversely sides with Guinevere against the Blameless +King:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “She broke into a little +scornful laugh:<br /> +‘Arthur, my lord, Arthur, the faultless King,<br /> +That passionate perfection, my good lord—<br /> +But who can gaze upon the Sun in heaven?<br /> +He never spake word of reproach to me,<br /> +He never had a glimpse of mine untruth,<br /> +He cares not for me: only here to-day<br /> +There gleam’d a vague suspicion in his eyes:<br /> +Some meddling rogue has tamper’d with him—else<br /> +Rapt in this fancy of his Table Round,<br /> +And swearing men to vows impossible,<br /> +To make them like himself: but, friend, to me<br /> +He is all fault who hath no fault at all:<br /> +For who loves me must have a touch of earth;<br /> +The low sun makes the colour: I am yours,<br /> +Not Arthur’s, as ye know, save by the bond.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It is not the beautiful Queen who wins us, our hearts are with +“the innocence of love” in Elaine. But Lancelot +has the charm that captivated Lavaine; and Tennyson’s +Arthur remains</p> +<blockquote><p>“The moral child without the craft to +rule,<br /> +Else had he not lost me.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Indeed the romance of Malory makes Arthur deserve “the +pretty popular name such manhood earns” by his conduct as +regards Guinevere when she is accused by her enemies in the later +chapters. Yet Malory does not finally condone the sin which +baffles Lancelot’s quest of the Holy Grail.</p> +<p>Tennyson at first was in doubt as to writing on the Grail, for +certain respects of reverence. When he did approach the +theme it was in a method of extreme condensation. The +romances on the Grail outrun the length even of mediæval +poetry and prose. They are exceedingly confused, as was +natural, if that hypothesis which regards the story as a +Christianised form of obscure Celtic myth be correct. Sir +Percivale’s sister, in the Idyll, has the first vision of +the Grail:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Sweet brother, I have seen the Holy +Grail:<br /> +For, waked at dead of night, I heard a sound<br /> +As of a silver horn from o’er the hills<br /> +Blown, and I thought, ‘It is not Arthur’s use<br /> +To hunt by moonlight’; and the slender sound<br /> +As from a distance beyond distance grew<br /> +Coming upon me—O never harp nor horn,<br /> +Nor aught we blow with breath, or touch with hand,<br /> +Was like that music as it came; and then<br /> +Stream’d thro’ my cell a cold and silver beam,<br /> +And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail,<br /> +Rose-red with beatings in it, as if alive,<br /> +Till all the white walls of my cell were dyed<br /> +With rosy colours leaping on the wall;<br /> +And then the music faded, and the Grail<br /> +Past, and the beam decay’d, and from the walls<br /> +The rosy quiverings died into the night.<br /> +So now the Holy Thing is here again<br /> +Among us, brother, fast thou too and pray,<br /> +And tell thy brother knights to fast and pray,<br /> +That so perchance the vision may be seen<br /> +By thee and those, and all the world be heal’d.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Galahad, son of Lancelot and the first Elaine (who became +Lancelot’s mistress by art magic), then vows himself to the +Quest, and, after the vision in hall at Camelot, the knights, +except Arthur, follow his example, to Arthur’s grief. +“Ye follow wandering fires!” Probably, or +perhaps, the poet indicates dislike of hasty spiritual +enthusiasms, of “seeking for a sign,” and of the +mysticism which betokens want of faith. The Middle Ages, +more than many readers know, were ages of doubt. Men +desired the witness of the senses to the truth of what the Church +taught, they wished to see that naked child of the romance +“smite himself into” the wafer of the +Sacrament. The author of the <i>Imitatio Christi</i> +discourages such vain and too curious inquiries as helped to rend +the Church, and divided Christendom into hostile camps. The +Quest of the actual Grail was a knightly form of theological +research into the unsearchable; undertaken, often in a secular +spirit of adventure, by sinful men. The poet’s heart +is rather with human things:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “‘O brother,’ +ask’d Ambrosius,—‘for in sooth<br /> +These ancient books—and they would win thee—teem,<br +/> +Only I find not there this Holy Grail,<br /> +With miracles and marvels like to these,<br /> +Not all unlike; which oftentime I read,<br /> +Who read but on my breviary with ease,<br /> +Till my head swims; and then go forth and pass<br /> +Down to the little thorpe that lies so close,<br /> +And almost plaster’d like a martin’s nest<br /> +To these old walls—and mingle with our folk;<br /> +And knowing every honest face of theirs<br /> +As well as ever shepherd knew his sheep,<br /> +And every homely secret in their hearts,<br /> +Delight myself with gossip and old wives,<br /> +And ills and aches, and teethings, lyings-in,<br /> +And mirthful sayings, children of the place,<br /> +That have no meaning half a league away:<br /> +Or lulling random squabbles when they rise,<br /> +Chafferings and chatterings at the market-cross,<br /> +Rejoice, small man, in this small world of mine,<br /> +Yea, even in their hens and in their eggs.”’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This appears to be Tennyson’s original reading of the +Quest of the Grail. His own mysticism, which did not +strive, or cry, or seek after marvels, though marvels might come +unsought, is expressed in Arthur’s words:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “‘“And spake I +not too truly, O my knights?<br /> +Was I too dark a prophet when I said<br /> +To those who went upon the Holy Quest,<br /> +That most of them would follow wandering fires,<br /> +Lost in the quagmire?—lost to me and gone,<br /> +And left me gazing at a barren board,<br /> +And a lean Order—scarce return’d a tithe—<br /> +And out of those to whom the vision came<br /> +My greatest hardly will believe he saw;<br /> +Another hath beheld it afar off,<br /> +And leaving human wrongs to right themselves,<br /> +Cares but to pass into the silent life.<br /> +And one hath had the vision face to face,<br /> +And now his chair desires him here in vain,<br /> +However they may crown him otherwhere.</p> +<p> ‘“And some among you held, that +if the King<br /> +Had seen the sight he would have sworn the vow:<br /> +Not easily, seeing that the King must guard<br /> +That which he rules, and is but as the hind<br /> +To whom a space of land is given to plow<br /> +Who may not wander from the allotted field<br /> +Before his work be done; but, being done,<br /> +Let visions of the night or of the day<br /> +Come, as they will; and many a time they come,<br /> +Until this earth he walks on seems not earth,<br /> +This light that strikes his eyeball is not light,<br /> +This air that smites his forehead is not air<br /> +But vision—yea, his very hand and foot—<br /> +In moments when he feels he cannot die,<br /> +And knows himself no vision to himself,<br /> +Nor the high God a vision, nor that One<br /> +Who rose again: ye have seen what ye have seen.”</p> +<p> ‘So spake the King: I knew not all he +meant.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The closing lines declare, as far as the poet could declare +them, these subjective experiences of his which, in a manner +rarely parallelled, coloured and formed his thought on the +highest things. He introduces them even into this poem on a +topic which, because of its sacred associations, he for long did +not venture to touch.</p> +<p>In <i>Pelleas and Ettarre</i>—which deals with the +sorrows of one of the young knights who fill up the gaps left at +the Round Table by the mischances of the Quest—it would be +difficult to trace a Celtic original. For Malory, not +Celtic legend, supplied Tennyson with the germinal idea of a poem +which, in the romance, has no bearing on the final +catastrophe. Pelleas, a King of the Isles, loves the +beautiful Ettarre, “a great lady,” and for her wins +at a tourney the prize of the golden circlet. But she hates +and despises him, and Sir Gawain is a spectator when, as in the +poem, the felon knights of Ettarre bind and insult their +conqueror, Pelleas. Gawain promises to win the love of +Ettarre for Pelleas, and, as in the poem, borrows his arms and +horse, and pretends to have slain him. But in place of +turning Ettarre’s heart towards Pelleas, Gawain becomes her +lover, and Pelleas, detecting them asleep, lays his naked sword +on their necks. He then rides home to die; but Nimue +(Vivien), the Lady of the Lake, restores him to health and +sanity. His fever gone, he scorns Ettarre, who, by +Nimue’s enchantment, now loves him as much as she had hated +him. Pelleas weds Nimue, and Ettarre dies of a broken +heart. Tennyson, of course, could not make Nimue (his +Vivien) do anything benevolent. He therefore closes his +poem by a repetition of the effect in the case of Balin. +Pelleas is driven desperate by the treachery of Gawain, the +reported infidelity of Guinevere, and the general corruption of +the ideal. A shadow falls on Lancelot and Guinevere, and +Modred sees that his hour is drawing nigh. In spite of +beautiful passages this is not one of the finest of the Idylls, +save for the study of the fierce, hateful, and beautiful +<i>grande dame</i>, Ettarre. The narrative does little to +advance the general plot. In the original of Malory it has +no connection with the Lancelot cycle, except as far as it +reveals the treachery of Gawain, the gay and fair-spoken +“light of love,” brother of the traitor Modred. +A simpler treatment of the theme may be read in Mr +Swinburne’s beautiful poem, <i>The Tale of Balen</i>.</p> +<p>It is in <i>The Last Tournament</i> that Modred finds the +beginning of his opportunity. The brief life of the Ideal +has burned itself out, as the year, in its vernal beauty when +Arthur came, is burning out in autumn. The poem is +purposely autumnal, with the autumn, not of mellow fruitfulness, +but of the “flying gold of the ruined woodlands” and +the dank odours of decay. In that miserable season is held +the Tourney of the Dead Innocence, with the blood-red prize of +rubies. With a wise touch Tennyson has represented the +Court as fallen not into vice only and crime, but into positive +vulgarity and bad taste. The Tournament is a carnival of +the “smart” and the third-rate. Courtesy is +dead, even Tristram is brutal, and in Iseult hatred of her +husband is as powerful as love of her lover. The satire +strikes at England, where the world has never been corrupt with a +good grace. It is a passage of arms neither gentle nor +joyous that Lancelot presides over:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “The sudden trumpet +sounded as in a dream<br /> +To ears but half-awaked, then one low roll<br /> +Of Autumn thunder, and the jousts began:<br /> +And ever the wind blew, and yellowing leaf<br /> +And gloom and gleam, and shower and shorn plume<br /> +Went down it. Sighing weariedly, as one<br /> +Who sits and gazes on a faded fire,<br /> +When all the goodlier guests are past away,<br /> +Sat their great umpire, looking o’er the lists.<br /> +He saw the laws that ruled the tournament<br /> +Broken, but spake not; once, a knight cast down<br /> +Before his throne of arbitration cursed<br /> +The dead babe and the follies of the King;<br /> +And once the laces of a helmet crack’d,<br /> +And show’d him, like a vermin in its hole,<br /> +Modred, a narrow face: anon he heard<br /> +The voice that billow’d round the barriers roar<br /> +An ocean-sounding welcome to one knight,<br /> +But newly-enter’d, taller than the rest,<br /> +And armour’d all in forest green, whereon<br /> +There tript a hundred tiny silver deer,<br /> +And wearing but a holly-spray for crest,<br /> +With ever-scattering berries, and on shield<br /> +A spear, a harp, a bugle—Tristram—late<br /> +From overseas in Brittany return’d,<br /> +And marriage with a princess of that realm,<br /> +Isolt the White—Sir Tristram of the Woods—<br /> +Whom Lancelot knew, had held sometime with pain<br /> +His own against him, and now yearn’d to shake<br /> +The burthen off his heart in one full shock<br /> +With Tristram ev’n to death: his strong hands gript<br /> +And dinted the gilt dragons right and left,<br /> +Until he groan’d for wrath—so many of those,<br /> +That ware their ladies’ colours on the casque,<br /> +Drew from before Sir Tristram to the bounds,<br /> +And there with gibes and flickering mockeries<br /> +Stood, while he mutter’d, ‘Craven crests! O +shame!<br /> +What faith have these in whom they sware to love?<br /> +The glory of our Round Table is no more.’</p> +<p> So Tristram won, and Lancelot gave, the +gems,<br /> +Not speaking other word than ‘Hast thou won?<br /> +Art thou the purest, brother? See, the hand<br /> +Wherewith thou takest this, is red!’ to whom<br /> +Tristram, half plagued by Lancelot’s languorous mood,<br /> +Made answer, ‘Ay, but wherefore toss me this<br /> +Like a dry bone cast to some hungry hound?<br /> +Let be thy fair Queen’s fantasy. Strength of heart<br +/> +And might of limb, but mainly use and skill,<br /> +Are winners in this pastime of our King.<br /> +My hand—belike the lance hath dript upon it—<br /> +No blood of mine, I trow; but O chief knight,<br /> +Right arm of Arthur in the battlefield,<br /> +Great brother, thou nor I have made the world;<br /> +Be happy in thy fair Queen as I in mine.’</p> +<p> And Tristram round the gallery made his +horse<br /> +Caracole; then bow’d his homage, bluntly saying,<br /> +‘Fair damsels, each to him who worships each<br /> +Sole Queen of Beauty and of love, behold<br /> +This day my Queen of Beauty is not here.’<br /> +And most of these were mute, some anger’d, one<br /> +Murmuring, ‘All courtesy is dead,’ and one,<br /> +‘The glory of our Round Table is no more.’</p> +<p> Then fell thick rain, plume droopt and +mantle clung,<br /> +And pettish cries awoke, and the wan day<br /> +Went glooming down in wet and weariness:<br /> +But under her black brows a swarthy one<br /> +Laugh’d shrilly, crying, ‘Praise the patient +saints,<br /> +Our one white day of Innocence hath past,<br /> +Tho’ somewhat draggled at the skirt. So be it.<br /> +The snowdrop only, flowering thro’ the year,<br /> +Would make the world as blank as Winter-tide.<br /> +Come—let us gladden their sad eyes, our Queen’s<br /> +And Lancelot’s, at this night’s solemnity<br /> +With all the kindlier colours of the field.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Arthur’s last victory over a robber knight is +ingloriously squalid:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “He ended: Arthur knew the +voice; the face<br /> +Wellnigh was helmet-hidden, and the name<br /> +Went wandering somewhere darkling in his mind.<br /> +And Arthur deign’d not use of word or sword,<br /> +But let the drunkard, as he stretch’d from horse<br /> +To strike him, overbalancing his bulk,<br /> +Down from the causeway heavily to the swamp<br /> +Fall, as the crest of some slow-arching wave,<br /> +Heard in dead night along that table-shore,<br /> +Drops flat, and after the great waters break<br /> +Whitening for half a league, and thin themselves,<br /> +Far over sands marbled with moon and cloud,<br /> +From less and less to nothing; thus he fell<br /> +Head-heavy; then the knights, who watch’d him, +roar’d<br /> +And shouted and leapt down upon the fall’n;<br /> +There trampled out his face from being known,<br /> +And sank his head in mire, and slimed themselves:<br /> +Nor heard the King for their own cries, but sprang<br /> +Thro’ open doors, and swording right and left<br /> +Men, women, on their sodden faces, hurl’d<br /> +The tables over and the wines, and slew<br /> +Till all the rafters rang with woman-yells,<br /> +And all the pavement stream’d with massacre:<br /> +Then, echoing yell with yell, they fired the tower,<br /> +Which half that autumn night, like the live North,<br /> +Red-pulsing up thro’ Alioth and Alcor,<br /> +Made all above it, and a hundred meres<br /> +About it, as the water Moab saw<br /> +Come round by the East, and out beyond them flush’d<br /> +The long low dune, and lazy-plunging sea.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><i>Guinevere</i> is one of the greatest of the Idylls. +Malory makes Lancelot more sympathetic; his fight, unarmed, in +Guinevere’s chamber, against the felon knights, is one of +his most spirited scenes. Tennyson omits this, and omits +all the unpardonable behaviour of Arthur as narrated in +Malory. Critics have usually condemned the last parting of +Guinevere and Arthur, because the King doth preach too much to an +unhappy woman who has no reply. The position of Arthur is +not easily redeemable: it is difficult to conceive that a noble +nature could be, or should be, blind so long. He does +rehabilitate his Queen in her own self-respect, perhaps, by +assuring her that he loves her still:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Let no man dream but that I love thee +still.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Had he said that one line and no more, we might have loved him +better. In the Idylls we have not Malory’s last +meeting of Lancelot and Guinevere, one of the scenes in which the +wandering composite romance ends as nobly as the +<i>Iliad</i>.</p> +<p><i>The Passing of Arthur</i>, except for a new introductory +passage of great beauty and appropriateness, is the <i>Morte +d’Arthur</i>, first published in 1842:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“So all day long the noise of battle +roll’d<br /> +Among the mountains by the winter sea.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The year has run its course, spring, summer, gloomy autumn, +and dies in the mist of Arthur’s last wintry battle in the +west—</p> +<blockquote><p>“And the new sun rose, bringing the new +year.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The splendid and sombre procession has passed, leaving us to +muse as to how far the poet has fulfilled his own ideal. +There could be no new epic: he gave a chain of heroic +Idylls. An epic there could not be, for the <i>Iliad</i> +and <i>Odyssey</i> have each a unity of theme, a narrative +compressed into a few days in the former, in the latter into +forty days of time. The tragedy of Arthur’s reign +could not so be condensed; and Tennyson chose the only feasible +plan. He has left a work, not absolutely perfect, indeed, +but such as he conceived, after many tentative essays, and such +as he desired to achieve. His fame may not rest chiefly on +the Idylls, but they form one of the fairest jewels in the crown +that shines with unnumbered gems, each with its own glory.</p> +<h2><a name="page158"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +158</span>VIII.<br /> +<i>ENOCH ARDEN</i>. THE DRAMAS.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> success of the first volume of +the Idylls recompensed the poet for the slings and arrows that +gave <i>Maud</i> a hostile welcome. His next publication +was the beautiful <i>Tithonus</i>, a fit pendant to the +<i>Ulysses</i>, and composed about the same date +(1833–35). “A quarter of a century ago,” +Tennyson dates it, writing in 1860 to the Duke of Argyll. +He had found it when “ferreting among my old books,” +he said, in search of something for Thackeray, who was +establishing the <i>Cornhill Magazine</i>. What must the +wealth of the poet have been, who, possessing <i>Tithonus</i> in +his portfolio, did not take the trouble to insert it in the +volumes of 1842! Nobody knows how many poems of +Tennyson’s never even saw pen and ink, being composed +unwritten, and forgotten. At this time we find him +recommending Mr Browning’s <i>Men and Women</i> to the +Duke, who, like many Tennysonians, does not seem to have been a +ready convert to his great contemporary. The Duke and +Duchess urged the Laureate to attempt the topic of the Holy +Grail, but he was not in the mood. Indeed the vision of the +Grail in the early <i>Sir Galahad</i> is doubtless happier than +the allegorical handling of a theme so obscure, remote, and +difficult, in the Idylls. He wrote his <i>Boadicea</i>, a +piece magnificent in itself, but of difficult popular access, +owing to the metrical experiment.</p> +<p>In the autumn of 1860 he revisited Cornwall with F. T. +Palgrave, Mr Val Prinsep, and Mr Holman Hunt. They walked +in the rain, saw Tintagel and the Scilly Isles, and were +fêted by an enthusiastic captain of a little river steamer, +who was more interested in “Mr Tinman and Mr Pancake” +than the Celtic boatman of Ardtornish. The winter was +passed at Farringford, and the <i>Northern Farmer</i> was written +there, a Lincolnshire reminiscence, in the February of +1861. In autumn the Pyrenees were visited by Tennyson in +company with Arthur Clough and Mr Dakyns of Clifton +College. At Cauteretz in August, and among memories of the +old tour with Arthur Hallam, was written <i>All along the +Valley</i>. The ways, however, in Auvergne were +“foul,” and the diet “unhappy.” The +dedication of the Idylls was written on the death of the Prince +Consort in December, and in January 1862 the Ode for the opening +of an exhibition. The poet was busy with his +“Fisherman,” <i>Enoch Arden</i>. The volume was +published in 1864, and Lord Tennyson says it has been, next to +<i>In Memoriam</i>, the most popular of his father’s +works. One would have expected the one volume containing +the poems up to 1842 to hold that place. The new book, +however, mainly dealt with English, contemporary, and domestic +themes—“the poetry of the affections.” An +old woman, a district visitor reported, regarded <i>Enoch +Arden</i> as “more beautiful” than the other tracts +which were read to her. It is indeed a tender and touching +tale, based on a folk-story which Tennyson found current in +Brittany as well as in England. Nor is the unseen and +unknown landscape of the tropic isle less happily created by the +poet’s imagination than the familiar English cliffs and +hazel copses:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “The mountain wooded to +the peak, the lawns<br /> +And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven,<br /> +The slender coco’s drooping crown of plumes,<br /> +The lightning flash of insect and of bird,<br /> +The lustre of the long convolvuluses<br /> +That coil’d around the stately stems, and ran<br /> +Ev’n to the limit of the land, the glows<br /> +And glories of the broad belt of the world,<br /> +All these he saw; but what he fain had seen<br /> +He could not see, the kindly human face,<br /> +Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard<br /> +The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl,<br /> +The league-long roller thundering on the reef,<br /> +The moving whisper of huge trees that branch’d<br /> +And blossom’d in the zenith, or the sweep<br /> +Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave,<br /> +As down the shore he ranged, or all day long<br /> +Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge,<br /> +A shipwreck’d sailor, waiting for a sail:<br /> +No sail from day to day, but every day<br /> +The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts<br /> +Among the palms and ferns and precipices;<br /> +The blaze upon the waters to the east;<br /> +The blaze upon his island overhead;<br /> +The blaze upon the waters to the west;<br /> +Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven,<br /> +The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again<br /> +The scarlet shafts of sunrise—but no sail.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><i>Aylmer’s Field</i> somewhat recalls the burden of +<i>Maud</i>, the curse of purse-proud wealth, but is too gloomy +to be a fair specimen of Tennyson’s art. In <i>Sea +Dreams</i> (first published in 1860) the awful vision of +crumbling faiths is somewhat out of harmony with its +environment:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “But round the North, a +light,<br /> +A belt, it seem’d, of luminous vapour, lay,<br /> +And ever in it a low musical note<br /> +Swell’d up and died; and, as it swell’d, a ridge<br +/> +Of breaker issued from the belt, and still<br /> +Grew with the growing note, and when the note<br /> +Had reach’d a thunderous fulness, on those cliffs<br /> +Broke, mixt with awful light (the same as that<br /> +Living within the belt) whereby she saw<br /> +That all those lines of cliffs were cliffs no more,<br /> +But huge cathedral fronts of every age,<br /> +Grave, florid, stern, as far as eye could see,<br /> +One after one: and then the great ridge drew,<br /> +Lessening to the lessening music, back,<br /> +And past into the belt and swell’d again<br /> +Slowly to music: ever when it broke<br /> +The statues, king or saint or founder fell;<br /> +Then from the gaps and chasms of ruin left<br /> +Came men and women in dark clusters round,<br /> +Some crying, ‘Set them up! they shall not fall!’<br +/> +And others, ‘Let them lie, for they have +fall’n.’<br /> +And still they strove and wrangled: and she grieved<br /> +In her strange dream, she knew not why, to find<br /> +Their wildest wailings never out of tune<br /> +With that sweet note; and ever as their shrieks<br /> +Ran highest up the gamut, that great wave<br /> +Returning, while none mark’d it, on the crowd<br /> +Broke, mixt with awful light, and show’d their eyes<br /> +Glaring, and passionate looks, and swept away<br /> +The men of flesh and blood, and men of stone,<br /> +To the waste deeps together.</p> +<p> ‘Then I fixt<br /> +My wistful eyes on two fair images,<br /> +Both crown’d with stars and high among the stars,—<br +/> +The Virgin Mother standing with her child<br /> +High up on one of those dark minster-fronts—<br /> +Till she began to totter, and the child<br /> +Clung to the mother, and sent out a cry<br /> +Which mixt with little Margaret’s, and I woke,<br /> +And my dream awed me:—well—but what are +dreams?”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The passage is rather fitted for a despairing mood of Arthur, +in the Idylls, than for the wife of the city clerk ruined by a +pious rogue.</p> +<p>The <i>Lucretius</i>, later published, is beyond praise as a +masterly study of the great Roman sceptic, whose heart is at +eternal odds with his Epicurean creed. Nascent madness, or +fever of the brain drugged by the blundering love philtre, is not +more cunningly treated in the mad scenes of <i>Maud</i>. No +prose commentary on the <i>De Rerum Natura</i>, however long and +learned, conveys so clearly as this concise study in verse the +sense of magnificent mingled ruin in the mind and poem of the +Roman.</p> +<p>The “Experiments in Quantity” were, perhaps, +suggested by Mr Matthew Arnold’s Lectures on the +Translating of Homer. Mr Arnold believed in a translation +into English hexameters. His negative criticism of other +translators and translations was amusing and instructive: he had +an easy game to play with the Yankee-doodle metre of F. W. +Newman, the ponderous blank verse of Cowper, the tripping and +clipping couplets of Pope, the Elizabethan fantasies of +Chapman. But Mr Arnold’s hexameters were neither +musical nor rapid: they only exhibited a new form of +failure. As the Prince of Abyssinia said to his tutor, +“Enough; you have convinced me that no man can be a +poet,” so Mr Arnold went some way to prove that no man can +translate Homer.</p> +<p>Tennyson had the lowest opinion of hexameters as an English +metre for serious purposes.</p> +<blockquote><p>“These lame hexameters the +strong-wing’d music of Homer!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Lord Tennyson says, “German hexameters he disliked even +more than English.” Indeed there is not much room for +preference. Tennyson’s Alcaics (<i>Milton</i>) were +intended to follow the Greek rather than the Horatian model, and +resulted, at all events, in a poem worthy of the +“mighty-mouth’d inventor of harmonies.” +The specimen of the <i>Iliad</i> in blank verse, beautiful as it +is, does not, somehow, reproduce the music of Homer. It is +entirely Tennysonian, as in</p> +<blockquote><p>“Roll’d the rich vapour far into the +heaven.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The reader, in that one line, recognises the voice and trick +of the English poet, and is far away from the Chian:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“As when in heaven the stars about the +moon<br /> +Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,<br /> +And every height comes out, and jutting peak<br /> +And valley, and the immeasurable heavens<br /> +Break open to their highest, and all the stars<br /> +Shine, and the Shepherd gladdens in his heart:<br /> +So many a fire between the ships and stream<br /> +Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy,<br /> +A thousand on the plain; and close by each<br /> +Sat fifty in the blaze of burning fire;<br /> +And eating hoary grain and pulse the steeds,<br /> +Fixt by their cars, waited the golden dawn.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This is excellent, is poetry, escapes the conceits of Pope +(who never “wrote with his eye on the object”), but +is pure Tennyson. We have not yet, probably we never shall +have, an adequate rendering of the <i>Iliad</i> into verse, and +prose translations do not pretend to be adequate. When +parents and dominies have abolished the study of Greek, +something, it seems, will have been lost to the +world,—something which even Tennyson could not restore in +English. He thought blank verse the proper equivalent; but +it is no equivalent. One even prefers his own +prose:—</p> +<blockquote><p>Nor did Paris linger in his lofty halls, but when +he had girt on his gorgeous armour, all of varied bronze, then he +rushed thro’ the city, glorying in his airy feet. And +as when a stall-kept horse, that is barley-fed at the manger, +breaketh his tether, and dasheth thro’ the plain, spurning +it, being wont to bathe himself in the fair-running river, +rioting, and reareth his head, and his mane flieth back on either +shoulder, and he glorieth in his beauty, and his knees bear him +at the gallop to the haunts and meadows of the mares; so ran the +son of Priam, Paris, from the height of Pergamus, all in arms, +glittering like the sun, laughing for light-heartedness, and his +swift feet bare him.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In February 1865 Tennyson lost the mother whose portrait he +drew in <i>Isabel</i>,—“a thing enskied and +sainted.”</p> +<p>In the autumn of 1865 the Tennysons went on a Continental +tour, and visited Waterloo, Weimar, and Dresden; in September +they entertained Emma I., Queen of the Sandwich Islands. +The months passed quietly at home or in town. The poet had +written his <i>Lucretius</i>, and, to please Sir George Grove, +wrote <i>The Song of the Wrens</i>, for music. Tennyson had +not that positive aversion to music which marked Dr Johnson, +Victor Hugo, Théophile Gautier, and some other +poets. Nay, he liked Beethoven, which places him higher in +the musical scale than Scott, who did not rise above a Border +lilt or a Jacobite ditty. The Wren songs, entitled <i>The +Window</i>, were privately printed by Sir Ivor Guest in 1867, +were set to music by Sir Arthur Sullivan, and published by +Strahan in December 1870. “A puppet,” Tennyson +called the song-book, “whose only merit is, perhaps, that +it can dance to Mr Sullivan’s instrument. I am sorry +that my puppet should have to dance at all in the dark shadow of +these days” (the siege of Paris), “but the music is +now completed, and I am bound by my promise.” The +verses are described as “partly in the old style,” +but the true old style of the Elizabethan and cavalier days is +lost.</p> +<p>In the summer of 1867 the Tennysons moved to a farmhouse near +Haslemere, at that time not a centre of literary Londoners. +“Sandy soil and heather-scented air” allured them, +and the result was the purchase of land, and the building of +Aldworth, Mr Knowles being the architect. In autumn +Tennyson visited Lyme Regis, and, like all other travellers +thither, made a pilgrimage to the Cobb, sacred to Louisa +Musgrove. The poet now began the study of Hebrew, having a +mind to translate the Book of Job, a vision unfulfilled. In +1868 he thought of publishing his boyish piece, <i>The +Lover’s Tale</i>, but delayed. An anonymously edited +piracy of this and other poems was perpetrated in 1875, limited, +at least nominally, to fifty copies.</p> +<p>In July Longfellow visited Tennyson. “The +Longfellows and he talked much of spiritualism, for he was +greatly interested in that subject, but he suspended his +judgment, and thought that, if in such manifestations there is +anything, ‘Pucks, not the spirits of dead men, reveal +themselves.’” This was Southey’s +suggestion, as regards the celebrated disturbances in the house +of the Wesleys. “Wit might have much to say, wisdom, +little,” said Sam Wesley. Probably the talk about +David Dunglas Home, the “medium” then in vogue, led +to the discussion of “spiritualism.” We do not +hear that Tennyson ever had the curiosity to see Home, whom Mr +Browning so firmly detested.</p> +<p>In September <i>The Holy Grail</i> was begun: it was finished +“in about a week. It came like a breath of +inspiration.” The subject had for many years been +turned about in the poet’s mind, which, of course, was busy +in these years of apparent inactivity. At this time (August +1868) Tennyson left his old publishers, the Moxons, for Mr +Strahan, who endured till 1872. Then he was succeeded by +Messrs H. S. King & Co., who gave place (1879) to Messrs +Kegan Paul & Co., while in 1884 Messrs Macmillan became, and +continue to be, the publishers. A few pieces, except +<i>Lucretius</i> (<i>Macmillan’s Magazine</i>, May 1868) +unimportant, appeared in serials.</p> +<p>Very early in 1869 <i>The Coming of Arthur</i> was composed, +while Tennyson was reading Browning’s <i>The Ring and the +Book</i>. He and his great contemporary were on terms of +affectionate friendship, though Tennyson, perhaps, appreciated +less of Browning than Browning of Tennyson. Meanwhile +“Old Fitz” kept up a fire of unsympathetic growls at +Browning and all his works. “I have been trying in +vain to read it” (<i>The Ring and the Book</i>), “and +yet the <i>Athenæum</i> tells me it is wonderfully +fine.” FitzGerald’s ply had been taken long +ago; he wanted verbal music in poetry (no exorbitant desire), +while, in Browning, <i>carmina desunt</i>. Perhaps, too, a +personal feeling, as if Browning was Tennyson’s rival, +affected the judgment of the author of <i>Omar +Kháyyám</i>. We may almost call him +“the author.”</p> +<p><i>The Holy Grail</i>, with the smaller poems, such as +<i>Lucretius</i>, was published at the end of 1869. +FitzGerald appears to have preferred <i>The Northern Farmer</i>, +“the substantial rough-spun nature I knew,” to all +the visionary knights in the airy Quest. To compare +“—” (obviously Browning) with Tennyson, was +“to compare an old Jew’s curiosity shop with the +Phidian Marbles.” Tennyson’s poems “being +clear to the bottom as well as beautiful, do not seem to cockney +eyes so deep as muddy waters.”</p> +<p>In November 1870 <i>The Last Tournament</i> was begun; it was +finished in May 1871. Conceivably the vulgar scandals of +the last days of the French Imperial <i>régime</i> may +have influenced Tennyson’s picture of the corruption of +Arthur’s Court; but the Empire did not begin, like the +Round Table, with aspirations after the Ideal. In the +autumn of the year Tennyson entertained, and was entertained by, +Mr Huxley. In their ideas about ultimate things two men +could not vary more widely, but each delighted in the +other’s society. In the spring of 1872 Tennyson +visited Paris and the ruins of the Louvre. He read Victor +Hugo, and Alfred de Musset, whose comedies he admired. The +little that we hear of his opinion of the other great poet runs +to this effect, “Victor Hugo is an unequal genius, +sometimes sublime; he reminds one that there is but one step +between the sublime and the ridiculous,” but the example by +which Tennyson illustrated this was derived from one of the +poet’s novels. In these we meet not only the sublime +and the ridiculous, but passages which leave us in some +perplexity as to their true category. One would have +expected Hugo’s lyrics to be Tennyson’s favourites, +but only <i>Gastibelza</i> is mentioned in that character. +At this time Tennyson was vexed by</p> +<blockquote><p>“Art with poisonous honey stolen from +France,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>a phrase which cannot apply to Hugo. Meanwhile +<i>Gareth</i> was being written, and the knight’s song for +<i>The Coming of Arthur</i>. <i>Gareth and Lynette</i>, +with minor pieces, appeared in 1872. <i>Balin and Balan</i> +was composed later, to lead up to <i>Vivien</i>, to which, +perhaps, <i>Balin and Balan</i> was introduction sufficient had +it been the earlier written. But the Idylls have already +been discussed as arranged in sequence. The completion of +the Idylls, with the patriotic epilogue, was followed by the +offer of a baronetcy. Tennyson preferred that he and his +wife “should remain plain Mr and Mrs,” though +“I hope that I have too much of the old-world loyalty not +to wear my lady’s favours against all comers, should you +think that it would be more agreeable to her Majesty that I +should do so.”</p> +<p>The Idylls ended, Tennyson in 1874 began to contemplate a +drama, choosing the topic, perhaps neither popular nor in an +Aristotelian sense tragic, of Mary Tudor. This play was +published, and put on the stage by Sir Henry Irving in +1875. <i>Harold</i> followed in 1876, <i>The Cup</i> in +1881 (at the Lyceum), <i>The Promise of May</i> (at the Globe) in +1882, <i>Becket</i> in 1884, with <i>The Foresters</i> in +1892. It seems best to consider all the dramatic period of +Tennyson’s work, a period reached so strangely late in his +career, in the sequence of the Plays. The task is one from +which I shrink, as conscious of entire ignorance of the stage and +of lack of enthusiasm for the drama. Great dramatic authors +have, almost invariably, had long practical knowledge of the +scenes and of what is behind them. Shakespeare and his +contemporaries, Molière and his contemporaries, had lived +their lives on the boards and in the <i>foyer</i>, actors +themselves, or in daily touch with actors and actresses. In +the present day successful playwrights appear to live much in the +world of the players. They have practical knowledge of the +conventions and conditions which the stage imposes. Neither +Browning nor Mr Swinburne (to take great names) has had, it +seems, much of this practical and daily experience; their dramas +have been acted but rarely, if at all, and many examples prove +that neither poetical genius nor the genius for prose fiction can +enable men to produce plays which hold their own on the +boards. This may be the fault of public taste, or partly of +public taste, partly of defect in practical knowledge on the side +of the authors. Of the stage, by way of practice, Tennyson +had known next to nothing, yet his dramas were written to be +acted, and acted some of them were. “For himself, he +was aware,” says his biographer, “that he wanted +intimate knowledge of the mechanical details necessary for the +modern stage, although in early and middle life he had been a +constant playgoer, and would keenly follow the action of a play, +criticising the characterisation, incidents, scenic effects, +situations, language, and dramatic points.” He was +quite prepared to be “edited” for acting purposes by +the players. Miss Mary Anderson says that “he was +ready to sacrifice even his <i>most</i> beautiful lines for the +sake of a real dramatic effect.”</p> +<p>This proved unusual common-sense in a poet. Modern times +and manners are notoriously unfavourable to the serious +drama. In the age of the Greek tragedians, as in the days +of “Eliza and our James,” reading was not very +common, and life was much more passed in public than among +ourselves, when people go to the play for light recreation, or to +be shocked. So various was the genius of Tennyson, that had +he devoted himself early to the stage, and had he been backed by +a manager with the enterprise and intelligence of Sir Henry +Irving, it is impossible to say how much he might have done to +restore the serious drama. But we cannot regret that he was +occupied in his prime with other things, nor can we expect to +find his noblest and most enduring work in the dramatic +experiments of his latest years. It is notable that, in his +opinion, “the conditions of the dramatic art are much more +complex than they were.” For example, we have +“the star system,” which tends to allot what is, or +was, technically styled “the fat,” to one or two +popular players. Now, a poet like Tennyson will inevitably +distribute large quantities of what is most excellent to many +characters, and the consequent difficulties may be appreciated by +students of our fallen nature. The poet added that to be a +first-rate historical playwright means much more work than +formerly, seeing that “exact history” has taken the +part of the “chance chronicle.”</p> +<p>This is a misfortune. The dramas of the Attic stage, +with one or two exceptions, are based on myth and legend, not on +history, and even in the <i>Persæ</i>, grounded on +contemporary events, Æschylus introduced the ghost of +Darius, not vouched for by “exact history.” Let +us conceive Shakespeare writing <i>Macbeth</i> in an age of +“exact history.” Hardly any of the play would +be left. Fleance and Banquo must go. Duncan becomes a +young man, and far from “gracious.” Macbeth +appears as the defender of the legitimist prince, Lulach, against +Duncan, a usurper. Lady Macbeth is a pattern to her sex, +and her lord is a clement and sagacious ruler. The witches +are ruled out of the piece. Difficulties arise about the +English aid to Malcolm. History, in fact, declines to be +dramatic. Liberties must be taken. In his plays of +the Mary Stuart cycle, Mr Swinburne telescopes the affair of +Darnley into that of Chastelard, which was much earlier. He +makes Mary Beaton (in love with Chastelard) a kind of avenging +fate, who will never leave the Queen till her head falls at +Fotheringay; though, in fact, after a flirtation with Randolph, +Mary Beaton married Ogilvy of Boyne (really in love with Lady +Bothwell), and not one of the four Maries was at +Fotheringay. An artist ought to be allowed to follow +legend, of its essence dramatic, or to manipulate history as he +pleases. Our modern scrupulosity is pedantic. But +Tennyson read a long list of books for his <i>Queen Mary</i>, +though it does not appear that he made original researches in +MSS. These labours occupied 1874 and 1875. Yet it +would be foolish to criticise his <i>Queen Mary</i> as if we were +criticising “exact history.” “The +play’s the thing.”</p> +<p>The poet thought that “Bloody Mary” “had +been harshly judged by the verdict of popular +tradition.” So have most characters to whom popular +dislike affixes the popular epithet—“Bloody +Claverse,” “Bloody Mackenzie,” “Bloody +Balfour.” Mary had the courage of the Tudors. +She “edified all around her by her cheerfulness, her piety, +and her resignation to the will of Providence,” in her last +days (Lingard). Camden calls her “a queen never +praised enough for the purity of her morals, her charity to the +poor” (she practised as a district visitor), “and her +liberality to the nobles and the clergy.” She was +“pious, merciful, pure, and ever to be praised, if we +overlook her erroneous opinions in religion,” says +Godwin. She had been grievously wronged from her youth +upwards. In Elizabeth she had a sister and a rival, a +constant intriguer against her, and a kinswoman far from +amiable. Despite “the kindness and attention of +Philip” (Lingard), affairs of State demanded his absence +from England. The disappointment as to her expected child +was cruel. She knew that she had become unpopular, and she +could not look for the success of her Church, to which she was +sincerely attached. M. Auguste Filon thought that <i>Queen +Mary</i> might secure dramatic rank for Tennyson, “if a +great actress arose who conceived a passion for the part of +Mary.” But that was not to be expected. Mary +was middle-aged, plain, and in aspect now terrible, now +rueful. No great actress will throw herself with passion +into such an ungrateful part. “Throughout all +history,” Tennyson said, “there was nothing more +mournful than the final tragedy of this woman.” +<i>Mournful</i> it is, but not tragic. There is nothing +grand at the close, as when Mary Stuart conquers death and evil +fame, redeeming herself by her courage and her calm, and +extending over unborn generations that witchery which her enemies +dreaded more than an army with banners.</p> +<p>Moreover, popular tradition can never forgive the fires of +Smithfield. It was Mary Tudor’s misfortune that she +had the power to execute, on a great scale, that faculty of +persecution to the death for which her Presbyterian and other +Protestant opponents pined in vain. Mr Froude says of her, +“For the first and last time the true Ultramontane spirit +was dominant in England, the genuine conviction that, as the +orthodox prophets and sovereigns of Israel slew the worshippers +of Baal, so were Catholic rulers called upon, as their first +duty, to extirpate heretics as the enemies of God and +man.” That was precisely the spirit of Knox and other +Presbyterian denouncers of death against “Idolaters” +(Catholics). But the Scottish preachers were always +thwarted: Mary and her advisers had their way, as, earlier, +Latimer had preached against sufferers at the stake. To the +stake, which he feared so greatly, Cranmer had sent persons not +of his own fleeting shade of theological opinion. These men +had burned Anabaptists, but all that is lightly forgotten by +Protestant opinion. Under Mary (whoever may have been +primarily responsible) Cranmer and Latimer were treated as they +had treated others. Moreover, some two hundred poor men and +women had dared the fiery death. The persecution was on a +scale never forgiven or forgotten, since Mary began <i>cerdonibus +esse timenda</i>. Mary was not essentially inclement. +Despite Renard, the agent of the Emperor, she spared that lord of +fluff and feather, Courtenay, and she spared Elizabeth. +Lady Jane she could not save, the girl who was a queen by grace +of God and of her own royal nature. But Mary will never be +pardoned by England. “Few men or women have lived +less capable of doing knowingly a wrong thing,” says Mr +Froude, a great admirer of Tennyson’s play. Yet, +taking Mr Froude’s own view, Mary’s abject and +superannuated passion for Philip; her ecstasies during her +supposed pregnancy; “the forlorn hours when she would sit +on the ground with her knees drawn to her face,” with all +her “symptoms of hysterical derangement, leave little room, +as we think of her, for other feelings than pity.” +Unfortunately, feelings of pity for a person so distraught, so +sourly treated by fortune, do not suffice for tragedy. When +we contemplate Antigone or Œdipus, it is not with a +sentiment of pity struggling against abhorrence.</p> +<p>For these reasons the play does not seem to have a good +dramatic subject. The unity is given by Mary herself and +her fortunes, and these are scarcely dramatic. History +prevents the introduction of Philip till the second scene of the +third act. His entrance is <i>manqué</i>; he merely +accompanies Cardinal Pole, who takes command of the scene, and +Philip does not get in a word till after a long conversation +between the Queen and the Cardinal. Previously Philip had +only crossed the stage in a procession, yet when he does appear +he is bereft of prominence. The interest as regards him is +indicated, in Act I. scene v., by Mary’s kissing his +miniature. Her blighted love for him is one main motive of +the tragedy, but his own part appears too subordinate in the play +as published. The interest is scattered among the vast +crowd of characters; and Mr R. H. Hutton remarked at the time +that he “remains something of a cold, cruel, and sensual +shadow.” We are more interested in Wyatt, Cranmer, +Gardiner, and others; or at least their parts are more +interesting. Yet in no case does the interest of any +character, except of Mary and Elizabeth, remain continuous +throughout the play. Tennyson himself thought that +“the real difficulty of the drama is to give sufficient +relief to its intense sadness. . . . Nothing less than the holy +calm of the meek and penitent Cranmer can be adequate artistic +relief.” But not much relief can be drawn from a man +about to be burned alive, and history does not tempt us to keen +sympathy with the recanting archbishop, at least if we agree with +Macaulay rather than with Froude.</p> +<p>I venture to think that historical tradition, as usual, +offered a better motive than exact history. Following +tradition, we see in Mary a cloud of hateful gloom, from which +England escapes into the glorious dawn of “the Gospel +light,” and of Elizabeth, who might be made a triumphantly +sympathetic character. That is the natural and popular +course which the drama might take. But Tennyson’s +history is almost critical and scientific. Points of +difficult and debated evidence (as to Elizabeth’s part in +Wyatt’s rebellion) are discussed. There is no contest +of day and darkness, of Truth and Error. The characters are +in that perplexed condition about creeds which was their actual +state after the political and social and religious chaos produced +by Henry VIII. Gardiner is a Catholic, but not an +Ultramontane; Lord William Howard is a Catholic, but not a +fanatic; we find a truculent Anabaptist, or Socialist, and a +citizen whose pride is his moderation. The native +uncritical tendency of the drama is to throw up hats and halloo +for Elizabeth and an open Bible. In place of this, Cecil +delivers a well-considered analysis of the character of +Elizabeth:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “<i>Eliz.</i> God +guide me lest I lose the way.</p> +<p style="text-align: right">[<i>Exit Elizabeth</i>.</p> +<p> <i>Cecil</i>. Many points +weather’d, many perilous ones,<br /> +At last a harbour opens; but therein<br /> +Sunk rocks—they need fine steering—much it is<br /> +To be nor mad, nor bigot—have a mind—<br /> +Nor let Priests’ talk, or dream of worlds to be,<br /> +Miscolour things about her—sudden touches<br /> +For him, or him—sunk rocks; no passionate faith—<br +/> +But—if let be—balance and compromise;<br /> +Brave, wary, sane to the heart of her—a Tudor<br /> +School’d by the shadow of death—a Boleyn, too,<br /> +Glancing across the Tudor—not so well.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This is excellent as historical criticism, in the favourable +sense; but the drama, by its nature, demands something not +critical but triumphant and one-sided. The character of +Elizabeth is one of the best in the play, as her soliloquy (Act +III. scene v.) is one of the finest of the speeches. We see +her courage, her coquetry, her dissimulation, her +arrogance. But while this is the true Elizabeth, it is not +the idealised Elizabeth whom English loyalty created, lived for, +and died for. Mr Froude wrote, “You have given us the +greatest of all your works,” an opinion which the world can +never accept. “You have reclaimed one more section of +English History from the wilderness, and given it a form in which +it will be fixed for ever. No one since Shakespeare has +done that.” But Mr Froude had done it, and +Tennyson’s reading of “the section” is mainly +that of Mr Froude. Mr Gladstone found that Cranmer and +Gardiner “are still in a considerable degree mysteries to +me.” A mystery Cranmer must remain. Perhaps the +“crowds” and “Voices” are not the least +excellent of the characters, Tennyson’s humour finding an +opportunity in them, and in Joan and Tib. His idyllic charm +speaks in the words of Lady Clarence to the fevered Queen; and +there is dramatic genius in her reply:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “<i>Mary</i>. What +is the strange thing happiness? Sit down here:<br /> +Tell me thine happiest hour.</p> +<p> <i>Lady Clarence</i>. I will, if +that<br /> +May make your Grace forget yourself a little.<br /> +There runs a shallow brook across our field<br /> +For twenty miles, where the black crow flies five,<br /> +And doth so bound and babble all the way<br /> +As if itself were happy. It was May-time,<br /> +And I was walking with the man I loved.<br /> +I loved him, but I thought I was not loved.<br /> +And both were silent, letting the wild brook<br /> +Speak for us—till he stoop’d and gather’d +one<br /> +From out a bed of thick forget-me-nots,<br /> +Look’d hard and sweet at me, and gave it me.<br /> +I took it, tho’ I did not know I took it,<br /> +And put it in my bosom, and all at once<br /> +I felt his arms about me, and his lips—</p> +<p> <i>Mary</i>. O God! I have been +too slack, too slack;<br /> +There are Hot Gospellers even among our guards—<br /> +Nobles we dared not touch. We have but burnt<br /> +The heretic priest, workmen, and women and children.<br /> +Wet, famine, ague, fever, storm, wreck, wrath,—<br /> +We have so play’d the coward; but by God’s grace,<br +/> +We’ll follow Philip’s leading, and set up<br /> +The Holy Office here—garner the wheat,<br /> +And burn the tares with unquenchable fire!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The conclusion, in the acting edition, printed in the +Biography, appears to be an improvement on that in the text as +originally published. Unhappy as the drama essentially is, +the welcome which Mr Browning gave both to the published work and +to the acted play—“a complete success”: +“conception, execution, the whole and the parts, I see +nowhere the shadow of a fault”—offers +“relief” in actual human nature. “He is +the greatest-brained poet in England,” Tennyson said, on a +later occasion. “Violets fade, he has given me a +crown of gold.”</p> +<p>Before writing <i>Harold</i> (1876) the poet “studied +many recent plays,” and re-read Æschylus and +Sophocles. For history he went to the Bayeux tapestry, the +<i>Roman de Rou</i>, Lord Lytton, and Freeman. Students of +a recent controversy will observe that, following Freeman, he +retains the famous palisade, so grievously battered by the +axe-strokes of Mr Horace Round. <i>Harold</i> is a piece +more compressed, and much more in accordance with the traditions +of the drama, than <i>Queen Mary</i>. The topic is tragic +indeed: the sorrow being that of a great man, a great king, the +bulwark of a people that fell with his fall. Moreover, as +the topic is treated, the play is rich in the irony usually +associated with the name of Sophocles. Victory comes before +a fall. Harold, like Antigone, is torn between two +duties—his oath and the claims of his country. His +ruin comes from what Aristotle would call his +<i>ἁμαρτία</i>, his fault in +swearing the oath to William. The hero himself; recking +little, after a superstitious moment, of the concealed relics +over which he swore, deems his offence to lie in swearing a vow +which he never meant to keep. The persuasions which urge +him to this course are admirably presented: England, Edith, his +brother’s freedom, were at stake. Casuistry, or even +law, would have absolved him easily; an oath taken under duresse +is of no avail. But Harold’s “honour rooted in +dishonour stood,” and he cannot so readily absolve +himself. Bruce and the bishops who stood by Bruce had no +such scruples: they perjured themselves often, on the most sacred +relics, especially the bishops. But Harold rises above the +mediæval and magical conception of the oath, and goes to +his doom conscious of a stain on his honour, of which only a +deeper stain, that of falseness to his country, could make him +clean. This is a truly tragic stroke of destiny. The +hero’s character is admirably noble, patient, and +simple. The Confessor also is as true in art as to history, +and his vision of the fall and rise of England is a noble +passage. In Aldwyth we have something of Vivien, with a +grain of conscience, and the part of Edith Swan’s-neck has +a restrained and classic pathos in contrast with the melancholy +of Wulfnoth. The piece, as the poet said, is a +“tragedy of doom,” of deepening and darkening omens, +as in the <i>Odyssey</i> and <i>Njal’s Saga</i>. The +battle scene, with the choruses of the monks, makes a noble +close.</p> +<p>FitzGerald remained loyal, but it was to “a fairy Prince +who came from other skies than these rainy ones,” and +“the wretched critics,” as G. H. Lewes called them, +seem to have been unfriendly. In fact (besides the innate +wretchedness of all critics), they grudged the time and labour +given to the drama, in an undramatic age. <i>Harold</i> had +not what FitzGerald called “the old champagne +flavour” of the vintage of 1842.</p> +<p><i>Becket</i> was begun in 1876, printed in 1879, and +published in 1884. Before that date, in 1880, Tennyson +produced one of the volumes of poetry which was more welcome than +a play to most of his admirers. The intervening years +passed in the Isle of Wight, at Aldworth, in town, and in summer +tours, were of no marked biographical interest. The poet +was close on three score and ten—he reached that limit in +1879. The days darkened around him, as darken they must: in +the spring of 1879 he lost his favourite brother, himself a poet +of original genius, Charles Tennyson Turner. In May of the +same year he published <i>The Lover’s Tale</i>, which has +been treated here among his earliest works. His hours, and +(to some extent) his meals, were regulated by Sir Andrew +Clark. He planted trees, walked, read, loitered in his +garden, and kept up his old friendships, while he made that of +the great Gordon. Compliments passed between him and Victor +Hugo, who had entertained Lionel Tennyson in Paris, and wrote: +“Je lis avec émotion vos vers superbes; c’est +un reflet de gloire que vous m’envoyez.” Mr +Matthew Arnold’s compliment was very like Mr Arnold’s +humour: “Your father has been our most popular poet for +over forty years, and I am of opinion that he fully deserves his +reputation”: such was “Mat’s sublime +waggery.” Tennyson heaped coals of fire on the other +poet, bidding him, as he liked to be bidden, to write more +poetry, not “prose things.” Tennyson lived much +in the society of Browning and George Eliot, and made the +acquaintance of Renan. In December 1879 Mr and Mrs Kendal +produced <i>The Falcon</i>, which ran for sixty-seven nights; it +is “an exquisite little poem in action,” as Fanny +Kemble said. During a Continental tour Tennyson visited +Catullus’s Sirmio: “here he made his <i>Frater Ave +atque Vale</i>,” and the poet composed his beautiful +salutation to the</p> +<blockquote><p>“Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred +years ago.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In 1880 <i>Ballads and other Poems</i> proved that, like +Titian, the great poet was not to be defeated by the years. +<i>The First Quarrel</i> was in his most popular English +style. <i>Rizpah</i> deserved and received the splendid +panegyric of Mr Swinburne. <i>The Revenge</i> is probably +the finest of the patriotic pieces, and keeps green the memory of +an exploit the most marvellous in the annals of English +seamen. <i>The Village Wife</i> is a pendant worthy of +<i>The Northern Farmer</i>. The poem <i>In the +Children’s Hospital</i> caused some irritation at the +moment, but there was only one opinion as to the <i>Defence of +Lucknow</i> and the beautiful re-telling of the Celtic <i>Voyage +of Maeldune</i>. The fragment of Homeric translation was +equally fortunate in choice of subject and in rendering.</p> +<p>In the end of 1880 the poet finished <i>The Cup</i>, which had +been worked on occasionally since he completed <i>The Falcon</i> +in 1880. The piece was read by the author to Sir Henry +Irving and his company, and it was found that the manuscript copy +needed few alterations to fit it for the stage. The scenery +and the acting of the protagonists are not easily to be +forgotten. The play ran for a hundred and thirty +nights. Sir Henry Irving had thought that <i>Becket</i> +(then unpublished) would prove too expensive, and could only be a +<i>succès d’estime</i>. Tennyson had found out +that “the worst of writing for the stage is, you must keep +some actor always in your mind.” To this necessity +authors like Molière and Shakespeare were, of course, +resigned and familiar; they knew exactly how to deal with all +their means. But this part of the business of play-writing +must always be a cross to the poet who is not at one with the +world of the stage.</p> +<p>In <i>The Cup</i> Miss Ellen Terry made the strongest +impression, her part being noble and sympathetic, while Sir Henry +Irving had the ungrateful part of the villain. To be sure, +he was a villain of much complexity; and Tennyson thought that +his subtle blend of Roman refinement and intellectuality, and +barbarian, self-satisfied sensuality, was not “hit +off.” Synorix is, in fact, half-Greek, half-Celt, +with a Roman education, and the “blend” is rather too +remote for successful representation. The traditional +villain, from Iago downwards, is not apt to utter such poetry as +this:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“O Thou, that dost inspire the germ with +life,<br /> +The child, a thread within the house of birth,<br /> +And give him limbs, then air, and send him forth<br /> +The glory of his father—Thou whose breath<br /> +Is balmy wind to robe our bills with grass,<br /> +And kindle all our vales with myrtle-blossom,<br /> +And roll the golden oceans of our grain,<br /> +And sway the long grape-bunches of our vines,<br /> +And fill all hearts with fatness and the lust<br /> +Of plenty—make me happy in my marriage!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The year 1881 brought the death of another of the old +Cambridge friends, James Spedding, the biographer of Bacon; and +Carlyle also died, a true friend, if rather intermittent in his +appreciation of poetry. The real Carlyle did appreciate it, +but the Carlyle of attitude was too much of the iron Covenanter +to express what he felt. The poem <i>Despair</i> irritated +the earnest and serious readers of “know-nothing +books.” The poem expressed, dramatically, a mood like +another, a human mood not so very uncommon. A man ruined in +this world’s happiness curses the faith of his youth, and +the unfaith of his reading and reflection, and tries to drown +himself. This is one conclusion of the practical syllogism, +and it is a free country. However, there were freethinkers +who did not think that Tennyson’s kind of thinking ought to +be free. Other earnest persons objected to “First +drink a health,” in the re-fashioned song of <i>Hands all +Round</i>. They might have remembered a royal health drunk +in water an hour before the drinkers swept Mackay down the Pass +of Killiecrankie. The poet did not specify the fluid in +which the toast was to be carried, and the cup might be that +which “cheers but not inebriates.” “The +common cup,” as the remonstrants had to be informed, +“has in all ages been the sacred symbol of +unity.”</p> +<p><i>The Promise of May</i> was produced in November 1882, and +the poet was once more so unfortunate as to vex the +susceptibilities of advanced thinkers. The play is not a +masterpiece, and yet neither the gallery gods nor the Marquis of +Queensberry need have felt their withers wrung. The hero, +or villain, Edgar, is a perfectly impossible person, and +represents no kind of political, social, or economical +thinker. A man would give all other bliss and all his +worldly wealth for this, to waste his whole strength in one kick +upon this perfect prig. He employs the arguments of +evolution and so forth to justify the seduction of a little girl +of fifteen, and later, by way of making amends, proposes to +commit incest by marrying her sister. There have been +evolutionists, to be sure, who believed in promiscuity, like Mr +Edgar, as preferable to monogamy. But this only proves that +an evolutionist may fail to understand evolution. There be +also such folk as Stevenson calls +“squirradicals”—squires who say that “the +land is the people’s.” Probably no advocate of +promiscuity, and no squirradical, was present at the performances +of <i>The Promise of May</i>. But people of advanced minds +had got it into their heads that their doctrines were to be +attacked, so they went and made a hubbub in the sacred cause of +freedom of thought and speech. The truth is, that +controversial topics, political topics, ought not to be brought +into plays, much less into sermons. Tennyson meant Edgar +for “nothing thorough, nothing sincere.” He is +that venomous thing, the prig-scoundrel: he does not suit the +stage, and his place, if anywhere, is in the novel. +Advocates of marriage with a deceased wife’s sister might +have applauded Edgar for wishing to marry the sister of a +mistress assumed to be deceased, but no other party in the State +wanted anything except the punching of Edgar’s head by +Farmer Dobson.</p> +<p>In 1883 died Edward FitzGerald, the most kind, loyal, and, as +he said, crotchety of old and dear Cambridge friends. He +did not live to see the delightful poem which Tennyson had +written for him. In almost his latest letter he had +remarked, superfluously, that when he called the task of +translating <i>The Agamemnon</i> “work for a poet,” +he “was not thinking of Mr Browning.”</p> +<p>In the autumn of 1883 Tennyson was taken, with Mr Gladstone, +by Sir Donald Currie, for a cruise round the west coast of +Scotland, to the Orkneys, and to Copenhagen. The people of +Kirkwall conferred on the poet and the statesman the freedom of +the burgh, and Mr Gladstone, in an interesting speech, compared +the relative chances of posthumous fame of the poet and the +politician. Pericles is not less remembered than Sophocles, +though Shakespeare is more in men’s minds than Cecil. +Much depends, as far as the statesmen are considered, on +contemporary historians. It is Thucydides who immortalises +Pericles. But it is improbable that the things which Mr +Gladstone did, and attempted, will be forgotten more rapidly than +the conduct and characters of, say, Burleigh or Lethington.</p> +<p>In 1884, after this voyage, with its royal functions and +celebrations at Copenhagen, a peerage was offered to the +poet. He “did not want to alter his plain Mr,” +and he must have known that, whether he accepted or refused, the +chorus of blame would be louder than that of applause. +Scott had desired “such grinning honour as Sir Walter +hath”; the title went well with the old name, and pleased +his love of old times. Tennyson had been blamed “by +literary men” for thrice evading a baronetcy, and he did +not think that a peerage would make smooth the lives of his +descendants. But he concluded, “Why should I be +selfish and not suffer an honour (as Gladstone says) to be done +to literature in my name?” Politically, he thought +that the Upper House, while it lasts, partly supplied the place +of the American “referendum.” He voted in July +1884 for the extension of the franchise, and in November stated +his views to Mr Gladstone in verse. In prose he wrote to Mr +Gladstone, “I have a strong conviction that the more simple +the dealings of men with men, as well as of man with man, +are—the better,” a sentiment which, perhaps, did not +always prevail with his friend. The poet’s +reflections on the horror of Gordon’s death are not +recorded. He introduced the idea of the Gordon Home for +Boys, and later supported it by a letter, “Have we +forgotten Gordon?” to the <i>Daily Telegraph</i>. +They who cannot forget Gordon must always be grateful to Tennyson +for providing this opportunity of honouring the greatest of an +illustrious clan, and of helping, in their degree, a scheme which +was dear to the heroic leader.</p> +<p>The poet, very naturally, was most averse to personal +appearance in public matters. Mankind is so fashioned that +the advice of a poet is always regarded as unpractical, and is +even apt to injure the cause which he advocates. Happily +there cannot be two opinions about the right way of honouring +Gordon. Tennyson’s poem, <i>The Fleet</i>, was also +in harmony with the general sentiment.</p> +<p>In the last month of 1884 <i>Becket</i> was published. +The theme of Fair Rosamund had appealed to the poet in youth, and +he had written part of a lyric which he judiciously left +unpublished. It is given in his Biography. In 1877 he +had visited Canterbury, and had traced the steps of Becket to his +place of slaughter in the Cathedral. The poem was printed +in 1879, but not published till seven years later. In 1879 +Sir Henry Irving had thought the play too costly to be produced +with more than a <i>succès d’estime</i>; but in 1891 +he put it on the stage, where it proved the most successful of +modern poetic dramas. As published it is, obviously, far +too long for public performance. It is not easy to +understand why dramatic poets always make their works so much too +long. The drama seems, by its very nature, to have a limit +almost as distinct as the limit of the sonnet. It is easy +to calculate how long a play for the stage ought to be, and we +might think that a poet would find the natural limit serviceable +to his art, for it inculcates selection, conciseness, and +concentration. But despite these advantages of the natural +form of the drama, modern poets, at least, constantly overflow +their banks. The author <i>ruit profusus</i>, and the +manager has to reduce the piece to feasible proportions, such as +it ought to have assumed from the first.</p> +<p><i>Becket</i> has been highly praised by Sir Henry Irving +himself, for its “moments of passion and pathos, . . . +which, when they exist, atone to an audience for the endurance of +long acts.” But why should the audience have such +long acts to endure? The reader, one fears, is apt to use +his privilege of skipping. The long speeches of Walter Map +and the immense period of Margery tempt the student to exercise +his agility. A “chronicle play” has the +privilege of wandering, but <i>Becket</i> wanders too far and too +long. The political details of the quarrel between Church +and State, with its domestic and international complexities, are +apt to fatigue the attention. Inevitable and insoluble as +the situation was, neither protagonist is entirely sympathetic, +whether in the play or in history. The struggle in Becket +between his love of the king and his duty to the Church (or what +he takes to be his duty) is nobly presented, and is truly +dramatic, while there is grotesque and terrible relief in the +banquet of the Beggars. In the scene of the assassination +the poet “never stoops his wing,” and there are +passages of tender pathos between Henry and Rosamund, while +Becket’s keen memories of his early days, just before his +death, are moving.</p> +<blockquote><p> “<i>Becket</i>. I +once was out with Henry in the days<br /> +When Henry loved me, and we came upon<br /> +A wild-fowl sitting on her nest, so still<br /> +I reach’d my hand and touch’d; she did not stir;<br +/> +The snow had frozen round her, and she sat<br /> +Stone-dead upon a heap of ice-cold eggs.<br /> +Look! how this love, this mother, runs thro’ all<br /> +The world God made—even the beast—the bird!</p> +<p> <i>John of Salisbury</i>. Ay, still a +lover of the beast and bird?<br /> +But these arm’d men—will you not hide yourself?<br /> +Perchance the fierce De Brocs from Saltwood Castle,<br /> +To assail our Holy Mother lest she brood<br /> +Too long o’er this hard egg, the world, and send<br /> +Her whole heart’s heat into it, till it break<br /> +Into young angels. Pray you, hide yourself.</p> +<p> <i>Becket</i>. There was a little +fair-hair’d Norman maid<br /> +Lived in my mother’s house: if Rosamund is<br /> +The world’s rose, as her name imports her—she<br /> +Was the world’s lily.</p> +<p> <i>John of Salisbury</i>. Ay, and what +of her?</p> +<p> <i>Becket</i>. She died of +leprosy.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But the part of Rosamund, her innocent ignorance especially, +is not very readily intelligible, not quite persuasive, and there +is almost a touch of the burlesque in her unexpected appearance +as a monk. To weave that old and famous story of love into +the terribly complex political intrigue was a task almost too +great. The character of Eleanor is perhaps more +successfully drawn in the Prologue than in the scene where she +offers the choice of the dagger or the bowl, and is interrupted, +in a startlingly unexpected manner, by the Archbishop +himself. The opportunities for scenic effects are +magnificent throughout, and must have contributed greatly to the +success on the stage. Still one cannot but regard the +published <i>Becket</i> as rather the marble from which the +statue may be hewn than as the statue itself. There are +fine scenes, powerful and masterly drawing of character in Henry, +Eleanor, and Becket, but there is a want of concentration, due, +perhaps, to the long period of time covered by the action. +So, at least, it seems to a reader who has admitted his sense of +incompetency in the dramatic region. The acuteness of the +poet’s power of historical intuition was attested by Mr J. +R. Green and Mr Bryce. “One cannot imagine,” +said Mr Bryce, “a more vivid, a more perfectly faithful +picture than it gives both of Henry and Thomas.” +Tennyson’s portraits of these two “go beyond and +perfect history.” The poet’s sympathy ought, +perhaps, to have been, if not with the false and ruffianly Henry, +at least with Henry’s side of the question. For +Tennyson had made Harold leave</p> +<blockquote><p> “To England<br /> +My legacy of war against the Pope<br /> +From child to child, from Pope to Pope, from age to age,<br /> +Till the sea wash her level with her shores,<br /> +Or till the Pope be Christ’s.”</p> +</blockquote> +<h2><a name="page194"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +194</span>IX.<br /> +LAST YEARS.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> end of 1884 saw the publication +of <i>Tiresias and other Poems</i>, dedicated to “My good +friend, Robert Browning,” and opening with the beautiful +verses to one who never was Mr Browning’s friend, Edward +FitzGerald. The volume is rich in the best examples of +Tennyson’s later work. <i>Tiresias</i>, the monologue +of the aged seer, blinded by excess of light when he beheld +Athene unveiled, and under the curse of Cassandra, is worthy of +the author who, in youth, wrote <i>Œnone</i> and +<i>Ulysses</i>. Possibly the verses reflect +Tennyson’s own sense of public indifference to the voice of +the poet and the seer. But they are of much earlier date +than the year of publication:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “For when the crowd would +roar<br /> +For blood, for war, whose issue was their doom,<br /> +To cast wise words among the multitude<br /> +Was flinging fruit to lions; nor, in hours<br /> +Of civil outbreak, when I knew the twain<br /> +Would each waste each, and bring on both the yoke<br /> +Of stronger states, was mine the voice to curb<br /> +The madness of our cities and their kings.<br /> + Who ever turn’d upon his heel to hear<br /> +My warning that the tyranny of one<br /> +Was prelude to the tyranny of all?<br /> +My counsel that the tyranny of all<br /> +Led backward to the tyranny of one?<br /> + This power hath work’d no good to aught that +lives.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The conclusion was a favourite with the author, and his blank +verse never reached a higher strain:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “But for +me,<br /> +I would that I were gather’d to my rest,<br /> +And mingled with the famous kings of old,<br /> +On whom about their ocean-islets flash<br /> +The faces of the Gods—the wise man’s word,<br /> +Here trampled by the populace underfoot,<br /> +There crown’d with worship—and these eyes will +find<br /> +The men I knew, and watch the chariot whirl<br /> +About the goal again, and hunters race<br /> +The shadowy lion, and the warrior-kings,<br /> +In height and prowess more than human, strive<br /> +Again for glory, while the golden lyre<br /> +Is ever sounding in heroic ears<br /> +Heroic hymns, and every way the vales<br /> +Wind, clouded with the grateful incense-fume<br /> +Of those who mix all odour to the Gods<br /> +On one far height in one far-shining fire.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Then follows the pathetic piece on FitzGerald’s death, +and the prayer, not unfulfilled—</p> + +<blockquote><p> “That, +when I from hence<br /> + Shall fade with him into the unknown,<br /> +My close of earth’s experience<br /> + May prove as peaceful as his own.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><i>The Ancient Sage</i>, with its lyric interludes, is one of +Tennyson’s meditations on the mystery of the world and of +existence. Like the poet himself, the Sage finds a gleam of +light and hope in his own subjective experiences of some +unspeakable condition, already recorded in <i>In +Memoriam</i>. The topic was one on which he seems to have +spoken to his friends with freedom:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“And more, my son! for more than once when +I<br /> +Sat all alone, revolving in myself<br /> +The word that is the symbol of myself,<br /> +The mortal limit of the Self was loosed,<br /> +And past into the Nameless, as a cloud<br /> +Melts into Heaven. I touch’d my limbs, the limbs<br +/> +Were strange not mine—and yet no shade of doubt,<br /> +But utter clearness, and thro’ loss of Self<br /> +The gain of such large life as match’d with ours<br /> +Were Sun to spark—unshadowable in words,<br /> +Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The poet’s habit of</p> + +<blockquote><p> “Revolving +in myself<br /> +The word that is the symbol of myself”—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>that is, of dwelling on the sound of his own name, was +familiar to the Arabs. M. Lefébure has drawn my +attention to a passage in the works of a mediæval Arab +philosopher, Ibn Khaldoun: <a name="citation196"></a><a +href="#footnote196" class="citation">[196]</a> “To arrive +at the highest degree of inspiration of which he is capable, the +diviner should have recourse to the use of certain phrases marked +by a peculiar cadence and parallelism. Thus he emancipates +his mind from the influence of the senses, and is enabled to +attain an imperfect contact with the spiritual +world.” Ibn Khaldoun regards the +“contact” as extremely “imperfect.” +He describes similar efforts made by concentrating the gaze on a +mirror, a bowl of water, or the like. Tennyson was +doubtless unaware that he had stumbled accidentally on a method +of “ancient sages.” Psychologists will explain +his experience by the word “dissociation.” It +is not everybody, however, who can thus dissociate himself. +The temperament of genius has often been subject to such +influence, as M. Lefébure has shown in the modern +instances of George Sand and Alfred de Musset: we might add +Shelley, Goethe, and even Scott.</p> +<p>The poet’s versatility was displayed in the appearance +with these records of “weird seizures”, of the Irish +dialect piece <i>To-morrow</i>, the popular <i>Spinster’s +Sweet-Arts</i>, and the <i>Locksley Hall Sixty Years +After</i>. The old fire of the versification is unabated, +but the hero has relapsed on the gloom of the hero of +<i>Maud</i>. He represents himself, of course, not +Tennyson, or only one of the moods of Tennyson, which were +sometimes black enough. A very different mood chants the +<i>Charge of the Heavy Brigade</i>, and speaks of</p> +<blockquote><p>“Green Sussex fading into blue<br /> + With one gray glimpse of sea.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The lines <i>To Virgil</i> were written at the request of the +Mantuans, by the most Virgilian of all the successors of the</p> +<blockquote><p>“Wielder of the stateliest measure<br /> + ever moulded by the lips of man.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Never was Tennyson more Virgilian than in this unmatched +panegyric, the sum and flower of criticism of that</p> +<blockquote><p>“Golden branch amid the shadows,<br /> + kings and realms that pass to rise no +more.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Hardly less admirable is the tribute to Catullus, and the old +poet is young again in the bird-song of <i>Early +Spring</i>. The lines on <i>Poets and their +Bibliographies</i>, with <i>The Dead Prophet</i>, express +Tennyson’s lifelong abhorrence of the critics and +biographers, whose joy is in the futile and the unimportant, in +personal gossip and the sweepings of the studio, the salvage of +the wastepaper basket. The <i>Prefatory Poem to my +Brother’s Sonnets</i> is not only touching in itself, but +proves that the poet can “turn to favour and to +prettiness” such an affliction as the ruinous summer of +1879.</p> +<p>The year 1880 brought deeper distress in the death of the +poet’s son Lionel, whose illness, begun in India, ended +fatally in the Red Sea. The interest of the following years +was mainly domestic. The poet’s health, hitherto +robust, was somewhat impaired in 1888, but his vivid interest in +affairs and in letters was unabated. He consoled himself +with Virgil, Keats, Wordsworth, Gibbon, Euripides, and Mr +Leaf’s speculations on the composite nature of the +<i>Iliad</i>, in which Coleridge, perhaps alone among poets, +believed. “You know,” said Tennyson to Mr Leaf; +“I never liked that theory of yours about the many +poets.” It would be at least as easy to prove that +there were many authors of <i>Ivanhoe</i>, or perhaps it would be +a good deal more easy. However, he admitted that three +lines which occur both in the Eighth and the Sixteenth Books of +the <i>Iliad</i> are more appropriate in the later book. +Similar examples might be found in his own poems. He still +wrote, in the intervals of a malady which brought him “as +near death as a man could be without dying.” He was +an example of the great physical strength which, on the whole, +seems usually to accompany great mental power. The strength +may be dissipated by passion, or by undue labour, as in cases +easily recalled to memory, but neither cause had impaired the +vigour of Tennyson. Like Goethe, he lived out all his life; +and his eightieth birthday was cheered both by public and private +expressions of reverence and affection.</p> +<p>Of Tennyson’s last three years on earth we may think, in +his own words, that his</p> +<blockquote><p> “Life’s latest eve +endured<br /> +Nor settled into hueless grey.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Nature was as dear to him and as inspiring as of old; men and +affairs and letters were not slurred by his intact and energetic +mind. His <i>Demeter and other Poems</i>, with the +dedication to Lord Dufferin, appeared in the December of the +year. The dedication was the lament for the dead son and +the salutation to the Viceroy of India, a piece of resigned and +manly regret. The <i>Demeter and Persephone</i> is a modern +and tender study of the theme of the most beautiful Homeric +Hymn. The ancient poet had no such thought of the restored +Persephone as that which impels Tennyson to describe her</p> +<blockquote><p>“Faint as a climate-changing bird that +flies<br /> +All night across the darkness, and at dawn<br /> +Falls on the threshold of her native land.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The spring, the restored Persephone, comes more vigorous and +joyous to the shores of the Ægean than to ours. All +Tennyson’s own is Demeter’s awe of those +“imperial disimpassioned eyes” of her daughter, come +from the bed and the throne of Hades, the Lord of many +guests. The hymn, happy in its ending, has no thought of +the grey heads of the Fates, and their answer to the goddess +concerning “fate beyond the Fates,” and the breaking +of the bonds of Hades. The ballad of <i>Owd Roä</i> is +one of the most spirited of the essays in dialect to which +Tennyson had of late years inclined. <i>Vastness</i> merely +expresses, in terms of poetry, Tennyson’s conviction that, +without immortality, life is a series of worthless +contrasts. An opposite opinion may be entertained, but a +man has a right to express his own, which, coming from so great a +mind, is not undeserving of attention; or, at least, is hardly +deserving of reproof. The poet’s idea is also stated +thus in <i>The Ring</i>, in terms which perhaps do not fall below +the poetical; or, at least, do not drop into “the utterly +unpoetical”:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“The Ghost in Man, the Ghost that once was +Man,<br /> +But cannot wholly free itself from Man,<br /> +Are calling to each other thro’ a dawn<br /> +Stranger than earth has ever seen; the veil<br /> +Is rending, and the Voices of the day<br /> +Are heard across the Voices of the dark.<br /> +No sudden heaven, nor sudden hell, for man,<br /> +But thro’ the Will of One who knows and rules—<br /> +And utter knowledge is but utter love—<br /> +Æonian Evolution, swift or slow,<br /> +Thro’ all the Spheres—an ever opening height,<br /> +An ever lessening earth.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><i>The Ring</i> is, in fact, a ghost story based on a legend +told by Mr Lowell about a house near where he had once lived; one +of those houses vexed by</p> +<blockquote><p>“A footstep, a low throbbing in the +walls,<br /> +A noise of falling weights that never fell,<br /> +Weird whispers, bells that rang without a hand,<br /> +Door-handles turn’d when none was at the door,<br /> +And bolted doors that open’d of themselves.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>These phenomena were doubtless caused by rats and water-pipes, +but they do not destroy the pity and the passion of the +tale. The lines to Mary Boyle are all of the normal world, +and worthy of a poet’s youth and of the spring. +<i>Merlin and the Gleam</i> is the spiritual allegory of the +poet’s own career:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Arthur had vanish’d<br /> +I knew not whither,<br /> +The king who loved me,<br /> +And cannot die.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>So at last</p> +<blockquote><p> “All but in Heaven<br /> +Hovers The Gleam,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>whither the wayfarer was soon to follow. There is a +marvellous hope and pathos in the melancholy of these all but the +latest songs, reminiscent of youth and love, and even of the dim +haunting memories and dreams of infancy. No other English +poet has thus rounded all his life with music. Tennyson was +in his eighty-first year, when there “came in a +moment” the crown of his work, the immortal lyric, +<i>Crossing the Bar</i>. It is hardly less majestic and +musical in the perfect Greek rendering by his brother-in-law, Mr +Lushington. For once at least a poem has been “poured +from the golden to the silver cup” without the spilling of +a drop. The new book’s appearance was coincident with +the death of Mr Browning, “so loving and +appreciative,” as Lady Tennyson wrote; a friend, not a +rival, however the partisans of either poet might strive to stir +emulation between two men of such lofty and such various +genius.</p> +<h2><a name="page203"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +203</span>X.<br /> +1890.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">In</span> the year 1889 the poet’s +health had permitted him to take long walks on the sea-shore and +along the cliffs, one of which, by reason of its whiteness, he +had named “Taliessin,” “the splendid +brow.” His mind ran on a poem founded on an Egyptian +legend (of which the source is not mentioned), telling how +“despair and death came upon him who was mad enough to try +to probe the secret of the universe.” He also thought +of a drama on Tristram, who, in the Idylls, is treated with +brevity, and not with the sympathy of the old writer who cries, +“God bless Tristram the knight: he fought for +England!” But early in 1890 Tennyson suffered from a +severe attack of influenza. In May Mr Watts painted his +portrait, and</p> +<blockquote><p>“Divinely through all hindrance found the +man.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Tennyson was a great admirer of Miss Austen’s novels: +“The realism and life-likeness of Miss Austen’s +<i>Dramatis Personæ</i> come nearest to those of +Shakespeare. Shakespeare, however, is a sun to which Jane +Austen, though a bright and true little world, is but an +asteroid.” He was therefore pleased to find +apple-blossoms co-existing with ripe strawberries on June 28, as +Miss Austen has been blamed, by minute philosophers, for +introducing this combination in the garden party in +<i>Emma</i>. The poet, like most of the good and great, +read novels eagerly, and excited himself over the confirmation of +an adult male in a story by Miss Yonge. Of Scott, +“the most chivalrous literary figure of the century, and +the author with the widest range since Shakespeare,” he +preferred <i>Old Mortality</i>, and it is a good choice. He +hated “morbid and introspective tales, with their oceans of +sham philosophy.” At this time, with catholic taste, +he read Mr Stevenson and Mr Meredith, Miss Braddon and Mr Henry +James, Ouida and Mr Thomas Hardy; Mr Hall Caine and Mr Anstey; +Mrs Oliphant and Miss Edna Lyall. Not everybody can peruse +all of these very diverse authors with pleasure. He began +his poem on the Roman gladiatorial combats; indeed his years, +fourscore and one, left his intellectual eagerness as unimpaired +as that of Goethe. “A crooked share,” he said +to the Princess Louise, “may make a straight +furrow.” “One afternoon he had a long waltz +with M— in the ballroom.” Speaking of</p> +<blockquote><p>“All the charm of all the Muses<br /> + Often flowering in a lonely word”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>in Virgil, he adduced, rather strangely, the <i>cunctantem +ramum</i>, said of the Golden Bough, in the Sixth +Æneid. The choice is odd, because the Sibyl has just +told Æneas that, if he be destined to pluck the branch of +gold, <i>ipse volens facilisque sequetur</i>, “it will come +off of its own accord,” like the sacred <i>ti</i> branches +of the Fijians, which bend down to be plucked for the Fire +rite. Yet, when the predestined Æneas tries to pluck +the bough of gold, it yields <i>reluctantly</i> +(<i>cunctantem</i>), contrary to what the Sibyl has +foretold. Mr Conington, therefore, thought the phrase a +slip on the part of Virgil. “People accused Virgil of +plagiarising,” he said, “but if a man made it his own +there was no harm in that (look at the great poets, Shakespeare +included).” Tennyson, like Virgil, made much that was +ancient his own; his verses are often, and purposefully, a mosaic +of classical reminiscences. But he was vexed by the hunters +after remote and unconscious resemblances, and far-fetched +analogies between his lines and those of others. He +complained that, if he said that the sun went down, a parallel +was at once cited from Homer, or anybody else, and he used a very +powerful phrase to condemn critics who detected such +repetitions. “The moanings of the homeless +sea,”—“moanings” from Horace, +“homeless” from Shelley. “As if no one +else had ever heard the sea moan except Horace!” +Tennyson’s mixture of memory and forgetfulness was not so +strange as that of Scott, and when he adapted from the Greek, +Latin, or Italian, it was of set purpose, just as it was with +Virgil. The beautiful lines comparing a girl’s eyes +to bottom agates that seem to</p> +<blockquote><p> “Wave and float<br /> +In crystal currents of clear running seas,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>he invented while bathing in Wales. It was his habit, to +note down in verse such similes from nature, and to use them when +he found occasion. But the higher criticism, analysing the +simile, detected elements from Shakespeare and from Beaumont and +Fletcher.</p> +<p>In June 1891 the poet went on a tour in Devonshire, and began +his <i>Akbar</i>, and probably wrote <i>June Bracken and +Heather</i>; or perhaps it was composed when “we often sat +on the top of Blackdown to watch the sunset.” He +wrote to Mr Kipling—</p> +<blockquote><p>“The oldest to the youngest singer<br /> + That England bore”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>(to alter Mr Swinburne’s lines to Landor), praising his +<i>Flag of England</i>. Mr Kipling replied as “the +private to the general.”</p> +<p>Early in 1892 <i>The Foresters</i> was successfully produced +at New York by Miss Ada Rehan, the music by Sir Arthur Sullivan, +and the scenery from woodland designs by Whymper. Robin +Hood (as we learn from Mark Twain) is a favourite hero with the +youth of America. Mr Tom Sawyer himself took, in Mark +Twain’s tale, the part of the bold outlaw.</p> +<p><i>The Death of Œnone</i> was published in 1892, with +the dedication to the Master of Balliol—</p> +<blockquote><p> “Read a Grecian tale +retold<br /> +Which, cast in later Grecian mould,<br /> + Quintus Calaber<br /> +Somewhat lazily handled of old.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Quintus Calaber, more usually called Quintus Smyrnæus, +is a writer of perhaps the fourth century of our era. About +him nothing, or next to nothing, is known. He told, in so +late an age, the conclusion of the Tale of Troy, and (in the +writer’s opinion) has been unduly neglected and +disdained. His manner, I venture to think, is more Homeric +than that of the more famous and doubtless greater Alexandrian +poet of the Argonautic cycle, Apollonius Rhodius, his senior by +five centuries. His materials were probably the ancient and +lost poems of the Epic Cycle, and the story of the death of +Œnone may be from the <i>Little Iliad</i> of Lesches. +Possibly parts of his work may be textually derived from the +Cyclics, but the topic is very obscure. In Quintus, Paris, +after encountering evil omens on his way, makes a long speech, +imploring the pardon of the deserted Œnone. She +replies, not with the Tennysonian brevity; she sends him back to +the helpless arms of her rival, Helen. Paris dies on the +hills; never did Helen see him returning. The wood-nymphs +bewail Paris, and a herdsman brings the bitter news to Helen, who +chants her lament. But remorse falls on Œnone. +She does not go</p> +<blockquote><p> “Slowly +down<br /> +By the long torrent’s ever-deepened roar,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>but rushes “swift as the wind to seek and spring upon +the pyre of her lord.” Fate and Aphrodite drive her +headlong, and in heaven Selene, remembering Endymion, bewails the +lot of her sister in sorrow. Œnone reaches the +funeral flame, and without a word or a cry leaps into her +husband’s arms, the wild Nymphs wondering. The lovers +are mingled in one heap of ashes, and these are bestowed in one +vessel of gold and buried in a howe. This is the story +which the poet rehandled in his old age, completing the work of +his happy youth when he walked with Hallam in the Pyrenean hills, +that were to him as Ida. The romance of Œnone and her +death condone, as even Homer was apt to condone, the sins of +beautiful Paris, whom the nymphs lament, despite the evil that he +has wrought. The silence of the veiled Œnone, as she +springs into her lover’s last embrace, is perhaps more +affecting and more natural than Tennyson’s</p> +<blockquote><p> “She lifted up a voice<br +/> +Of shrill command, ‘Who burns upon the +pyre?’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The <i>St Telemachus</i> has the old splendour and vigour of +verse, and, though written so late in life, is worthy of the +poet’s prime:—</p> +<blockquote><p> “Eve after eve that +haggard anchorite<br /> +Would haunt the desolated fane, and there<br /> +Gaze at the ruin, often mutter low<br /> +‘Vicisti Galilæe’; louder again,<br /> +Spurning a shatter’d fragment of the God,<br /> +‘Vicisti Galilæe!’ but—when now<br /> +Bathed in that lurid crimson—ask’d ‘Is earth<br +/> +On fire to the West? or is the Demon-god<br /> +Wroth at his fall?’ and heard an answer ‘Wake<br /> +Thou deedless dreamer, lazying out a life<br /> +Of self-suppression, not of selfless love.’<br /> +And once a flight of shadowy fighters crost<br /> +The disk, and once, he thought, a shape with wings<br /> +Came sweeping by him, and pointed to the West,<br /> +And at his ear he heard a whisper ‘Rome,’<br /> +And in his heart he cried ‘The call of God!’<br /> +And call’d arose, and, slowly plunging down<br /> +Thro’ that disastrous glory, set his face<br /> +By waste and field and town of alien tongue,<br /> +Following a hundred sunsets, and the sphere<br /> +Of westward-wheeling stars; and every dawn<br /> +Struck from him his own shadow on to Rome.<br /> + Foot-sore, way-worn, at length he touch’d his +goal,<br /> +The Christian city.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><i>Akbar’s Dream</i> may be taken, more or less, to +represent the poet’s own theology of a race seeking after +God, if perchance they may find Him, and the closing Hymn was a +favourite with Tennyson. He said, “It is a +magnificent metre”:—</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">“<span +class="smcap">Hymn</span>.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">I.</p> +<p>Once again thou flamest heavenward, once again we see thee +rise.<br /> +Every morning is thy birthday gladdening human hearts and +eyes.<br /> + Every morning here we greet it, bowing lowly down +before thee,<br /> +Thee the Godlike, thee the changeless in thine ever-changing +skies.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">II.</p> +<p>Shadow-maker, shadow-slayer, arrowing light from clime to +clime,<br /> +Hear thy myriad laureates hail thee monarch in their woodland +rhyme.<br /> + Warble bird, and open flower, and, men, below the +dome of azure<br /> +Kneel adoring Him the Timeless in the flame that measures +Time!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In this final volume the poet cast his handful of incense on +the altar of Scott, versifying the tale of <i>Il Bizarro</i>, +which the dying Sir Walter records in his Journal in Italy. +<i>The Churchwarden and the Curate</i> is not inferior to the +earlier peasant poems in its expression of shrewdness, humour, +and superstition. A verse of <i>Poets and Critics</i> may +be taken as the poet’s last word on the old futile +quarrel:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“This thing, that thing is the rage,<br /> +Helter-skelter runs the age;<br /> +Minds on this round earth of ours<br /> +Vary like the leaves and flowers,<br /> + Fashion’d after certain laws;<br /> +Sing thou low or loud or sweet,<br /> +All at all points thou canst not meet,<br /> + Some will pass and some will pause.</p> +<p>What is true at last will tell:<br /> +Few at first will place thee well;<br /> +Some too low would have thee shine,<br /> +Some too high—no fault of thine—<br /> + Hold thine own, and work thy will!<br /> +Year will graze the heel of year,<br /> +But seldom comes the poet here,<br /> + And the Critic’s rarer still.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Still the lines hold good—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Some too low would have thee shine,<br /> +Some too high—no fault of thine.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The end was now at hand. A sense of weakness was felt by +the poet on September 3, 1892: on the 28th his family sent for +Sir Andrew Clark; but the patient gradually faded out of life, +and expired on Thursday, October 6, at 1.35 <span +class="GutSmall">A.M.</span> To the very last he had +Shakespeare by him, and his windows were open to the sun; on the +last night they were flooded by the moonlight. The +description of the final scenes must be read in the Biography by +the poet’s son. “His patience and quiet +strength had power upon those who were nearest and dearest to +him; we felt thankful for the love and the utter peace of it +all.” “The life after death,” Tennyson +had said just before his fatal illness, “is the cardinal +point of Christianity. I believe that God reveals Himself +in every individual soul; and my idea of Heaven is the perpetual +ministry of one soul to another.” He had lived the +life of heaven upon earth, being in all his work a minister of +things honourable, lovely, consoling, and ennobling to the souls +of others, with a ministry which cannot die. His body +sleeps next to that of his friend and fellow-poet, Robert +Browning, in front of Chaucer’s monument in the Abbey.</p> +<h2><a name="page212"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +212</span>XI.<br /> +LAST CHAPTER.</h2> +<p>“O, <span class="smcap">that</span> Press will get hold +of me now,” Tennyson said when he knew that his last hour +was at hand. He had a horror of personal tattle, as even +his early poems declare—</p> +<blockquote><p>“For now the Poet cannot die,<br /> + Nor leave his music as of old,<br /> + But round him ere he scarce be cold<br /> +Begins the scandal and the cry.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But no “carrion-vulture” has waited</p> +<blockquote><p>“To tear his heart before the +crowd.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>About Tennyson, doubtless, there is much anecdotage: most of +the anecdotes turn on his shyness, his really exaggerated hatred +of personal notoriety, and the odd and brusque things which he +would say when alarmed by effusive strangers. It has not +seemed worth while to repeat more than one or two of these +legends, nor have I sought outside the Biography by his son for +more than the biographer chose to tell. The readers who are +least interested in poetry are most interested in tattle about +the poet. It is the privilege of genius to retain the +freshness and simplicity, with some of the foibles, of the +child. When Tennyson read his poems aloud he was apt to be +moved by them, and to express frankly his approbation where he +thought it deserved. Only very rudimentary psychologists +recognised conceit in this freedom; and only the same set of +persons mistook shyness for arrogance. Effusiveness of +praise or curiosity in a stranger is apt to produce bluntness of +reply in a Briton. “Don’t talk d—d +nonsense, sir,” said the Duke of Wellington to the gushing +person who piloted him, in his old age, across Piccadilly. +Of Tennyson Mr Palgrave says, “I have known him silenced, +almost frozen, before the eager unintentional eyes of a girl of +fifteen. And under the stress of this nervous impulse +compelled to contradict his inner self (especially when under the +terror of leonisation . . . ), he was doubtless at times betrayed +into an abrupt phrase, a cold unsympathetic exterior; a +moment’s ‘defect of the rose.’” Had +he not been sensitive in all things, he would have been less of a +poet. The chief criticism directed against his mode of life +is that he <i>was</i> sensitive and reserved, but he could and +did make himself pleasant in the society of <i>les pauvres +d’esprit</i>. Curiosity alarmed him, and drove him +into his shell: strangers who met him in that mood carried away +false impressions, which developed into myths. As the +Master of Balliol has recorded, despite his shyness “he was +extremely hospitable, often inviting not only his friends, but +the friends of his friends, and giving them a hearty +welcome. For underneath a sensitive exterior he was +thoroughly genial if he was understood.” In these +points he was unlike his great contemporary, Browning; for +instance, Tennyson never (I think) was the Master’s guest +at Balliol, mingling, like Browning, with the undergraduates, to +whom the Master’s hospitality was freely extended. +Yet, where he was familiar, Tennyson was a gay companion, not +shunning jest or even paradox. “As Dr Johnson says, +every man may be judged of by his laughter”: but no Boswell +has chronicled the laughters of Tennyson. “He never, +or hardly ever, made puns or witticisms” (though one pun, +at least, endures in tradition), “but always lived in an +attitude of humour.” Mr Jowett writes (and no +description of the poet is better than his)—</p> +<blockquote><p>If I were to describe his outward appearance, I +should say that he was certainly unlike any one else whom I ever +saw. A glance at some of Watts’ portraits of him will +give, better than any description which can be expressed in +words, a conception of his noble mien and look. He was a +magnificent man, who stood before you in his native refinement +and strength. The unconventionality of his manners was in +keeping with the originality of his figure. He would +sometimes say nothing, or a word or two only, to the stranger who +approached him, out of shyness. He would sometimes come +into the drawing-room reading a book. At other times, +especially to ladies, he was singularly gracious and +benevolent. He would talk about the accidents of his own +life with an extraordinary freedom, as at the moment they +appeared to present themselves to his mind, the days of his +boyhood that were passed at Somersby, and the old school of +manners which he came across in his own neighbourhood: the days +of the “apostles” at Cambridge: the years which he +spent in London; the evenings enjoyed at the Cock Tavern, and +elsewhere, when he saw another side of life, not without a kindly +and humorous sense of the ridiculous in his +fellow-creatures. His repertory of stories was perfectly +inexhaustible; they were often about slight matters that would +scarcely bear repetition, but were told with such lifelike +reality, that they convulsed his hearers with laughter. +Like most story-tellers, he often repeated his favourites; but, +like children, his audience liked hearing them again and again, +and he enjoyed telling them. It might be said of him that +he told more stories than any one, but was by no means the +regular story-teller. In the commonest conversation he +showed himself a man of genius.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>To this description may be added another by Mr F. T. +Palgrave:—</p> +<blockquote><p>Every one will have seen men, distinguished in +some line of work, whose conversation (to take the old figure) +either “smelt too strongly of the lamp,” or lay quite +apart from their art or craft. What, through all these +years, struck me about Tennyson, was that whilst he never +deviated into poetical language as such, whether in rhetoric or +highly coloured phrase, yet throughout the substance of his talk +the same mode of thought, the same imaginative grasp of nature, +the same fineness and gentleness in his view of character, the +same forbearance and toleration, the <i>aurea mediocritas</i> +despised by fools and fanatics, which are stamped on his poetry, +were constantly perceptible: whilst in the easy and as it were +unsought choiceness, the conscientious and truth-loving precision +of his words, the same personal identity revealed itself. +What a strange charm lay here, how deeply illuminating the whole +character, as in prolonged intercourse it gradually revealed +itself! Artist and man, Tennyson was invariably true to +himself, or rather, in Wordsworth’s phrase, he “moved +altogether”; his nature and his poetry being harmonious +aspects of the same soul; as botanists tell us that flower and +fruit are but transformations of root and stem and leafage. +We read how, in mediæval days, conduits were made to flow +with claret. But this was on great occasions only. +Tennyson’s fountain always ran wine.</p> +<p>Once more: In Mme. Récamier’s <i>salon</i>, I +have read, at the time when conversation was yet a fine art in +Paris, guests famous for <i>esprit</i> would sit in the twilight +round the stove, whilst each in turn let fly some sparkling +anecdote or bon-mot, which rose and shone and died out into +silence, till the next of the elect pyrotechnists was +ready. Good things of this kind, as I have said, were +plentiful in Tennyson’s repertory. But what, to pass +from the materials to the method of his conversation, eminently +marked it was the continuity of the electric current. He +spoke, and was silent, and spoke again: but the circuit was +unbroken; there was no effort in taking up the thread, no sense +of disjunction. Often I thought, had he never written a +line of the poems so dear to us, his conversation alone would +have made him the most interesting companion known to me. +From this great and gracious student of humanity, what less, +indeed, could be expected? And if, as a converser, I were +to compare him with Socrates, as figured for us in the dialogues +of his great disciple, I think that I should have the assent of +that eminently valued friend of Tennyson’s, whose long +labour of love has conferred English citizenship upon Plato.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>We have called him shy and sensitive in daily intercourse with +strangers, and as to criticism, he freely confessed that a midge +of dispraise could sting, while applause gave him little +pleasure. Yet no poet altered his verses so much in +obedience to censure unjustly or irritatingly stated, yet in +essence just. He readily rejected some of his +“Juvenilia” on Mr Palgrave’s suggestion. +The same friend tells how well he took a rather fierce attack on +an unpublished piece, when Mr Palgrave “owned that he could +not find one good line in it.” Very few poets, or +even versifiers (fiercer they than poets are), would have +continued to show their virgin numbers to a friend so candid, as +Tennyson did. Perhaps most of the <i>genus irritabile</i> +will grant that spoken criticism, if unfavourable, somehow annoys +and stirs opposition in an author; probably because it confirms +his own suspicions about his work. Such criticism is almost +invariably just. But Campbell, when Rogers offered a +correction, “bounced out of the room, with a ‘Hang +it! I should like to see the man who would dare to correct +me.’”</p> +<p>Mr Jowett justly recognised in the life of Tennyson two +circumstances which made him other than, but for these, he would +have been. He had intended to do with the Arthurian subject +what he never did, “in some way or other to have +represented in it the great religions of the world. . . . It is a +proof of Tennyson’s genius that he should have thus early +grasped the great historical aspect of religion.” His +intention was foiled, his early dream was broken, by the death of +Arthur Hallam, and by the coldness and contempt with which, at +the same period, his early poems were received.</p> +<p>Mr Jowett (who had a firm belief in the “great +work”) regretted the change of plan as to the Arthurian +topic, regretted it the more from his own interest in the History +of Religion. But we need not share the regrets. The +early plan for the Arthur (which Mr Jowett never saw) has been +published, and certainly the scheme could not have been executed +on these lines. <a name="citation218"></a><a href="#footnote218" +class="citation">[218]</a> Moreover, as the Master +observed, the work would have been premature in Tennyson’s +youth, and, indeed, it would still be premature. The +comparative science of religious evolution is even now very +tentative, and does not yield materials of sufficient stability +for an epic, even if such an epic could be forced into the mould +of the Arthur legends, a feat perhaps impossible, and certainly +undesirable. A truly fantastic allegory must have been the +result, and it is fortunate that the poet abandoned the idea in +favour of more human themes. Moreover, he recognised very +early that his was not a Muse <i>de longue haleine</i>; that he +must be “short.” We may therefore feel certain +that his early sorrow and discouragement were salutary to him as +a poet, and as a man. He became more sympathetic, more +tender, and was obliged to put forth that stoical self-control, +and strenuous courage and endurance, through which alone his +poetic career was rendered possible. “He had the +susceptibility of a child or a woman,” says his friend; +“he had also” (it was a strange combination) +“the strength of a giant or of a god.” Without +these qualities he must have broken down between 1833 and 1842 +into a hypochondriac, or a morose, if majestic, failure. +Poor, obscure, and unhappy, he overcame the world, and passed +from darkness into light. The “poetic +temperament” in another not gifted with his endurance and +persistent strength would have achieved ruin.</p> +<p>Most of us remember Taine’s parallel between Tennyson +and Alfred de Musset. The French critic has no high +approval of Tennyson’s “respectability” and +long peaceful life, as compared with the wrecked life and genius +of Musset, <i>l’enfant perdu</i> of love, wine, and +song. This is a theory like another, and is perhaps +attractive to the young. The poet must have strong +passions, or how can he sing of them: he must be tossed and +whirled in the stress of things, like Shelley’s autumn +leaves;—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Ghosts from an enchanter +fleeing.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Looking at Burns, Byron, Musset, or even at Shelley’s +earlier years, youth sees in them the true poets, “sacred +things,” but also “light,” as Plato says, +inspired to break their wings against the nature of existence, +and the <i>flammantia mænia mundi</i>. But this is +almost a boyish idea, this idea that the true poet is the slave +of the passions, and that the poet who dominates them has none, +and is but a staid domestic animal, an ass browsing the common, +as somebody has written about Wordsworth. Certainly +Tennyson’s was no “passionless +perfection.” He, like others, was tempted to beat +with ineffectual wings against the inscrutable nature of +life. He, too, had his dark hour, and was as subject to +temptation as they who yielded to the stress and died, or became +unhappy waifs, “young men with a splendid +past.” He must have known, no less than Musset, the +attractions of many a <i>paradis artificiel</i>, with its bright +visions, its houris, its offers of oblivion of pain. +“He had the look of one who had suffered greatly,” Mr +Palgrave writes in his record of their first meeting in +1842. But he, like Goethe, Scott, and Victor Hugo, had +strength as well as passion and emotion; he came unscorched +through the fire that has burned away the wings of so many other +great poets. This was no less fortunate for the world than +for himself. Of his prolonged dark hour we know little in +detail, but we have seen that from the first he resisted the +Tempter; <i>Ulysses</i> is his <i>Retro Sathanas</i>!</p> +<p>About “the mechanism of genius” in Tennyson Mr +Palgrave has told us a little; more appears incidentally in his +biography. “It was his way that when we had entered +on some scene of special beauty or grandeur, after enjoying it +together, he should always withdraw wholly from sight, and study +the view, as it were, in a little artificial solitude.”</p> +<p>Tennyson’s poems, Mr Palgrave says, often arose in a +kind of <i>point de repère</i> (like those forms and +landscapes which seem to spring from a floating point of light, +beheld with closed eyes just before we sleep). “More +than once he said that his poems sprang often from a +‘nucleus,’ some one word, maybe, or brief melodious +phrase, which had floated through the brain, as it were, +unbidden. And perhaps at once while walking they were +presently wrought into a little song. But if he did not +write it down at once the lyric fled from him +irrecoverably.” He believed himself thus to have lost +poems as good as his best. It seems probable that this is a +common genesis of verses, good or bad, among all who write. +Like Dickens, and like most men of genius probably, he saw all +the scenes of his poems “in his mind’s +eye.” Many authors do this, without the power of +making their readers share the vision; but probably few can +impart the vision who do not themselves “visualise” +with distinctness. We have seen, in the cases of <i>The +Holy Grail</i> and other pieces, that Tennyson, after long +meditating a subject, often wrote very rapidly, and with little +need of correction. He was born with “style”; +it was a gift of his genius rather than the result of conscious +elaboration. Yet he did use “the file,” of +which much is now written, especially for the purpose of +polishing away the sibilants, so common in our language. In +the nine years of silence which followed the little book of 1833 +his poems matured, and henceforth it is probable that he altered +his verses little, if we except the modifications in <i>The +Princess</i>. Many slight verbal touches were made, or old +readings were restored, but important changes, in the way of +omission or addition, became rare.</p> +<p>Of nature Tennyson was scrupulously observant till his very +latest days, eagerly noting, not only “effects,” as a +painter does, but their causes, botanical or geological. +Had man been scientific from the beginning he would probably have +evolved no poetry at all; material things would not have been +endowed by him with life and passion; he would have told himself +no stories of the origins of stars and flowers, clouds and fire, +winds and rainbows. Modern poets have resented, like Keats +and Wordsworth, the destruction of the old prehistoric dreams by +the geologist and by other scientific characters. But it +was part of Tennyson’s poetic originality to see the +beautiful things of nature at once with the vision of early +poetic men, and of moderns accustomed to the microscope, +telescope, spectrum analysis, and so forth. Thus Tennyson +received a double delight from the sensible universe, and it is a +double delight that he communicates to his readers. His +intellect was thus always active, even in apparent repose. +His eyes rested not from observing, or his mind from recording +and comparing, the beautiful familiar phenomena of earth and +sky. In the matter of the study of books we have seen how +deeply versed he was in certain of the Greek, Roman, and Italian +classics. Mr Jowett writes: “He was what might be +called a good scholar in the university or public-school sense of +the term, . . . yet I seem to remember that he had his favourite +classics, such as Homer, and Pindar, and Theocritus. . . . He was +also a lover of Greek fragments. But I am not sure whether, +in later life, he ever sat down to read consecutively the +greatest works of Æschylus and Sophocles, although he used +occasionally to dip into them.” The Greek dramatists, +in fact, seem to have affected Tennyson’s work but +slightly, while he constantly reminds us of Virgil, Homer, +Theocritus, and even Persius and Horace. Mediæval +French, whether in poetry or prose, and the poetry of the +“Pleiad” seems to have occupied little of his +attention. Into the oriental literatures he +dipped—pretty deeply for his <i>Akbar</i>; and even his +<i>Locksley Hall</i> owed something to Sir William Jones’s +version of “the old Arabian <i>Moallakat</i>.” +The debt appears to be infinitesimal. He seems to have been +less closely familiar with Elizabethan poetry than might have +been expected: a number of his <i>obiter dicta</i> on all kinds +of literary points are recorded in the <i>Life</i> by Mr +Palgrave. “Sir Walter Scott’s short tale, <i>My +Aunt Margaret’s Mirror</i> (how little known!), he once +spoke of as the finest of all ghost or magical +stories.” Lord Tennyson adds, “<i>The +Tapestried Chamber</i> also he greatly admired.” Both +are lost from modern view among the short pieces of the last +volumes of the <i>Waverley</i> novels. Of the poet’s +interest in and attitude towards the more obscure pyschological +and psychical problems—to popular science +foolishness—enough has been said, but the remarks of +Professor Tyndall have not been cited:—</p> +<blockquote><p>My special purpose in introducing this poem, +however, was to call your attention to a passage further on which +greatly interested me. The poem is, throughout, a +discussion between a believer in immortality and one who is +unable to believe. The method pursued is this. The +Sage reads a portion of the scroll, which he has taken from the +hands of his follower, and then brings his own arguments to bear +upon that portion, with a view to neutralising the scepticism of +the younger man. Let me here remark that I read the whole +series of poems published under the title “Tiresias,” +full of admiration for their freshness and vigour. Seven +years after I had first read them your father died, and you, his +son, asked me to contribute a chapter to the book which you +contemplate publishing. I knew that I had some small store +of references to my interview with your father carefully written +in ancient journals. On the receipt of your request, I +looked up the account of my first visit to Farringford, and +there, to my profound astonishment, I found described that +experience of your father’s which, in the mouth of the +Ancient Sage, was made the ground of an important argument +against materialism and in favour of personal immortality +eight-and-twenty years afterwards. In no other poem during +all these years is, to my knowledge, this experience once alluded +to. I had completely forgotten it, but here it was recorded +in black and white. If you turn to your father’s +account of the wonderful state of consciousness superinduced by +thinking of his own name, and compare it with the argument of the +Ancient Sage, you will see that they refer to one and the same +phenomenon.</p> +</blockquote> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<blockquote><p> And more, my son! for more than +once when I<br /> +Sat all alone, revolving in myself<br /> +The word that is the symbol of myself,<br /> +The mortal limit of the Self was loosed,<br /> +And past into the Nameless, as a cloud<br /> +Melts into heaven. I touch’d my limbs, the limbs<br +/> +Were strange, not mine—and yet no shade of doubt,<br /> +But utter clearness, and thro’ loss of Self<br /> +The gain of such large life as match’d with ours<br /> +Were Sun to spark—unshadowable in words,<br /> +Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Any words about Tennyson as a politician are apt to excite the +sleepless prejudice which haunts the political field. He +probably, if forced to “put a name to it,” would have +called himself a Liberal. But he was not a social +agitator. He never set a rick on fire. “He held +aloof, in a somewhat detached position, from the great social +seethings of his age” (Mr Frederic Harrison). But in +youth he helped to extinguish some flaming ricks. He spoke +of the “many-headed beast” (the reading public) in +terms borrowed from Plato. He had no higher esteem for mobs +than Shakespeare or John Knox professed, while his theory of +tyrants (in the case of Napoleon III. about 1852) was that of +Liberals like Mr Swinburne and Victor Hugo. Though to +modern enlightenment Tennyson may seem as great a Tory as Dr +Johnson, yet he had spoken his word in 1852 for the freedom of +France, and for securing England against the supposed designs of +a usurper (now fallen). He really believed, obsolete as the +faith may be, in guarding our own, both on land and sea. +Perhaps no Continental or American critic has ever yet dispraised +a poetical fellow-countryman merely for urging the duties of +national union and national defence. A critic, however, +writes thus of Tennyson: “When our poet descends into the +arena of party polemics, in such things as <i>Riflemen</i>, +<i>Form</i>! <i>Hands all Round</i>, . . . <i>The +Fleet</i>, and other topical pieces dear to the Jingo soul, it is +not poetry but journalism.” I doubt whether the +desirableness of the existence of a volunteer force and of a +fleet really is within the arena of <i>party</i> polemics. +If any party thinks that we ought to have no volunteers, and that +it is our duty to starve the fleet, what is that party’s +name? Who cries, “Down with the Fleet! Down +with National Defence! Hooray for the Disintegration of the +Empire!”?</p> +<p>Tennyson was not a party man, but he certainly would have +opposed any such party. If to defend our homes and this +England be “Jingoism,” Tennyson, like Shakespeare, +was a Jingo. But, alas! I do not know the name of the party +which opposes Tennyson, and which wishes the invader to trample +down England—any invader will do for so philanthropic a +purpose. Except when resisting this unnamed party, the poet +seldom or never entered “the arena of party +polemics.” Tennyson could not have exclaimed, like +Squire Western, “Hurrah for old England! Twenty +thousand honest Frenchmen have landed in Kent!” He +undeniably did write verses (whether poetry or journalism) +tending to make readers take an unfavourable view of honest +invaders. If to do that is to be a “Jingo,” and +if such conduct hurts the feelings of any great English party, +then Tennyson was a Jingo and a partisan, and was, so far, a +rhymester, like Mr Kipling. Indeed we know that Tennyson +applauded Mr Kipling’s <i>The English Flag</i>. So +the worst is out, as we in England count the worst. In +America and on the continent of Europe, however, a poet may be +proud of his country’s flag without incurring rebuke from +his countrymen. Tennyson did not reckon himself a party +man; he believed more in political evolution than in political +revolution, with cataclysms. He was neither an Anarchist +nor a Home Ruler, nor a politician so generous as to wish England +to be laid defenceless at the feet of her foes.</p> +<p>If these sentiments deserve censure, in Tennyson, at least, +they claim our tolerance. He was not born in a generation +late enough to be truly Liberal. Old prejudices about +“this England,” old words from <i>Henry V.</i> and +<i>King John</i>, haunted his memory and darkened his vision of +the true proportions of things. We draw in prejudice with +our mother’s milk. The mother of Tennyson had not +been an Agnostic or a Comtist; his father had not been a staunch +true-blue anti-Englander. Thus he inherited a certain bias +in favour of faith and fatherland, a bias from which he could +never emancipate himself. But <i>tout comprendre +c’est tout pardonner</i>. Had Tennyson’s birth +been later, we might find in him a more complete realisation of +our poetic ideal—might have detected less to blame or to +forgive.</p> +<p>With that apology we must leave the fame of Tennyson as a +politician to the clement consideration of an enlightened +posterity. I do not defend his narrow insularities, his +Jingoism, or the appreciable percentage of faith which blushing +analysis may detect in his honest doubt: these things I may +regret or condemn, but we ought not to let them obscure our view +of the Poet. He was led away by bad examples. Of all +Jingoes Shakespeare is the most unashamed, and next to him are +Drayton, Scott, and Wordsworth, with his</p> +<blockquote><p>“Oh, for one hour of that Dundee!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In the years which followed the untoward affair of Waterloo +young Tennyson fell much under the influence of Shakespeare, +Wordsworth, and the other offenders, and these are extenuating +circumstances. By a curious practical paradox, where the +realms of poetry and politics meet, the Tory critics seem milder +of mood and more Liberal than the Liberal critics. Thus Mr +William Morris was certainly a very advanced political theorist; +and in theology Mr Swinburne has written things not easily +reconcilable with orthodoxy. Yet we find Divine-Right +Tories, who in literature are fervent admirers of these two +poets, and leave their heterodoxies out of account. But +many Liberal critics appear unable quite to forgive Tennyson +because he did not wish to starve the fleet, and because he held +certain very ancient, if obsolete, beliefs. Perhaps a +general amnesty ought to be passed, as far as poets are +concerned, and their politics and creeds should be left to +silence, where “beyond these voices there is +peace.”</p> +<p>One remark, I hope, can excite no prejudice. The +greatest of the Gordons was a soldier, and lived in +religion. But the point at which Tennyson’s memory is +blended with that of Gordon is the point of sympathy with the +neglected poor. It is to his wise advice, and to affection +for Gordon, that we owe the Gordon training school for poor +boys,—a good school, and good boys come out of that +academy.</p> +<p>The question as to Tennyson’s precise rank in the +glorious roll of the Poets of England can never be determined by +us, if in any case or at any time such determinations can be +made. We do not, or should not, ask whether Virgil or +Lucretius, whether Æschylus or Sophocles, is the greater +poet. The consent of mankind seems to place Homer and +Shakespeare and Dante high above all. For the rest no +prize-list can be settled. If influence among aliens is the +test, Byron probably takes, among our poets, the next rank after +Shakespeare. But probably there is no possible test. +In certain respects Shelley, in many respects Milton, in some +Coleridge, in some Burns, in the opinion of a number of persons +Browning, are greater poets than Tennyson. But for +exquisite variety and varied exquisiteness Tennyson is not +readily to be surpassed. At one moment he pleases the +uncritical mass of readers, in another mood he wins the verdict +of the <i>raffiné</i>. It is a success which scarce +any English poet but Shakespeare has excelled. His faults +have rarely, if ever, been those of flat-footed, +“thick-ankled” dulness; of rhetoric, of common-place; +rather have his defects been the excess of his qualities. A +kind of John Bullishness may also be noted, especially in +derogatory references to France, which, true or untrue, are out +of taste and keeping. But these errors could be removed by +the excision of half-a-dozen lines. His later work (as the +<i>Voyage of Maeldune</i>) shows a just appreciation of ancient +Celtic literature. A great critic, F. T. Palgrave, has +expressed perhaps the soundest appreciation of +Tennyson:—</p> +<blockquote><p>It is for “the days that remain” to +bear witness to his real place in the great hierarchy, amongst +whom Dante boldly yet justly ranked himself. But if we look +at Tennyson’s work in a twofold aspect,—<i>Here</i>, +on the exquisite art in which, throughout, his verse is clothed, +the lucid beauty of the form, the melody almost audible as music, +the mysterious skill by which the words used constantly strike as +the <i>inevitable</i> words (and hence, unforgettable), the +subtle allusive touches, by which a secondary image is suggested +to enrich the leading thought, as the harmonic +“partials” give richness to the note struck upon the +string; <i>There</i>, when we think of the vast fertility in +subject and treatment, united with happy selection of motive, the +wide range of character, the dramatic force of impersonation, the +pathos in every variety, the mastery over the comic and the +tragic alike, above all, perhaps, those phrases of luminous +insight which spring direct from imaginative observation of +Humanity, true for all time, coming from the heart to the +heart,—his work will probably be found to lie somewhere +between that of Virgil and Shakespeare: having its portion, if I +may venture on the phrase, in the inspiration of both.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>A professed enthusiast for Tennyson can add nothing to, and +take nothing from, these words of one who, though his friend, was +too truly a critic to entertain the admiration that goes beyond +idolatry.</p> +<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> +<p><a name="footnote1"></a><a href="#citation1" +class="footnote">[1]</a> Macmillan & Co.</p> +<p><a name="footnote7"></a><a href="#citation7" +class="footnote">[7]</a> To the present writer, as to +others, <i>The Lover’s Tale</i> appeared to be imitative of +Shelley, but if Tennyson had never read Shelley, <i>cadit +quæstio</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote16"></a><a href="#citation16" +class="footnote">[16]</a> F. W. H. Myers, <i>Science and a +Future Life</i>, p. 133.</p> +<p><a name="footnote39"></a><a href="#citation39" +class="footnote">[39]</a> The writer knew this edition +before he knew Tennyson’s poems.</p> +<p><a name="footnote50"></a><a href="#citation50" +class="footnote">[50]</a> The author of the spiteful +letters was an unpublished anonymous person.</p> +<p><a name="footnote58"></a><a href="#citation58" +class="footnote">[58]</a> The Lennox MSS.</p> +<p><a name="footnote62"></a><a href="#citation62" +class="footnote">[62]</a> Spencer and Gillen, <i>Natives of +Central Australia</i>, pp. 388, 389.</p> +<p><a name="footnote65"></a><a href="#citation65" +class="footnote">[65]</a> <i>Tennyson</i>, <i>Ruskin</i>, +<i>and Mill</i>, pp. 11, 12.</p> +<p><a name="footnote66"></a><a href="#citation66" +class="footnote">[66]</a> <i>Life</i>, p. 37, 1899.</p> +<p><a name="footnote72"></a><a href="#citation72" +class="footnote">[72]</a> Poem omitted from <i>In +Memoriam</i>. <i>Life</i>, p. 257, 1899.</p> +<p><a name="footnote74"></a><a href="#citation74" +class="footnote">[74]</a> Mr Harrison, <i>Tennyson</i>, +<i>Ruskin</i>, <i>and Mill</i>, p. 5.</p> +<p><a name="footnote112"></a><a href="#citation112" +class="footnote">[112]</a> The English reader may consult +Mr Rhys’s <i>The Arthurian Legend</i>, Oxford, 1891, and Mr +Nutt’s <i>Studies of the Legend of the Holy Grail</i>, +which will direct him to other authorities and sources.</p> +<p><a name="footnote113"></a><a href="#citation113" +class="footnote">[113]</a> I have summarised, with +omissions, Miss Jessie L. Watson’s sketch in <i>King Arthur +and his Knights</i>. Nutt, 1899. The learning of the +subject is enormous; Dr Sommer’s <i>Le Mort +d’Arthur</i>, the second volume may be consulted. +Nutt, 1899.</p> +<p><a name="footnote129a"></a><a href="#citation129a" +class="footnote">[129a]</a> +Βέλενος and +Βήληνος. He is +referred to in inscriptions, <i>e.g.</i> Berlin, <i>Corpus</i>, +iii. 4774, V. 732, 733, 1829, 2143–46; xii. 405. See +also Ausonius (Leipsic, 1886, pp. 52, 59), cited by Rhys, <i>The +Arthurian Legend</i> p. 159, note 4.</p> +<p><a name="footnote129b"></a><a href="#citation129b" +class="footnote">[129b]</a> Brebeuf; <i>Relations des +Jésuites</i>, 1636, pp. 100–102.</p> +<p><a name="footnote139"></a><a href="#citation139" +class="footnote">[139]</a> Malory, xviii. 8 <i>et +seq.</i></p> +<p><a name="footnote196"></a><a href="#citation196" +class="footnote">[196]</a> Notices et Extraits des MSS. de +la Bibliothèque Impériale, I. xix. pp. +643–645.</p> +<p><a name="footnote218"></a><a href="#citation218" +class="footnote">[218]</a> See the <i>Life</i>, 1899, p. +521.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALFRED TENNYSON***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 3654-h.htm or 3654-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/6/5/3654 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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