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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.06/12/01*END* +[Portions of this header are copyright (C) 2001 by Michael S. Hart +and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.] +[Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be used in any sales +of Project Gutenberg Etexts or other materials be they hardware or +software or any other related product without express permission.] + + + + + +This etext was produced by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, +from the 1901 William Blackwood and Sons edition. + + + + + +ALFRED TENNYSON + +by Andrew Lang + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + + +In writing this brief sketch of the Life of Tennyson, and this +attempt to appreciate his work, I have rested almost entirely on the +Biography by Lord Tennyson (with his kind permission) and on the text +of the Poems. As to the Life, doubtless current anecdotes, not given +in the Biography, are known to me, and to most people. But as they +must also be familiar to the author of the Biography, I have not +thought it desirable to include what he rejected. The works of the +"localisers" I have not read: Tennyson disliked these researches, as +a rule, and they appear to be unessential, and often hazardous. The +professed commentators I have not consulted. It appeared better to +give one's own impressions of the Poems, unaffected by the +impressions of others, except in one or two cases where matters of +fact rather than of taste seemed to be in question. Thus on two or +three points I have ventured to differ from a distinguished living +critic, and have given the reasons for my dissent. Professor +Bradley's Commentary on In Memoriam {1} came out after this sketch +was in print. Many of the comments cited by Mr Bradley from his +predecessors appear to justify my neglect of these curious inquirers. +The "difficulties" which they raise are not likely, as a rule, to +present themselves to persons who read poetry "for human pleasure." + +I have not often dwelt on parallels to be found in the works of +earlier poets. In many cases Tennyson deliberately reproduced +passages from Greek, Latin, and old Italian writers, just as Virgil +did in the case of Homer, Theocritus, Apollonius Rhodius, and others. +There are, doubtless, instances in which a phrase is unconsciously +reproduced by automatic memory, from an English poet. But I am less +inclined than Mr Bradley to think that unconscious reminiscence is +more common in Tennyson than in the poets generally. I have not +closely examined Keats and Shelley, for example, to see how far they +were influenced by unconscious memory. But Scott, confessedly, was +apt to reproduce the phrases of others, and once unwittingly borrowed +from a poem by the valet of one of his friends! I believe that many +of the alleged borrowings in Tennyson are either no true parallels at +all or are the unavoidable coincidences of expression which must +inevitably occur. The poet himself stated, in a lively phrase, his +opinion of the hunters after parallels, and I confess that I am much +of his mind. They often remind me of Mr Punch's parody on an +unfriendly review of Alexander Smith - + + +"Most WOMEN have NO CHARACTER at all." --POPE. +"No CHARACTER that servant WOMAN asked." --SMITH. + + +I have to thank Mr Edmund Gosse and Mr Vernon Rendall for their +kindness in reading my proof-sheets. They have saved me from some +errors, but I may have occasionally retained matter which, for one +reason or another, did not recommend itself to them. In no case are +they responsible for the opinions expressed, or for the critical +estimates. They are those of a Tennysonian, and, no doubt, would be +other than they are if the writer were younger than he is. It does +not follow that they would necessarily be more correct, though +probably they would be more in vogue. The point of view must shift +with each generation of readers, as ideas or beliefs go in or out of +fashion, are accepted, rejected, or rehabilitated. To one age +Tennyson may seem weakly superstitious; to another needlessly +sceptical. After all, what he must live by is, not his opinions, but +his poetry. The poetry of Milton survives his ideas; whatever may be +the fate of the ideas of Tennyson his poetry must endure. + + + +CHAPTER I--BOYHOOD--CAMBRIDGE--EARLY POEMS. + + + +The life and work of Tennyson present something like the normal type +of what, in circumstances as fortunate as mortals may expect, the +life and work of a modern poet ought to be. A modern poet, one says, +because even poetry is now affected by the division of labour. We do +not look to the poet for a large share in the practical activities of +existence: we do not expect him, like AEschylus and Sophocles, +Theognis and Alcaeus, to take a conspicuous part in politics and war; +or even, as in the Age of Anne, to shine among wits and in society. +Life has become, perhaps, too specialised for such multifarious +activities. Indeed, even in ancient days, as a Celtic proverb and as +the picture of life in the Homeric epics prove, the poet was already +a man apart--not foremost among statesmen and rather backward among +warriors. If we agree with a not unpopular opinion, the poet ought +to be a kind of "Titanic" force, wrecking himself on his own passions +and on the nature of things, as did Byron, Burns, Marlowe, and +Musset. But Tennyson's career followed lines really more normal, the +lines of the life of Wordsworth, wisdom and self-control directing +the course of a long, sane, sound, and fortunate existence. The +great physical strength which is commonly the basis of great mental +vigour was not ruined in Tennyson by poverty and passion, as in the +case of Burns, nor in forced literary labour, as in those of Scott +and Dickens. For long he was poor, like Wordsworth and Southey, but +never destitute. He made his early effort: he had his time of great +sorrow, and trial, and apparent failure. With practical wisdom he +conquered circumstances; he became eminent; he outlived reaction +against his genius; he died in the fulness of a happy age and of +renown. This full-orbed life, with not a few years of sorrow and +stress, is what Nature seems to intend for the career of a divine +minstrel. If Tennyson missed the "one crowded hour of glorious +life," he had not to be content in "an age without a name." + +It was not Tennyson's lot to illustrate any modern theory of the +origin of genius. Born in 1809 of a Lincolnshire family, long +connected with the soil but inconspicuous in history, Tennyson had +nothing Celtic in his blood, as far as pedigrees prove. This is +unfortunate for one school of theorists. His mother (genius is +presumed to be derived from mothers) had a genius merely for moral +excellence and for religion. She is described in the poem of Isabel, +and was "a remarkable and saintly woman." In the male line, the +family was not (as the families of genius ought to be) brief of life +and unhealthy. "The Tennysons never die," said the sister who was +betrothed to Arthur Hallam. The father, a clergyman, was, says his +grandson, "a man of great ability," and his "excellent library" was +an element in the education of his family. "My father was a poet," +Tennyson said, "and could write regular verse very skilfully." In +physical type the sons were tall, strong, and unusually dark: +Tennyson, when abroad, was not taken for an Englishman; at home, +strangers thought him "foreign." Most of the children had the +temperament, and several of the sons had some of the accomplishments, +of genius: whence derived by way of heredity is a question beyond +conjecture, for the father's accomplishment was not unusual. As +Walton says of the poet and the angler, they "were born to be so": +we know no more. + +The region in which the paternal hamlet of Somersby lies, "a land of +quiet villages, large fields, grey hillsides, and noble tall-towered +churches, on the lower slope of a Lincolnshire wold," does not appear +to have been rich in romantic legend and tradition. The folk-lore of +Lincolnshire, of which examples have been published, does seem to +have a peculiar poetry of its own, but it was rather the humorous +than the poetical aspect of the country-people that Tennyson appears +to have known. In brief, we have nothing to inform us as to how +genius came into that generation of Tennysons which was born between +1807 and 1819. A source and a cause there must have been, but these +things are hidden, except from popular science. + +Precocity is not a sign of genius, but genius is perhaps always +accompanied by precocity. This is especially notable in the cases of +painting, music, and mathematics; but in the matter of literature +genius may chiefly show itself in acquisition, as in Sir Walter +Scott, who when a boy knew much, but did little that would attract +notice. As a child and a boy young Tennyson was remarked both for +acquisition and performance. His own reminiscences of his childhood +varied somewhat in detail. In one place we learn that at the age of +eight he covered a slate with blank verse in the manner of Jamie +Thomson, the only poet with whom he was then acquainted. In another +passage he says, "The first poetry that moved me was my own at five +years old. When I was eight I remember making a line I thought +grander than Campbell, or Byron, or Scott. I rolled it out, it was +this - + + +'With slaughterous sons of thunder rolled the flood' - + + +great nonsense, of course, but I thought it fine!" + +It WAS fine, and was thoroughly Tennysonian. Scott, Campbell, and +Byron probably never produced a line with the qualities of this +nonsense verse. "Before I could read I was in the habit on a stormy +day of spreading my arms to the wind and crying out, 'I hear a voice +that's speaking in the wind,' and the words 'far, far away' had +always a strange charm for me." A late lyric has this overword, FAR, +FAR AWAY! + +A boy of eight who knew the contemporary poets was more or less +precocious. Tennyson also knew Pope, and wrote hundreds of lines in +Pope's measure. At twelve the boy produced an epic, in Scott's +manner, of some six thousand lines. He "never felt himself more +truly inspired," for the sense of "inspiration" (as the late Mr Myers +has argued in an essay on the "Mechanism of Genius") has little to do +with the actual value of the product. At fourteen Tennyson wrote a +drama in blank verse. A chorus from this play (as one guesses), a +piece from "an unpublished drama written very early," is published in +the volume of 1830:- + + +"The varied earth, the moving heaven, + The rapid waste of roving sea, +The fountain-pregnant mountains riven + To shapes of wildest anarchy, +By secret fire and midnight storms + That wander round their windy cones." + + +These lines are already Tennysonian. There is the classical +transcript, "the varied earth," daedala tellus. There is the +geological interest in the forces that shape the hills. There is the +use of the favourite word "windy," and later in the piece - + + +"The troublous autumn's SALLOW gloom." + + +The young poet from boyhood was original in his manner. + +Byron made him blase at fourteen. Then Byron died, and Tennyson +scratched on a rock "Byron is dead," on "a day when the whole world +seemed darkened for me." Later he considered Byron's poetry "too +much akin to rhetoric." "Byron is not an artist or a thinker, or a +creator in the higher sense, but a strong personality; he is +endlessly clever, and is now unduly depreciated." He "did give the +world another heart and new pulses, and so we are kept going." But +"he was dominated by Byron till he was seventeen, when he put him +away altogether." + +In his boyhood, despite the sufferings which he endured for a while +at school at Louth; despite bullying from big boys and masters, +Tennyson would "shout his verses to the skies." "Well, Arthur, I +mean to be famous," he used to say to one of his brothers. He +observed nature very closely by the brook and the thundering sea- +shores: he was never a sportsman, and his angling was in the manner +of the lover of The Miller's Daughter. He was seventeen (1826) when +Poems by Two Brothers (himself and his brother Frederick) was +published with the date 1827. These poems contain, as far as I have +been able to discover, nothing really Tennysonian. What he had done +in his own manner was omitted, "being thought too much out of the +common for the public taste." The young poet had already saving +common-sense, and understood the public. Fragments of the true gold +are found in the volume of 1830, others are preserved in the +Biography. The ballad suggested by The Bride of Lammermoor was not +unworthy of Beddoes, and that novel, one cannot but think, suggested +the opening situation in Maud, where the hero is a modern Master of +Ravenswood in his relation to the rich interloping family and the +beautiful daughter. To this point we shall return. It does not +appear that Tennyson was conscious in Maud of the suggestion from +Scott, and the coincidence may be merely accidental. + +The Lover's Tale, published in 1879, was mainly a work of the poet's +nineteenth year. A few copies had been printed for friends. One of +these, with errors of the press, and without the intended +alterations, was pirated by an unhappy man in 1875. In old age +Tennyson brought out the work of his boyhood. "It was written before +I had ever seen Shelley, though it is called Shelleyan," he said; and +indeed he believed that his work had never been imitative, after his +earliest efforts in the manner of Thomson and of Scott. The only +things in The Lover's Tale which would suggest that the poet here +followed Shelley are the Italian scene of the story, the character of +the versification, and the extraordinary luxuriance and exuberance of +the imagery. {2} As early as 1868 Tennyson heard that written copies +of The Lover's Tale were in circulation. He then remarked, as to the +exuberance of the piece: "Allowance must be made for abundance of +youth. It is rich and full, but there are mistakes in it. . . . The +poem is the breath of young love." + +How truly Tennysonian the manner is may be understood even from the +opening lines, full of the original cadences which were to become so +familiar:- + + +"Here far away, seen from the topmost cliff, +Filling with purple gloom the vacancies +Between the tufted hills, the sloping seas +Hung in mid-heaven, and half way down rare sails, +White as white clouds, floated from sky to sky." + + +The narrative in parts one and two (which alone were written in +youth) is so choked with images and descriptions as to be almost +obscure. It is the story, practically, of a love like that of Paul +and Virginia, but the love is not returned by the girl, who prefers +the friend of the narrator. Like the hero of Maud, the speaker has a +period of madness and illusion; while the third part, "The Golden +Supper"--suggested by a story of Boccaccio, and written in maturity-- +is put in the mouth of another narrator, and is in a different style. +The discarded lover, visiting the vault which contains the body of +his lady, finds her alive, and restores her to her husband. The +whole finished legend is necessarily not among the author's +masterpieces. But perhaps not even Keats in his earliest work +displayed more of promise, and gave more assurance of genius. Here +and there come turns and phrases, "all the charm of all the Muses," +which remind a reader of things later well known in pieces more +mature. Such lines are - + + + "Strange to me and sweet, +Sweet through strange years," + + +and - + + +"Like to a low-hung and a fiery sky +Hung round with RAGGED RIMS and burning folds." + + +And - + + +"Like sounds without the twilight realm of dreams, +Which wander round the bases of the hills." + + +We also note close observation of nature in the curious phrase - + + +"Cries of the partridge like a rusty key +Turned in a lock." + + +Of this kind was Tennyson's adolescent vein, when he left + + + "The poplars four +That stood beside his father's door," + + +the Somersby brook, and the mills and granges, the seas of the +Lincolnshire coast, and the hills and dales among the wolds, for +Cambridge. He was well read in old and contemporary English +literature, and in the classics. Already he was acquainted with the +singular trance-like condition to which his poems occasionally +allude, a subject for comment later. He matriculated at Trinity, +with his brother Charles, on February 20, 1828, and had an interview +of a not quite friendly sort with a proctor before he wore the gown. + +That Tennyson should go to Cambridge, not to Oxford, was part of the +nature of things, by which Cambridge educates the majority of English +poets, whereas Oxford has only "turned out" a few--like Shelley. At +that time, as in Macaulay's day, the path of university honours at +Cambridge lay through Mathematics, and, except for his prize poem in +1829, Tennyson took no honours at all. His classical reading was +pursued as literature, not as a course of grammar and philology. No +English poet, at least since Milton, had been better read in the +classics; but Tennyson's studies did not aim at the gaining of +academic distinction. His aspect was such that Thompson, later +Master of Trinity, on first seeing him come into hall, said, "That +man must be a poet." Like Byron, Shelley, and probably Coleridge, +Tennyson looked the poet that he was: "Six feet high, broad-chested, +strong-limbed, his face Shakespearian and with deep eyelids, his +forehead ample, crowned with dark wavy hair, his head finely poised." + +Not much is recorded of Tennyson as an undergraduate. In our days +efforts would have been made to enlist so promising a recruit in one +of the college boats; but rowing was in its infancy. It is a +peculiarity of the universities that little flocks of men of unusual +ability come up at intervals together, breaking the monotony of +idlers, prize scholars, and honours men. Such a group appeared at +Balliol in Matthew Arnold's time, and rather later, at various +colleges, in the dawn of Pre-Raphaelitism. The Tennysons--Alfred, +Frederick, and Charles--were members of such a set. There was Arthur +Hallam, son of the historian, from Eton; there was Spedding, the +editor and biographer of Bacon; Milnes (Lord Houghton), Blakesley +(Dean of Lincoln), Thompson, Merivale, Trench (a poet, and later, +Archbishop of Dublin), Brookfield, Buller, and, after Tennyson the +greatest, Thackeray, a contemporary if not an "Apostle." Charles +Buller's, like Hallam's, was to be an "unfulfilled renown." Of +Hallam, whose name is for ever linked with his own, Tennyson said +that he would have been a great man, but not a great poet; "he was as +near perfection as mortal man could be." His scanty remains are +chiefly notable for his divination of Tennyson as a great poet; for +the rest, we can only trust the author of In Memoriam and the verdict +of tradition. + +The studies of the poet at this time included original composition in +Greek and Latin verse, history, and a theme that he alone has made +poetical, natural science. All poetry has its roots in the age +before natural science was more than a series of nature-myths. The +poets have usually, like Keats, regretted the days when + + +"There was an awful rainbow once in heaven," + + +when the hills and streams were not yet "dispeopled of their dreams." +Tennyson, on the other hand, was already finding material for poetry +in the world as seen through microscope and telescope, and as +developed through "aeonian" processes of evolution. In a notebook, +mixed with Greek, is a poem on the Moon--not the moon of Selene, "the +orbed Maiden," but of astronomical science. In Memoriam recalls the +conversations on labour and politics, discussions of the age of the +Reform Bill, of rick-burning (expected to "make taters cheaper"), and +of Catholic emancipation; also the emancipation of such negroes as +had not yet tasted the blessings of freedom. In politics Tennyson +was what he remained, a patriot, a friend of freedom, a foe of +disorder. His politics, he said, were those "of Shakespeare, Bacon, +and every sane man." He was one of the Society of Apostles, and +characteristically contributed an essay on Ghosts. Only the preface +survives: it is not written in a scientific style; but bids us "not +assume that any vision IS baseless." Perhaps the author went on to +discuss "veridical hallucinations," but his ideas about these things +must be considered later. + +It was by his father's wish that Tennyson competed for the English +prize poem. The theme, Timbuctoo, was not inspiring. Thackeray +wrote a good parody of the ordinary prize poem in Pope's metre:- + + +"I see her sons the hill of glory mount, +And sell their sugars on their own account; +Prone to her feet the prostrate nations come, +Sue for her rice and barter for her rum." + + +Tennyson's work was not much more serious: he merely patched up an +old piece, in blank verse, on the battle of Armageddon. The poem is +not destitute of Tennysonian cadence, and ends, not inappropriately, +with "All was night." Indeed, all WAS night. + + An ingenious myth accounts for Tennyson's success: At Oxford, says +Charles Wordsworth, the author was more likely to have been +rusticated than rewarded. But already (1829) Arthur Hallam told Mr +Gladstone that Tennyson "promised fair to be the greatest poet of our +generation, perhaps of our century." + +In 1830 Tennyson published the first volume of which he was sole +author. Browning's Pauline was of the year 1833. It was the very +dead hours of the Muses. The great Mr Murray had ceased, as one +despairing of song, to publish poetry. Bulwer Lytton, in the preface +to Paul Clifford (1830), announced that poetry, with every other form +of literature except the Novel, was unremunerative and unread. +Coleridge and Scott were silent: indeed Sir Walter was near his +death; Wordsworth had shot his bolt, though an arrow or two were left +in the quiver. Keats, Shelley, and Byron were dead; Milman's brief +vogue was departing. It seemed as if novels alone could appeal to +readers, so great a change in taste had been wrought by the sixteen +years of Waverley romances. The slim volume of Tennyson was +naturally neglected, though Leigh Hunt reviewed it in the Tatler. +Hallam's comments in the Englishman's Magazine, though enthusiastic +(as was right and natural), were judicious. "The author imitates no +one." Coleridge did not read all the book, but noted "things of a +good deal of beauty. The misfortune is that he has begun to write +verses without very well understanding what metre is." As Tennyson +said in 1890, "So I, an old man, who get a poem or poems every day, +might cast a casual glance at a book, and seeing something which I +could not scan or understand, might possibly decide against the book +without further consideration." As a rule, the said books are +worthless. The number of versifiers makes it hard, indeed, for the +poet to win recognition. One little new book of rhyme is so like +another, and almost all are of so little interest! + +The rare book that differs from the rest has a bizarrerie with its +originality, and in the poems of 1830 there was, assuredly, more than +enough of the bizarre. There were no hyphens in the double epithets, +and words like "tendriltwine" seemed provokingly affected. A kind of +lusciousness, like that of Keats when under the influence of Leigh +Hunt, may here and there be observed. Such faults as these catch the +indifferent eye when a new book is first opened, and the volume of +1830 was probably condemned by almost every reader of the previous +generation who deigned to afford it a glance. Out of fifty-six +pieces only twenty-three were reprinted in the two volumes of 1842, +which won for Tennyson the general recognition of the world of +letters. Five or six of the pieces then left out were added as +Juvenilia in the collected works of 1871, 1872. The whole mass +deserves the attention of students of the poet's development. + +This early volume may be said to contain, in the germ, all the great +original qualities of Tennyson, except the humour of his rural +studies and the elaboration of his Idylls. For example, in Mariana +we first note what may be called his perfection and accomplishment. +The very few alterations made later are verbal. The moated grange of +Mariana in Measure for Measure, and her mood of desertion and +despair, are elaborated by a precision of truth and with a perfection +of harmony worthy of Shakespeare himself, and minutely studied from +the natural scenes in which the poet was born. If these verses alone +survived out of the wreck of Victorian literature, they would +demonstrate the greatness of the author as clearly as do the +fragments of Sappho. Isabel (a study of the poet's mother) is almost +as remarkable in its stately dignity; while Recollections of the +Arabian Nights attest the power of refined luxury in romantic +description, and herald the unmatched beauty of The Lotos-Eaters. +The Poet, again, is a picture of that which Tennyson himself was to +fulfil; and Oriana is a revival of romance, and of the ballad, not +limited to the ballad form as in its prototype, Helen of Kirkconnell. +Curious and exquisite experiment in metre is indicated in the Leonine +Elegiacs, in Claribel, and several other poems. Qualities which were +not for long to find public expression, speculative powers brooding, +in various moods, on ultimate and insoluble questions, were attested +by The Mystic, and Supposed Confessions of a Second-rate Sensitive +Mind not in Unity with Itself, an unlucky title of a remarkable +performance. "In this, the most agitated of all his poems, we find +the soul urging onward + + +'Thro' utter dark a full-sail'd skiff, +Unpiloted i' the echoing dance +Of reboant whirlwinds;' + + +and to the question, 'Why not believe, then?' we have as answer a +simile of the sea, which cannot slumber like a mountain tarn, or + + +'Draw down into his vexed pools +All that blue heaven which hues and paves' + + +the tranquil inland mere." {3} + +The poet longs for the faith of his infant days and of his mother - + + +"Thy mild deep eyes upraised, that knew +The beauty and repose of faith, +And the clear spirit shining thro'." + + +That faith is already shaken, and the long struggle for belief has +already begun. + +Tennyson, according to Matthew Arnold, was not un esprit puissant. +Other and younger critics, who have attained to a cock-certain mood +of negation, are apt to blame him because, in fact, he did not +finally agree with their opinions. If a man is necessarily a +weakling or a hypocrite because, after trying all things, he is not +an atheist or a materialist, then the reproach of insincerity or of +feebleness of mind must rest upon Tennyson. But it is manifest that, +almost in boyhood, he had already faced the ideas which, to one of +his character, almost meant despair: he had not kept his eyes +closed. To his extremely self-satisfied accusers we might answer, in +lines from this earliest volume (The Mystic):- + + +"Ye scorn him with an undiscerning scorn; +Ye cannot read the marvel in his eye, +The still serene abstraction." + + +He would behold + + +"One shadow in the midst of a great light, +One reflex from eternity on time, +One mighty countenance of perfect calm, +Awful with most invariable eyes." + + +His mystic of these boyish years - + + + "Often lying broad awake, and yet +Remaining from the body, and apart +In intellect and power and will, hath heard +Time flowing in the middle of the night, +And all things creeping to a day of doom." + + +In this poem, never republished by the author, is an attempt to +express an experience which in later years he more than once +endeavoured to set forth in articulate speech, an experience which +was destined to colour his finial speculations on ultimate problems +of God and of the soul. We shall later have to discuss the opinion +of an eminent critic, Mr Frederic Harrison, that Tennyson's ideas, +theological, evolutionary, and generally speculative, "followed, +rather than created, the current ideas of his time." "The train of +thought" (in In Memoriam), writes Mr Harrison, "is essentially that +with which ordinary English readers had been made familiar by F. D. +Maurice, Professor Jowett, Dr Martineau, Ecce Homo, Hypatia." Of +these influences only Maurice, and Maurice only orally, could have +reached the author of The Mystic and the Supposed Confessions. Ecce +Homo, Hypatia, Mr Jowett, were all in the bosom of the future when In +Memoriam was written. Now, The Mystic and the Supposed Confessions +are prior to In Memoriam, earlier than 1830. Yet they already +contain the chief speculative tendencies of In Memoriam; the growing +doubts caused by evolutionary ideas (then familiar to Tennyson, +though not to "ordinary English readers"), the longing for a return +to childlike faith, and the mystical experiences which helped +Tennyson to recover a faith that abode with him. In these things he +was original. Even as an undergraduate he was not following "a train +of thought made familiar" by authors who had not yet written a line, +and by books which had not yet been published. + +So much, then, of the poet that was to be and of the philosopher +existed in the little volume of the undergraduate. In The Mystic we +notice a phrase, two words long, which was later to be made familiar, +"Daughters of time, divinely tall," reproduced in the picture of +Helen:- + + +"A daughter of the Gods, divinely tall, + And most divinely fair." + + +The reflective pieces are certainly of more interest now (though they +seem to have satisfied the poet less) than the gallery of airy fairy +Lilians, Adelines, Rosalinds, and Eleanores:- + + +"Daughters of dreams and of stories," + + +like + + +"Faustine, Fragoletta, Dolores, +Felise, and Yolande, and Juliette." + + +Cambridge, which he was soon to leave, did not satisfy the poet. +Oxford did not satisfy Gibbon, or later, Shelley; and young men of +genius are not, in fact, usually content with universities which, +perhaps, are doing their best, but are neither governed nor populated +by minds of the highest and most original class. + + + "You that do profess to teach +And teach us nothing, feeding not the heart." + + +The universities, in fact, teach a good deal of that which can be +learned, but the best things cannot be taught. The universities give +men leisure, books, and companionship, to learn for themselves. All +tutors cannot be, and at that time few dreamed of being, men like +Jowett and T. H. Green, Gamaliels at whose feet undergraduates sat +with enthusiasm, "did EAGERLY frequent," like Omar Khayyam. In later +years Tennyson found closer relations between dons and +undergraduates, and recorded his affection for his university. She +had supplied him with such companionship as is rare, and permitted +him to "catch the blossom of the flying terms," even if tutors and +lecturers were creatures of routine, terriblement enfonces dans la +matiere, like the sire of Madelon and Cathos, that honourable +citizen. + +Tennyson just missed, by going down, a visit of Wordsworth to +Cambridge. The old enthusiast of revolution was justifying passive +obedience: thirty years had turned the almost Jacobin into an almost +Jacobite. Such is the triumph of time. In the summer of 1830 +Tennyson, with Hallam, visited the Pyrenees. The purpose was +political--to aid some Spanish rebels. The fruit is seen in OEnone +and Mariana in the South. + +In March 1831 Tennyson lost his father. "He slept in the dead man's +bed, earnestly desiring to see his ghost, but no ghost came." "You +see," he said, "ghosts do not generally come to imaginative people;" +a remark very true, though ghosts are attributed to "imagination." +Whatever causes these phantasms, it is not the kind of phantasia +which is consciously exercised by the poet. Coleridge had seen far +too many ghosts to believe in them; and Coleridge and Donne apart, +with the hallucinations of Goethe and Shelley, who met themselves, +what poet ever did "see a ghost"? One who saw Tennyson as he +wandered alone at this period called him "a mysterious being, +seemingly lifted high above other mortals, and having a power of +intercourse with the spirit world not granted to others." But it was +the world of the poet, not of the "medium." + +The Tennysons stayed on at the parsonage for six years. But, +anticipating their removal, Arthur Hallam in 1831 dealt in prophecy +about the identification in the district of places in his friend's +poems--"critic after critic will trace the wanderings of the brook," +as,--in fact, critic after critic has done. Tennyson disliked--these +"localisers." The poet's walks were shared by Arthur Hallam, then +affianced to his sister Emily. + + + +CHAPTER II.--POEMS OF 1831-1833. + + + +By 1832 most of the poems of Tennyson's second volume were +circulating in MS. among his friends, and no poet ever had friends +more encouraging. Perhaps bards of to-day do not find an eagerness +among their acquaintance for effusions in manuscript, or in proof- +sheets. The charmed volume appeared at the end of the year (dated +1833), and Hallam denounced as "infamous" Lockhart's review in the +Quarterly. Infamous or not, it is extremely diverting. How Lockhart +could miss the great and abundant poetry remains a marvel. Ten years +later the Scorpion repented, and invited Sterling to review any book +he pleased, for the purpose of enabling him to praise the two volumes +of 1842, which he did gladly. Lockhart hated all affectation and +"preciosity," of which the new book was not destitute. He had been +among Wordsworth's most ardent admirers when Wordsworth had few, but +the memories of the war with the "Cockney School" clung to him, the +war with Leigh Hunt, and now he gave himself up to satire. Probably +he thought that the poet was a member of a London clique. There is +really no excuse for Lockhart, except that he DID repent, that much +of his banter was amusing, and that, above all, his censures were +accepted by the poet, who altered, later, many passages of a fine +absurdity criticised by the infamous reviewer. One could name great +prose-writers, historians, who never altered the wondrous errors to +which their attention was called by critics. Prose-writers have been +more sensitively attached to their glaring blunders in verifiable +facts than was this very sensitive poet to his occasional lapses in +taste. + +The Lady of Shalott, even in its early form, was more than enough to +give assurance of a poet. In effect it is even more poetical, in a +mysterious way, if infinitely less human, than the later treatment of +the same or a similar legend in Elaine. It has the charm of +Coleridge, and an allegory of the fatal escape from the world of +dreams and shadows into that of realities may have been really +present to the mind of the young poet, aware that he was "living in +phantasy." The alterations are usually for the better. The daffodil +is not an aquatic plant, as the poet seems to assert in the first +form - + + +"The yellow-leaved water-lily, +The green sheathed daffodilly, +Tremble in the water chilly, + Round about Shalott." + + +Nobody can prefer to keep + + +"Though the squally east wind keenly +Blew, with folded arms serenely +By the water stood the queenly + Lady of Shalott." + + +However stoical the Lady may have been, the reader is too seriously +sympathetic with her inevitable discomfort - + + +"All raimented in snowy white +That loosely flew," + + +as she was. The original conclusion was distressing; we were dropped +from the airs of mysterious romance:- + + +"They crossed themselves, their stars they blest, +Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire, and guest; +There lay a parchment on her breast, +That puzzled more than all the rest + The well-fed wits at Camelot." + + +Hitherto we have been "puzzled," but as with the sublime incoherences +of a dream. Now we meet well-fed wits, who say, "Bless my stars!" as +perhaps we should also have done in the circumstances--a dead lady +arriving, in a very cold east wind, alone in a boat, for "her blood +was frozen slowly," as was natural, granting the weather and the +lady's airy costume. It is certainly matter of surprise that the +young poet's vision broke up in this humorous manner. And, after +all, it is less surprising that the Scorpion, finding such matter in +a new little book by a new young man, was more sensitive to the +absurdity than to the romance. But no lover of poetry should have +been blind to the almost flawless excellence of Mariana in the South, +inspired by the landscape of the Provencal tour with Arthur Hallam. +In consequence of Lockhart's censures, or in deference to the maturer +taste of the poet, The Miller's Daughter was greatly altered before +1842. It is one of the earliest, if not the very earliest, of +Tennyson's domestic English idylls, poems with conspicuous beauties, +but not without sacrifices to that Muse of the home affections on +whom Sir Barnes Newcome delivered his famous lecture. The seventh +stanza perhaps hardly deserved to be altered, as it is, so as to +bring in "minnows" where "fish" had been the reading, and where +"trout" would best recall an English chalk stream. To the angler the +rising trout, which left the poet cold, is at least as welcome as the +"reflex of a beauteous form." "Every woman seems an angel at the +water-side," said "that good old angler, now with God," Thomas Todd +Stoddart, and so "the long and listless boy" found it to be. It is +no wonder that the mother was "SLOWLY brought to yield consent to my +desire." The domestic affections, in fact, do not adapt themselves +so well to poetry as the passion, unique in Tennyson, of Fatima. The +critics who hunt for parallels or plagiarisms will note - + + +"O Love, O fire! once he drew +With one long kiss my whole soul thro' +My lips," + + +and will observe Mr Browning's + + + "Once he kissed +My soul out in a fiery mist." + + +As to OEnone, the scenery of that earliest of the classical idylls is +borrowed from the Pyrenees and the tour with Hallam. "It is possible +that the poem may have been suggested by Beattie's Judgment of +Paris," says Mr Collins; it is also possible that the tale which + + + "Quintus Calaber +Somewhat lazily handled of old" + + +may have reached Tennyson's mind from an older writer than Beattie. +He is at least as likely to have been familiar with Greek myth as +with the lamented "Minstrel." The form of 1833, greatly altered in +1842, contained such unlucky phrases as "cedar shadowy," and +"snowycoloured," "marblecold," "violet-eyed"--easy spoils of +criticism. The alterations which converted a beautiful but faulty +into a beautiful and flawless poem perhaps obscure the significance +of OEnone's "I will not die alone," which in the earlier volume +directly refers to the foreseen end of all as narrated in Tennyson's +late piece, The Death of OEnone. The whole poem brings to mind the +glowing hues of Titian and the famous Homeric lines on the divine +wedlock of Zeus and Hera. + +The allegory or moral of The Palace of Art does not need explanation. +Not many of the poems owe more to revision. The early stanza about +Isaiah, with fierce Ezekiel, and "Eastern Confutzee," did undeniably +remind the reader, as Lockhart said, of The Groves of Blarney. + + +"With statues gracing that noble place in, + All haythen goddesses most rare, +Petrarch, Plato, and Nebuchadnezzar, + All standing naked in the open air." + + +In the early version the Soul, being too much "up to date," + + +"Lit white streams of dazzling gas," + + +like Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford. + + +"Thus her intense, untold delight, +In deep or vivid colour, smell, and sound, + Was flattered day and night." + + +Lockhart was not fond of Sir Walter's experiments in gas, the "smell" +gave him no "deep, untold delight," and his "infamous review" was +biassed by these circumstances. + +The volume of 1833 was in nothing more remarkable than in its proof +of the many-sidedness of the author. He offered mediaeval romance, +and classical perfection touched with the romantic spirit, and +domestic idyll, of which The May Queen is probably the most popular +example. The "mysterious being," conversant with "the spiritual +world," might have been expected to disdain topics well within the +range of Eliza Cook. He did not despise but elevated them, and +thereby did more to introduce himself to the wide English public than +he could have done by a century of Fatimas or Lotos-Eaters. On the +other hand, a taste more fastidious, or more perverse, will scarcely +be satisfied with pathos which in process of time has come to seem +"obvious." The pathos of early death in the prime of beauty is less +obvious in Homer, where Achilles is to be the victim, or in the +laments of the Anthology, where we only know that the dead bride or +maiden was fair; but the poor May Queen is of her nature rather +commonplace. + + +"That good man, the clergyman, has told me words of peace," + + +strikes a note rather resembling the Tennysonian parody of Wordsworth +- + + +"A Mr Wilkinson, a clergyman." + + +The Lotos-Eaters, of course, is at the opposite pole of the poet's +genius. A few plain verses of the Odyssey, almost bald in their +reticence, are the point de repere of the most magical vision +expressed in the most musical verse. Here is the languid charm of +Spenser, enriched with many classical memories, and pictures of +natural beauty gorgeously yet delicately painted. After the excision +of some verses, rather fantastical, in 1842, the poem became a +flawless masterpiece,--one of the eternal possessions of song. + +On the other hand, the opening of The Dream of Fair Women was marred +in 1833 by the grotesque introductory verses about "a man that sails +in a balloon." Young as Tennyson was, these freakish passages are a +psychological marvel in the work of one who did not lack the saving +sense of humour. The poet, wafted on the wing and "pinion that the +Theban eagle bear," cannot conceivably be likened to an aeronaut +waving flags out of a balloon--except in a spirit of self-mockery +which was not Tennyson's. His remarkable self-discipline in excising +the fantastic and superfluous, and reducing his work to its classical +perfection of thought and form, is nowhere more remarkable than in +this magnificent vision. It is probably by mere accidental +coincidence of thought that, in the verses To J. S. (James Spedding), +Tennyson reproduces the noble speech on the warrior's death which Sir +Walter Scott places in the lips of the great Dundee: "It is the +memory which the soldier leaves behind him, like the long train of +light that follows the sunken sun, THAT is all that is worth caring +for," the light which lingers eternally on the hills of Atholl. +Tennyson's lines are a close parallel:- + + +"His memory long will live alone + In all our hearts, as mournful light +That broods above the fallen sun, + And dwells in heaven half the night." + + +Though Tennyson disliked the exhibition of "the chips of the +workshop," we have commented on them, on the early readings of the +early volumes. They may be regarded more properly as the sketches of +a master than as "chips," and do more than merely engage the idle +curiosity of the fanatics of first editions. They prove that the +poet was studious of perfection, and wisely studious, for his +alterations, unlike those of some authors, were almost invariably for +the better, the saner, the more mature in taste. The early readings +are also worth notice, because they partially explain, by their +occasionally fantastic and humourless character, the lack of early +and general recognition of the poet's genius. The native prejudice +of mankind is not in favour of a new poet. Of new poets there are +always so many, most of them bad, that nature has protected mankind +by an armour of suspiciousness. The world, and Lockhart, easily +found good reasons for distrusting this new claimant of the ivy and +the bays: moreover, since about 1814 there had been a reaction +against new poetry. The market was glutted. Scott had set everybody +on reading, and too many on writing, novels. The great reaction of +the century against all forms of literature except prose fiction had +begun. Near the very date of Tennyson's first volume Bulwer Lytton, +as we saw, had frankly explained that he wrote novels because nobody +would look at anything else. Tennyson had to overcome this +universal, or all but universal, indifference to new poetry, and, +after being silent for ten years, overcome it he did--a remarkable +victory of art and of patient courage. Times were even worse for +poets than to-day. Three hundred copies of the new volume were sold! +But Tennyson's friends were not puffers in league with pushing +publishers. + +Meanwhile the poet in 1833 went on quietly and undefeated with his +work. He composed The Gardener's Daughter, and was at work on the +Morte d'Arthur, suppressed till the ninth year, on the Horatian plan. +Many poems were produced (and even written out, which a number of his +pieces never were), and were left in manuscript till they appeared in +the Biography. Most of these are so little worthy of the author that +the marvel is how he came to write them--in what uninspired hours. +Unlike Wordsworth, he could weed the tares from his wheat. His +studies were in Greek, German, Italian, history (a little), and +chemistry, botany, and electricity--"cross-grained Muses," these +last. + +It was on September 15, 1833, that Arthur Hallam died. Unheralded by +sign or symptom of disease as it was, the news fell like a +thunderbolt from a serene sky. Tennyson's and Hallam's love had been +"passing the love of women." A blow like this drives a man on the +rocks of the ultimate, the insoluble problems of destiny. "Is this +the end?" Nourished as on the milk of lions, on the elevating and +strengthening doctrines of popular science, trained from childhood to +forego hope and attend evening lectures, the young critics of our +generation find Tennyson a weakling because he had hopes and fears +concerning the ultimate renewal of what was more than half his life-- +his friendship. + + +"That faith I fain would keep, + That hope I'll not forego: +Eternal be the sleep - + Unless to waken so," + + +wrote Lockhart, and the verses echoed ceaselessly in the widowed +heart of Carlyle. These men, it is part of the duty of critics later +born to remember, were not children or cowards, though they dreamed, +and hoped, and feared. We ought to make allowance for failings +incident to an age not yet fully enlightened by popular science, and +still undivorced from spiritual ideas that are as old as the human +race, and perhaps not likely to perish while that race exists. Now +and then even scientific men have been mistaken, especially when they +have declined to examine evidence, as in this problem of the +transcendental nature of the human spirit they usually do. At all +events Tennyson was unconvinced that death is the end, and shortly +after the fatal tidings arrived from Vienna he began to write +fragments in verse preluding to the poem of In Memoriam. He also +began, in a mood of great misery, The Two Voices; or, Thoughts of a +Suicide. The poem seems to have been partly done by September 1834, +when Spedding commented on it, and on the beautiful Sir Galahad, +"intended for something of a male counterpart to St Agnes." The +Morte d'Arthur Tennyson then thought "the best thing I have managed +lately." Very early in 1835 many stanzas of In Memoriam had taken +form. "I do not wish to be dragged forward in any shape before the +reading public at present," wrote the poet, when he heard that Mill +desired to write on him. His OEnone he had brought to its new +perfection, and did not desire comments on work now several years +old. He also wrote his Ulysses and his Tithonus. + +If ever the term "morbid" could have been applied to Tennyson, it +would have been in the years immediately following the death of +Arthur Hallam. But the application would have been unjust. True, +the poet was living out of the world; he was unhappy, and he was, as +people say, "doing nothing." He was so poor that he sold his +Chancellor's prize gold medal, and he did not + + + "Scan his whole horizon +In quest of what he could clap eyes on," + + +in the way of money-making, which another poet describes as the +normal attitude of all men as well as of pirates. A careless +observer would have thought that the poet was dawdling. But he dwelt +in no Castle of Indolence; he studied, he composed, he corrected his +verses: like Sir Walter in Liddesdale, "he was making himsel' a' the +time." He did not neglect the movements of the great world in that +dawn of discontent with the philosophy of commercialism. But it was +not his vocation to plunge into the fray, and on to platforms. + +It is a very rare thing anywhere, especially in England, for a man +deliberately to choose poetry as the duty of his life, and to remain +loyal, as a consequence, to the bride of St Francis--Poverty. This +loyalty Tennyson maintained, even under the temptation to make money +in recognised ways presented by his new-born love for his future +wife, Miss Emily Sellwood. They had first met in 1830, when she, a +girl of seventeen, seemed to him like "a Dryad or an Oread wandering +here." But admiration became the affection of a lifetime when +Tennyson met Miss Sellwood as bridesmaid to her sister, the bride of +his brother Charles, in 1836. The poet could not afford to marry, +and, like the hero of Locksley Hall, he may have asked himself, "What +is that which I should do?" By 1840 he had done nothing tangible and +lucrative, and correspondence between the lovers was forbidden. That +neither dreamed of Tennyson's deserting poetry for a more normal +profession proved of great benefit to the world. The course is one +which could only be justified by the absolute certainty of possessing +genius. + + + +CHAPTER III.--1837-1842. + + + +In 1837 the Tennysons left the old rectory; till 1840 they lived at +High Beech in Epping Forest, and after a brief stay at Tunbridge +Wells went to Boxley, near Maidstone. + +It appears that at last the poet had "beat his music out," though his +friends "still tried to cheer him." But the man who wrote Ulysses +when his grief was fresh could not be suspected of declining into a +hypochondriac. "If I mean to make my mark at all, it must be by +shortness," he said at this time; "for the men before me had been so +diffuse, and most of the big things, except King Arthur, had been +done." The age had not la tete epique: Poe had announced the +paradox that there is no such thing as a long poem, and even in +dealing with Arthur, Tennyson followed the example of Theocritus in +writing, not an epic, but epic idylls. Long poems suit an age of +listeners, for which they were originally composed, or of leisure and +few books. At present epics are read for duty's sake, not for the +only valid reason, "for human pleasure," in FitzGerald's phrase. + +Between 1838 and 1840 Tennyson made some brief tours in England with +FitzGerald, and, coming from Coventry, wrote Godiva. His engagement +with Miss Sellwood seemed to be adjourned sine die, as they were +forbidden to correspond. + +By 1841 Tennyson was living at Mablethorpe on the Lincolnshire coast; +working at his volumes of 1842, much urged by FitzGerald and American +admirers, who had heard of the poet through Emerson. Moxon was to be +the publisher, himself something of a poet; but early in 1842 he had +not yet received the MS. Perhaps Emerson heard of Tennyson through +Carlyle, who, says Sterling, "said more in your praise than in any +one's except Cromwell, and an American backwoodsman who has killed +thirty or forty people with a bowie-knife." Carlyle at this time was +much attached to Lockhart, editor of the Quarterly Review, and it may +have been Carlyle who converted Lockhart to admiration of his old +victim. Carlyle had very little more appreciation of Keats than had +Byron, or (in early days) Lockhart, and it was probably as much the +man of heroic physical mould, "a life-guardsman spoilt by making +poetry," and the unaffected companion over a pipe, as the poet, that +attracted him in Tennyson. As we saw, when the two triumphant +volumes of 1842 did appear, Lockhart asked Sterling to review +whatever book he pleased (meaning the Poems) in the Quarterly. The +praise of Sterling may seem lukewarm to us, especially when compared +with that of Spedding in the Edinburgh. But Sterling, and Lockhart +too, were obliged to "gang warily." Lockhart had, to his constant +annoyance, "a partner, Mr Croker," and I have heard from the late +Dean Boyle that Mr Croker was much annoyed by even the mild applause +yielded in the Quarterly to the author of the Morte d'Arthur. + +While preparing the volumes of 1842 at Boxley, Tennyson's life was +divided between London and the society of his brother-in-law, Mr +Edmund Lushington, the great Greek scholar and Professor of Greek at +Glasgow University. There was in Mr Lushington's personal aspect, +and noble simplicity of manner and character, something that strongly +resembled Tennyson himself. Among their common friends were Lord +Houghton (Monckton Milnes), Mr Lear of the Book of Nonsense ("with +such a pencil, such a pen"), Mr Venables (who at school modified the +profile of Thackeray), and Lord Kelvin. In town Tennyson met his +friends at The Cock, which he rendered classic; among them were +Thackeray, Forster, Maclise, and Dickens. The times were stirring: +social agitation, and "Carol philosophy" in Dickens, with growls from +Carlyle, marked the period. There was also a kind of optimism in the +air, a prophetic optimism, not yet fulfilled. + + +"Fly, happy happy sails, and bear the Press!" + + +That mission no longer strikes us as exquisitely felicitous. "The +mission of the Cross," and of the missionaries, means international +complications; and "the markets of the Golden Year" are precisely the +most fruitful causes of wars and rumours of wars:- + + + "Sea and air are dark +With great contrivances of Power." + + +Tennyson's was not an unmitigated optimism, and had no special +confidence in + + +"The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings + That every sophister can lime." + + +His political poetry, in fact, was very unlike the socialist chants +of Mr William Morris, or Songs before Sunrise. He had nothing to say +about + + +"The blood on the hands of the King, + And the lie on the lips of the Priest." + + +The hands of Presidents have not always been unstained; nor are +statements of a mythical nature confined to the lips of the clergy. +The poet was anxious that freedom should "broaden down," but +"slowly," not with indelicate haste. Persons who are more in a hurry +will never care for the political poems, and it is certain that +Tennyson did not feel sympathetically inclined towards the Iberian +patriot who said that his darling desire was "to cut the throats of +all the cures," like some Covenanters of old. "Mais vous connaissez +mon coeur"--"and a pretty black one it is," thought young Tennyson. +So cautious in youth, during his Pyrenean tour with Hallam in 1830, +Tennyson could not become a convinced revolutionary later. We must +accept him with his limitations: nor must we confuse him with the +hero of his Locksley Hall, one of the most popular, and most +parodied, of the poems of 1842: full of beautiful images and +"confusions of a wasted youth," a youth dramatically conceived, and +in no way autobiographical. + +In so marvellous a treasure of precious things as the volumes of +1842, perhaps none is more splendid, perfect, and perdurable than the +Morte d'Arthur. It had been written seven years earlier, and +pronounced by the poet "not bad." Tennyson was never, perhaps, a +very deep Arthurian student. A little cheap copy of Malory was his +companion. {4} He does not appear to have gone deeply into the +French and German "literature of the subject." Malory's compilation +(1485) from French and English sources, with the Mabinogion of Lady +Charlotte Guest, sufficed for him as materials. The whole poem, +enshrined in the memory of all lovers of verse, is richly studded, as +the hilt of Excalibur, with classical memories. "A faint Homeric +echo" it is not, nor a Virgilian echo, but the absolute voice of old +romance, a thing that might have been chanted by + + +"The lonely maiden of the Lake" + + +when + + +"Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps, +Upon the hidden bases of the hills." + + +Perhaps the most exquisite adaptation of all are the lines from the +Odyssey - + + +"Where falls not hail nor rain, nor any snow." + + +"Softly through the flutes of the Grecians" came first these Elysian +numbers, then through Lucretius, then through Tennyson's own +Lucretius, then in Mr Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon:- + + +"Lands indiscoverable in the unheard-of west +Round which the strong stream of a sacred sea +Rolls without wind for ever, and the snow +There shows not her white wings and windy feet, +Nor thunder nor swift rain saith anything, +Nor the sun burns, but all things rest and thrive." + + +So fortunate in their transmission through poets have been the lines +of "the Ionian father of the rest," the greatest of them all. + +In the variety of excellences which marks Tennyson, the new English +idylls of 1842 hold their prominent place. Nothing can be more +exquisite and more English than the picture of "the garden that I +love." Theocritus cannot be surpassed; but the idyll matches to the +seventh of his, where it is most closely followed, and possesses such +a picture of a girl as the Sicilian never tried to paint. + +Dora is another idyll, resembling the work of a Wordsworth in a clime +softer than that of the Fells. The lays of Edwin Morris and Edward +Bull are not among the more enduring of even the playful poems. The +St Simeon Stylites appears "made to the hand" of the author of Men +and Women rather than of Tennyson. The grotesque vanity of the +anchorite is so remote from us, that we can scarcely judge of the +truth of the picture, though the East has still her parallels to St +Simeon. From the almost, perhaps quite, incredible ascetic the poet +lightly turns to "society verse" lifted up into the air of poetry, in +the charm of The Talking Oak, and the happy flitting sketches of +actual history; and thence to the strength and passion of Love and +Duty. Shall + + + "Sin itself be found +The cloudy porch oft opening on the Sun?" + + +That this is the province of sin is a pretty popular modern moral. +But Honour is the better part, and here was a poet who had the +courage to say so; though, to be sure, the words ring strange in an +age when highly respectable matrons assure us that "passion," like +charity, covers a multitude of sins. Love and Duty, we must admit, +is "early Victorian." + +The Ulysses is almost a rival to the Morte d'Arthur. It is of an +early date, after Arthur Hallam's death, and Thackeray speaks of the +poet chanting his + + +"Great Achilles whom we knew," + + +as if he thought that this was in Cambridge days. But it is later +than these. Tennyson said, "Ulysses was written soon after Arthur +Hallam's death, and gave my feeling about the need of going forward, +and braving the struggle of life, perhaps more simply than anything +in In Memoriam." Assuredly the expression is more simple, and more +noble, and the personal emotion more dignified for the classic veil. +When the plaintive Pessimist ("'proud of the title,' as the Living +Skeleton said when they showed him") tells us that "not to have been +born is best," we may answer with Ulysses - + + + "Life piled on life +Were all too little." + + +The Ulysses of Tennyson, of course, is Dante's Ulysses, not Homer's +Odysseus, who brought home to Ithaca not one of his mariners. His +last known adventure, the journey to the land of men who knew not the +savour of salt, Odysseus was to make on foot and alone; so spake the +ghost of Tiresias within the poplar pale of Persephone. + +The Two Voices expresses the contest of doubts and griefs with the +spirit of endurance and joy which speaks alone in Ulysses. The man +who is unhappy, but does not want to put an end to himself, has +certainly the better of the argument with the despairing Voice. The +arguments of "that barren Voice" are, indeed, remarkably deficient in +cogency and logic, if we can bring ourselves to strip the discussion +of its poetry. The original title, Thoughts of a Suicide, was +inappropriate. The suicidal suggestions are promptly faced and +confuted, and the mood of the author is throughout that of one who +thinks life worth living:- + + +"Whatever crazy sorrow saith, +No life that breathes with human breath +Has ever truly long'd for death. + +'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, +Oh life, not death, for which we pant; +More life, and fuller, that I want." + + +This appears to be a satisfactory reply to the persons who eke out a +livelihood by publishing pessimistic books, and hooting, as the great +Alexandre Dumas says, at the great drama of Life. + +With The Day-Dream (of The Sleeping Beauty) Tennyson again displays +his matchless range of powers. Verse of Society rises into a charmed +and musical fantasy, passing from the Berlin-wool work of the period + + +("Take the broidery frame, and add +A crimson to the quaint Macaw") + + +into the enchanted land of the fable: princes immortal, princesses +eternally young and fair. The St Agnes and Sir Galahad, companion +pieces, contain the romance, as St Simeon Stylites shows the +repulsive side of asceticism; for the saint and the knight are young, +beautiful, and eager as St Theresa in her childhood. It has been +said, I do not know on what authority, that the poet had no +recollection of composing Sir Galahad, any more than Scott remembered +composing The Bride of Lammermoor, or Thackeray parts of Pendennis. +The haunting of Tennyson's mind by the Arthurian legends prompted +also the lovely fragment on the Queen's last Maying, Sir Launcelot +and Queen Guinevere, a thing of perfect charm and music. The ballads +of Lady Clare and The Lord of Burleigh are not examples of the poet +in his strength; for his power and fantasy we must turn to The Vision +of Sin, where the early passages have the languid voluptuous music of +The Lotos-Eaters, with the ethical element superadded, while the +portion beginning - + + +"Wrinkled ostler, grim and thin + + +is in parts reminiscent of Burns's Jolly Beggars. In Break, Break, +Break, we hear a note prelusive to In Memoriam, much of which was +already composed. + +The Poems of 1842 are always vocal in the memories of all readers of +English verse. None are more familiar, at least to men of the +generations which immediately followed Tennyson's. FitzGerald was +apt to think that the poet never again attained the same level, and I +venture to suppose that he never rose above it. For FitzGerald's +opinion, right or wrong, it is easy to account. He had seen all the +pieces in manuscript; they were his cherished possession before the +world knew them. C'est mon homme, he might have said of Tennyson, as +Boileau said of Moliere. Before the public awoke FitzGerald had +"discovered Tennyson," and that at the age most open to poetry and +most enthusiastic in friendship. Again, the Poems of 1842 were +SHORT, while The Princess, Maud, and The Idylls of the King were +relatively long, and, with In Memoriam, possessed unity of subject. +They lacked the rich, the unexampled variety of topic, treatment, and +theme which marks the Poems of 1842. These were all reasons why +FitzGerald should think that the two slim green volumes held the +poet's work at its highest level. Perhaps he was not wrong, after +all. + + + +CHAPTER IV.--1842-848--THE PRINCESS. + + + +The Poems, and such criticisms as those of Spedding and Sterling, +gave Tennyson his place. All the world of letters heard of him. +Dean Bradley tells us how he took Oxford by storm in the days of the +undergraduateship of Clough and Matthew Arnold. Probably both of +these young writers did not share the undergraduate enthusiasm. Mr +Arnold, we know, did not reckon Tennyson un esprit puissant. Like +Wordsworth (who thought Tennyson "decidedly the first of our living +poets, . . . he has expressed in the strongest terms his gratitude to +my writings"), Arnold was no fervent admirer of his contemporaries. +Besides, if Tennyson's work is "a criticism of Life," the moral +criticism, so far, was hidden in flowers, like the sword of +Aristogiton at the feast. But, on the whole, Tennyson had won the +young men who cared for poetry, though Sir Robert Peel had never +heard of him: and to win the young, as Theocritus desired to do, is +more than half the battle. On September 8, 1842, the poet was able +to tell Mr Lushington that "500 of my books are sold; according to +Moxon's brother, I have made a sensation." The sales were not like +those of Childe Harold or Marmion; but for some twenty years new +poetry had not sold at all. Novels had come in about 1814, and few +wanted or bought recent verse. But Carlyle was converted. He spoke +no more of a spoiled guardsman. "If you knew what my relation has +been to the thing called 'English Poetry' for many years back, you +would think such a fact" (his pleasure in the book) "surprising." +Carlyle had been living (as Mrs Carlyle too well knew) in Oliver +Cromwell, a hero who probably took no delight in Lycidas or Comus, in +Lovelace or Carew. "I would give all my poetry to have made one song +like that," said Tennyson of Lovelace's Althea. But Noll would have +disregarded them all alike, and Carlyle was full of the spirit of the +Protector. To conquer him was indeed a victory for Tennyson; while +Dickens, not a reading man, expressed his "earnest and sincere +homage." + +But Tennyson was not successful in the modern way. Nobody +"interviewed" him. His photograph, of course, with disquisitions on +his pipes and slippers, did not adorn the literary press. His +literary income was not magnified by penny-a-liners. He did not +become a lion; he never would roar and shake his mane in drawing- +rooms. Lockhart held that Society was the most agreeable form of the +stage: the dresses and actresses incomparably the prettiest. But +Tennyson liked Society no better than did General Gordon. He had +friends enough, and no desire for new acquaintances. Indeed, his +fortune was shattered at this time by a strange investment in wood- +carving by machinery. Ruskin had only just begun to write, and wood- +carving by machinery was still deemed an enterprise at once +philanthropic and aesthetic. "My father's worldly goods were all +gone," says Lord Tennyson. The poet's health suffered extremely: he +tried a fashionable "cure" at Cheltenham, where he saw miracles of +healing, but underwent none. In September 1845 Peel was moved by +Lord Houghton to recommend the poet for a pension (200 pounds +annually). "I have done nothing slavish to get it: I never even +solicited for it either by myself or others." Like Dr Johnson, he +honourably accepted what was offered in honour. For some reason many +persons who write in the press are always maddened when such good +fortune, however small, however well merited, falls to a brother in +letters. They, of course, were "causelessly bitter." "Let them +rave!" + +If few of the rewards of literary success arrived, the penalties at +once began, and only ceased with the poet's existence. "If you only +knew what a nuisance these volumes of verse are! Rascals send me +theirs per post from America, and I have more than once been knocked +up out of bed to pay three or four shillings for books of which I +can't get through one page, for of all books the most insipid reading +is second-rate verse." + +Would that versifiers took the warning! Tennyson had not sent his +little firstlings to Coleridge and Wordsworth: they are only the +hopeless rhymers who bombard men of letters with their lyrics and +tragedies. + +Mr Browning was a sufferer. To one young twitterer he replied in the +usual way. The bard wrote acknowledging the letter, but asking for a +definite criticism. "I do not think myself a Shakespeare or a +Milton, but I KNOW I am better than Mr Coventry Patmore or Mr Austin +Dobson." Mr Browning tried to procrastinate: he was already deeply +engaged with earlier arrivals of volumes of song. The poet was hurt, +not angry; he had expected other things from Mr Browning: HE ought +to know his duty to youth. At the intercession of a relation Mr +Browning now did his best, and the minstrel, satisfied at last, +repeated his conviction of his superiority to the authors of The +Angel in the House and Beau Brocade. Probably no man, not even Mr +Gladstone, ever suffered so much from minstrels as Tennyson. He did +not suffer them gladly. + +In 1846 the Poems reached their fourth edition. Sir Edward Bulwer +Lytton (bitten by what fly who knows?) attacked Tennyson in The New +Timon, a forgotten satire. We do not understand the ways of that +generation. The cheap and spiteful genre of satire, its forged +morality, its sham indignation, its appeal to the ape-like passions, +has gone out. Lytton had suffered many things (not in verse) from +Jeames Yellowplush: I do not know that he hit back at Thackeray, but +he "passed it on" to Thackeray's old college companion. Tennyson, +for once, replied (in Punch: the verses were sent thither by John +Forster); the answer was one of magnificent contempt. But he soon +decided that + + +"The noblest answer unto such +Is perfect stillness when they brawl." + + +Long afterwards the poet dedicated a work to the son of Lord Lytton. +He replied to no more satirists. {5} Our difficulty, of course, is +to conceive such an attack coming from a man of Lytton's position and +genius. He was no hungry hack, and could, and did, do infinitely +better things than "stand in a false following" of Pope. Probably +Lytton had a false idea that Tennyson was a rich man, a branch of his +family being affluent, and so resented the little pension. The poet +was so far from rich in 1846, and even after the publication of The +Princess, that his marriage had still to be deferred for four years. + +On reading The Princess afresh one is impressed, despite old +familiarity, with the extraordinary influence of its beauty. Here +are, indeed, the best words best placed, and that curious felicity of +style which makes every line a marvel, and an eternal possession. It +is as if Tennyson had taken the advice which Keats gave to Shelley, +"Load every rift with ore." To choose but one or two examples, how +the purest and freshest impression of nature is re-created in mind +and memory by the picture of Melissa with + + + "All her thoughts as fair within her eyes, +As bottom agates seen to wave and float +In crystal currents of clear morning seas." + + +The lyric, "Tears, idle tears," is far beyond praise: once read it +seems like a thing that has always existed in the world of poetic +archetypes, and has now been not so much composed as discovered and +revealed. The many pictures and similitudes in The Princess have a +magical gorgeousness:- + + + "From the illumined hall +Long lanes of splendour slanted o'er a press +Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes, +And rainbow robes, and gems and gem-like eyes, +And gold and golden heads; they to and fro +Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, some pale." + + +The "small sweet Idyll" from + + +"A volume of the poets of her land" + + +pure Theocritus. It has been admirably rendered into Greek by Mr +Gilbert Murray. The exquisite beauties of style are not less +exquisitely blended in the confusions of a dream, for a dream is the +thing most akin to The Princess. Time does not exist in the realm of +Gama, or in the ideal university of Ida. We have a bookless North, +severed but by a frontier pillar from a golden and learned South. +The arts, from architecture to miniature-painting, are in their +highest perfection, while knights still tourney in armour, and the +quarrel of two nations is decided as in the gentle and joyous passage +of arms at Ashby de la Zouche. Such confusions are purposefully +dream-like: the vision being a composite thing, as dreams are, +haunted by the modern scene of the holiday in the park, the "gallant +glorious chronicle," the Abbey, and that "old crusading knight +austere," Sir Ralph. The seven narrators of the scheme are like the +"split personalities" of dreams, and the whole scheme is of great +technical skill. The earlier editions lacked the beautiful songs of +the ladies, and that additional trait of dream, the strange trance- +like seizures of the Prince: "fallings from us, vanishings," in +Wordsworthian phrase; instances of "dissociation," in modern +psychological terminology. Tennyson himself, like Shelley and +Wordsworth, had experience of this kind of dreaming awake which he +attributes to his Prince, to strengthen the shadowy yet brilliant +character of his romance. It is a thing of normal and natural points +de repere; of daylight suggestion, touched as with the magnifying and +intensifying elements of haschish-begotten phantasmagoria. In the +same way opium raised into the region of brilliant vision that +passage of Purchas which Coleridge was reading before he dreamed +Kubla Khan. But in Tennyson the effects were deliberately sought and +secured. + + One might conjecture, though Lord Tennyson says nothing on the +subject, that among the suggestions for The Princess was the opening +of Love's Labour's Lost. Here the King of Navarre devises the +College of Recluses, which is broken up by the arrival of the +Princess of France, Rosaline, and the other ladies:- + + +King. Our Court shall be a little Academe, +Still and contemplative in living art. +You three, Biron, Domain, and Longaville, +Have sworn for three years' term to live with me, +My fellow-scholars, and to keep those statutes. +* * * +Biron. That is, to live and study here three years. +But there are other strict observances; +As, not to see a woman in that term. +* * * +[Reads] 'That no woman shalt come within a mile of my Court:' Hath +this been proclaimed? +Long. Four days ago. +Biron. Let's see the penalty. [Reads] 'On pain of losing her +tongue.' + + +The Princess then arrives with her ladies, as the Prince does with +Cyril and Florian, as Charles did, with Buckingham, in Spain. The +conclusion of Shakespeare is Tennyson's conclusion - + + +"We cannot cross the cause why we are born." + + +The later poet reverses the attitude of the sexes in Love's Labour's +Lost: it is the women who make and break the vow; and the women in +The Princess insist on the "grand, epic, homicidal" scenes, while the +men are debarred, more or less, from a sportive treatment of the +subject. The tavern catch of Cyril; the laughable pursuit of the +Prince by the feminine Proctors; the draggled appearance of the +adventurers in female garb, are concessions to the humour of the +situation. Shakespeare would certainly have given us the song of +Cyril at the picnic, and comic enough the effect would have been on +the stage. It may be a gross employment, but The Princess, with the +pretty chorus of girl undergraduates, + + +"In colours gayer than the morning mist," + + +went reasonably well in opera. Merely considered as a romantic +fiction, The Princess presents higher proofs of original narrative +genius than any other such attempt by its author. + +The poem is far from being deficient in that human interest which +Shelley said that it was as vain to ask from HIM, as to seek to buy a +leg of mutton at a gin-shop. The characters, the protagonists, with +Cyril, Melissa, Lady Blanche, the child Aglaia, King Gama, the other +king, Arac, and the hero's mother--beautifully studied from the +mother of the poet--are all sufficiently human. But they seem to +waver in the magic air, "as all the golden autumn woodland reels +athwart the fires of autumn leaves. For these reasons, and because +of the designed fantasy of the whole composition, The Princess is +essentially a poem for the true lovers of poetry, of Spenser and of +Coleridge. The serious motive, the question of Woman, her wrongs, +her rights, her education, her capabilities, was not "in the air" in +1847. To be sure it had often been "in the air." The Alexandrian +Platonists, the Renaissance, even the age of Anne, had their +emancipated and learned ladies. Early Greece had Sappho, Corinna, +and Erinna, the first the chief of lyric poets, even in her +fragments, the two others applauded by all Hellas. The French +Revolution had begotten Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and her +Vindication of the Rights of Women, and in France George Sand was +prominent and emancipated enough while the poet wrote. But, the +question of love apart, George Sand was "very, very woman," shining +as a domestic character and fond of needlework. England was not +excited about the question which has since produced so many +disputants, inevitably shrill, and has not been greatly meddled with +by women of genius, George Eliot or Mrs Oliphant. The poem, in the +public indifference as to feminine education, came rather +prematurely. We have now ladies' colleges, not in haunts remote from +man, but by the sedged banks of Cam and Cherwell. There have been no +revolutionary results: no boys have spied these chaste nests, with +echoing romantic consequences. The beauty and splendour of the +Princess's university have not arisen in light and colour, and it is +only at St Andrews that girls wear the academic and becoming costume +of the scarlet gown. The real is far below the ideal, but the real +in 1847 seemed eminently remote, or even impossible. + +The learned Princess herself was not on our level as to knowledge and +the past of womankind. She knew not of their masterly position in +the law of ancient Egypt. Gynaeocracy and matriarchy, the woman the +head of the savage or prehistoric group, were things hidden from her. +She "glanced at the Lycian custom," but not at the Pictish, a custom +which would have suited George Sand to a marvel. She maligned the +Hottentots. + + +"The highest is the measure of the man, +And not the Kaffir, Hottentot, Malay." + + +The Hottentots had long ago anticipated the Princess and her shrill +modern sisterhood. If we take the Greeks, or even ourselves, we may +say, with Dampier (1689), "The Hodmadods, though a nasty people, yet +are gentlemen to these" as regards the position of women. Let us +hear Mr Hartland: "In every Hottentot's house the wife is supreme. +Her husband, poor fellow, though he may wield wide power and +influence out of doors, at home dare not even take a mouthful of +sour-milk out of the household vat without her permission . . . The +highest oath a man can take is to swear by his eldest sister, and if +he abuses this name he forfeits to her his finest goods and sheep." + +However, in 1847 England had not yet thought of imitating the +Hodmadods. Consequently, and by reason of the purely literary and +elaborately fantastical character of The Princess, it was not of a +nature to increase the poet's fame and success. "My book is out, and +I hate it, and so no doubt will you," Tennyson wrote to FitzGerald, +who hated it and said so. "Like Carlyle, I gave up all hopes of him +after The Princess," indeed it was not apt to conciliate Carlyle. +"None of the songs had the old champagne flavour," said Fitz; and +Lord Tennyson adds, "Nothing either by Thackeray or by my father met +FitzGerald's approbation unless he had first seen it in manuscript." +This prejudice was very human. Lord Tennyson remarks, as to the +poet's meaning in this work, born too early, that "the sooner woman +finds out, before the great educational movement begins, that 'woman +is not undeveloped man, but diverse,' the better it will be for the +progress of the world." + +But probably the "educational movement" will not make much difference +to womankind on the whole. The old Platonic remark that woman "does +the same things as man, but not so well," will eternally hold good, +at least in the arts, and in letters, except in rare cases of genius. +A new Jeanne d'Arc, the most signal example of absolute genius in +history, will not come again; and the ages have waited vainly for a +new Sappho or a new Jane Austen. Literature, poetry, painting, have +always been fields open to woman. But two names exhaust the roll of +women of the highest rank in letters--Sappho and Jane Austen. And +"when did woman ever yet invent?" In "arts of government" Elizabeth +had courage, and just saving sense enough to yield to Cecil at the +eleventh hour, and escape the fate of "her sister and her foe," the +beautiful unhappy queen who told her ladies that she dared to look on +whatever men dared to do, and herself would do it if her strength so +served her." {6} "The foundress of the Babylonian walls" is a myth; +"the Rhodope that built the Pyramid" is not a creditable myth; for +exceptions to Knox's "Monstrous Regiment of Women" we must fall back +on "The Palmyrene that fought Aurelian," and the revered name of the +greatest of English queens, Victoria. Thus history does not +encourage the hope that a man-like education will raise many women to +the level of the highest of their sex in the past, or even that the +enormous majority of women will take advantage of the opportunity of +a man-like education. A glance at the numerous periodicals designed +for the reading of women depresses optimism, and the Princess's +prophecy of + + +"Two plummets dropped for one to sound the abyss +Of science, and the secrets of the mind," + + +is not near fulfilment. Fortunately the sex does not "love the +Metaphysics," and perhaps has not yet produced even a manual of +Logic. It must suffice man and woman to + + + "Walk this world +Yoked in all exercise of noble end," + + +of a more practical character, while woman is at liberty + + + "To live and learn and be +All that not harms distinctive womanhood." + + +This was the conclusion of the poet who had the most chivalrous +reverence for womanhood. This is the eirenicon of that old strife +between the women and the men--that war in which both armies are +captured. It may not be acceptable to excited lady combatants, who +think man their foe, when the real enemy is (what Porson damned) the +Nature of Things. + +A new poem like The Princess would soon reach the public of our day, +so greatly increased are the uses of advertisement. But The Princess +moved slowly from edition to revised and improved edition, bringing +neither money nor much increase of fame. The poet was living with +his family at Cheltenham, where among his new acquaintances were +Sydney Dobell, the poet of a few exquisite pieces, and F. W. +Robertson, later so popular as a preacher at Brighton. Meeting him +for the first time, and knowing Robertson's "wish to pluck the heart +from my mystery, from pure nervousness I would only talk of beer." +This kind of shyness beset Tennyson. A lady tells me that as a girl +(and a very beautiful girl) she and her sister, and a third, nec +diversa, met the poet, and expected high discourse. But his speech +was all of that wingless insect which "gets there, all the same," +according to an American lyrist; the insect which fills Mrs Carlyle's +letters with bulletins of her success or failure in domestic +campaigns. + +Tennyson kept visiting London, where he saw Thackeray and the despair +of Carlyle, and at Bath House he was too modest to be introduced to +the great Duke whose requiem he was to sing so nobly. Oddly enough +Douglas Jerrold enthusiastically assured Tennyson, at a dinner of a +Society of Authors, that "you are the one who will live." To that +end, humanly speaking, he placed himself under the celebrated Dr +Gully and his "water-cure," a foible of that period. In 1848 he made +a tour to King Arthur's Cornish bounds, and another to Scotland, +where the Pass of Brander disappointed him: perhaps he saw it on a +fine day, and, like Glencoe, it needs tempest and mist lit up by the +white fires of many waterfalls. By bonny Doon he "fell into a +passion of tears," for he had all of Keats's sentiment for Burns: +"There never was immortal poet if he be not one." Of all English +poets, the warmest in the praise of Burns have been the two most +unlike himself--Tennyson and Keats. It was the songs that Tennyson +preferred; Wordsworth liked the Cottar's Saturday Night. + + + +CHAPTER V.--IN MEMORIAM. + + + +In May 1850 a few, copies of In Memoriam were printed for friends, +and presently the poem was published without author's name. The +pieces had been composed at intervals, from 1833 onwards. It is to +be observed that the "section about evolution" was written some years +before 1844, when the ingenious hypotheses of Robert Chambers, in +Vestiges of Creation, were given to the world, and caused a good deal +of talk. Ten years, again, after In Memoriam, came Darwin's Origin +of Species. These dates are worth observing. The theory of +evolution, of course in a rude mythical shape, is at least as old as +the theory of creation, and is found among the speculations of the +most backward savages. The Arunta of Central Australia, a race +remote from the polite, have a hypothesis of evolution which +postulates only a few rudimentary forms of life, a marine +environment, and the minimum of supernormal assistance in the way of +stimulating the primal forms in the direction of more highly +differentiated developments. "The rudimentary forms, Inapertwa, were +in reality stages in the transformation of various plants and animals +into human beings. . . . They had no distinct limbs or organs of +sight, hearing, or smell." They existed in a kind of lumps, and were +set free from the cauls which enveloped them by two beings called +Ungambikula, "a word which means 'out of nothing,' or 'self- +existing.' Men descend from lower animals thus evolved." {7} + +This example of the doctrine of evolution in an early shape is only +mentioned to prove that the idea has been familiar to the human mind +from the lowest known stage of culture. Not less familiar has been +the theory of creation by a kind of supreme being. The notion of +creation, however, up to 1860, held the foremost place in modern +European belief. But Lamarck, the elder Darwin, Monboddo, and others +had submitted hypotheses of evolution. Now it was part of the +originality of Tennyson, as a philosophic poet, that he had brooded +from boyhood on these early theories of evolution, in an age when +they were practically unknown to the literary, and were not +patronised by the scientific, world. In November 1844 he wrote to Mr +Moxon, "I want you to get me a book which I see advertised in the +Examiner: it seems to contain many speculations with which I have +been familiar for years, and on which I have written more than one +poem." This book was Vestiges of Creation. These poems are the +stanzas in In Memoriam about "the greater ape," and about Nature as +careless of the type: "all shall go." The poetic and philosophic +originality of Tennyson thus faced the popular inferences as to the +effect of the doctrine of evolution upon religious beliefs long +before the world was moved in all its deeps by Darwin's Origin of +Species. Thus the geological record is inconsistent, we learned, +with the record of the first chapters of Genesis. If man is a +differentiated monkey, and if a monkey has no soul, or future life +(which is taken for granted), where are man's title-deeds to these +possessions? With other difficulties of an obvious kind, these +presented themselves to the poet with renewed force when his only +chance of happiness depended on being able to believe in a future +life, and reunion with the beloved dead. Unbelief had always +existed. We hear of atheists in the Rig Veda. In the early +eighteenth century, in the age of Swift - + + +"Men proved, as sure as God's in Gloucester, +That Moses was a great impostor." + + +distrust of Moses increased with the increase of hypotheses of +evolution. But what English poet, before Tennyson, ever attempted +"to lay the spectres of the mind"; ever faced world-old problems in +their most recent aspects? I am not acquainted with any poet who +attempted this task, and, whatever we may think of Tennyson's +success, I do not see how we can deny his originality. + +Mr Frederic Harrison, however, thinks that neither "the theology nor +the philosophy of In Memoriam are new, original, with an independent +force and depth of their own." "They are exquisitely graceful re- +statements of the theology of the Broad Churchman of the school of F. +D. Maurice and Jowett--a combination of Maurice's somewhat illogical +piety with Jowett's philosophy of mystification." The piety of +Maurice may be as illogical as that of Positivism is logical, and the +philosophy of the Master of Balliol may be whatever Mr Harrison +pleases to call it. But as Jowett's earliest work (except an essay +on Etruscan religion) is of 1855, one does not see how it could +influence Tennyson before 1844. And what had the Duke of Argyll +written on these themes some years before 1844? The late Duke, to +whom Mr Harrison refers in this connection, was born in 1823. His +philosophic ideas, if they were to influence Tennyson's In Memoriam, +must have been set forth by him at the tender age of seventeen, or +thereabouts. Mr Harrison's sentence is, "But does In Memoriam teach +anything, or transfigure any idea which was not about that time" (the +time of writing was mainly 1833-1840) "common form with F. D. +Maurice, with Jowett, C. Kingsley, F. Robertson, Stopford Brooke, Mr +Ruskin, and the Duke of Argyll, Bishops Westcott and Boyd Carpenter?" + +The dates answer Mr Harrison. Jowett did not publish anything till +at least fifteen years after Tennyson wrote his poems on evolution +and belief. Dr Boyd Carpenter's works previous to 1840 are unknown +to bibliography. F. W. Robertson was a young parson at Cheltenham. +Ruskin had not published the first volume of Modern Painters. His +Oxford prize poem is of 1839. Mr Stopford Brooke was at school. The +Duke of Argyll was being privately educated: and so with the rest, +except the contemporary Maurice. How can Mr Harrison say that, in +the time of In Memoriam, Tennyson was "in touch with the ideas of +Herschel, Owen, Huxley, Darwin, and Tyndall"? {8} When Tennyson +wrote the parts of In Memoriam which deal with science, nobody beyond +their families and friends had heard of Huxley, Darwin, and Tyndall. +They had not developed, much less had they published, their "general +ideas." Even in his journal of the Cruise of the Beagle Darwin's +ideas were religious, and he naively admired the works of God. It is +strange that Mr Harrison has based his criticism, and his theory of +Tennyson's want of originality, on what seems to be a historical +error. He cites parts of In Memoriam, and remarks, "No one can deny +that all this is exquisitely beautiful; that these eternal problems +have never been clad in such inimitable grace . . . But the train of +thought is essentially that with which ordinary English readers have +been made familiar by F. D. Maurice, Professor Jowett, Ecce Homo, +Hypatia, and now by Arthur Balfour, Mr Drummond, and many valiant +companies of Septem [why Septem?] contra Diabolum." One must keep +repeating the historical verity that the ideas of In Memoriam could +not have been "made familiar by" authors who had not yet published +anything, or by books yet undreamed of and unborn, such as Ecce Homo +and Jowett's work on some of St Paul's Epistles. If these books +contain the ideas of In Memoriam, it is by dint of repetition and +borrowing from In Memoriam, or by coincidence. The originality was +Tennyson's, for we cannot dispute the evidence of dates. + +When one speaks of "originality" one does not mean that Tennyson +discovered the existence of the ultimate problems. But at Cambridge +(1828-1830) he had voted "No" in answer to the question discussed by +"the Apostles," "Is an intelligible [intelligent?] First Cause +deducible from the phenomena of the universe?" {9} He had also +propounded the theory that "the development of the human body might +possibly be traced from the radiated vermicular molluscous and +vertebrate organisms," thirty years before Darwin published The +Origin of Species. To be concerned so early with such hypotheses, +and to face, in poetry, the religious or irreligious inferences which +may be drawn from them, decidedly constitutes part of the poetic +originality of Tennyson. His attitude, as a poet, towards religious +doubt is only so far not original, as it is part of the general +reaction from the freethinking of the eighteenth century. Men had +then been freethinkers avec delices. It was a joyous thing to be an +atheist, or something very like one; at all events, it was glorious +to be "emancipated." Many still find it glorious, as we read in the +tone of Mr Huxley, when he triumphs and tramples over pious dukes and +bishops. Shelley said that a certain schoolgirl "would make a dear +little atheist." But by 1828-1830 men were less joyous in their +escape from all that had hitherto consoled and fortified humanity. +Long before he dreamed of In Memoriam, in the Poems chiefly Lyrical +of 1830 Tennyson had written - + + +"'Yet,' said I, in my morn of youth, +The unsunn'd freshness of my strength, +When I went forth in quest of truth, +'It is man's privilege to doubt.' . . . + Ay me! I fear +All may not doubt, but everywhere +Some must clasp Idols. Yet, my God, +Whom call I Idol? Let Thy dove +Shadow me over, and my sins +Be unremember'd, and Thy love +Enlighten me. Oh teach me yet +Somewhat before the heavy clod +Weighs on me, and the busy fret +Of that sharp-headed worm begins +In the gross blackness underneath. + +Oh weary life! oh weary death! +Oh spirit and heart made desolate! +Oh damned vacillating state!" + + +Now the philosophy of In Memoriam may be, indeed is, regarded by +robust, first-rate, and far from sensitive minds, as a "damned +vacillating state." The poet is not so imbued with the spirit of +popular science as to be sure that he knows everything: knows that +there is nothing but atoms and ether, with no room for God or a soul. +He is far from that happy cock-certainty, and consequently is exposed +to the contempt of the cock-certain. The poem, says Mr Harrison, +"has made Tennyson the idol of the Anglican clergyman--the world in +which he was born and the world in which his life was ideally passed- +-the idol of all cultured youth and of all aesthetic women. It is an +honourable post to fill"--that of idol. "The argument of In Memoriam +apparently is . . . that we should faintly trust the larger hope." +That, I think, is not the argument, not the conclusion of the poem, +but is a casual expression of one mood among many moods. + +The argument and conclusion of In Memoriam are the argument and +conclusion of the life of Tennyson, and of the love of Tennyson, that +immortal passion which was a part of himself, and which, if aught of +us endure, is living yet, and must live eternally. From the record +of his Life by his son we know that his trust in "the larger hope" +was not "faint," but strengthened with the years. There are said to +have been less hopeful intervals. + +His faith is, of course, no argument for others,--at least it ought +not to be. We are all the creatures of our bias, our environment, +our experience, our emotions. The experience of Tennyson was unlike +the experience of most men. It yielded him subjective grounds for +belief. He "opened a path unto many," like Yama, the Vedic being who +discovered the way to death. But Tennyson's path led not to death, +but to life spiritual, and to hope, and he did "give a new impulse to +the thought of his age," as other great poets have done. Of course +it may be an impulse to wrong thought. As the philosophical +Australian black said, "We shall know when we are dead." + +Mr Harrison argues as if, unlike Tennyson, Byron, Wordsworth, +Shelley, and Burns produced "original ideas fresh from their own +spirit, and not derived from contemporary thinkers." I do not know +what original ideas these great poets discovered and promulgated; +their ideas seem to have been "in the air." These poets "made them +current coin." Shelley thought that he owed many of his ideas to +Godwin, a contemporary thinker. Wordsworth has a debt to Plato, a +thinker not contemporary. Burns's democratic independence was "in +the air," and had been, in Scotland, since Elder remarked on it in a +letter to Ingles in 1515. It is not the ideas, it is the expression +of the ideas, that marks the poet. Tennyson's ideas are relatively +novel, though as old as Plotinus, for they are applied to a novel, or +at least an unfamiliar, mental situation. Doubt was abroad, as it +always is; but, for perhaps the first time since Porphyry wrote his +letter to Abammon, the doubters desired to believe, and said, "Lord, +help Thou my unbelief." To robust, not sensitive minds, very much in +unity with themselves, the attitude seems contemptible, or at best +decently futile. Yet I cannot think it below the dignity of mankind, +conscious that it is not omniscient. The poet does fail in logic (In +Memoriam, cxx.) when he says - + + +"Let him, the wiser man who springs + Hereafter, up from childhood shape + His action like the greater ape, +But I was BORN to other things." + + +I am not well acquainted with the habits of the greater ape, but it +would probably be unwise, and perhaps indecent, to imitate him, even +if "we also are his offspring." We might as well revert to polyandry +and paint, because our Celtic or Pictish ancestors, if we had any, +practised the one and wore the other. However, petulances like the +verse on the greater ape are rare in In Memoriam. To declare that "I +would not stay" in life if science proves us to be "cunning casts in +clay," is beneath the courage of the Stoical philosophy. + +Theologically, the poem represents the struggle with doubts and hopes +and fears, which had been with Tennyson from his boyhood, as is +proved by the volume of 1830. But the doubts had exerted, probably, +but little influence on his happiness till the sudden stroke of loss +made life for a time seem almost unbearable unless the doubts were +solved. They WERE solved, or stoically set aside, in the Ulysses, +written in the freshness of grief, with the conclusion that we must +be + + + "Strong in will +To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." + + +But the gnawing of grief till it becomes a physical pain, the fever +fits of sorrow, the aching desiderium, bring back in many guises the +old questions. These require new attempts at answers, and are +answered, "the sad mechanic exercise" of verse allaying the pain. +This is the genesis of In Memoriam, not originally written for +publication but produced at last as a monument to friendship, and as +a book of consolation. + +No books of consolation can console except by sympathy; and in In +Memoriam sympathy and relief have been found, and will be found, by +many. Another, we feel, has trodden our dark and stony path, has +been shadowed by the shapes of dread which haunt our valley of +tribulation: a mind almost infinitely greater than ours has been our +fellow-sufferer. He has emerged from the darkness of the shadow of +death into the light, whither, as it seems to us, we can scarcely +hope to come. It is the sympathy and the example, I think, not the +speculations, mystical or scientific, which make In Memoriam, in more +than name, a book of consolation: even in hours of the sharpest +distress, when its technical beauties and wonderful pictures seem +shadowy and unreal, like the yellow sunshine and the woods of that +autumn day when a man learned that his friend was dead. No, it was +not the speculations and arguments that consoled or encouraged us. +We did not listen to Tennyson as to Mr Frederic Harrison's glorified +Anglican clergyman. We could not murmur, like the Queen of the May - + + +"That good man, the Laureate, has told tis words of peace." + + +What we valued was the poet's companionship. There was a young +reader to whom All along the Valley came as a new poem in a time of +recent sorrow. + + +"The two-and-thirty years were a mist that rolls away," + + +said the singer of In Memoriam, and in that hour it seemed as if none +could endure for two-and-thirty years the companionship of loss. But +the years have gone by, and have left + + + "Ever young the face that dwells +With reason cloister'd in the brain." {10} + + +In this way to many In Memoriam is almost a life-long companion: we +walk with Great-heart for our guide through the valley Perilous. + +In this respect In Memoriam is unique, for neither to its praise nor +dispraise is it to be compared with the other famous elegies of the +world. These are brief outbursts of grief--real, as in the hopeless +words of Catullus over his brother's tomb; or academic, like Milton's +Lycidas. We are not to suppose that Milton was heart-broken by the +death of young Mr King, or that Shelley was greatly desolated by the +death of Keats, with whom his personal relations had been slight, and +of whose poetry he had spoken evil. He was nobly stirred as a poet +by a poet's death--like Mr Swinburne by the death of Charles +Baudelaire; but neither Shelley nor Mr Swinburne was lamenting +dimidium animae suae, or mourning for a friend + + + "Dear as the mother to the son, +More than my brothers are to me." + + +The passion of In Memoriam is personal, is acute, is life-long, and +thus it differs from the other elegies. Moreover, it celebrates a +noble object, and thus is unlike the ambiguous affection, real or +dramatic, which informs the sonnets of Shakespeare. So the poem +stands alone, cloistered; not fiery with indignation, not breaking +into actual prophecy, like Shelley's Adonais; not capable, by reason +even of its meditative metre, of the organ music of Lycidas. Yet it +is not to be reckoned inferior to these because its aim and plan are +other than theirs. + + It is far from my purpose to "class" Tennyson, or to dispute about +his relative greatness when compared with Wordsworth or Byron, +Coleridge, Shelley, or Burns. He rated one song of Lovelace above +all his lyrics, and, in fact, could no more have written the +Cavalier's To Althea from Prison than Lovelace could have written the +Morte d'Arthur. "It is not reasonable, it is not fair," says Mr +Harrison, after comparing In Memoriam with Lycidas, "to compare +Tennyson with Milton," and it is not reasonable to compare Tennyson +with any poet whatever. Criticism is not the construction of a class +list. But we may reasonably say that In Memoriam is a noble poem, an +original poem, a poem which stands alone in literature. The +wonderful beauty, ever fresh, howsoever often read, of many stanzas, +is not denied by any critic. The marvel is that the same serene +certainty of art broods over even the stanzas which must have been +conceived while the sorrow was fresh. The second piece, + + +"Old yew, which graspest at the stones," + + +must have been composed soon after the stroke fell. Yet it is as +perfect as the proem of 1849. As a rule, the poetical expression of +strong emotion appears usually to clothe the memory of passion when +it has been softened by time. But here already "the rhythm, +phrasing, and articulation are entirely faultless, exquisitely clear, +melodious, and rare." {11} It were superfluous labour to point at +special beauties, at the exquisite rendering of nature; and copious +commentaries exist to explain the course of the argument, if a series +of moods is to be called an argument. One may note such a point as +that (xiv.) where the poet says that, were he to meet his friend in +life, + + +"I should not feel it to be strange." + + +It may have happened to many to mistake, for a section of a second, +the face of a stranger for the face seen only in dreams, and to find +that the recognition brings no surprise. + +Pieces of a character apart from the rest, and placed in a designed +sequence, are xcii., xciii., xcv. In the first the poet says - + + +"If any vision should reveal + Thy likeness, I might count it vain + As but the canker of the brain; +Yea, tho' it spake and made appeal + +To chances where our lots were cast + Together in the days behind, + I might but say, I hear a wind +Of memory murmuring the past. + +Yea, tho' it spake and bared to view + A fact within the coming year; + And tho' the months, revolving near, +Should prove the phantom-warning true, + +They might not seem thy prophecies, + But spiritual presentiments, + And such refraction of events +As often rises ere they rise." + + +The author thus shows himself difficile as to recognising the +personal identity of a phantasm; nor is it easy to see what mode of +proving his identity would be left to a spirit. The poet, therefore, +appeals to some perhaps less satisfactory experience:- + + +"Descend, and touch, and enter; hear + The wish too strong for words to name; + That in this blindness of the frame +My Ghost may feel that thine is near." + + +The third poem is the crown of In Memoriam, expressing almost such +things as are not given to man to utter:- + + + And all at once it seem'd at last +The living soul was flash'd on mine, + +And mine in this was wound, and whirl'd + About empyreal heights of thought, + And came on that which is, and caught +The deep pulsations of the world, + +AEonian music measuring out + The steps of Time--the shocks of Chance - + The blows of Death. At length my trance +Was cancell'd, stricken thro' with doubt. + +Vague words! but ah, how hard to frame + In matter-moulded forms of speech, + Or ev'n for intellect to reach +Thro' memory that which I became." + + +Experiences like this, subjective, and not matter for argument, were +familiar to Tennyson. Jowett said, "He was one of those who, though +not an upholder of miracles, thought that the wonders of Heaven and +Earth were never far absent from us." In The Mystic, Tennyson, when +almost a boy, had shown familiarity with strange psychological and +psychical conditions. Poems of much later life also deal with these, +and, more or less consciously, his philosophy was tinged, and his +confidence that we are more than "cunning casts in clay" was +increased, by phenomena of experience, which can only be evidence for +the mystic himself, if even for him. But this dim aspect of his +philosophy, of course, is "to the Greeks foolishness." + +His was a philosophy of his own; not a philosophy for disciples, and +"those that eddy round and round." It was the sum of his reflection +on the mass of his impressions. I have shown, by the aid of dates, +that it was not borrowed from Huxley, Mr Stopford Brooke, or the late +Duke of Argyll. But, no doubt, many of the ideas were "in the air," +and must have presented themselves to minds at once of religious +tendency, and attracted by the evolutionary theories which had always +existed as floating speculations, till they were made current coin by +the genius and patient study of Darwin. That Tennyson's opinions +between 1830 and 1840 were influenced by those of F. D. Maurice is +reckoned probable by Canon Ainger, author of the notice of the poet +in The Dictionary of National Biography. In the Life of Maurice, +Tennyson does not appear till 1850, and the two men were not at +Cambridge together. But Maurice's ideas, as they then existed, may +have reached Tennyson orally through Hallam and other members of the +Trinity set, who knew personally the author of Letters to a Quaker. +However, this is no question of scientific priority: to myself it +seems that Tennyson "beat his music out" for himself, as perhaps most +people do. Like his own Sir Percivale, "I know not all he meant." + +Among the opinions as to In Memoriam current at the time of its +publication Lord Tennyson notices those of Maurice and Robertson. +They "thought that the poet had made a definite step towards the +unification of the highest religion and philosophy with the +progressive science of the day." Neither science nor religion stands +still; neither stands now where it then did. Conceivably they are +travelling on paths which will ultimately coincide; but this opinion, +of course, must seem foolishness to most professors of science. +Bishop Westcott was at Cambridge when the book appeared: he is one +of Mr Harrison's possible sources of Tennyson's ideas. He recognised +the poet's "splendid faith (in the face of every difficulty) in the +growing purpose of the sum of life, and in the noble destiny of the +individual man." Ten years later Professor Henry Sidgwick, a mind +sufficiently sceptical, found in some lines of In Memoriam "the +indestructible and inalienable minimum of faith which humanity cannot +give up because it is necessary for life; and which I know that I, at +least so far as the man in me is deeper than the methodical thinker, +cannot give up." But we know that many persons not only do not find +an irreducible minimum of faith "necessary for life," but are highly +indignant and contemptuous if any one else ventures to suggest the +logical possibility of any faith at all. + +The mass of mankind will probably never be convinced unbelievers-- +nay, probably the backward or forward swing of the pendulum will +touch more convinced belief. But there always have been, since the +Rishis of India sang, superior persons who believe in nothing not +material--whatever the material may be. Tennyson was, it is said, +"impatient" of these esprits forts, and they are impatient of him. +It is an error to be impatient: we know not whither the logos may +lead us, or later generations; and we ought not to be irritated with +others because it leads them into what we think the wrong path. It +is unfortunate that a work of art, like In Memoriam, should arouse +theological or anti-theological passions. The poet only shows us the +paths by which his mind travelled: they may not be the right paths, +nor is it easy to trace them on a philosophical chart. He escaped +from Doubting Castle. Others may "take that for a hermitage," and be +happy enough in the residence. We are all determined by our bias: +Tennyson's is unconcealed. His poem is not a tract: it does not aim +at the conversion of people with the contrary bias, it is irksome, in +writing about a poet, to be obliged to discuss a philosophy which, +certainly, is not stated in the manner of Spinoza, but is merely the +equilibrium of contending forces in a single mind. + +The most famous review of In Memoriam is that which declared that +"these touching lines evidently come from the full heart of the widow +of a military man." This is only equalled, if equalled, by a recent +critique which treated a fresh edition of Jane Eyre as a new novel, +"not without power, in parts, and showing some knowledge of Yorkshire +local colour." + + + +CHAPTER VI.--AFTER IN MEMORIAM. + + + +On June 13 Tennyson married, at Shiplake, the object of his old, +long-tried, and constant affection. The marriage was still +"imprudent,"--eight years of then uncontested supremacy in English +poetry had not brought a golden harvest. Mr Moxon appears to have +supplied 300 pounds "in advance of royalties." The sum, so +contemptible in the eyes of first-rate modern novelists, was a +competence to Tennyson, added to his little pension and the epaves of +his patrimony. "The peace of God came into my life when I married +her," he said in later days. The poet made a charming copy of verses +to his friend, the Rev. Mr Rawnsley, who tied the knot, as he and his +bride drove to the beautiful village of Pangbourne. Thence they went +to the stately Clevedon Court, the seat of Sir Abraham Elton, hard by +the church where Arthur Hallam sleeps. The place is very ancient and +beautiful, and was a favourite haunt of Thackeray. They passed on to +Lynton, and to Glastonbury, where a collateral ancestor of Mrs +Tennyson's is buried beside King Arthur's grave, in that green valley +of Avilion, among the apple-blossoms. They settled for a while at +Tent Lodge on Coniston Water, in a land of hospitable Marshalls. + +After their return to London, on the night of November 18, Tennyson +dreamed that Prince Albert came and kissed him, and that he himself +said, "Very kind, but very German," which was very like him. Next +day he received from Windsor the offer of the Laureateship. He +doubted, and hesitated, but accepted. Since Wordsworth's death there +had, as usual, been a good deal of banter about the probable new +Laureate: examples of competitive odes exist in Bon Gaultier. That +by Tennyson is Anacreontic, but he was not really set on kissing the +Maids of Honour, as he is made to sing. Rogers had declined, on the +plea of extreme old age; but it was worthy of the great and good +Queen not to overlook the Nestor of English poets. For the rest, the +Queen looked for "a name bearing such distinction in the literary +world as to do credit to the appointment." In the previous century +the great poets had rarely been Laureates. But since Sir Walter +Scott declined the bays in favour of Southey, for whom, again, the +tale of bricks in the way of Odes was lightened, and when Wordsworth +succeeded Southey, the office became honourable. Tennyson gave it an +increase of renown, while, though in itself of merely nominal value, +it served his poems, to speak profanely, as an advertisement. New +editions of his books were at once in demand; while few readers had +ever heard of Mr Browning, already his friend, and already author of +Men and Women. + +The Laureateship brought the poet acquainted with the Queen, who was +to be his debtor in later days for encouragement and consolation. To +his Laureateship we owe, among other good things, the stately and +moving Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, a splendid heroic +piece, unappreciated at the moment. But Tennyson was, of course, no +Birthday poet. Since the exile of the House of Stuart our kings in +England have not maintained the old familiarity with many classes of +their subjects. Literature has not been fashionable at Court, and +Tennyson could in no age have been a courtier. We hear the +complaint, every now and then, that official honours are not +conferred (except the Laureateship) on men of letters. But most of +them probably think it rather distinguished not to be decorated, or +to carry titles borne by many deserving persons unvisited by the +Muses. Even the appointment to the bays usually provokes a great +deal of jealous and spiteful feeling, which would only be multiplied +if official honours were distributed among men of the pen. Perhaps +Tennyson's laurels were not for nothing in the chorus of dispraise +which greeted the Ode on the Duke of Wellington, and Maud. + +The year 1851 was chiefly notable for a tour to Italy, made immortal +in the beautiful poem of The Daisy, in a measure of the poet's own +invention. The next year, following on the Coup d'etat and the rise +of the new French empire, produced patriotic appeals to Britons to +"guard their own," which to a great extent former alien owners had +been unsuccessful in guarding from Britons. The Tennysons had lost +their first child at his birth: perhaps he is remembered in The +Grandmother, "the babe had fought for his life." In August 1852 the +present Lord Tennyson was born, and Mr Maurice was asked to be +godfather. The Wellington Ode was of November, and was met by "the +almost universal depreciation of the press,"--why, except because, as +I have just suggested, Tennyson was Laureate, it is impossible to +imagine. The verses were worthy of the occasion: more they could +not be. + +In the autumn of 1853 the poet visited Ardtornish on the Sound of +Mull, a beautiful place endeared to him who now writes by the +earliest associations. It chanced to him to pass his holidays there +just when Tennyson and Mr Palgrave had left--"Mr Tinsmith and Mr +Pancake," as Robert the boatman, a very black Celt, called them. +Being then nine years of age, I heard of a poet's visit, and asked, +"A real poet, like Sir Walter Scott?" with whom I then supposed that +"the Muse had gone away." "Oh, not like Sir Walter Scott, of +course," my mother told me, with loyalty unashamed. One can think of +the poet as Mrs Sellar, his hostess, describes him, beneath the limes +of the avenue at Acharn, planted, Mrs Sellar says, by a cousin of +Flora Macdonald. I have been told that the lady who planted the +lilies, if not the limes, was the famed Jacobite, Miss Jennie +Cameron, mentioned in Tom Jones. An English engraving of 1746 shows +the Prince between these two beauties, Flora and Jennie. + +"No one," says Mrs Sellar, "could have been more easy, simple, and +delightful," and indeed it is no marvel that in her society and that +of her husband, the Greek professor, and her cousin, Miss Cross, and +in such scenes, "he blossomed out in the most genial manner, making +us all feel as if he were an old friend." + +In November Tennyson took a house at Farringford, "as it was +beautiful and far from the haunts of men." There he settled to a +country existence in the society of his wife, his two children (the +second, Lionel, being in 1854 the baby), and there he composed Maud, +while the sound of the guns, in practice for the war of the Crimea, +boomed from the coast. In May Tennyson saw the artists, of schools +oddly various, who illustrated his poems. Millais, Rossetti, and +Holman Hunt gave the tone to the art, but Mr Horsley, Creswick, and +Mulgrave were also engaged. While Maud was being composed Tennyson +wrote The Charge of the Light Brigade; a famous poem, not in a manner +in which he was born to excel--at least in my poor opinion. "Some +one HAD blundered," and that line was the first fashioned and the +keynote of the poem; but, after all, "blundered" is not an exquisite +rhyme to "hundred." The poem, in any case, was most welcome to our +army in the Crimea, and is a spirited piece for recitation. + +In January 1855 Maud was finished; in April the poet copied it out +for the press, and refreshed himself by reading a very different +poem, The Lady of the Lake. The author, Sir Walter, had suffered, +like the hero of Maud, by an unhappy love affair, which just faintly +colours The Lady of the Lake by a single allusion, in the description +of Fitz-James's dreams:- + + +"Then,--from my couch may heavenly might +Chase that worst phantom of the night! - +Again returned the scenes of youth, +Of confident undoubting truth; +Again his soul he interchanged +With friends whose hearts were long estranged. +They come, in dim procession led, +The cold, the faithless, and the dead; +As warm each hand, each brow as gay, +As if they parted yesterday. +And doubt distracts him at the view - +Oh, were his senses false or true? +Dreamed he of death, or broken vow, +Or is it all a vision now?" + + +We learn from Lady Louisa Stuart, to whom Scott read these lines, +that they referred to his lost love. I cite the passage because the +extreme reticence of Scott, in his undying sorrow, is in contrast +with what Tennyson, after reading The Lady of the Lake, was putting +into the mouth of his complaining lover in Maud. + +We have no reason to suppose that Tennyson himself had ever to bewail +a faithless love. To be sure, the hero of Locksley Hall is in this +attitude, but then Locksley Hall is not autobiographical. Less +dramatic and impersonal in appearance are the stanzas - + + +"Come not, when I am dead, + To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave;" + + +and + + +"Child, if it were thine error or thy crime + I care no longer, being all unblest." + + +No biographer tells us whether this was a personal complaint or a +mere set of verses on an imaginary occasion. In In Memoriam Tennyson +speaks out concerning the loss of a friend. In Maud, as in Locksley +Hall, he makes his hero reveal the agony caused by the loss of a +mistress. There is no reason to suppose that the poet had ever any +such mischance, but many readers have taken Locksley Hall and Maud +for autobiographical revelations, like In Memoriam. They are, on the +other hand, imaginative and dramatic. They illustrate the pangs of +disappointed love of woman, pangs more complex and more rankling than +those inflicted by death. In each case, however, the poet, who has +sung so nobly the happiness of fortunate wedded loves, has chosen a +hero with whom we do not readily sympathise--a Hamlet in miniature, + + +"With a heart of furious fancies," + + +as in the old mad song. This choice, thanks to the popular +misconception, did him some harm. As a "monodramatic Idyll," a +romance in many rich lyric measures, Maud was at first excessively +unpopular. "Tennyson's Maud is Tennyson's Maudlin," said a satirist, +and "morbid," "mad," "rampant," and "rabid bloodthirstiness of soul," +were among the amenities of criticism. Tennyson hated war, but his +hero, at least, hopes that national union in a national struggle will +awake a nobler than the commercial spirit. Into the rights and +wrongs of our quarrel with Russia we are not to go. Tennyson, +rightly or wrongly, took the part of his country, and must "thole the +feud" of those high-souled citizens who think their country always in +the wrong--as perhaps it very frequently is. We are not to expect a +tranquil absence of bias in the midst of military excitement, when +very laudable sentiments are apt to misguide men in both directions. +In any case, political partisanship added to the enemies of the poem, +which was applauded by Henry Taylor, Ruskin, George Brimley, and +Jowett, while Mrs Browning sent consoling words from Italy. The poem +remained a favourite with the author, who chose passages from it +often, when persuaded to read aloud by friends; and modern criticism +has not failed to applaud the splendour of the verse and the subtlety +of the mad scenes, the passion of the love lyrics. + +These merits have ceased to be disputed, but, though a loyal +Tennysonian, I have never quite been able to reconcile myself to Maud +as a whole. The hero is an unwholesome young man, and not of an +original kind. He is un beau tenebreux of 1830. I suppose it has +been observed that he is merely The Master of Ravenswood in modern +costume, and without Lady Ashton. Her part is taken by Maud's +brother. The situations of the hero and of the Master (whose +acquaintance Thackeray never renewed after he lost his hat in the +Kelpie Flow) are nearly identical. The families and fathers of both +have been ruined by "the gray old wolf," and by Sir William Ashton, +representing the house of Stair. Both heroes live dawdling on, hard +by their lost ancestral homes. Both fall in love with the daughters +of the enemies of their houses. The loves of both are baffled, and +end in tragedy. Both are concerned in a duel, though the Master, on +his way to the ground, "stables his steed in the Kelpie Flow," and +the wooer in Maud shoots Lucy Ashton's brother,--I mean the brother +of Maud,--though duelling in England was out of date. Then comes an +interval of madness, and he recovers amid the patriotic emotions of +the ill-fated Crimean expedition. Both lovers are gloomy, though the +Master has better cause, for the Tennysonian hero is more comfortably +provided for than Edgar with his "man and maid," his Caleb and Mysie. +Finally, both The Bride of Lammermoor, which affected Tennyson so +potently in boyhood + + +("A merry merry bridal, +A merry merry day"), + + +and Maud, excel in passages rather than as wholes. + +The hero of Maud, with his clandestine wooing of a girl of sixteen, +has this apology, that the match had been, as it were, predestined, +and desired by the mother of the lady. Still, the brother did not +ill to be angry; and the peevishness of the hero against the brother +and the parvenu lord and rival strikes a jarring note. In England, +at least, the general sentiment is opposed to this moody, +introspective kind of young man, of whom Tennyson is not to be +supposed to approve. We do not feel certain that his man and maid +were "ever ready to slander and steal." That seems to be part of his +jaundiced way of looking at everything and everybody. He has even a +bad word for the "man-god" of modern days, - + + +"The man of science himself is fonder of glory, and vain, +An eye well-practised in nature, a spirit bounded and poor." + + +Rien n'est sacre for this cynic, who thinks himself a Stoic. Thus +Maud was made to be unpopular with the author's countrymen, who +conceived a prejudice against Maud's lover, described by Tennyson as +"a morbid poetic soul, . . . an egotist with the makings of a cynic." +That he is "raised to sanity" (still in Tennyson's words) "by a pure +and holy love which elevates his whole nature," the world failed to +perceive, especially as the sanity was only a brief lucid interval, +tempered by hanging about the garden to meet a girl of sixteen, +unknown to her relations. Tennyson added that "different phases of +passion in one person take the place of different characters," to +which critics replied that they wanted different characters, if only +by way of relief, and did not care for any of the phases of passion. +The learned Monsieur Janet has maintained that love is a disease like +another, and that nobody falls in love when in perfect health of mind +and body. This theory seems open to exception, but the hero of Maud +is unhealthy enough. At best and last, he only helps to give a +martial force a "send-off":- + + +"I stood on a giant deck and mixed my breath +With a loyal people shouting a battle-cry." + + +He did not go out as a volunteer, and probably the Crimean winters +brought him back to his original estate of cynical gloom--and very +naturally. + +The reconciliation with Life is not like the reconciliation of In +Memoriam. The poem took its rise in old lines, and most beautiful +lines, which Tennyson had contributed in 1837 to a miscellany:- + + +"O that 'twere possible, + After long grief and pain, +To find the arms of my true love + Round me once again." + + +Thence the poet, working back to find the origin of the situation, +encountered the ideas and the persons of Maud. + +I have tried to state the sources, in the general mind, of the +general dislike of Maud. The public, "driving at practice," +disapproved of the "criticism of life" in the poem; confused the +suffering narrator with the author, and neglected the poetry. "No +modern poem," said Jowett, "contains more lines that ring in the ears +of men. I do not know any verse out of Shakespeare in which the +ecstacy of love soars to such a height." With these comments we may +agree, yet may fail to follow Jowett when he says, "No poem since +Shakespeare seems to show equal power of the same kind, or equal +knowledge of human nature." Shakespeare could not in a narrative +poem have preferred the varying passions of one character to the +characters of many persons. + +Tennyson was "nettled at first," his son says, "by these captious +remarks of the 'indolent reviewers,' but afterwards he would take no +notice of them except to speak of them in a half-pitiful, half- +humorous, half-mournful manner." The besetting sin and error of the +critics was, of course, to confound Tennyson's hero with himself, as +if we confused Dickens with Pip. + +Like Aurora Leigh, Lucile, and other works, Maud is under the +disadvantage of being, practically, a novel of modern life in verse. +Criticised as a tale of modern life (and it was criticised in that +character), it could not be very highly esteemed. But the essence of +Maud, of course, lies in the poetical vehicle. Nobody can cavil at +the impressiveness of the opening stanzas - + + +"I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood"; + + +with the keynotes of colour and of desolation struck; the lips of the +hollow "dabbled with blood-red heath," the "red-ribb'd ledges," and +"the flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands"; and the contrast in the +picture of the child Maud - + + +"Maud the delight of the village, the ringing joy of the Hall." + + +The poem abounds in lines which live in the memory, as in the vernal +description - + + +"A million emeralds break from the ruby-budded lime"; + + +and the voice heard in the garden singing + + +"A passionate ballad gallant and gay," + + +as Lovelace's Althea, and the lines on the far-off waving of a white +hand, "betwixt the cloud and the moon." The lyric of + + +"Birds in the high Hall-garden + When twilight was falling, +Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud, + They were crying and calling," + + +was a favourite of the poet. + +"What birds were these?" he is said to have asked a lady suddenly, +when reading to a silent company. + +"Nightingales," suggested a listener, who did not probably remember +any other fowl that is vocal in the dusk. + +"No, they were rooks," answered the poet. + +"Come into the Garden, Maud," is as fine a love-song as Tennyson ever +wrote, with a triumphant ring, and a soaring exultant note. Then the +poem drops from its height, like a lark shot high in heaven; tragedy +comes, and remorse, and the beautiful interlude of the + + + "lovely shell, +Small and pure as a pearl." + + +Then follows the exquisite + + +"O that 'twere possible," + + +and the dull consciousness of the poem of madness, with its dumb +gnawing confusion of pain and wandering memory; the hero being +finally left, in the author's words, "sane but shattered." + +Tennyson's letters of the time show that the critics succeeded in +wounding him: it was not a difficult thing to do. Maud was +threatened with a broadside from "that pompholygous, broad-blown +Apollodorus, the gifted X." People who have read Aytoun's diverting +Firmilian, where Apollodorus plays his part, and who remember "gifted +Gilfillan" in Waverley, know who the gifted X. was. But X. was no +great authority south of Tay. + +Despite the almost unanimous condemnation by public critics, the +success of Maud enabled Tennyson to buy Farringford, so he must have +been better appreciated and understood by the world than by the +reviewers. + +In February 1850 Tennyson returned to his old Arthurian themes, "the +only big thing not done," for Milton had merely glanced at Arthur, +Dryden did not + + +"Raise the Table Round again," + + +and Blackmore has never been reckoned adequate. Vivien was first +composed as Merlin and Nimue, and then Geraint and Enid was adapted +from the Mabinogion, the Welsh collection of Marchen and legends, +things of widely different ages, now rather Celtic, or Brythonic, now +amplifications made under the influence of mediaeval French romance. +Enid was finished in Wales in August, and Tennyson learned Welsh +enough to be able to read the Mabinogion, which is much more of Welsh +than many Arthurian critics possess. The two first Idylls were +privately printed in the summer of 1857, being very rare and much +desired of collectors in this embryonic shape. In July Guinevere was +begun, in the middle, with Arthur's valedictory address to his erring +consort. In autumn Tennyson visited the late Duke of Argyll at +Inveraray: he was much attached to the Duke--unlike Professor +Huxley. Their love of nature, the Duke being as keen-eyed as the +poet was short-sighted, was one tie of union. The Indian Mutiny, or +at least the death of Havelock, was the occasion of lines which the +author was too wise to include in any of his volumes: the poem on +Lucknow was of later composition. + +Guinevere was completed in March 1858; and Tennyson met Mr Swinburne, +then very young. "What I particularly admired in him was that he did +not press upon me any verses of his own." Tennyson would have found +more to admire if he had pressed for a sight of the verses. Neither +he nor Mr Matthew Arnold was very encouraging to young poets: they +had no sons in Apollo, like Ben Jonson. But both were kept in a +perpetual state of apprehension by the army of versifiers who send +volumes by post, to whom that can only be said what Tennyson did say +to one of them, "As an amusement to yourself and your friends, the +writing it" (verse) "is all very well." It is the friends who do not +find it amusing, while the stranger becomes the foe. The psychology +of these pests of the Muses is bewildering. They do not seem to read +poetry, only to write it and launch it at unoffending strangers. If +they bought each other's books, all of them could afford to publish. + +The Master of Balliol, the most adviceful man, if one may use the +term, of his age, appears to have advised Tennyson to publish the +Idylls at once. There had been years of silence since Maud, and the +Master suspected that "mosquitoes" (reviewers) were the cause. +"There is a note needed to show the good side of human nature and to +condone its frailties which Thackeray will never strike." To others +it seems that Thackeray was eternally striking this note: at that +time in General Lambert, his wife, and daughters, not to speak of +other characters in The Virginians. Who does not condone the +frailties of Captain Costigan, and F. B., and the Chevalier Strong? +In any case, Tennyson took his own time, he was (1858) only beginning +Elaine. There is no doubt that Tennyson was easily pricked by +unsympathetic criticism, even from the most insignificant source, +and, as he confessed, he received little pleasure from praise. All +authors, without exception, are sensitive. A sturdier author wrote +that he would sometimes have been glad to meet his assailant "where +the muir-cock was bailie." We know how testily Wordsworth replied in +defence to the gentlest comments by Lamb. + +The Master of Balliol kept insisting, "As to the critics, their power +is not really great. . . . One drop of natural feeling in poetry or +the true statement of a single new fact is already felt to be of more +value than all the critics put together." Yet even critics may be in +the right, and of all great poets, Tennyson listened most obediently +to their censures, as we have seen in the case of his early poems. +His prolonged silences after the attacks of 1833 and 1855 were +occupied in work and reflection: Achilles was not merely sulking in +his tent, as some of his friends seem to have supposed. An epic in a +series of epic idylls cannot be dashed off like a romantic novel in +rhyme; and Tennyson's method was always one of waiting for maturity +of conception and execution. + +Mrs Tennyson, doubtless by her lord's desire, asked the Master (then +tutor of Balliol) to suggest themes. Old age was suggested, and is +treated in The Grandmother. Other topics were not handled. "I hold +most strongly," said the Master, "that it is the duty of every one +who has the good fortune to know a man of genius to do any trifling +service they can to lighten his work." To do every service in his +power to every man was the Master's life-long practice. He was not +much at home, his letters show, with Burns, to whom he seems to have +attributed John Anderson, my jo, John, while he tells an anecdote of +Burns composing Tam o' Shanter with emotional tears, which, if true +at all, is true of the making of To Mary in Heaven. If Burns wept +over Tam o' Shanter, the tears must have been tears of laughter. + +The first four Idylls of the King were prepared for publication in +the spring of 1859; while Tennyson was at work also on Pelleas and +Ettarre, and the Tristram cycle. In autumn he went on a tour to +Lisbon with Mr F. T. Palgrave and Mr Craufurd Grove. Returning, he +fell eagerly to reading an early copy of Darwin's Origin of Species, +the crown of his own early speculations on the theory of evolution. +"Your theory does not make against Christianity?" he asked Darwin +later (1868), who replied, "No, certainly not." But Darwin has +stated the waverings of his own mind in contact with a topic too high +for a priori reasoning, and only to be approached, if at all, on the +strength of the scientific method applied to facts which science, so +far, neglects, or denies, or "explains away," rather than explains. + +The Idylls, unlike Maud, were well received by the press, better by +the public, and best of all by friends like Thackeray, the Duke of +Argyll, the Master of Balliol, and Clough, while Ruskin showed some +reserve. The letter from Thackeray I cannot deny myself the pleasure +of citing from the Biography: it was written "in an ardour of claret +and gratitude," but posted some six weeks later:- + + +FOLKESTONE, September. +36 ONSLOW SQUARE, October. + +My Dear Old Alfred,--I owe you a letter of happiness and thanks. +Sir, about three weeks ago, when I was ill in bed, I read the Idylls +of the King, and I thought, "Oh, I must write to him now, for this +pleasure, this delight, this splendour of happiness which I have been +enjoying." But I should have blotted the sheets, 'tis ill writing on +one's back. The letter full of gratitude never went as far as the +post-office, and how comes it now? + +D'abord, a bottle of claret. (The landlord of the hotel asked me +down to the cellar and treated me.) Then afterwards sitting here, an +old magazine, Fraser's Magazine, 1850, and I come on a poem out of +The Princess which says, "I hear the horns of Elfland blowing, +blowing,"--no, it's "the horns of Elfland faintly blowing" (I have +been into my bedroom to fetch my pen and it has made that blot), and, +reading the lines, which only one man in the world could write, I +thought about the other horns of Elfland blowing in full strength, +and Arthur in gold armour, and Guinevere in gold hair, and all those +knights and heroes and beauties and purple landscapes and misty gray +lakes in which you have made me live. They seem like facts to me, +since about three weeks ago (three weeks or a month was it?) when I +read the book. It is on the table yonder, and I don't like, somehow, +to disturb it, but the delight and gratitude! You have made me as +happy as I was as a child with the Arabian Nights,--every step I have +walked in Elfland has been a sort of Paradise to me. (The landlord +gave TWO bottles of his claret and I think I drank the most) and here +I have been lying back in the chair and thinking of those delightful +Idylls, my thoughts being turned to you: what could I do but be +grateful to that surprising genius which has made me so happy? Do +you understand that what I mean is all true, and that I should break +out were you sitting opposite with a pipe in your mouth? Gold and +purple and diamonds, I say, gentlemen, and glory and love and honour, +and if you haven't given me all these why should I be in such an +ardour of gratitude? But I have had out of that dear book the +greatest delight that has ever come to me since I was a young man; to +write and think about it makes me almost young, and this I suppose is +what I'm doing, like an after-dinner speech. + +P.S.--I thought the "Grandmother" quite as fine. How can you at 50 +be doing things as well as at 35? + +October 16th.--(I should think six weeks after the writing of the +above.) + +The rhapsody of gratitude was never sent, and for a peculiar reason: +just about the time of writing I came to an arrangement with Smith & +Elder to edit their new magazine, and to have a contribution from T. +was the publishers' and editor's highest ambition. But to ask a man +for a favour, and to praise and bow down before him in the same page, +seemed to be so like hypocrisy, that I held my hand, and left this +note in my desk, where it has been lying during a little French- +Italian-Swiss tour which my girls and their papa have been making. + +Meanwhile S. E. & Co. have been making their own proposals to you, +and you have replied not favourably, I am sorry to hear; but now +there is no reason why you should not have my homages, and I am just +as thankful for the Idylls, and love and admire them just as much, as +I did two months ago when I began to write in that ardour of claret +and gratitude. If you can't write for us you can't. If you can by +chance some day, and help an old friend, how pleased and happy I +shall be! This however must be left to fate and your convenience: I +don't intend to give up hope, but accept the good fortune if it +comes. I see one, two, three quarterlies advertised to-day, as all +bringing laurels to laureatus. He will not refuse the private +tribute of an old friend, will he? You don't know how pleased the +girls were at Kensington t'other day to hear you quote their father's +little verses, and he too I daresay was not disgusted. He sends you +and yours his very best regards in this most heartfelt and artless + +(note of admiration)! +Always yours, my dear Alfred, +W. M. THACKERAY. + + +Naturally this letter gave Tennyson more pleasure than all the +converted critics with their favourable reviews. The Duke of Argyll +announced the conversion of Macaulay. The Master found Elaine "the +fairest, sweetest, purest love poem in the English language." As to +the whole, "The allegory in the distance GREATLY STRENGTHENS, ALSO +ELEVATES, THE MEANING OF THE POEM." + +Ruskin, like some other critics, felt "the art and finish in these +poems a little more than I like to feel it." Yet Guinevere and +Elaine had been rapidly written and little corrected. I confess to +the opinion that what a man does most easily is, as a rule, what he +does best. We know that the "art and finish" of Shakespeare were +spontaneous, and so were those of Tennyson. Perfection in art is +sometimes more sudden than we think, but then "the long preparation +for it,--that unseen germination, THAT is what we ignore and forget." +But he wisely kept his pieces by him for a long time, restudying them +with a fresh eye. The "unreality" of the subject also failed to +please Ruskin, as it is a stumbling-block to others. He wanted poems +on "the living present," a theme not selected by Homer, Shakespeare, +Spenser, Milton, Virgil, or the Greek dramatists, except (among +surviving plays) in the Persae of AEschylus. The poet who can +transfigure the hot present is fortunate, but most, and the greatest, +have visited the cool quiet purlieus of the past. + + + +CHAPTER VII.--THE IDYLLS OF THE KING. + + + +The Idylls may probably be best considered in their final shape: +they are not an epic, but a series of heroic idyllia of the same +genre as the heroic idyllia of Theocritus. He wrote long after the +natural age of national epic, the age of Homer. He saw the later +literary epic rise in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, a poem +with many beauties, if rather an archaistic and elaborate revival as +a whole. The time for long narrative poems, Theocritus appears to +have thought, was past, and he only ventured on the heroic idyllia of +Heracles, and certain adventures of the Argonauts. Tennyson, too, +from the first believed that his pieces ought to be short. +Therefore, though he had a conception of his work as a whole, a +conception long mused on, and sketched in various lights, he produced +no epic, only a series of epic idyllia. He had a spiritual +conception, "an allegory in the distance," an allegory not to be +insisted upon, though its presence was to be felt. No longer, as in +youth, did Tennyson intend Merlin to symbolise "the sceptical +understanding" (as if one were to "break into blank the gospel of" +Herr Kant), or poor Guinevere to stand for the Blessed Reformation, +or the Table Round for Liberal Institutions. Mercifully Tennyson +never actually allegorised Arthur in that fashion. Later he thought +of a musical masque of Arthur, and sketched a scenario. Finally +Tennyson dropped both the allegory of Liberal principles and the +musical masque in favour of the series of heroic idylls. There was +only a "parabolic drift" in the intention. "There is no single fact +or incident in the Idylls, however seemingly mystical, which cannot +be explained without any mystery or allegory whatever. The Idylls +ought to be read (and the right readers never dream of doing anything +else) as romantic poems, just like Browning's Childe Roland, in which +the wrong readers (the members of the Browning Society) sought for +mystic mountains and marvels. Yet Tennyson had his own +interpretation, "a dream of man coming into practical life and ruined +by one sin." That was his "interpretation," or "allegory in the +distance." + +People may be heard objecting to the suggestion of any spiritual +interpretation of the Arthur legends, and even to the existence of +elementary morality among the Arthurian knights and ladies. There +seems to be a notion that "bold bawdry and open manslaughter," as +Roger Ascham said, are the staple of Tennyson's sources, whether in +the mediaeval French, the Welsh, or in Malory's compilation, chiefly +from French sources. Tennyson is accused of "Bowdlerising" these, +and of introducing gentleness, courtesy, and conscience into a +literature where such qualities were unknown. I must confess myself +ignorant of any early and popular, or "primitive" literature, in +which human virtues, and the human conscience, do not play their +part. Those who object to Tennyson's handling of the great Arthurian +cycle, on the ground that he is too refined and too moral, must +either never have read or must long have forgotten even Malory's +romance. Thus we read, in a recent novel, that Lancelot was an homme +aux bonnes fortunes, whereas Lancelot was the most loyal of lovers. + +Among other critics, Mr Harrison has objected that the Arthurian +world of Tennyson "is not quite an ideal world. Therein lies the +difficulty. The scene, though not of course historic, has certain +historic suggestions and characters." It is not apparent who the +historic characters are, for the real Arthur is but a historic +phantasm. "But then, in the midst of so much realism, the knights, +from Arthur downwards, talk and act in ways with which we are +familiar in modern ethical and psychological novels, but which are as +impossible in real mediaeval knights as a Bengal tiger or a Polar +bear would be in a drawing-room." I confess to little acquaintance +with modern ethical novels; but real mediaeval knights, and still +more the knights of mediaeval romance, were capable of very ethical +actions. To halt an army for the protection and comfort of a +laundress was a highly ethical action. Perhaps Sir Redvers Buller +would do it: Bruce did. Mr Harrison accuses the ladies of the +Idylls of soul-bewildering casuistry, like that of women in +Middlemarch or Helbeck of Bannisdale. Now I am not reminded by +Guinevere, and Elaine, and Enid, of ladies in these ethical novels. +But the women of the mediaeval Cours d'Amour (the originals from whom +the old romancers drew) were nothing if not casuists. "Spiritual +delicacy" (as they understood it) was their delight. + +Mr Harrison even argues that Malory's men lived hot-blooded lives in +fierce times, "before an idea had arisen in the world of 'reverencing +conscience,' 'leading sweet lives,'" and so on. But he admits that +they had "fantastic ideals of 'honour' and 'love.'" As to +"fantastic," that is a matter of opinion, but to have ideals and to +live in accordance with them is to "reverence conscience", which the +heroes of the romances are said by Mr Harrison never to have had an +idea of doing. They are denied even "amiable words and courtliness." +Need one say that courtliness is the dominant note of mediaeval +knights, in history as in romance? With discourtesy Froissart would +"head the count of crimes." After a battle, he says, Scots knights +and English would thank each other for a good fight, "not like the +Germans." "And now, I dare say," said Malory's Sir Ector, "thou, Sir +Lancelot, wast the curtiest knight that ever bare shield, . . . and +thou wast the meekest man and the gentlest that ever ate in hall +among ladies." Observe Sir Lancelot in the difficult pass where the +Lily Maid offers her love: "Jesu defend me, for then I rewarded your +father and your brother full evil for their great goodness. . . . +But because, fair damsel, that ye love me as ye say ye do, I will, +for your good will and kindness, show you some goodness, . . . and +always while I live to be your true knight." Here are "amiable words +and courtesy." I cannot agree with Mr Harrison that Malory's book is +merely "a fierce lusty epic." That was not the opinion of its +printer and publisher, Caxton. He produced it as an example of "the +gentle and virtuous deeds that some knights used in these days, . . . +noble and renowned acts of humanity, gentleness, and chivalry. For +herein may be seen noble chivalry, courtesy, humanity, friendliness, +love, cowardice, murder, hate, virtue, and sin. Do after the good +and leave the evil." + +In reaction against the bold-faced heroines and sensual amours of +some of the old French romances, an ideal of exaggerated asceticism, +of stainless chastity, notoriously pervades the portion of Malory's +work which deals with the Holy Grail. Lancelot is distraught when he +finds that, by dint of enchantment, he has been made false to +Guinevere (Book XI. chap. viii.) After his dreaming vision of the +Holy Grail, with the reproachful Voice, Sir Lancelot said, "My sin +and my wickedness have brought me great dishonour, . . . and now I +see and understand that my old sin hindereth and shameth me." He was +human, the Lancelot of Malory, and "fell to his old love again," with +a heavy heart, and with long penance at the end. How such good +knights can be deemed conscienceless and void of courtesy one knows +not, except by a survival of the Puritanism of Ascham. But Tennyson +found in the book what is in the book--honour, conscience, courtesy, +and the hero - + + +"Whose honour rooted in dishonour stood, +And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true." + + +Malory's book, which was Tennyson's chief source, ends by being the +tragedy of the conscience of Lancelot. Arthur is dead, or "In Avalon +he groweth old." The Queen and Lancelot might sing, as Lennox +reports that Queen Mary did after Darnley's murder - + + +"Weel is me +For I am free." + + +"Why took they not their pastime?" Because conscience forbade, and +Guinevere sends her lover far from her, and both die in religion. +Thus Malory's "fierce lusty epic" is neither so lusty nor so fierce +but that it gives Tennyson his keynote: the sin that breaks the fair +companionship, and is bitterly repented. + +"The knights are almost too polite to kill each other," the critic +urges. In Malory they are sometimes quite too polite to kill each +other. Sir Darras has a blood-feud against Sir Tristram, and Sir +Tristram is in his dungeon. Sir Darras said, "Wit ye well that Sir +Darras shall never destroy such a noble knight as thou art in prison, +howbeit that thou hast slain three of my sons, whereby I was greatly +aggrieved. But now shalt thou go and thy fellows. . . . All that ye +did," said Sir Darras, "was by force of knighthood, and that was the +cause I would not put you to death" (Book IX. chap. xl.) + +Tennyson is accused of "emasculating the fierce lusty epic into a +moral lesson, as if it were to be performed in a drawing-room by an +academy of young ladies"--presided over, I daresay, by "Anglican +clergymen." I know not how any one who has read the Morte d'Arthur +can blame Tennyson in the matter. Let Malory and his sources be +blamed, if to be moral is to be culpable. A few passages apart, +there is no coarseness in Malory; that there are conscience, +courtesy, "sweet lives," "keeping down the base in man," "amiable +words," and all that Tennyson gives, and, in Mr Harrison's theory, +gives without authority in the romance, my quotations from Malory +demonstrate. They are chosen at a casual opening of his book. That +there "had not arisen in the world" "the idea of reverencing +conscience" before the close of the fifteenth century A.D. is an +extraordinary statement for a critic of history to offer. + +Mr Harrison makes his protest because "in the conspiracy of silence +into which Tennyson's just fame has hypnotised the critics, it is +bare honesty to admit defects." I think I am not hypnotised, and I +do not regard the Idylls as the crown of Tennyson's work. But it is +not his "defect" to have introduced generosity, gentleness, +conscience, and chastity where no such things occur in his sources. +Take Sir Darras: his position is that of Priam when he meets +Achilles, who slew his sons, except that Priam comes as a suppliant; +Sir Darras has Tristram in his hands, and may slay him. He is "too +polite," as Mr Harrison says: he is too good a Christian, or too +good a gentleman. One would not have given a tripod for the life of +Achilles had he fallen into the hands of Priam. But between 1200 +B.C. (or so) and the date of Malory, new ideas about "living sweet +lives" had arisen. Where and when do they not arise? A British +patrol fired on certain Swazis in time of truce. Their lieutenant, +who had been absent when this occurred, rode alone to the stronghold +of the Swazi king, Sekukoeni, and gave himself up, expecting death by +torture. "Go, sir," said the king; "we too are gentlemen." The idea +of a "sweet life" of honour had dawned even on Sekukoeni: it lights +up Malory's romance, and is reflected in Tennyson's Idylls, doubtless +with some modernism of expression. + +That the Idylls represent no real world is certain. That Tennyson +modernises and moralises too much, I willingly admit; what I deny is +that he introduces gentleness, courtesy, and conscience where his +sources have none. Indeed this is not a matter of critical opinion, +but of verifiable fact. Any one can read Malory and judge for +himself. But the world in which the Idylls move could not be real. +For more than a thousand years different races, different ages, had +taken hold of the ancient Celtic legends and spiritualised them after +their own manner, and moulded them to their own ideals. There may +have been a historical Arthur, Comes Britanniae, after the Roman +withdrawal. Ye Amherawdyr Arthur, "the Emperor Arthur," may have +lived and fought, and led the Brythons to battle. But there may also +have been a Brythonic deity, or culture hero, of the same, or of a +similar name, and myths about him may have been assigned to a real +Arthur. Again, the Arthur of the old Welsh legends was by no means +the blameless king--even in comparatively late French romances he is +not blameless. But the process of idealising him went on: still +incomplete in Malory's compilation, where he is often rather otiose +and far from royal. Tennyson, for his purpose, completed the +idealisation. + +As to Guinevere, she was not idealised in the old Welsh rhyme - + + +"Guinevere, Giant Ogurvan's daughter, +Naughty young, more naughty later." + + +Of Lancelot, and her passion for him, the old Welsh has nothing to +say. Probably Chretien de Troyes, by a happy blunder or +misconception, gave Lancelot his love and his pre-eminent part. +Lancelot was confused with Peredur, and Guinevere with the lady of +whom Peredur was in quest. The Elaine who becomes by Lancelot the +mother of Galahad "was Lancelot's rightful consort, as one recognises +in her name that of Elen, the Empress, whom the story of Peredur" +(Lancelot, by the confusion) "gives that hero to wife." The second +Elaine, the maid of Astolat, is another refraction from the original +Elen. As to the Grail, it may be a Christianised rendering of one or +another of the magical and mystic caldrons of Welsh or Irish legend. +There is even an apparent Celtic source of the mysterious fisher king +of the Grail romance. {12} + +A sketch of the evolution of the Arthurian legends might run thus:- + +Sixth to eighth century, growth of myth about an Arthur, real, or +supposed to be real. + +Tenth century, the Duchies of Normandy and Brittany are in close +relations; by the eleventh century Normans know Celtic Arthurian +stories. + +After, 1066, Normans in contact with the Celtic peoples of this +island are in touch with the Arthur tales. + +1130-1145, works on Arthurian matter by Geoffrey of Monmouth. + +1155, Wace's French translation of Geoffrey. + +1150-1182, Chretien de Troyes writes poems on Arthurian topics. + +French prose romances on Arthur, from, say, 1180 to 1250. Those +romances reach Wales, and modify, in translations, the original Welsh +legends, or, in part, supplant them. + +Amplifications and recastings are numerous. In 1485 Caxton publishes +Malory's selections from French and English sources, the whole being +Tennyson's main source, Le Mort d'Arthur. {13} + + +Thus the Arthur stories, originally Celtic, originally a mass of +semi-pagan legend, myth, and marchen, have been retold and rehandled +by Norman, Englishman, and Frenchman, taking on new hues, expressing +new ideals--religious, chivalrous, and moral. Any poet may work his +will on them, and Tennyson's will was to retain the chivalrous +courtesy, generosity, love, and asceticism, while dimly or brightly +veiling or illuminating them with his own ideals. After so many +processes, from folk-tale to modern idyll, the Arthurian world could +not be real, and real it is not. Camelot lies "out of space, out of +time," though the colouring is mainly that of the later chivalry, and +"the gleam" on the hues is partly derived from Celtic fancy of +various dates, and is partly Tennysonian. + +As the Idylls were finally arranged, the first, The Coming of Arthur, +is a remarkable proof of Tennyson's ingenuity in construction. Tales +about the birth of Arthur varied. In Malory, Uther Pendragon, the +Bretwalda (in later phrase) of Britain, besieges the Duke of +Tintagil, who has a fair wife, Ygerne, in another castle. Merlin +magically puts on Uther the shape of Ygerne's husband, and as her +husband she receives him. On that night Arthur is begotten by Uther, +and the Duke of Tintagil, his mother's husband, is slain in a sortie. +Uther weds Ygerne; both recognise Arthur as their child. However, by +the Celtic custom of fosterage the infant is intrusted to Sir Ector +as his dalt, or foster-child, and Uther falls in battle. Arthur is +later approven king by the adventure of drawing from the stone the +magic sword that no other king could move. This adventure answers to +Sigmund's drawing the sword from the Branstock, in the Volsunga Saga, +"Now men stand up, and none would fain be the last to lay hand to the +sword," apparently stricken into the pillar by Woden. "But none who +came thereto might avail to pull it out, for in nowise would it come +away howsoever they tugged at it, but now up comes Sigmund, King +Volsung's son, and sets hand to the sword, and pulls it from the +stock, even as if it lay loose before him." The incident in the +Arthurian as in the Volsunga legend is on a par with the Golden +Bough, in the sixth book of the AEneid. Only the predestined +champion, such as AEneas, can pluck, or break, or cut the bough - + + + "Ipse volens facilisque sequetur +Si te fata vocant." + + +All this ancient popular element in the Arthur story is disregarded +by Tennyson. He does not make Uther approach Ygerne in the semblance +of her lord, as Zeus approached Alcmena in the semblance of her +husband, Amphitryon. He neglects the other ancient test of the +proving of Arthur by his success in drawing the sword. The poet's +object is to enfold the origin and birth of Arthur in a spiritual +mystery. This is deftly accomplished by aid of the various versions +of the tale that reach King Leodogran when Arthur seeks the hand of +his daughter Guinevere, for Arthur's title to the crown is still +disputed, so Leodogran makes inquiries. The answers first leave it +dubious whether Arthur is son of Gorlois, husband of Ygerne, or of +Uther, who slew Gorlois and married her:- + + +"Enforced she was to wed him in her tears." + + +The Celtic custom of fosterage is overlooked, and Merlin gives the +child to Anton, not as the customary dalt, but to preserve the babe +from danger. Queen Bellicent then tells Leodogran, from the evidence +of Bleys, Merlin's master in necromancy, the story of Arthur's +miraculous advent. + + +"And down the wave and in the flame was borne +A naked babe, and rode to Merlin's feet, +Who stoopt and caught the babe, and cried 'The King! +Here is an heir for Uther!'" + + +But Merlin, when asked by Bellicent to corroborate the statement of +Bleys, merely + + +"Answer'd in riddling triplets of old time." + + +Finally, Leodogran's faith is confirmed by a vision. Thus +doubtfully, amidst rumour and portent, cloud and spiritual light, +comes Arthur: "from the great deep" he comes, and in as strange +fashion, at the end, "to the great deep he goes"--a king to be +accepted in faith or rejected by doubt. Arthur and his ideal are +objects of belief. All goes well while the knights hold that + + +"The King will follow Christ, and we the King, +In whom high God hath breathed a secret thing." + + +In history we find the same situation in the France of 1429 - + + +"The King will follow Jeanne, and we the King." + + +While this faith held, all went well; when the king ceased to follow, +the spell was broken,--the Maid was martyred. In this sense the poet +conceives the coming of Arthur, a sign to be spoken against, a test +of high purposes, a belief redeeming and ennobling till faith fails, +and the little rift within the lute, the love of Lancelot and +Guinevere, makes discord of the music. As matter of legend, it is to +be understood that Guinevere did not recognise Arthur when first he +rode below her window - + + +"Since he neither wore on helm or shield +The golden symbol of his kinglihood." + + +But Lancelot was sent to bring the bride - + + + "And return'd +Among the flowers, in May, with Guinevere." + + +Then their long love may have begun, as in the story of Tristram sent +to bring Yseult to be the bride of King Mark. In Malory, however, +Lancelot does not come on the scene till after Arthur's wedding and +return from his conquering expedition to Rome. Then Lancelot wins +renown, "wherefore Queen Guinevere had him in favour above all other +knights; and in certain he loved the Queen again above all other +ladies damosels of his life." Lancelot, as we have seen, is +practically a French creation, adopted to illustrate the chivalrous +theory of love, with its bitter fruit. Though not of the original +Celtic stock of legend, Sir Lancelot makes the romance what it is, +and draws down the tragedy that originally turned on the sin of +Arthur himself, the sin that gave birth to the traitor Modred. But +the mediaeval romancers disguised that form of the story, and the +process of idealising Arthur reached such heights in the middle ages +that Tennyson thought himself at liberty to paint the Flos Regum, +"the blameless King." He followed the Brut ab Arthur. "In short, +God has not made since Adam was, the man more perfect than Arthur." +This is remote from the Arthur of the oldest Celtic legends, but +justifies the poet in adapting Arthur to the ideal hero of the +Idylls:- + + +"Ideal manhood closed in real man, +Rather than that grey king, whose name, a ghost, +Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain-peak, +And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still; or him +Of Geoffrey's book, or him of Malleor's, one +Touched by the adulterous finger of a time +That hovered between war and wantonness, +And crownings and dethronements." + + +The poetical beauties of The Coming of Arthur excel those of Gareth +and Lynette. The sons of Lot and Bellicent seem to have been +originally regarded as the incestuous offspring of Arthur and his +sister, the wife of King Lot. Next it was represented that Arthur +was ignorant of the relationship. Mr Rhys supposes that the mythical +scandal (still present in Malory as a sin of ignorance) arose from +blending the Celtic Arthur (as Culture Hero) with an older divine +personage, such as Zeus, who marries his sister Hera. Marriages of +brother and sister are familiar in the Egyptian royal house, and that +of the Incas. But the poet has a perfect right to disregard a +scandalous myth which, obviously crystallised later about the figure +of the mythical Celtic Arthur, was an incongruous accretion to his +legend. Gareth, therefore, is merely Arthur's nephew, not son, in +the poem, as are Gawain and the traitor Modred. The story seems to +be rather mediaeval French than Celtic--a mingling of the spirit of +fabliau and popular fairy tale. The poet has added to its lightness, +almost frivolity, the description of the unreal city of Camelot, +built to music, as when + + +"Ilion, like a mist, rose into towers." + + +He has also brought in the allegory of Death, which, when faced, +proves to be "a blooming boy" behind the mask. The courtesy and +prowess of Lancelot lead up to the later development of his +character. + +In The Marriage of Geraint, a rumour has already risen about Lancelot +and the Queen, darkening the Court, and presaging + + +"The world's loud whisper breaking into storm." + + +For this reason Geraint removes Enid from Camelot to his own land-- +the poet thus early leading up to the sin and the doom of Lancelot. +But this motive does not occur in the Welsh story of Enid and +Geraint, which Tennyson has otherwise followed with unwonted +closeness. The tale occurs in French romances in various forms, but +it appears to have returned, by way of France and coloured with +French influences, to Wales, where it is one of the later Mabinogion. +The characters are Celtic, and Nud, father of Edyrn, Geraint's +defeated antagonist, appears to be recognised by Mr Rhys as "the +Celtic Zeus." The manners and the tournaments are French. In the +Welsh tale Geraint and Enid are bedded in Arthur's own chamber, which +seems to be a symbolic commutation of the jus primae noctis a custom +of which the very existence is disputed. This unseemly antiquarian +detail, of course, is omitted in the Idyll. + +An abstract of the Welsh tale will show how closely Tennyson here +follows his original. News is brought into Arthur's Court of the +appearance of a white stag. The king arranges a hunt, and Guinevere +asks leave to go and watch the sport. Next morning she cannot be +wakened, though the tale does not aver, like the Idyll, that she was + + +"Lost in sweet dreams, and dreaming of her love +For Lancelot." + + +Guinevere wakes late, and rides through a ford of Usk to the hunt. +Geraint follows, "a golden-hilted sword was at his side, and a robe +and a surcoat of satin were upon him, and two shoes of leather upon +his feet, and around him was a scarf of blue purple, at each corner +of which was a golden apple":- + + +"But Guinevere lay late into the morn, +Lost in sweet dreams, and dreaming of her love +For Lancelot, and forgetful of the hunt; +But rose at last, a single maiden with her, +Took horse, and forded Usk, and gain'd the wood; +There, on a little knoll beside it, stay'd +Waiting to hear the hounds; but heard instead +A sudden sound of hoofs, for Prince Geraint, +Late also, wearing neither hunting-dress +Nor weapon, save a golden-hilted brand, +Came quickly flashing thro' the shallow ford +Behind them, and so gallop'd up the knoll. +A purple scarf, at either end whereof +There swung an apple of the purest gold, +Sway'd round about him, as he gallop'd up +To join them, glancing like a dragon-fly +In summer suit and silks of holiday." + + +The encounter with the dwarf, the lady, and the knight follows. The +prose of the Mabinogi may be compared with the verse of Tennyson:- + + +"Geraint," said Gwenhwyvar, "knowest thou the name of that tall +knight yonder?" "I know him not," said he, "and the strange armour +that he wears prevents my either seeing his face or his features." +"Go, maiden," said Gwenhwyvar, "and ask the dwarf who that knight +is." Then the maiden went up to the dwarf; and the dwarf waited for +the maiden, when he saw her coming towards him. And the maiden +inquired of the dwarf who the knight was. "I will not tell thee," he +answered. "Since thou art so churlish as not to tell me," said she, +"I will ask him himself." "Thou shalt not ask him, by my faith," +said he. "Wherefore?" said she. "Because thou art not of honour +sufficient to befit thee to speak to my Lord." Then the maiden +turned her horse's head towards the knight, upon which the dwarf +struck her with the whip that was in his hand across the face and the +eyes, until the blood flowed forth. And the maiden, through the hurt +she received from the blow, returned to Gwenhwyvar, complaining of +the pain. "Very rudely has the dwarf treated thee," said Geraint. +"I will go myself to know who the knight is." "Go," said Gwenhwyvar. +And Geraint went up to the dwarf. "Who is yonder knight?" said +Geraint. "I will not tell thee," said the dwarf. "Then will I ask +him himself," said he. "That wilt thou not, by my faith," said the +dwarf; "thou art not honourable enough to speak with my Lord." Said +Geraint, "I have spoken with men of equal rank with him." And he +turned his horse's head towards the knight; but the dwarf overtook +him, and struck him as he had done the maiden, so that the blood +coloured the scarf that Geraint wore. Then Geraint put his hand upon +the hilt of his sword, but he took counsel with himself, and +considered that it would be no vengeance for him to slay the dwarf, +and to be attacked unarmed by the armed knight, so he returned to +where Gwenhwyvar was. + + + "And while they listen'd for the distant hunt, +And chiefly for the baying of Cavall, +King Arthur's hound of deepest mouth, there rode +Full slowly by a knight, lady, and dwarf; +Whereof the dwarf lagg'd latest, and the knight +Had vizor up, and show'd a youthful face, +Imperious, and of haughtiest lineaments. +And Guinevere, not mindful of his face +In the King's hall, desired his name, and sent +Her maiden to demand it of the dwarf; +Who being vicious, old and irritable, +And doubling all his master's vice of pride, +Made answer sharply that she should not know. +'Then will I ask it of himself,' she said. +'Nay, by my faith, thou shalt not,' cried the dwarf; +'Thou art not worthy ev'n to speak of him'; +And when she put her horse toward the knight, +Struck at her with his whip, and she return'd +Indignant to the Queen; whereat Geraint +Exclaiming, 'Surely I will learn the name,' +Made sharply to the dwarf, and ask'd it of him, +Who answer'd as before; and when the Prince +Had put his horse in motion toward the knight, +Struck at him with his whip, and cut his cheek. +The Prince's blood spirted upon the scarf, +Dyeing it; and his quick, instinctive hand +Caught at the hilt, as to abolish him: +But he, from his exceeding manfulness +And pure nobility of temperament, +Wroth to be wroth at such a worm, refrain'd +From ev'n a word." + + +The self-restraint of Geraint, who does not slay the dwarf, + + + "From his exceeding manfulness +And pure nobility of temperament," + + +may appear "too polite," and too much in accord with the still +undiscovered idea of "leading sweet lives." However, the uninvented +idea does occur in the Welsh original: "Then Geraint put his hand +upon the hilt of his sword, but he took counsel with himself, and +considered that it would be no vengeance for him to slay the dwarf," +while he also reflects that he would be "attacked unarmed by the +armed knight." Perhaps Tennyson may be blamed for omitting this +obvious motive for self-restraint. Geraint therefore follows the +knight in hope of finding arms, and arrives at the town all busy with +preparations for the tournament of the sparrow-hawk. This was a +challenge sparrow-hawk: the knight had won it twice, and if he won +it thrice it would be his to keep. The rest, in the tale, is exactly +followed in the Idyll. Geraint is entertained by the ruined Yniol. +The youth bears the "costrel" full of "good purchased mead" (the +ruined Earl not brewing for himself), and Enid carries the manchet +bread in her veil, "old, and beginning to be worn out." All +Tennyson's own is the beautiful passage - + + + "And while he waited in the castle court, +The voice of Enid, Yniol's daughter, rang +Clear thro' the open casement of the hall, +Singing; and as the sweet voice of a bird, +Heard by the lander in a lonely isle, +Moves him to think what kind of bird it is +That sings so delicately clear, and make +Conjecture of the plumage and the form; +So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint; +And made him like a man abroad at morn +When first the liquid note beloved of men +Comes flying over many a windy wave +To Britain, and in April suddenly +Breaks from a coppice gemm'd with green and red, +And he suspends his converse with a friend, +Or it may be the labour of his hands, +To think or say, 'There is the nightingale'; +So fared it with Geraint, who thought and said, +'Here, by God's grace, is the one voice for me.'" + + +Yniol frankly admits in the tale that he was in the wrong in the +quarrel with his nephew. The poet, however, gives him the right, as +is natural. The combat is exactly followed in the Idyll, as is +Geraint's insistence in carrying his bride to Court in her faded +silks. Geraint, however, leaves Court with Enid, not because of the +scandal about Lancelot, but to do his duty in his own country. He +becomes indolent and uxorious, and Enid deplores his weakness, and +awakes his suspicions, thus:- + + +And one morning in the summer time they were upon their couch, and +Geraint lay upon the edge of it. And Enid was without sleep in the +apartment which had windows of glass. And the sun shone upon the +couch. And the clothes had slipped from off his arms and his breast, +and he was asleep. Then she gazed upon the marvellous beauty of his +appearance, and she said, "Alas, and am I the cause that these arms +and this breast have lost their glory and the warlike fame which they +once so richly enjoyed!" And as she said this, the tears dropped +from her eyes, and they fell upon his breast. And the tears she +shed, and the words she had spoken, awoke him; and another thing +contributed to awaken him, and that was the idea that it was not in +thinking of him that she spoke thus, but that it was because she +loved some other man more than him, and that she wished for other +society, and thereupon Geraint was troubled in his mind, and he +called his squire; and when he came to him, "Go quickly," said he, +"and prepare my horse and my arms, and make them ready. And do thou +arise," said he to Enid, "and apparel thyself; and cause thy horse to +be accoutred, and clothe thee in the worst riding-dress that thou +hast in thy possession. And evil betide me," said he, "if thou +returnest here until thou knowest whether I have lost my strength so +completely as thou didst say. And if it be so, it will then be easy +for thee to seek the society thou didst wish for of him of whom thou +wast thinking." So she arose, and clothed herself in her meanest +garments. "I know nothing, Lord," said she, "of thy meaning." +"Neither wilt thou know at this time," said he. + + + "At last, it chanced that on a summer morn +(They sleeping each by either) the new sun +Beat thro' the blindless casement of the room, +And heated the strong warrior in his dreams; +Who, moving, cast the coverlet aside, +And bared the knotted column of his throat, +The massive square of his heroic breast, +And arms on which the standing muscle sloped, +As slopes a wild brook o'er a little stone, +Running too vehemently to break upon it. +And Enid woke and sat beside the couch, +Admiring him, and thought within herself, +Was ever man so grandly made as he? +Then, like a shadow, past the people's talk +And accusation of uxoriousness +Across her mind, and bowing over him, +Low to her own heart piteously she said: + + 'O noble breast and all-puissant arms, +Am I the cause, I the poor cause that men +Reproach you, saying all your force is gone? +I AM the cause, because I dare not speak +And tell him what I think and what they say. +And yet I hate that he should linger here; +I cannot love my lord and not his name. +Far liefer had I gird his harness on him, +And ride with him to battle and stand by, +And watch his mightful hand striking great blows +At caitiffs and at wrongers of the world. +Far better were I laid in the dark earth, +Not hearing any more his noble voice, +Not to be folded more in these dear arms, +And darken'd from the high light in his eyes, +Than that my lord thro' me should suffer shame. +Am I so bold, and could I so stand by, +And see my dear lord wounded in the strife, +Or maybe pierced to death before mine eyes, +And yet not dare to tell him what I think, +And how men slur him, saying all his force +Is melted into mere effeminacy? +O me, I fear that I am no true wife.' + + Half inwardly, half audibly she spoke, +And the strong passion in her made her weep +True tears upon his broad and naked breast, +And these awoke him, and by great mischance +He heard but fragments of her later words, +And that she fear'd she was not a true wife. +And then he thought, 'In spite of all my care, +For all my pains, poor man, for all my pains, +She is not faithful to me, and I see her +Weeping for some gay knight in Arthur's hall.' +Then tho' he loved and reverenced her too much +To dream she could be guilty of foul act, +Right thro' his manful breast darted the pang +That makes a man, in the sweet face of her +Whom he loves most, lonely and miserable. +At this he hurl'd his huge limbs out of bed, +And shook his drowsy squire awake and cried, +'My charger and her palfrey'; then to her, +'I will ride forth into the wilderness; +For tho' it seems my spurs are yet to win, +I have not fall'n so low as some would wish. +And thou, put on thy worst and meanest dress +And ride with me.' And Enid ask'd, amazed, +'If Enid errs, let Enid learn her fault.' +But he, 'I charge thee, ask not, but obey.' +Then she bethought her of a faded silk, +A faded mantle and a faded veil, +And moving toward a cedarn cabinet, +Wherein she kept them folded reverently +With sprigs of summer laid between the folds, +She took them, and array'd herself therein, +Remembering when first he came on her +Drest in that dress, and how he loved her in it, +And all her foolish fears about the dress, +And all his journey to her, as himself +Had told her, and their coming to the court." + + +Tennyson's + + +"Arms on which the standing muscle sloped, +As slopes a wild brook o'er a little stone, +Running too vehemently to break upon it," + + +is suggested perhaps by Theocritus--"The muscles on his brawny arms +stood out like rounded rocks that the winter torrent has rolled and +worn smooth, in the great swirling stream" (Idyll xxii.) + +The second part of the poem follows the original less closely. Thus +Limours, in the tale, is not an old suitor of Enid; Edyrn does not +appear to the rescue; certain cruel games, veiled in a magic mist, +occur in the tale, and are omitted by the poet; "Gwyffert petit, so +called by the Franks, whom the Cymry call the Little King," in the +tale, is not a character in the Idyll, and, generally, the gross +Celtic exaggerations of Geraint's feats are toned down by Tennyson. +In other respects, as when Geraint eats the mowers' dinner, the tale +supplies the materials. But it does not dwell tenderly on the +reconciliation. The tale is more or less in the vein of "patient +Grizel," and he who told it is more concerned with the fighting than +with amoris redintegratio, and the sufferings of Enid. The Idyll is +enriched with many beautiful pictures from nature, such as this:- + + +"But at the flash and motion of the man +They vanish'd panic-stricken, like a shoal +Of darting fish, that on a summer morn +Adown the crystal dykes at Camelot +Come slipping o'er their shadows on the sand, +But if a man who stands upon the brink +But lift a shining hand against the sun, +There is not left the twinkle of a fin +Betwixt the cressy islets white in flower; +So, scared but at the motion of the man, +Fled all the boon companions of the Earl, +And left him lying in the public way." + + +In Balin and Balan Tennyson displays great constructive power, and +remarkable skill in moulding the most recalcitrant materials. Balin +or Balyn, according to Mr Rhys, is the Belinus of Geoffrey of +Monmouth, "whose name represents the Celtic divinity described in +Latin as Apollo Belenus or Belinus." {14} In Geoffrey, Belinus, +euphemerised, or reduced from god to hero, has a brother, Brennius, +the Celtic Bran, King of Britain from Caithness to the Humber. +Belinus drives Bran into exile. "Thus it is seen that Belinus or +Balyn was, mythologically speaking, the natural enemy" (as Apollo +Belinus, the radiant god) "of the dark divinity Bran or Balan." + +If this view be correct, the two brothers answer to the good and bad +principles of myths like that of the Huron Iouskeha the Sun, and +Anatensic the Moon, or rather Taouiscara and Iouskeha, the hostile +brothers, Black and White. {15} These mythical brethren are, in +Malory, two knights of Northumberland, Balin the wild and Balan. +Their adventures are mixed up with a hostile Lady of the Lake, whom +Balin slays in Arthur's presence, with a sword which none but Balin +can draw from sheath; and with an evil black-faced knight Garlon, +invisible at will, whom Balin slays in the castle of the knight's +brother, King Pellam. Pursued from room to room by Pellam, Balin +finds himself in a chamber full of relics of Joseph of Arimathea. +There he seizes a spear, the very spear with which the Roman soldier +pierced the side of the Crucified, and wounds Pellam. The castle +falls in ruins "through that dolorous stroke." Pellam becomes the +maimed king, who can only be healed by the Holy Grail. Apparently +Celtic myths of obscure antiquity have been adapted in France, and +interwoven with fables about Joseph of Arimathea and Christian +mysteries. It is not possible here to go into the complicated +learning of the subject. In Malory, Balin, after dealing the +dolorous stroke, borrows a strange shield from a knight, and, thus +accoutred, meets his brother Balan, who does not recognise him. They +fight, both die and are buried in one tomb, and Galahad later +achieves the adventure of winning Balin's sword. "Thus endeth the +tale of Balyn and of Balan, two brethren born in Northumberland, good +knights," says Malory, simply, and unconscious of the strange +mythological medley under the coat armour of romance. + +The materials, then, seemed confused and obdurate, but Tennyson works +them into the course of the fatal love of Lancelot and Guinevere, and +into the spiritual texture of the Idylls. Balin has been expelled +from Court for the wildness that gives him his name, Balin le +Sauvage. He had buffeted a squire in hall. He and Balan await all +challengers beside a well. Arthur encounters and dismounts them. +Balin devotes himself to self-conquest. Then comes tidings that +Pellam, of old leagued with Lot against Arthur, has taken to +religion, collects relics, claims descent from Joseph of Arimathea, +and owns the sacred spear that pierced the side of Christ. But +Garlon is with him, the knight invisible, who appears to come from an +Irish source, or at least has a parallel in Irish legend. This +Garlon has an unknightly way of killing men by viewless blows from +the rear. Balan goes to encounter Garlon. Balin remains, learning +courtesy, modelling himself on Lancelot, and gaining leave to bear +Guinevere's Crown Matrimonial for his cognisance,--which, of course, +Balan does not know, - + + +"As golden earnest of a better life." + + +But Balin sees reason to think that Lancelot and Guinevere love even +too well. + + + "Then chanced, one morning, that Sir Balin sat +Close-bower'd in that garden nigh the hall. +A walk of roses ran from door to door; +A walk of lilies crost it to the bower: +And down that range of roses the great Queen +Came with slow steps, the morning on her face; +And all in shadow from the counter door +Sir Lancelot as to meet her, then at once, +As if he saw not, glanced aside, and paced +The long white walk of lilies toward the bower. +Follow'd the Queen; Sir Balin heard her 'Prince, +Art thou so little loyal to thy Queen, +As pass without good morrow to thy Queen?' +To whom Sir Lancelot with his eyes on earth, +'Fain would I still be loyal to the Queen.' +'Yea so,' she said, 'but so to pass me by - +So loyal scarce is loyal to thyself, +Whom all men rate the king of courtesy. +Let be: ye stand, fair lord, as in a dream.' + + Then Lancelot with his hand among the flowers, +'Yea--for a dream. Last night methought I saw +That maiden Saint who stands with lily in hand +In yonder shrine. All round her prest the dark, +And all the light upon her silver face +Flow'd from the spiritual lily that she held. +Lo! these her emblems drew mine eyes--away: +For see, how perfect-pure! As light a flush +As hardly tints the blossom of the quince +Would mar their charm of stainless maidenhood.' + + 'Sweeter to me,' she said, 'this garden rose +Deep-hued and many-folded sweeter still +The wild-wood hyacinth and the bloom of May. +Prince, we have ridd'n before among the flowers +In those fair days--not all as cool as these, +Tho' season-earlier. Art thou sad? or sick? +Our noble King will send thee his own leech - +Sick? or for any matter anger'd at me?' + + Then Lancelot lifted his large eyes; they dwelt +Deep-tranced on hers, and could not fall: her hue +Changed at his gaze: so turning side by side +They past, and Balin started from his bower. + + 'Queen? subject? but I see not what I see. +Damsel and lover? hear not what I hear. +My father hath begotten me in his wrath. +I suffer from the things before me, know, +Learn nothing; am not worthy to be knight; +A churl, a clown!' and in him gloom on gloom +Deepen'd: he sharply caught his lance and shield, +Nor stay'd to crave permission of the King, +But, mad for strange adventure, dash'd away." + + +Balin is "disillusioned," his faith in the Ideal is shaken if not +shattered. He rides at adventure. Arriving at the half-ruined +castle of Pellam, that dubious devotee, he hears Garlon insult +Guinevere, but restrains himself. Next day, again insulted for +bearing "the crown scandalous" on his shield, he strikes Garlon down, +is pursued, seizes the sacred spear, and escapes. Vivien meets him +in the woods, drops scandal in his ears, and so maddens him that he +defaces his shield with the crown of Guinevere. Her song, and her +words, + + + "This fire of Heaven, +This old sun-worship, boy, will rise again, +And beat the cross to earth, and break the King +And all his Table," + + +might be forced into an allegory of the revived pride of life, at the +Renaissance and after. The maddened yells of Balin strike the ear of +Balan, who thinks he has met the foul knight Garlon, that + + +"Tramples on the goodly shield to show +His loathing of our Order and the Queen." + + +They fight, fatally wound, and finally recognise each other: Balan +trying to restore Balin's faith in Guinevere, who is merely slandered +by Garlon and Vivien. Balin acknowledges that his wildness has been +their common bane, and they die, "either locked in either's arms." + +There is nothing in Malory, nor in any other source, so far as I am +aware, which suggested to Tennyson the clou of the situation--the use +of Guinevere's crown as a cognisance by Balin. This device enables +the poet to weave the rather confused and unintelligible adventures +of Balin and Balan into the scheme, and to make it a stage in the +progress of his fable. That Balin was reckless and wild Malory bears +witness, but his endeavours to conquer himself and reach the ideal +set by Lancelot are Tennyson's addition, with all the tragedy of +Balin's disenchantment and despair. The strange fantastic house of +Pellam, full of the most sacred things, + + +"In which he scarce could spy the Christ for Saints," + + +yet sheltering the human fiend Garlon, is supplied by Malory, whose +predecessors probably blended more than one myth of the old Cymry +into the romance, washed over with Christian colouring. As Malory +tells this part of the tale it is perhaps more strange and effective +than in the Idyll. The introduction of Vivien into this adventure is +wholly due to Tennyson: her appearance here leads up to her triumph +in the poem which follows, Merlin and Vivien. + +The nature and origin of Merlin are something of a mystery. Hints +and rumours of Merlin, as of Arthur, stream from hill and grave as +far north as Tweedside. If he was a historical person, myths of +magic might crystallise round him, as round Virgil in Italy. The +process would be the easier in a country where the practices of +Druidry still lingered, and revived after the retreat of the Romans. +The mediaeval romancers invented a legend that Merlin was a virgin- +born child of Satan. In Tennyson he may be guessed to represent the +fabled esoteric lore of old religions, with their vague pantheisms, +and such magic as the tapas of Brahmanic legends. He is wise with a +riddling evasive wisdom: the builder of Camelot, the prophet, a +shadow of Druidry clinging to the Christian king. His wisdom cannot +avail him: if he beholds "his own mischance with a glassy +countenance," he cannot avoid his shapen fate. He becomes assotted +of Vivien, and goes open-eyed to his doom. + +The enchantress, Vivien, is one of that dubious company of Ladies of +the Lake, now friendly, now treacherous. Probably these ladies are +the fairies of popular Celtic tradition, taken up into the more +elaborate poetry of Cymric literature and mediaeval romance. Mr Rhys +traces Vivien, or Nimue, or Nyneue, back, through a series of +palaeographic changes and errors, to Rhiannon, wife of Pwyll, a kind +of lady of the lake he thinks, but the identification is not very +satisfactory. Vivien is certainly "one of the damsels of the lake" +in Malory, and the damsels of the lake seem to be lake fairies, with +all their beguilements and strange unstable loves. "And always +Merlin lay about the lady to have her maidenhood, and she was ever +passing weary of him, and fain would have been delivered of him, for +she was afraid of him because he was a devil's son. . . . So by her +subtle working she made Merlin to go under that stone to let her wit +of the marvels there, but she wrought so there for him that he came +never out for all the craft he could do. And so she departed and +left Merlin." The sympathy of Malory is not with the enchanter. In +the Idylls, as finally published, Vivien is born on a battlefield of +death, with a nature perverted, and an instinctive hatred of the +good. Wherefore she leaves the Court of King Mark to make mischief +in Camelot. She is, in fact, the ideal minx, a character not +elsewhere treated by Tennyson:- + + + "She hated all the knights, and heard in thought +Their lavish comment when her name was named. +For once, when Arthur walking all alone, +Vext at a rumour issued from herself +Of some corruption crept among his knights, +Had met her, Vivien, being greeted fair, +Would fain have wrought upon his cloudy mood +With reverent eyes mock-loyal, shaken voice, +And flutter'd adoration, and at last +With dark sweet hints of some who prized him more +Than who should prize him most; at which the King +Had gazed upon her blankly and gone by: +But one had watch'd, and had not held his peace: +It made the laughter of an afternoon +That Vivien should attempt the blameless King. +And after that, she set herself to gain +Him, the most famous man of all those times, +Merlin, who knew the range of all their arts, +Had built the King his havens, ships, and halls, +Was also Bard, and knew the starry heavens; +The people call'd him Wizard; whom at first +She play'd about with slight and sprightly talk, +And vivid smiles, and faintly-venom'd points +Of slander, glancing here and grazing there; +And yielding to his kindlier moods, the Seer +Would watch her at her petulance, and play, +Ev'n when they seem'd unloveable, and laugh +As those that watch a kitten; thus he grew +Tolerant of what he half disdain'd, and she, +Perceiving that she was but half disdain'd, +Began to break her sports with graver fits, +Turn red or pale, would often when they met +Sigh fully, or all-silent gaze upon him +With such a fixt devotion, that the old man, +Tho' doubtful, felt the flattery, and at times +Would flatter his own wish in age for love, +And half believe her true: for thus at times +He waver'd; but that other clung to him, +Fixt in her will, and so the seasons went." + + +Vivien is modern enough--if any type of character is modern: at all +events there is no such Blanche Amory of a girl in the old legends +and romances. In these Merlin fatigues the lady by his love; she +learns his arts, and gets rid of him as she can. His forebodings in +the Idyll contain a magnificent image:- + + + "There lay she all her length and kiss'd his feet, +As if in deepest reverence and in love. +A twist of gold was round her hair; a robe +Of samite without price, that more exprest +Than hid her, clung about her lissome limbs, +In colour like the satin-shining palm +On sallows in the windy gleams of March: +And while she kiss'd them, crying, 'Trample me, +Dear feet, that I have follow'd thro' the world, +And I will pay you worship; tread me down +And I will kiss you for it'; he was mute: +So dark a forethought roll'd about his brain, +As on a dull day in an Ocean cave +The blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall +In silence." + + +We think of the blinded Cyclops groping round his cave, like "the +blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall." + +The richness, the many shining contrasts and immortal lines in +Vivien, seem almost too noble for a subject not easily redeemed, and +the picture of the ideal Court lying in full corruption. Next to +Elaine, Jowett wrote that he "admired Vivien the most (the naughty +one), which seems to me a work of wonderful power and skill. It is +most elegant and fanciful. I am not surprised at your Delilah +beguiling the wise man; she is quite equal to it." The dramatic +versatility of Tennyson's genius, his power of creating the most +various characters, is nowhere better displayed than in the contrast +between the Vivien and the Elaine. Vivien is a type, her adventure +is of a nature, which he has not elsewhere handled. Thackeray, who +admired the Idylls so enthusiastically, might have recognised in +Vivien a character not unlike some of his own, as dark as Becky +Sharp, more terrible in her selfishness than that Beatrix Esmond who +is still a paragon, and, in her creator's despite, a queen of hearts. +In Elaine, on the other hand, Tennyson has drawn a girl so innocently +passionate, and told a tale of love that never found his earthly +close, so delicately beautiful, that we may perhaps place this Idyll +the highest of his poems on love, and reckon it the gem of the +Idylls, the central diamond in the diamond crown. Reading Elaine +once more, after an interval of years, one is captivated by its +grace, its pathos, its nobility. The poet had touched on some +unidentified form of the story, long before, in The Lady of Shalott. +That poem had the mystery of romance, but, in human interest, could +not compete with Elaine, if indeed any poem of Tennyson's can be +ranked with this matchless Idyll. + +The mere invention, and, as we may say, charpentage, are of the first +order. The materials in Malory, though beautiful, are simple, and +left a field for the poet's invention. {16} + +Arthur, with the Scots and Northern knights, means to encounter all +comers at a Whitsuntide tourney. Guinevere is ill, and cannot go to +the jousts, while Lancelot makes excuse that he is not healed of a +wound. "Wherefore the King was heavy and passing wroth, and so he +departed towards Winchester." The Queen then blamed Lancelot: +people will say they deceive Arthur. "Madame," said Sir Lancelot, "I +allow your wit; it is of late come that ye were wise." In the Idyll +Guinevere speaks as if their early loves had been as conspicuous as, +according to George Buchanan, were those of Queen Mary and Bothwell. +Lancelot will go to the tourney, and, despite Guinevere's warning, +will take part against Arthur and his own fierce Northern kinsmen. +He rides to Astolat--"that is, Gylford"--where Arthur sees him. He +borrows the blank shield of "Sir Torre," and the company of his +brother Sir Lavaine. Elaine "cast such a love unto Sir Lancelot that +she would never withdraw her love, wherefore she died." At her +prayer, and for better disguise (as he had never worn a lady's +favour), Lancelot carried her scarlet pearl-embroidered sleeve in his +helmet, and left his shield in Elaine's keeping. The tourney passes +as in the poem, Gawain recognising Lancelot, but puzzled by the +favour he wears. The wounded Lancelot "thought to do what he might +while he might endure." When he is offered the prize he is so sore +hurt that he "takes no force of no honour." He rides into a wood, +where Lavaine draws forth the spear. Lavaine brings Lancelot to the +hermit, once a knight. "I have seen the day," says the hermit, "I +would have loved him the worse, because he was against my lord, King +Arthur, for some time. I was one of the fellowship of the Round +Table, but I thank God now I am otherwise disposed." Gawain, seeking +the wounded knight, comes to Astolat, where Elaine declares "he is +the man in the world that I first loved, and truly he is the last +that ever I shall love." Gawain, on seeing the shield, tells Elaine +that the wounded knight is Lancelot, and she goes to seek him and +Lavaine. Gawain does not pay court to Elaine, nor does Arthur rebuke +him, as in the poem. When Guinevere heard that Lancelot bore another +lady's favour, "she was nigh out of her mind for wrath," and +expressed her anger to Sir Bors, for Gawain had spoken of the maid of +Astolat. Bors tells this to Lancelot, who is tended by Elaine. +"'But I well see,' said Sir Bors, 'by her diligence about you that +she loveth you entirely.' 'That me repenteth,' said Sir Lancelot. +Said Sir Bors, 'Sir, she is not the first that hath lost her pain +upon you, and that is the more pity.'" When Lancelot recovers, and +returns to Astolat, she declares her love with the frankness of +ladies in mediaeval romance. "Have mercy upon me and suffer me not +to die for thy love." Lancelot replies with the courtesy and the +offers of service which became him. "Of all this," said the maiden, +"I will none; for but if ye will wed me, or be my paramour at the +least, wit you well, Sir Lancelot, my good days are done." + +This was a difficult pass for the poet, living in other days of other +manners. His art appears in the turn which he gives to Elaine's +declaration:- + + + "But when Sir Lancelot's deadly hurt was whole, +To Astolat returning rode the three. +There morn by morn, arraying her sweet self +In that wherein she deem'd she look'd her best, +She came before Sir Lancelot, for she thought +'If I be loved, these are my festal robes, +If not, the victim's flowers before he fall.' +And Lancelot ever prest upon the maid +That she should ask some goodly gift of him +For her own self or hers; 'and do not shun +To speak the wish most near to your true heart; +Such service have ye done me, that I make +My will of yours, and Prince and Lord am I +In mine own land, and what I will I can.' +Then like a ghost she lifted up her face, +But like a ghost without the power to speak. +And Lancelot saw that she withheld her wish, +And bode among them yet a little space +Till he should learn it; and one morn it chanced +He found her in among the garden yews, +And said, 'Delay no longer, speak your wish, +Seeing I go to-day': then out she brake: +'Going? and we shall never see you more. +And I must die for want of one bold word.' +'Speak: that I live to hear,' he said, 'is yours.' +Then suddenly and passionately she spoke: +'I have gone mad. I love you: let me die.' +'Ah, sister,' answer'd Lancelot, 'what is this?' +And innocently extending her white arms, +'Your love,' she said, 'your love--to be your wife.' +And Lancelot answer'd, 'Had I chosen to wed, +I had been wedded earlier, sweet Elaine: +But now there never will be wife of mine.' +'No, no' she cried, 'I care not to be wife, +But to be with you still, to see your face, +To serve you, and to follow you thro' the world.' +And Lancelot answer'd, 'Nay, the world, the world, +All ear and eye, with such a stupid heart +To interpret ear and eye, and such a tongue +To blare its own interpretation--nay, +Full ill then should I quit your brother's love, +And your good father's kindness.' And she said, +'Not to be with you, not to see your face - +Alas for me then, my good days are done.'" + + +So she dies, and is borne down Thames to London, the fairest corpse, +"and she lay as though she had smiled." Her letter is read. "Ye +might have showed her," said the Queen, "some courtesy and gentleness +that might have preserved her life;" and so the two are reconciled. + +Such, in brief, is the tender old tale of true love, with the shining +courtesy of Lavaine and the father of the maid, who speak no word of +anger against Lancelot. "For since first I saw my lord, Sir +Lancelot," says Lavaine, "I could never depart from him, nor nought I +will, if I may follow him: she doth as I do." To the simple and +moving story Tennyson adds, by way of ornament, the diamonds, the +prize of the tourney, and the manner of their finding:- + + + "For Arthur, long before they crown'd him King, +Roving the trackless realms of Lyonnesse, +Had found a glen, gray boulder and black tarn. +A horror lived about the tarn, and clave +Like its own mists to all the mountain side: +For here two brothers, one a king, had met +And fought together; but their names were lost; +And each had slain his brother at a blow; +And down they fell and made the glen abhorr'd: +And there they lay till all their bones were bleach'd, +And lichen'd into colour with the crags: +And he, that once was king, had on a crown +Of diamonds, one in front, and four aside. +And Arthur came, and labouring up the pass, +All in a misty moonshine, unawares +Had trodden that crown'd skeleton, and the skull +Brake from the nape, and from the skull the crown +Roll'd into light, and turning on its rims +Fled like a glittering rivulet to the tarn: +And down the shingly scaur he plunged, and caught, +And set it on his head, and in his heart +Heard murmurs, 'Lo, thou likewise shalt be King.'" + + +The diamonds reappear in the scene of Guinevere's jealousy:- + + + "All in an oriel on the summer side, +Vine-clad, of Arthur's palace toward the stream, +They met, and Lancelot kneeling utter'd, 'Queen, +Lady, my liege, in whom I have my joy, +Take, what I had not won except for you, +These jewels, and make me happy, making them +An armlet for the roundest arm on earth, +Or necklace for a neck to which the swan's +Is tawnier than her cygnet's: these are words: +Your beauty is your beauty, and I sin +In speaking, yet O grant my worship of it +Words, as we grant grief tears. Such sin in words, +Perchance, we both can pardon: but, my Queen, +I hear of rumours flying thro' your court. +Our bond, as not the bond of man and wife, +Should have in it an absoluter trust +To make up that defect: let rumours be: +When did not rumours fly? these, as I trust +That you trust me in your own nobleness, +I may not well believe that you believe.' + + While thus he spoke, half turn'd away, the Queen +Brake from the vast oriel-embowering vine +Leaf after leaf, and tore, and cast them off, +Till all the place whereon she stood was green; +Then, when he ceased, in one cold passive hand +Received at once and laid aside the gems +There on a table near her, and replied: + + 'It may be, I am quicker of belief +Than you believe me, Lancelot of the Lake. +Our bond is not the bond of man and wife. +This good is in it, whatsoe'er of ill, +It can be broken easier. I for you +This many a year have done despite and wrong +To one whom ever in my heart of hearts +I did acknowledge nobler. What are these? +Diamonds for me! they had been thrice their worth +Being your gift, had you not lost your own. +To loyal hearts the value of all gifts +Must vary as the giver's. Not for me! +For her! for your new fancy. Only this +Grant me, I pray you: have your joys apart. +I doubt not that however changed, you keep +So much of what is graceful: and myself +Would shun to break those bounds of courtesy +In which as Arthur's Queen I move and rule: +So cannot speak my mind. An end to this! +A strange one! yet I take it with Amen. +So pray you, add my diamonds to her pearls; +Deck her with these; tell her, she shines me down: +An armlet for an arm to which the Queen's +Is haggard, or a necklace for a neck +O as much fairer--as a faith once fair +Was richer than these diamonds--hers not mine - +Nay, by the mother of our Lord himself, +Or hers or mine, mine now to work my will - +She shall not have them.' + + Saying which she seized, +And, thro' the casement standing wide for heat, +Flung them, and down they flash'd, and smote the stream. +Then from the smitten surface flash'd, as it were, +Diamonds to meet them, and they past away. +Then while Sir Lancelot leant, in half disdain +At love, life, all things, on the window ledge, +Close underneath his eyes, and right across +Where these had fallen, slowly past the barge +Whereon the lily maid of Astolat +Lay smiling, like a star in blackest night." + + +This affair of the diamonds is the chief addition to the old tale, in +which we already see the curse of lawless love, fallen upon the +jealous Queen and the long-enduring Lancelot. "This is not the first +time," said Sir Lancelot, "that ye have been displeased with me +causeless, but, madame, ever I must suffer you, but what sorrow I +endure I take no force" (that is, "I disregard"). + +The romance, and the poet, in his own despite, cannot but make +Lancelot the man we love, not Arthur or another. Human nature +perversely sides with Guinevere against the Blameless King:- + + + "She broke into a little scornful laugh: +'Arthur, my lord, Arthur, the faultless King, +That passionate perfection, my good lord - +But who can gaze upon the Sun in heaven? +He never spake word of reproach to me, +He never had a glimpse of mine untruth, +He cares not for me: only here to-day +There gleam'd a vague suspicion in his eyes: +Some meddling rogue has tamper'd with him--else +Rapt in this fancy of his Table Round, +And swearing men to vows impossible, +To make them like himself: but, friend, to me +He is all fault who hath no fault at all: +For who loves me must have a touch of earth; +The low sun makes the colour: I am yours, +Not Arthur's, as ye know, save by the bond." + + +It is not the beautiful Queen who wins us, our hearts are with "the +innocence of love" in Elaine. But Lancelot has the charm that +captivated Lavaine; and Tennyson's Arthur remains + + +"The moral child without the craft to rule, +Else had he not lost me." + + +Indeed the romance of Malory makes Arthur deserve "the pretty popular +name such manhood earns" by his conduct as regards Guinevere when she +is accused by her enemies in the later chapters. Yet Malory does not +finally condone the sin which baffles Lancelot's quest of the Holy +Grail. + +Tennyson at first was in doubt as to writing on the Grail, for +certain respects of reverence. When he did approach the theme it was +in a method of extreme condensation. The romances on the Grail +outrun the length even of mediaeval poetry and prose. They are +exceedingly confused, as was natural, if that hypothesis which +regards the story as a Christianised form of obscure Celtic myth be +correct. Sir Percivale's sister, in the Idyll, has the first vision +of the Grail:- + + +"Sweet brother, I have seen the Holy Grail: +For, waked at dead of night, I heard a sound +As of a silver horn from o'er the hills +Blown, and I thought, 'It is not Arthur's use +To hunt by moonlight'; and the slender sound +As from a distance beyond distance grew +Coming upon me--O never harp nor horn, +Nor aught we blow with breath, or touch with hand, +Was like that music as it came; and then +Stream'd thro' my cell a cold and silver beam, +And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail, +Rose-red with beatings in it, as if alive, +Till all the white walls of my cell were dyed +With rosy colours leaping on the wall; +And then the music faded, and the Grail +Past, and the beam decay'd, and from the walls +The rosy quiverings died into the night. +So now the Holy Thing is here again +Among us, brother, fast thou too and pray, +And tell thy brother knights to fast and pray, +That so perchance the vision may be seen +By thee and those, and all the world be heal'd." + + +Galahad, son of Lancelot and the first Elaine (who became Lancelot's +mistress by art magic), then vows himself to the Quest, and, after +the vision in hall at Camelot, the knights, except Arthur, follow his +example, to Arthur's grief. "Ye follow wandering fires!" Probably, +or perhaps, the poet indicates dislike of hasty spiritual +enthusiasms, of "seeking for a sign," and of the mysticism which +betokens want of faith. The Middle Ages, more than many readers +know, were ages of doubt. Men desired the witness of the senses to +the truth of what the Church taught, they wished to see that naked +child of the romance "smite himself into" the wafer of the Sacrament. +The author of the Imitatio Christi discourages such vain and too +curious inquiries as helped to rend the Church, and divided +Christendom into hostile camps. The Quest of the actual Grail was a +knightly form of theological research into the unsearchable; +undertaken, often in a secular spirit of adventure, by sinful men. +The poet's heart is rather with human things:- + + + "'O brother,' ask'd Ambrosius,--'for in sooth +These ancient books--and they would win thee--teem, +Only I find not there this Holy Grail, +With miracles and marvels like to these, +Not all unlike; which oftentime I read, +Who read but on my breviary with ease, +Till my head swims; and then go forth and pass +Down to the little thorpe that lies so close, +And almost plaster'd like a martin's nest +To these old walls--and mingle with our folk; +And knowing every honest face of theirs +As well as ever shepherd knew his sheep, +And every homely secret in their hearts, +Delight myself with gossip and old wives, +And ills and aches, and teethings, lyings-in, +And mirthful sayings, children of the place, +That have no meaning half a league away: +Or lulling random squabbles when they rise, +Chafferings and chatterings at the market-cross, +Rejoice, small man, in this small world of mine, +Yea, even in their hens and in their eggs."' + + +This appears to be Tennyson's original reading of the Quest of the +Grail. His own mysticism, which did not strive, or cry, or seek +after marvels, though marvels might come unsought, is expressed in +Arthur's words:- + + + "'"And spake I not too truly, O my knights? +Was I too dark a prophet when I said +To those who went upon the Holy Quest, +That most of them would follow wandering fires, +Lost in the quagmire?--lost to me and gone, +And left me gazing at a barren board, +And a lean Order--scarce return'd a tithe - +And out of those to whom the vision came +My greatest hardly will believe he saw; +Another hath beheld it afar off, +And leaving human wrongs to right themselves, +Cares but to pass into the silent life. +And one hath had the vision face to face, +And now his chair desires him here in vain, +However they may crown him otherwhere. + + '"And some among you held, that if the King +Had seen the sight he would have sworn the vow: +Not easily, seeing that the King must guard +That which he rules, and is but as the hind +To whom a space of land is given to plow +Who may not wander from the allotted field +Before his work be done; but, being done, +Let visions of the night or of the day +Come, as they will; and many a time they come, +Until this earth he walks on seems not earth, +This light that strikes his eyeball is not light, +This air that smites his forehead is not air +But vision--yea, his very hand and foot - +In moments when he feels he cannot die, +And knows himself no vision to himself, +Nor the high God a vision, nor that One +Who rose again: ye have seen what ye have seen." + + 'So spake the King: I knew not all he meant.'" + + +The closing lines declare, as far as the poet could declare them, +these subjective experiences of his which, in a manner rarely +parallelled, coloured and formed his thought on the highest things. +He introduces them even into this poem on a topic which, because of +its sacred associations, he for long did not venture to touch. + +In Pelleas and Ettarre--which deals with the sorrows of one of the +young knights who fill up the gaps left at the Round Table by the +mischances of the Quest--it would be difficult to trace a Celtic +original. For Malory, not Celtic legend, supplied Tennyson with the +germinal idea of a poem which, in the romance, has no bearing on the +final catastrophe. Pelleas, a King of the Isles, loves the beautiful +Ettarre, "a great lady," and for her wins at a tourney the prize of +the golden circlet. But she hates and despises him, and Sir Gawain +is a spectator when, as in the poem, the felon knights of Ettarre +bind and insult their conqueror, Pelleas. Gawain promises to win the +love of Ettarre for Pelleas, and, as in the poem, borrows his arms +and horse, and pretends to have slain him. But in place of turning +Ettarre's heart towards Pelleas, Gawain becomes her lover, and +Pelleas, detecting them asleep, lays his naked sword on their necks. +He then rides home to die; but Nimue (Vivien), the Lady of the Lake, +restores him to health and sanity. His fever gone, he scorns +Ettarre, who, by Nimue's enchantment, now loves him as much as she +had hated him. Pelleas weds Nimue, and Ettarre dies of a broken +heart. Tennyson, of course, could not make Nimue (his Vivien) do +anything benevolent. He therefore closes his poem by a repetition of +the effect in the case of Balin. Pelleas is driven desperate by the +treachery of Gawain, the reported infidelity of Guinevere, and the +general corruption of the ideal. A shadow falls on Lancelot and +Guinevere, and Modred sees that his hour is drawing nigh. In spite +of beautiful passages this is not one of the finest of the Idylls, +save for the study of the fierce, hateful, and beautiful grande dame, +Ettarre. The narrative does little to advance the general plot. In +the original of Malory it has no connection with the Lancelot cycle, +except as far as it reveals the treachery of Gawain, the gay and +fair-spoken "light of love," brother of the traitor Modred. A +simpler treatment of the theme may be read in Mr Swinburne's +beautiful poem, The Tale of Balen. + +It is in The Last Tournament that Modred finds the beginning of his +opportunity. The brief life of the Ideal has burned itself out, as +the year, in its vernal beauty when Arthur came, is burning out in +autumn. The poem is purposely autumnal, with the autumn, not of +mellow fruitfulness, but of the "flying gold of the ruined woodlands" +and the dank odours of decay. In that miserable season is held the +Tourney of the Dead Innocence, with the blood-red prize of rubies. +With a wise touch Tennyson has represented the Court as fallen not +into vice only and crime, but into positive vulgarity and bad taste. +The Tournament is a carnival of the "smart" and the third-rate. +Courtesy is dead, even Tristram is brutal, and in Iseult hatred of +her husband is as powerful as love of her lover. The satire strikes +at England, where the world has never been corrupt with a good grace. +It is a passage of arms neither gentle nor joyous that Lancelot +presides over:- + + + "The sudden trumpet sounded as in a dream +To ears but half-awaked, then one low roll +Of Autumn thunder, and the jousts began: +And ever the wind blew, and yellowing leaf +And gloom and gleam, and shower and shorn plume +Went down it. Sighing weariedly, as one +Who sits and gazes on a faded fire, +When all the goodlier guests are past away, +Sat their great umpire, looking o'er the lists. +He saw the laws that ruled the tournament +Broken, but spake not; once, a knight cast down +Before his throne of arbitration cursed +The dead babe and the follies of the King; +And once the laces of a helmet crack'd, +And show'd him, like a vermin in its hole, +Modred, a narrow face: anon he heard +The voice that billow'd round the barriers roar +An ocean-sounding welcome to one knight, +But newly-enter'd, taller than the rest, +And armour'd all in forest green, whereon +There tript a hundred tiny silver deer, +And wearing but a holly-spray for crest, +With ever-scattering berries, and on shield +A spear, a harp, a bugle--Tristram--late +From overseas in Brittany return'd, +And marriage with a princess of that realm, +Isolt the White--Sir Tristram of the Woods - +Whom Lancelot knew, had held sometime with pain +His own against him, and now yearn'd to shake +The burthen off his heart in one full shock +With Tristram ev'n to death: his strong hands gript +And dinted the gilt dragons right and left, +Until he groan'd for wrath--so many of those, +That ware their ladies' colours on the casque, +Drew from before Sir Tristram to the bounds, +And there with gibes and flickering mockeries +Stood, while he mutter'd, 'Craven crests! O shame! +What faith have these in whom they sware to love? +The glory of our Round Table is no more.' + + So Tristram won, and Lancelot gave, the gems, +Not speaking other word than 'Hast thou won? +Art thou the purest, brother? See, the hand +Wherewith thou takest this, is red!' to whom +Tristram, half plagued by Lancelot's languorous mood, +Made answer, 'Ay, but wherefore toss me this +Like a dry bone cast to some hungry hound? +Let be thy fair Queen's fantasy. Strength of heart +And might of limb, but mainly use and skill, +Are winners in this pastime of our King. +My hand--belike the lance hath dript upon it - +No blood of mine, I trow; but O chief knight, +Right arm of Arthur in the battlefield, +Great brother, thou nor I have made the world; +Be happy in thy fair Queen as I in mine.' + + And Tristram round the gallery made his horse +Caracole; then bow'd his homage, bluntly saying, +'Fair damsels, each to him who worships each +Sole Queen of Beauty and of love, behold +This day my Queen of Beauty is not here.' +And most of these were mute, some anger'd, one +Murmuring, 'All courtesy is dead,' and one, +'The glory of our Round Table is no more.' + + Then fell thick rain, plume droopt and mantle clung, +And pettish cries awoke, and the wan day +Went glooming down in wet and weariness: +But under her black brows a swarthy one +Laugh'd shrilly, crying, 'Praise the patient saints, +Our one white day of Innocence hath past, +Tho' somewhat draggled at the skirt. So be it. +The snowdrop only, flowering thro' the year, +Would make the world as blank as Winter-tide. +Come--let us gladden their sad eyes, our Queen's +And Lancelot's, at this night's solemnity +With all the kindlier colours of the field.'" + + +Arthur's last victory over a robber knight is ingloriously squalid:- + + + "He ended: Arthur knew the voice; the face +Wellnigh was helmet-hidden, and the name +Went wandering somewhere darkling in his mind. +And Arthur deign'd not use of word or sword, +But let the drunkard, as he stretch'd from horse +To strike him, overbalancing his bulk, +Down from the causeway heavily to the swamp +Fall, as the crest of some slow-arching wave, +Heard in dead night along that table-shore, +Drops flat, and after the great waters break +Whitening for half a league, and thin themselves, +Far over sands marbled with moon and cloud, +From less and less to nothing; thus he fell +Head-heavy; then the knights, who watch'd him, roar'd +And shouted and leapt down upon the fall'n; +There trampled out his face from being known, +And sank his head in mire, and slimed themselves: +Nor heard the King for their own cries, but sprang +Thro' open doors, and swording right and left +Men, women, on their sodden faces, hurl'd +The tables over and the wines, and slew +Till all the rafters rang with woman-yells, +And all the pavement stream'd with massacre: +Then, echoing yell with yell, they fired the tower, +Which half that autumn night, like the live North, +Red-pulsing up thro' Alioth and Alcor, +Made all above it, and a hundred meres +About it, as the water Moab saw +Come round by the East, and out beyond them flush'd +The long low dune, and lazy-plunging sea." + + +Guinevere is one of the greatest of the Idylls. Malory makes +Lancelot more sympathetic; his fight, unarmed, in Guinevere's +chamber, against the felon knights, is one of his most spirited +scenes. Tennyson omits this, and omits all the unpardonable +behaviour of Arthur as narrated in Malory. Critics have usually +condemned the last parting of Guinevere and Arthur, because the King +doth preach too much to an unhappy woman who has no reply. The +position of Arthur is not easily redeemable: it is difficult to +conceive that a noble nature could be, or should be, blind so long. +He does rehabilitate his Queen in her own self-respect, perhaps, by +assuring her that he loves her still:- + + +"Let no man dream but that I love thee still." + + +Had he said that one line and no more, we might have loved him +better. In the Idylls we have not Malory's last meeting of Lancelot +and Guinevere, one of the scenes in which the wandering composite +romance ends as nobly as the Iliad. + +The Passing of Arthur, except for a new introductory passage of great +beauty and appropriateness, is the Morte d'Arthur, first published in +1842:- + + +"So all day long the noise of battle roll'd +Among the mountains by the winter sea." + + +The year has run its course, spring, summer, gloomy autumn, and dies +in the mist of Arthur's last wintry battle in the west - + + +"And the new sun rose, bringing the new year." + + +The splendid and sombre procession has passed, leaving us to muse as +to how far the poet has fulfilled his own ideal. There could be no +new epic: he gave a chain of heroic Idylls. An epic there could not +be, for the Iliad and Odyssey have each a unity of theme, a narrative +compressed into a few days in the former, in the latter into forty +days of time. The tragedy of Arthur's reign could not so be +condensed; and Tennyson chose the only feasible plan. He has left a +work, not absolutely perfect, indeed, but such as he conceived, after +many tentative essays, and such as he desired to achieve. His fame +may not rest chiefly on the Idylls, but they form one of the fairest +jewels in the crown that shines with unnumbered gems, each with its +own glory. + + + +CHAPTER VIII.--ENOCH ARDEN. THE DRAMAS. + + + +The success of the first volume of the Idylls recompensed the poet +for the slings and arrows that gave Maud a hostile welcome. His next +publication was the beautiful Tithonus, a fit pendant to the Ulysses, +and composed about the same date (1833-35). "A quarter of a century +ago," Tennyson dates it, writing in 1860 to the Duke of Argyll. He +had found it when "ferreting among my old books," he said, in search +of something for Thackeray, who was establishing the Cornhill +Magazine. What must the wealth of the poet have been, who, +possessing Tithonus in his portfolio, did not take the trouble to +insert it in the volumes of 1842! Nobody knows how many poems of +Tennyson's never even saw pen and ink, being composed unwritten, and +forgotten. At this time we find him recommending Mr Browning's Men +and Women to the Duke, who, like many Tennysonians, does not seem to +have been a ready convert to his great contemporary. The Duke and +Duchess urged the Laureate to attempt the topic of the Holy Grail, +but he was not in the mood. Indeed the vision of the Grail in the +early Sir Galahad is doubtless happier than the allegorical handling +of a theme so obscure, remote, and difficult, in the Idylls. He +wrote his Boadicea, a piece magnificent in itself, but of difficult +popular access, owing to the metrical experiment. + +In the autumn of 1860 he revisited Cornwall with F. T. Palgrave, Mr +Val Prinsep, and Mr Holman Hunt. They walked in the rain, saw +Tintagel and the Scilly Isles, and were feted by an enthusiastic +captain of a little river steamer, who was more interested in "Mr +Tinman and Mr Pancake" than the Celtic boatman of Ardtornish. The +winter was passed at Farringford, and the Northern Farmer was written +there, a Lincolnshire reminiscence, in the February of 1861. In +autumn the Pyrenees were visited by Tennyson in company with Arthur +Clough and Mr Dakyns of Clifton College. At Cauteretz in August, and +among memories of the old tour with Arthur Hallam, was written All +along the Valley. The ways, however, in Auvergne were "foul," and +the diet "unhappy." The dedication of the Idylls was written on the +death of the Prince Consort in December, and in January 1862 the Ode +for the opening of an exhibition. The poet was busy with his +"Fisherman," Enoch Arden. The volume was published in 1864, and Lord +Tennyson says it has been, next to In Memoriam, the most popular of +his father's works. One would have expected the one volume +containing the poems up to 1842 to hold that place. The new book, +however, mainly dealt with English, contemporary, and domestic +themes--"the poetry of the affections." An old woman, a district +visitor reported, regarded Enoch Arden as "more beautiful" than the +other tracts which were read to her. It is indeed a tender and +touching tale, based on a folk-story which Tennyson found current in +Brittany as well as in England. Nor is the unseen and unknown +landscape of the tropic isle less happily created by the poet's +imagination than the familiar English cliffs and hazel copses:- + + + "The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns +And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven, +The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes, +The lightning flash of insect and of bird, +The lustre of the long convolvuluses +That coil'd around the stately stems, and ran +Ev'n to the limit of the land, the glows +And glories of the broad belt of the world, +All these he saw; but what he fain had seen +He could not see, the kindly human face, +Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard +The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl, +The league-long roller thundering on the reef, +The moving whisper of huge trees that branch'd +And blossom'd in the zenith, or the sweep +Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave, +As down the shore he ranged, or all day long +Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge, +A shipwreck'd sailor, waiting for a sail: +No sail from day to day, but every day +The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts +Among the palms and ferns and precipices; +The blaze upon the waters to the east; +The blaze upon his island overhead; +The blaze upon the waters to the west; +Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven, +The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again +The scarlet shafts of sunrise--but no sail." + + +Aylmer's Field somewhat recalls the burden of Maud, the curse of +purse-proud wealth, but is too gloomy to be a fair specimen of +Tennyson's art. In Sea Dreams (first published in 1860) the awful +vision of crumbling faiths is somewhat out of harmony with its +environment:- + + + "But round the North, a light, +A belt, it seem'd, of luminous vapour, lay, +And ever in it a low musical note +Swell'd up and died; and, as it swell'd, a ridge +Of breaker issued from the belt, and still +Grew with the growing note, and when the note +Had reach'd a thunderous fulness, on those cliffs +Broke, mixt with awful light (the same as that +Living within the belt) whereby she saw +That all those lines of cliffs were cliffs no more, +But huge cathedral fronts of every age, +Grave, florid, stern, as far as eye could see, +One after one: and then the great ridge drew, +Lessening to the lessening music, back, +And past into the belt and swell'd again +Slowly to music: ever when it broke +The statues, king or saint or founder fell; +Then from the gaps and chasms of ruin left +Came men and women in dark clusters round, +Some crying, 'Set them up! they shall not fall!' +And others, 'Let them lie, for they have fall'n.' +And still they strove and wrangled: and she grieved +In her strange dream, she knew not why, to find +Their wildest wailings never out of tune +With that sweet note; and ever as their shrieks +Ran highest up the gamut, that great wave +Returning, while none mark'd it, on the crowd +Broke, mixt with awful light, and show'd their eyes +Glaring, and passionate looks, and swept away +The men of flesh and blood, and men of stone, +To the waste deeps together. + + 'Then I fixt +My wistful eyes on two fair images, +Both crown'd with stars and high among the stars, - +The Virgin Mother standing with her child +High up on one of those dark minster-fronts - +Till she began to totter, and the child +Clung to the mother, and sent out a cry +Which mixt with little Margaret's, and I woke, +And my dream awed me: --well--but what are dreams?" + + +The passage is rather fitted for a despairing mood of Arthur, in the +Idylls, than for the wife of the city clerk ruined by a pious rogue. + +The Lucretius, later published, is beyond praise as a masterly study +of the great Roman sceptic, whose heart is at eternal odds with his +Epicurean creed. Nascent madness, or fever of the brain drugged by +the blundering love philtre, is not more cunningly treated in the mad +scenes of Maud. No prose commentary on the De Rerum Natura, however +long and learned, conveys so clearly as this concise study in verse +the sense of magnificent mingled ruin in the mind and poem of the +Roman. + +The "Experiments in Quantity" were, perhaps, suggested by Mr Matthew +Arnold's Lectures on the Translating of Homer. Mr Arnold believed in +a translation into English hexameters. His negative criticism of +other translators and translations was amusing and instructive: he +had an easy game to play with the Yankee-doodle metre of F. W. +Newman, the ponderous blank verse of Cowper, the tripping and +clipping couplets of Pope, the Elizabethan fantasies of Chapman. But +Mr Arnold's hexameters were neither musical nor rapid: they only +exhibited a new form of failure. As the Prince of Abyssinia said to +his tutor, "Enough; you have convinced me that no man can be a poet," +so Mr Arnold went some way to prove that no man can translate Homer. + +Tennyson had the lowest opinion of hexameters as an English metre for +serious purposes. + + +"These lame hexameters the strong-wing'd music of Homer!" + + +Lord Tennyson says, "German hexameters he disliked even more than +English." Indeed there is not much room for preference. Tennyson's +Alcaics (Milton) were intended to follow the Greek rather than the +Horatian model, and resulted, at all events, in a poem worthy of the +"mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies." The specimen of the Iliad in +blank verse, beautiful as it is, does not, somehow, reproduce the +music of Homer. It is entirely Tennysonian, as in + + +"Roll'd the rich vapour far into the heaven." + + +The reader, in that one line, recognises the voice and trick of the +English poet, and is far away from the Chian:- + + +"As when in heaven the stars about the moon +Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid, +And every height comes out, and jutting peak +And valley, and the immeasurable heavens +Break open to their highest, and all the stars +Shine, and the Shepherd gladdens in his heart: +So many a fire between the ships and stream +Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy, +A thousand on the plain; and close by each +Sat fifty in the blaze of burning fire; +And eating hoary grain and pulse the steeds, +Fixt by their cars, waited the golden dawn." + + +This is excellent, is poetry, escapes the conceits of Pope (who never +"wrote with his eye on the object"), but is pure Tennyson. We have +not yet, probably we never shall have, an adequate rendering of the +Iliad into verse, and prose translations do not pretend to be +adequate. When parents and dominies have abolished the study of +Greek, something, it seems, will have been lost to the world,-- +something which even Tennyson could not restore in English. He +thought blank verse the proper equivalent; but it is no equivalent. +One even prefers his own prose:- + + +Nor did Paris linger in his lofty halls, but when he had girt on his +gorgeous armour, all of varied bronze, then he rushed thro' the city, +glorying in his airy feet. And as when a stall-kept horse, that is +barley-fed at the manger, breaketh his tether, and dasheth thro' the +plain, spurning it, being wont to bathe himself in the fair-running +river, rioting, and reareth his head, and his mane flieth back on +either shoulder, and he glorieth in his beauty, and his knees bear +him at the gallop to the haunts and meadows of the mares; so ran the +son of Priam, Paris, from the height of Pergamus, all in arms, +glittering like the sun, laughing for light-heartedness, and his +swift feet bare him. + + +In February 1865 Tennyson lost the mother whose portrait he drew in +Isabel,--"a thing enskied and sainted." + +In the autumn of 1865 the Tennysons went on a Continental tour, and +visited Waterloo, Weimar, and Dresden; in September they entertained +Emma I., Queen of the Sandwich Islands. The months passed quietly at +home or in town. The poet had written his Lucretius, and, to please +Sir George Grove, wrote The Song of the Wrens, for music. Tennyson +had not that positive aversion to music which marked Dr Johnson, +Victor Hugo, Theophile Gautier, and some other poets. Nay, he liked +Beethoven, which places him higher in the musical scale than Scott, +who did not rise above a Border lilt or a Jacobite ditty. The Wren +songs, entitled The Window, were privately printed by Sir Ivor Guest +in 1867, were set to music by Sir Arthur Sullivan, and published by +Strahan in December 1870. "A puppet," Tennyson called the song-book, +"whose only merit is, perhaps, that it can dance to Mr Sullivan's +instrument. I am sorry that my puppet should have to dance at all in +the dark shadow of these days" (the siege of Paris), "but the music +is now completed, and I am bound by my promise." The verses are +described as "partly in the old style," but the true old style of the +Elizabethan and cavalier days is lost. + +In the summer of 1867 the Tennysons moved to a farmhouse near +Haslemere, at that time not a centre of literary Londoners. "Sandy +soil and heather-scented air" allured them, and the result was the +purchase of land, and the building of Aldworth, Mr Knowles being the +architect. In autumn Tennyson visited Lyme Regis, and, like all +other travellers thither, made a pilgrimage to the Cobb, sacred to +Louisa Musgrove. The poet now began the study of Hebrew, having a +mind to translate the Book of Job, a vision unfulfilled. In 1868 he +thought of publishing his boyish piece, The Lover's Tale, but +delayed. An anonymously edited piracy of this and other poems was +perpetrated in 1875, limited, at least nominally, to fifty copies. + +In July Longfellow visited Tennyson. "The Longfellows and he talked +much of spiritualism, for he was greatly interested in that subject, +but he suspended his judgment, and thought that, if in such +manifestations there is anything, 'Pucks, not the spirits of dead +men, reveal themselves.'" This was Southey's suggestion, as regards +the celebrated disturbances in the house of the Wesleys. "Wit might +have much to say, wisdom, little," said Sam Wesley. Probably the +talk about David Dunglas Home, the "medium" then in vogue, led to the +discussion of "spiritualism." We do not hear that Tennyson ever had +the curiosity to see Home, whom Mr Browning so firmly detested. + +In September The Holy Grail was begun: it was finished "in about a +week. It came like a breath of inspiration." The subject had for +many years been turned about in the poet's mind, which, of course, +was busy in these years of apparent inactivity. At this time (August +1868) Tennyson left his old publishers, the Moxons, for Mr Strahan, +who endured till 1872. Then he was succeeded by Messrs H. S. King & +Co., who gave place (1879) to Messrs Kegan Paul & Co., while in 1884 +Messrs Macmillan became, and continue to be, the publishers. A few +pieces, except Lucretius (Macmillan's Magazine, May 1868) +unimportant, appeared in serials. + +Very early in 1869 The Coming of Arthur was composed, while Tennyson +was reading Browning's The Ring and the Book. He and his great +contemporary were on terms of affectionate friendship, though +Tennyson, perhaps, appreciated less of Browning than Browning of +Tennyson. Meanwhile "Old Fitz" kept up a fire of unsympathetic +growls at Browning and all his works. "I have been trying in vain to +read it" (The Ring and the Book), "and yet the Athenaeum tells me it +is wonderfully fine." FitzGerald's ply had been taken long ago; he +wanted verbal music in poetry (no exorbitant desire), while, in +Browning, carmina desunt. Perhaps, too, a personal feeling, as if +Browning was Tennyson's rival, affected the judgment of the author of +Omar Khayyam. We may almost call him "the author." + +The Holy Grail, with the smaller poems, such as Lucretius, was +published at the end of 1869. FitzGerald appears to have preferred +The Northern Farmer, "the substantial rough-spun nature I knew," to +all the visionary knights in the airy Quest. To compare "--" +(obviously Browning) with Tennyson, was "to compare an old Jew's +curiosity shop with the Phidian Marbles." Tennyson's poems "being +clear to the bottom as well as beautiful, do not seem to cockney eyes +so deep as muddy waters." + +In November 1870 The Last Tournament was begun; it was finished in +May 1871. Conceivably the vulgar scandals of the last days of the +French Imperial regime may have influenced Tennyson's picture of the +corruption of Arthur's Court; but the Empire did not begin, like the +Round Table, with aspirations after the Ideal. In the autumn of the +year Tennyson entertained, and was entertained by, Mr Huxley. In +their ideas about ultimate things two men could not vary more widely, +but each delighted in the other's society. In the spring of 1872 +Tennyson visited Paris and the ruins of the Louvre. He read Victor +Hugo, and Alfred de Musset, whose comedies he admired. The little +that we hear of his opinion of the other great poet runs to this +effect, "Victor Hugo is an unequal genius, sometimes sublime; he +reminds one that there is but one step between the sublime and the +ridiculous," but the example by which Tennyson illustrated this was +derived from one of the poet's novels. In these we meet not only the +sublime and the ridiculous, but passages which leave us in some +perplexity as to their true category. One would have expected Hugo's +lyrics to be Tennyson's favourites, but only Gastibelza is mentioned +in that character. At this time Tennyson was vexed by + + +"Art with poisonous honey stolen from France," + + +a phrase which cannot apply to Hugo. Meanwhile Gareth was being +written, and the knight's song for The Coming of Arthur. Gareth and +Lynette, with minor pieces, appeared in 1872. Balin and Balan was +composed later, to lead up to Vivien, to which, perhaps, Balin and +Balan was introduction sufficient had it been the earlier written. +But the Idylls have already been discussed as arranged in sequence. +The completion of the Idylls, with the patriotic epilogue, was +followed by the offer of a baronetcy. Tennyson preferred that he and +his wife "should remain plain Mr and Mrs," though "I hope that I have +too much of the old-world loyalty not to wear my lady's favours +against all comers, should you think that it would be more agreeable +to her Majesty that I should do so." + +The Idylls ended, Tennyson in 1874 began to contemplate a drama, +choosing the topic, perhaps neither popular nor in an Aristotelian +sense tragic, of Mary Tudor. This play was published, and put on the +stage by Sir Henry Irving in 1875. Harold followed in 1876, The Cup +in 1881 (at the Lyceum), The Promise of May (at the Globe) in 1882, +Becket in 1884, with The Foresters in 1892. It seems best to +consider all the dramatic period of Tennyson's work, a period reached +so strangely late in his career, in the sequence of the Plays. The +task is one from which I shrink, as conscious of entire ignorance of +the stage and of lack of enthusiasm for the drama. Great dramatic +authors have, almost invariably, had long practical knowledge of the +scenes and of what is behind them. Shakespeare and his +contemporaries, Moliere and his contemporaries, had lived their lives +on the boards and in the foyer, actors themselves, or in daily touch +with actors and actresses. In the present day successful playwrights +appear to live much in the world of the players. They have practical +knowledge of the conventions and conditions which the stage imposes. +Neither Browning nor Mr Swinburne (to take great names) has had, it +seems, much of this practical and daily experience; their dramas have +been acted but rarely, if at all, and many examples prove that +neither poetical genius nor the genius for prose fiction can enable +men to produce plays which hold their own on the boards. This may be +the fault of public taste, or partly of public taste, partly of +defect in practical knowledge on the side of the authors. Of the +stage, by way of practice, Tennyson had known next to nothing, yet +his dramas were written to be acted, and acted some of them were. +"For himself, he was aware," says his biographer, "that he wanted +intimate knowledge of the mechanical details necessary for the modern +stage, although in early and middle life he had been a constant +playgoer, and would keenly follow the action of a play, criticising +the characterisation, incidents, scenic effects, situations, +language, and dramatic points." He was quite prepared to be "edited" +for acting purposes by the players. Miss Mary Anderson says that "he +was ready to sacrifice even his MOST beautiful lines for the sake of +a real dramatic effect." + +This proved unusual common-sense in a poet. Modern times and manners +are notoriously unfavourable to the serious drama. In the age of the +Greek tragedians, as in the days of "Eliza and our James," reading +was not very common, and life was much more passed in public than +among ourselves, when people go to the play for light recreation, or +to be shocked. So various was the genius of Tennyson, that had he +devoted himself early to the stage, and had he been backed by a +manager with the enterprise and intelligence of Sir Henry Irving, it +is impossible to say how much he might have done to restore the +serious drama. But we cannot regret that he was occupied in his +prime with other things, nor can we expect to find his noblest and +most enduring work in the dramatic experiments of his latest years. +It is notable that, in his opinion, "the conditions of the dramatic +art are much more complex than they were." For example, we have "the +star system," which tends to allot what is, or was, technically +styled "the fat," to one or two popular players. Now, a poet like +Tennyson will inevitably distribute large quantities of what is most +excellent to many characters, and the consequent difficulties may be +appreciated by students of our fallen nature. The poet added that to +be a first-rate historical playwright means much more work than +formerly, seeing that "exact history" has taken the part of the +"chance chronicle." + +This is a misfortune. The dramas of the Attic stage, with one or two +exceptions, are based on myth and legend, not on history, and even in +the Persae, grounded on contemporary events, AEschylus introduced the +ghost of Darius, not vouched for by "exact history." Let us conceive +Shakespeare writing Macbeth in an age of "exact history." Hardly any +of the play would be left. Fleance and Banquo must go. Duncan +becomes a young man, and far from "gracious." Macbeth appears as the +defender of the legitimist prince, Lulach, against Duncan, a usurper. +Lady Macbeth is a pattern to her sex, and her lord is a clement and +sagacious ruler. The witches are ruled out of the piece. +Difficulties arise about the English aid to Malcolm. History, in +fact, declines to be dramatic. Liberties must be taken. In his +plays of the Mary Stuart cycle, Mr Swinburne telescopes the affair of +Darnley into that of Chastelard, which was much earlier. He makes +Mary Beaton (in love with Chastelard) a kind of avenging fate, who +will never leave the Queen till her head falls at Fotheringay; +though, in fact, after a flirtation with Randolph, Mary Beaton +married Ogilvy of Boyne (really in love with Lady Bothwell), and not +one of the four Maries was at Fotheringay. An artist ought to be +allowed to follow legend, of its essence dramatic, or to manipulate +history as he pleases. Our modern scrupulosity is pedantic. But +Tennyson read a long list of books for his Queen Mary, though it does +not appear that he made original researches in MSS. These labours +occupied 1874 and 1875. Yet it would be foolish to criticise his +Queen Mary as if we were criticising "exact history." "The play's +the thing." + +The poet thought that "Bloody Mary" "had been harshly judged by the +verdict of popular tradition." So have most characters to whom +popular dislike affixes the popular epithet--"Bloody Claverse," +"Bloody Mackenzie," "Bloody Balfour." Mary had the courage of the +Tudors. She "edified all around her by her cheerfulness, her piety, +and her resignation to the will of Providence," in her last days +(Lingard). Camden calls her "a queen never praised enough for the +purity of her morals, her charity to the poor" (she practised as a +district visitor), "and her liberality to the nobles and the clergy." +She was "pious, merciful, pure, and ever to be praised, if we +overlook her erroneous opinions in religion," says Godwin. She had +been grievously wronged from her youth upwards. In Elizabeth she had +a sister and a rival, a constant intriguer against her, and a +kinswoman far from amiable. Despite "the kindness and attention of +Philip" (Lingard), affairs of State demanded his absence from +England. The disappointment as to her expected child was cruel. She +knew that she had become unpopular, and she could not look for the +success of her Church, to which she was sincerely attached. M. +Auguste Filon thought that Queen Mary might secure dramatic rank for +Tennyson, "if a great actress arose who conceived a passion for the +part of Mary." But that was not to be expected. Mary was middle- +aged, plain, and in aspect now terrible, now rueful. No great +actress will throw herself with passion into such an ungrateful part. +"Throughout all history," Tennyson said, "there was nothing more +mournful than the final tragedy of this woman." MOURNFUL it is, but +not tragic. There is nothing grand at the close, as when Mary Stuart +conquers death and evil fame, redeeming herself by her courage and +her calm, and extending over unborn generations that witchery which +her enemies dreaded more than an army with banners. + +Moreover, popular tradition can never forgive the fires of +Smithfield. It was Mary Tudor's misfortune that she had the power to +execute, on a great scale, that faculty of persecution to the death +for which her Presbyterian and other Protestant opponents pined in +vain. Mr Froude says of her, "For the first and last time the true +Ultramontane spirit was dominant in England, the genuine conviction +that, as the orthodox prophets and sovereigns of Israel slew the +worshippers of Baal, so were Catholic rulers called upon, as their +first duty, to extirpate heretics as the enemies of God and man." +That was precisely the spirit of Knox and other Presbyterian +denouncers of death against "Idolaters" (Catholics). But the +Scottish preachers were always thwarted: Mary and her advisers had +their way, as, earlier, Latimer had preached against sufferers at the +stake. To the stake, which he feared so greatly, Cranmer had sent +persons not of his own fleeting shade of theological opinion. These +men had burned Anabaptists, but all that is lightly forgotten by +Protestant opinion. Under Mary (whoever may have been primarily +responsible) Cranmer and Latimer were treated as they had treated +others. Moreover, some two hundred poor men and women had dared the +fiery death. The persecution was on a scale never forgiven or +forgotten, since Mary began cerdonibus esse timenda. Mary was not +essentially inclement. Despite Renard, the agent of the Emperor, she +spared that lord of fluff and feather, Courtenay, and she spared +Elizabeth. Lady Jane she could not save, the girl who was a queen by +grace of God and of her own royal nature. But Mary will never be +pardoned by England. "Few men or women have lived less capable of +doing knowingly a wrong thing," says Mr Froude, a great admirer of +Tennyson's play. Yet, taking Mr Froude's own view, Mary's abject and +superannuated passion for Philip; her ecstasies during her supposed +pregnancy; "the forlorn hours when she would sit on the ground with +her knees drawn to her face," with all her "symptoms of hysterical +derangement, leave little room, as we think of her, for other +feelings than pity." Unfortunately, feelings of pity for a person so +distraught, so sourly treated by fortune, do not suffice for tragedy. +When we contemplate Antigone or OEdipus, it is not with a sentiment +of pity struggling against abhorrence. + +For these reasons the play does not seem to have a good dramatic +subject. The unity is given by Mary herself and her fortunes, and +these are scarcely dramatic. History prevents the introduction of +Philip till the second scene of the third act. His entrance is +manque; he merely accompanies Cardinal Pole, who takes command of the +scene, and Philip does not get in a word till after a long +conversation between the Queen and the Cardinal. Previously Philip +had only crossed the stage in a procession, yet when he does appear +he is bereft of prominence. The interest as regards him is +indicated, in Act I. scene v., by Mary's kissing his miniature. Her +blighted love for him is one main motive of the tragedy, but his own +part appears too subordinate in the play as published. The interest +is scattered among the vast crowd of characters; and Mr R. H. Hutton +remarked at the time that he "remains something of a cold, cruel, and +sensual shadow." We are more interested in Wyatt, Cranmer, Gardiner, +and others; or at least their parts are more interesting. Yet in no +case does the interest of any character, except of Mary and +Elizabeth, remain continuous throughout the play. Tennyson himself +thought that "the real difficulty of the drama is to give sufficient +relief to its intense sadness. . . . Nothing less than the holy calm +of the meek and penitent Cranmer can be adequate artistic relief." +But not much relief can be drawn from a man about to be burned alive, +and history does not tempt us to keen sympathy with the recanting +archbishop, at least if we agree with Macaulay rather than with +Froude. + +I venture to think that historical tradition, as usual, offered a +better motive than exact history. Following tradition, we see in +Mary a cloud of hateful gloom, from which England escapes into the +glorious dawn of "the Gospel light," and of Elizabeth, who might be +made a triumphantly sympathetic character. That is the natural and +popular course which the drama might take. But Tennyson's history is +almost critical and scientific. Points of difficult and debated +evidence (as to Elizabeth's part in Wyatt's rebellion) are discussed. +There is no contest of day and darkness, of Truth and Error. The +characters are in that perplexed condition about creeds which was +their actual state after the political and social and religious chaos +produced by Henry VIII. Gardiner is a Catholic, but not an +Ultramontane; Lord William Howard is a Catholic, but not a fanatic; +we find a truculent Anabaptist, or Socialist, and a citizen whose +pride is his moderation. The native uncritical tendency of the drama +is to throw up hats and halloo for Elizabeth and an open Bible. In +place of this, Cecil delivers a well-considered analysis of the +character of Elizabeth + + + "Eliz. God guide me lest I lose the way. +[Exit Elizabeth. + Cecil. Many points weather'd, many perilous ones, +At last a harbour opens; but therein +Sunk rocks--they need fine steering--much it is +To be nor mad, nor bigot--have a mind - +Nor let Priests' talk, or dream of worlds to be, +Miscolour things about her--sudden touches +For him, or him--sunk rocks; no passionate faith - +But--if let be--balance and compromise; +Brave, wary, sane to the heart of her--a Tudor +School'd by the shadow of death--a Boleyn, too, +Glancing across the Tudor--not so well." + + +This is excellent as historical criticism, in the favourable sense; +but the drama, by its nature, demands something not critical but +triumphant and one-sided. The character of Elizabeth is one of the +best in the play, as her soliloquy (Act III. scene v.) is one of the +finest of the speeches. We see her courage, her coquetry, her +dissimulation, her arrogance. But while this is the true Elizabeth, +it is not the idealised Elizabeth whom English loyalty created, lived +for, and died for. Mr Froude wrote, "You have given us the greatest +of all your works," an opinion which the world can never accept. +"You have reclaimed one more section of English History from the +wilderness, and given it a form in which it will be fixed for ever. +No one since Shakespeare has done that." But Mr Froude had done it, +and Tennyson's reading of "the section" is mainly that of Mr Froude. +Mr Gladstone found that Cranmer and Gardiner "are still in a +considerable degree mysteries to me." A mystery Cranmer must remain. +Perhaps the "crowds" and "Voices" are not the least excellent of the +characters, Tennyson's humour finding an opportunity in them, and in +Joan and Tib. His idyllic charm speaks in the words of Lady Clarence +to the fevered Queen; and there is dramatic genius in her reply:- + + + "Mary. What is the strange thing happiness? Sit down here: +Tell me thine happiest hour. + Lady Clarence. I will, if that +May make your Grace forget yourself a little. +There runs a shallow brook across our field +For twenty miles, where the black crow flies five, +And doth so bound and babble all the way +As if itself were happy. It was May-time, +And I was walking with the man I loved. +I loved him, but I thought I was not loved. +And both were silent, letting the wild brook +Speak for us--till he stoop'd and gather'd one +From out a bed of thick forget-me-nots, +Look'd hard and sweet at me, and gave it me. +I took it, tho' I did not know I took it, +And put it in my bosom, and all at once +I felt his arms about me, and his lips - + Mary. O God! I have been too slack, too slack; +There are Hot Gospellers even among our guards - +Nobles we dared not touch. We have but burnt +The heretic priest, workmen, and women and children. +Wet, famine, ague, fever, storm, wreck, wrath, - +We have so play'd the coward; but by God's grace, +We'll follow Philip's leading, and set up +The Holy Office here--garner the wheat, +And burn the tares with unquenchable fire!" + + +The conclusion, in the acting edition, printed in the Biography, +appears to be an improvement on that in the text as originally +published. Unhappy as the drama essentially is, the welcome which Mr +Browning gave both to the published work and to the acted play--"a +complete success": "conception, execution, the whole and the parts, +I see nowhere the shadow of a fault"--offers "relief" in actual human +nature. "He is the greatest-brained poet in England," Tennyson said, +on a later occasion. "Violets fade, he has given me a crown of +gold." + +Before writing Harold (1876) the poet "studied many recent plays," +and re-read AEschylus and Sophocles. For history he went to the +Bayeux tapestry, the Roman de Rou, Lord Lytton, and Freeman. +Students of a recent controversy will observe that, following +Freeman, he retains the famous palisade, so grievously battered by +the axe-strokes of Mr Horace Round. Harold is a piece more +compressed, and much more in accordance with the traditions of the +drama, than Queen Mary. The topic is tragic indeed: the sorrow +being that of a great man, a great king, the bulwark of a people that +fell with his fall. Moreover, as the topic is treated, the play is +rich in the irony usually associated with the name of Sophocles. +Victory comes before a fall. Harold, like Antigone, is torn between +two duties--his oath and the claims of his country. His ruin comes +from what Aristotle would call his [Greek text which cannot be +reproduced], his fault in swearing the oath to William. The hero +himself; recking little, after a superstitious moment, of the +concealed relics over which he swore, deems his offence to lie in +swearing a vow which he never meant to keep. The persuasions which +urge him to this course are admirably presented: England, Edith, his +brother's freedom, were at stake. Casuistry, or even law, would have +absolved him easily; an oath taken under duresse is of no avail. But +Harold's "honour rooted in dishonour stood," and he cannot so readily +absolve himself. Bruce and the bishops who stood by Bruce had no +such scruples: they perjured themselves often, on the most sacred +relics, especially the bishops. But Harold rises above the mediaeval +and magical conception of the oath, and goes to his doom conscious of +a stain on his honour, of which only a deeper stain, that of +falseness to his country, could make him clean. This is a truly +tragic stroke of destiny. The hero's character is admirably noble, +patient, and simple. The Confessor also is as true in art as to +history, and his vision of the fall and rise of England is a noble +passage. In Aldwyth we have something of Vivien, with a grain of +conscience, and the part of Edith Swan's-neck has a restrained and +classic pathos in contrast with the melancholy of Wulfnoth. The +piece, as the poet said, is a "tragedy of doom," of deepening and +darkening omens, as in the Odyssey and Njal's Saga. The battle +scene, with the choruses of the monks, makes a noble close. + +FitzGerald remained loyal, but it was to "a fairy Prince who came +from other skies than these rainy ones," and "the wretched critics," +as G. H. Lewes called them, seem to have been unfriendly. In fact +(besides the innate wretchedness of all critics), they grudged the +time and labour given to the drama, in an undramatic age. Harold had +not what FitzGerald called "the old champagne flavour" of the vintage +of 1842. + +Becket was begun in 1876, printed in 1879, and published in 1884. +Before that date, in 1880, Tennyson produced one of the volumes of +poetry which was more welcome than a play to most of his admirers. +The intervening years passed in the Isle of Wight, at Aldworth, in +town, and in summer tours, were of no marked biographical interest. +The poet was close on three score and ten--he reached that limit in +1879. The days darkened around him, as darken they must: in the +spring of 1879 he lost his favourite brother, himself a poet of +original genius, Charles Tennyson Turner. In May of the same year he +published The Lover's Tale, which has been treated here among his +earliest works. His hours, and (to some extent) his meals, were +regulated by Sir Andrew Clark. He planted trees, walked, read, +loitered in his garden, and kept up his old friendships, while he +made that of the great Gordon. Compliments passed between him and +Victor Hugo, who had entertained Lionel Tennyson in Paris, and wrote: +"Je lis avec emotion vos vers superbes; c'est un reflet de gloire que +vous m'envoyez." Mr Matthew Arnold's compliment was very like Mr +Arnold's humour: "Your father has been our most popular poet for +over forty years, and I am of opinion that he fully deserves his +reputation": such was "Mat's sublime waggery." Tennyson heaped +coals of fire on the other poet, bidding him, as he liked to be +bidden, to write more poetry, not "prose things." Tennyson lived +much in the society of Browning and George Eliot, and made the +acquaintance of Renan. In December 1879 Mr and Mrs Kendal produced +The Falcon, which ran for sixty-seven nights; it is "an exquisite +little poem in action," as Fanny Kemble said. During a Continental +tour Tennyson visited Catullus's Sirmio: "here he made his Frater +Ave atque Vale," and the poet composed his beautiful salutation to +the + + +"Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago." + + +In 1880 Ballads and other Poems proved that, like Titian, the great +poet was not to be defeated by the years. The First Quarrel was in +his most popular English style. Rizpah deserved and received the +splendid panegyric of Mr Swinburne. The Revenge is probably the +finest of the patriotic pieces, and keeps green the memory of an +exploit the most marvellous in the annals of English seamen. The +Village Wife is a pendant worthy of The Northern Farmer. The poem In +the Children's Hospital caused some irritation at the moment, but +there was only one opinion as to the Defence of Lucknow and the +beautiful re-telling of the Celtic Voyage of Maeldune. The fragment +of Homeric translation was equally fortunate in choice of subject and +in rendering. + +In the end of 1880 the poet finished The Cup, which had been worked +on occasionally since he completed The Falcon in 1880. The piece was +read by the author to Sir Henry Irving and his company, and it was +found that the manuscript copy needed few alterations to fit it for +the stage. The scenery and the acting of the protagonists are not +easily to be forgotten. The play ran for a hundred and thirty +nights. Sir Henry Irving had thought that Becket (then unpublished) +would prove too expensive, and could only be a succes d'estime. +Tennyson had found out that "the worst of writing for the stage is, +you must keep some actor always in your mind." To this necessity +authors like Moliere and Shakespeare were, of course, resigned and +familiar; they knew exactly how to deal with all their means. But +this part of the business of play-writing must always be a cross to +the poet who is not at one with the world of the stage. + +In The Cup Miss Ellen Terry made the strongest impression, her part +being noble and sympathetic, while Sir Henry Irving had the +ungrateful part of the villain. To be sure, he was a villain of much +complexity; and Tennyson thought that his subtle blend of Roman +refinement and intellectuality, and barbarian, self-satisfied +sensuality, was not "hit off." Synorix is, in fact, half-Greek, +half-Celt, with a Roman education, and the "blend" is rather too +remote for successful representation. The traditional villain, from +Iago downwards, is not apt to utter such poetry as this:- + + +"O Thou, that dost inspire the germ with life, +The child, a thread within the house of birth, +And give him limbs, then air, and send him forth +The glory of his father--Thou whose breath +Is balmy wind to robe our bills with grass, +And kindle all our vales with myrtle-blossom, +And roll the golden oceans of our grain, +And sway the long grape-bunches of our vines, +And fill all hearts with fatness and the lust +Of plenty--make me happy in my marriage!" + + +The year 1881 brought the death of another of the old Cambridge +friends, James Spedding, the biographer of Bacon; and Carlyle also +died, a true friend, if rather intermittent in his appreciation of +poetry. The real Carlyle did appreciate it, but the Carlyle of +attitude was too much of the iron Covenanter to express what he felt. +The poem Despair irritated the earnest and serious readers of "know- +nothing books." The poem expressed, dramatically, a mood like +another, a human mood not so very uncommon. A man ruined in this +world's happiness curses the faith of his youth, and the unfaith of +his reading and reflection, and tries to drown himself. This is one +conclusion of the practical syllogism, and it is a free country. +However, there were freethinkers who did not think that Tennyson's +kind of thinking ought to be free. Other earnest persons objected to +"First drink a health," in the re-fashioned song of Hands all Round. +They might have remembered a royal health drunk in water an hour +before the drinkers swept Mackay down the Pass of Killiecrankie. The +poet did not specify the fluid in which the toast was to be carried, +and the cup might be that which "cheers but not inebriates." "The +common cup," as the remonstrants had to be informed, "has in all ages +been the sacred symbol of unity." + +The Promise of May was produced in November 1882, and the poet was +once more so unfortunate as to vex the susceptibilities of advanced +thinkers. The play is not a masterpiece, and yet neither the gallery +gods nor the Marquis of Queensberry need have felt their withers +wrung. The hero, or villain, Edgar, is a perfectly impossible +person, and represents no kind of political, social, or economical +thinker. A man would give all other bliss and all his worldly wealth +for this, to waste his whole strength in one kick upon this perfect +prig. He employs the arguments of evolution and so forth to justify +the seduction of a little girl of fifteen, and later, by way of +making amends, proposes to commit incest by marrying her sister. +There have been evolutionists, to be sure, who believed in +promiscuity, like Mr Edgar, as preferable to monogamy. But this only +proves that an evolutionist may fail to understand evolution. There +be also such folk as Stevenson calls "squirradicals"--squires who say +that "the land is the people's." Probably no advocate of +promiscuity, and no squirradical, was present at the performances of +The Promise of May. But people of advanced minds had got it into +their heads that their doctrines were to be attacked, so they went +and made a hubbub in the sacred cause of freedom of thought and +speech. The truth is, that controversial topics, political topics, +ought not to be brought into plays, much less into sermons. Tennyson +meant Edgar for "nothing thorough, nothing sincere." He is that +venomous thing, the prig-scoundrel: he does not suit the stage, and +his place, if anywhere, is in the novel. Advocates of marriage with +a deceased wife's sister might have applauded Edgar for wishing to +marry the sister of a mistress assumed to be deceased, but no other +party in the State wanted anything except the punching of Edgar's +head by Farmer Dobson. + +In 1883 died Edward FitzGerald, the most kind, loyal, and, as he +said, crotchety of old and dear Cambridge friends. He did not live +to see the delightful poem which Tennyson had written for him. In +almost his latest letter he had remarked, superfluously, that when he +called the task of translating The Agamemnon "work for a poet," he +"was not thinking of Mr Browning." + +In the autumn of 1883 Tennyson was taken, with Mr Gladstone, by Sir +Donald Currie, for a cruise round the west coast of Scotland, to the +Orkneys, and to Copenhagen. The people of Kirkwall conferred on the +poet and the statesman the freedom of the burgh, and Mr Gladstone, in +an interesting speech, compared the relative chances of posthumous +fame of the poet and the politician. Pericles is not less remembered +than Sophocles, though Shakespeare is more in men's minds than Cecil. +Much depends, as far as the statesmen are considered, on contemporary +historians. It is Thucydides who immortalises Pericles. But it is +improbable that the things which Mr Gladstone did, and attempted, +will be forgotten more rapidly than the conduct and characters of, +say, Burleigh or Lethington. + +In 1884, after this voyage, with its royal functions and celebrations +at Copenhagen, a peerage was offered to the poet. He "did not want +to alter his plain Mr," and he must have known that, whether he +accepted or refused, the chorus of blame would be louder than that of +applause. Scott had desired "such grinning honour as Sir Walter +hath"; the title went well with the old name, and pleased his love of +old times. Tennyson had been blamed "by literary men" for thrice +evading a baronetcy, and he did not think that a peerage would make +smooth the lives of his descendants. But he concluded, "Why should I +be selfish and not suffer an honour (as Gladstone says) to be done to +literature in my name?" Politically, he thought that the Upper +House, while it lasts, partly supplied the place of the American +"referendum." He voted in July 1884 for the extension of the +franchise, and in November stated his views to Mr Gladstone in verse. +In prose he wrote to Mr Gladstone, "I have a strong conviction that +the more simple the dealings of men with men, as well as of man with +man, are--the better," a sentiment which, perhaps, did not always +prevail with his friend. The poet's reflections on the horror of +Gordon's death are not recorded. He introduced the idea of the +Gordon Home for Boys, and later supported it by a letter, "Have we +forgotten Gordon?" to the Daily Telegraph. They who cannot forget +Gordon must always be grateful to Tennyson for providing this +opportunity of honouring the greatest of an illustrious clan, and of +helping, in their degree, a scheme which was dear to the heroic +leader. + +The poet, very naturally, was most averse to personal appearance in +public matters. Mankind is so fashioned that the advice of a poet is +always regarded as unpractical, and is even apt to injure the cause +which he advocates. Happily there cannot be two opinions about the +right way of honouring Gordon. Tennyson's poem, The Fleet, was also +in harmony with the general sentiment. + +In the last month of 1884 Becket was published. The theme of Fair +Rosamund had appealed to the poet in youth, and he had written part +of a lyric which he judiciously left unpublished. It is given in his +Biography. In 1877 he had visited Canterbury, and had traced the +steps of Becket to his place of slaughter in the Cathedral. The poem +was printed in 1879, but not published till seven years later. In +1879 Sir Henry Irving had thought the play too costly to be produced +with more than a succes d'estime; but in 1891 he put it on the stage, +where it proved the most successful of modern poetic dramas. As +published it is, obviously, far too long for public performance. It +is not easy to understand why dramatic poets always make their works +so much too long. The drama seems, by its very nature, to have a +limit almost as distinct as the limit of the sonnet. It is easy to +calculate how long a play for the stage ought to be, and we might +think that a poet would find the natural limit serviceable to his +art, for it inculcates selection, conciseness, and concentration. +But despite these advantages of the natural form of the drama, modern +poets, at least, constantly overflow their banks. The author ruit +profusus, and the manager has to reduce the piece to feasible +proportions, such as it ought to have assumed from the first. + +Becket has been highly praised by Sir Henry Irving himself, for its +"moments of passion and pathos, . . . which, when they exist, atone +to an audience for the endurance of long acts." But why should the +audience have such long acts to endure? The reader, one fears, is +apt to use his privilege of skipping. The long speeches of Walter +Map and the immense period of Margery tempt the student to exercise +his agility. A "chronicle play" has the privilege of wandering, but +Becket wanders too far and too long. The political details of the +quarrel between Church and State, with its domestic and international +complexities, are apt to fatigue the attention. Inevitable and +insoluble as the situation was, neither protagonist is entirely +sympathetic, whether in the play or in history. The struggle in +Becket between his love of the king and his duty to the Church (or +what he takes to be his duty) is nobly presented, and is truly +dramatic, while there is grotesque and terrible relief in the banquet +of the Beggars. In the scene of the assassination the poet "never +stoops his wing," and there are passages of tender pathos between +Henry and Rosamund, while Becket's keen memories of his early days, +just before his death, are moving. + + + "Becket. I once was out with Henry in the days +When Henry loved me, and we came upon +A wild-fowl sitting on her nest, so still +I reach'd my hand and touch'd; she did not stir; +The snow had frozen round her, and she sat +Stone-dead upon a heap of ice-cold eggs. +Look! how this love, this mother, runs thro' all +The world God made--even the beast--the bird! + John of Salisbury. Ay, still a lover of the beast and bird? +But these arm'd men--will you not hide yourself? +Perchance the fierce De Brocs from Saltwood Castle, +To assail our Holy Mother lest she brood +Too long o'er this hard egg, the world, and send +Her whole heart's heat into it, till it break +Into young angels. Pray you, hide yourself. + Becket. There was a little fair-hair'd Norman maid +Lived in my mother's house: if Rosamund is +The world's rose, as her name imports her--she +Was the world's lily. + John of Salisbury. Ay, and what of her? + Becket. She died of leprosy." + + +But the part of Rosamund, her innocent ignorance especially, is not +very readily intelligible, not quite persuasive, and there is almost +a touch of the burlesque in her unexpected appearance as a monk. To +weave that old and famous story of love into the terribly complex +political intrigue was a task almost too great. The character of +Eleanor is perhaps more successfully drawn in the Prologue than in +the scene where she offers the choice of the dagger or the bowl, and +is interrupted, in a startlingly unexpected manner, by the Archbishop +himself. The opportunities for scenic effects are magnificent +throughout, and must have contributed greatly to the success on the +stage. Still one cannot but regard the published Becket as rather +the marble from which the statue may be hewn than as the statue +itself. There are fine scenes, powerful and masterly drawing of +character in Henry, Eleanor, and Becket, but there is a want of +concentration, due, perhaps, to the long period of time covered by +the action. So, at least, it seems to a reader who has admitted his +sense of incompetency in the dramatic region. The acuteness of the +poet's power of historical intuition was attested by Mr J. R. Green +and Mr Bryce. "One cannot imagine," said Mr Bryce, "a more vivid, a +more perfectly faithful picture than it gives both of Henry and +Thomas." Tennyson's portraits of these two "go beyond and perfect +history." The poet's sympathy ought, perhaps, to have been, if not +with the false and ruffianly Henry, at least with Henry's side of the +question. For Tennyson had made Harold leave + + + "To England +My legacy of war against the Pope +From child to child, from Pope to Pope, from age to age, +Till the sea wash her level with her shores, +Or till the Pope be Christ's." + + + +CHAPTER IX.--LAST YEARS. + + + +The end of 1884 saw the publication of Tiresias and other Poems, +dedicated to "My good friend, Robert Browning," and opening with the +beautiful verses to one who never was Mr Browning's friend, Edward +FitzGerald. The volume is rich in the best examples of Tennyson's +later work. Tiresias, the monologue of the aged seer, blinded by +excess of light when he beheld Athene unveiled, and under the curse +of Cassandra, is worthy of the author who, in youth, wrote OEnone and +Ulysses. Possibly the verses reflect Tennyson's own sense of public +indifference to the voice of the poet and the seer. But they are of +much earlier date than the year of publication:- + + + "For when the crowd would roar +For blood, for war, whose issue was their doom, +To cast wise words among the multitude +Was flinging fruit to lions; nor, in hours +Of civil outbreak, when I knew the twain +Would each waste each, and bring on both the yoke +Of stronger states, was mine the voice to curb +The madness of our cities and their kings. + Who ever turn'd upon his heel to hear +My warning that the tyranny of one +Was prelude to the tyranny of all? +My counsel that the tyranny of all +Led backward to the tyranny of one? + This power hath work'd no good to aught that lives." + + +The conclusion was a favourite with the author, and his blank verse +never reached a higher strain:- + + + "But for me, +I would that I were gather'd to my rest, +And mingled with the famous kings of old, +On whom about their ocean-islets flash +The faces of the Gods--the wise man's word, +Here trampled by the populace underfoot, +There crown'd with worship--and these eyes will find +The men I knew, and watch the chariot whirl +About the goal again, and hunters race +The shadowy lion, and the warrior-kings, +In height and prowess more than human, strive +Again for glory, while the golden lyre +Is ever sounding in heroic ears +Heroic hymns, and every way the vales +Wind, clouded with the grateful incense-fume +Of those who mix all odour to the Gods +On one far height in one far-shining fire." + + +Then follows the pathetic piece on FitzGerald's death, and the +prayer, not unfulfilled - + + + "That, when I from hence + Shall fade with him into the unknown, +My close of earth's experience + May prove as peaceful as his own." + + +The Ancient Sage, with its lyric interludes, is one of Tennyson's +meditations on the mystery of the world and of existence. Like the +poet himself, the Sage finds a gleam of light and hope in his own +subjective experiences of some unspeakable condition, already +recorded in In Memoriam. The topic was one on which he seems to have +spoken to his friends with freedom:- + + +"And more, my son! for more than once when I +Sat all alone, revolving in myself +The word that is the symbol of myself, +The mortal limit of the Self was loosed, +And past into the Nameless, as a cloud +Melts into Heaven. I touch'd my limbs, the limbs +Were strange not mine--and yet no shade of doubt, +But utter clearness, and thro' loss of Self +The gain of such large life as match'd with ours +Were Sun to spark--unshadowable in words, +Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world." + + +The poet's habit of + + + "Revolving in myself +The word that is the symbol of myself" - + + +that is, of dwelling on the sound of his own name, was familiar to +the Arabs. M. Lefebure has drawn my attention to a passage in the +works of a mediaeval Arab philosopher, Ibn Khaldoun: {17} "To arrive +at the highest degree of inspiration of which he is capable, the +diviner should have recourse to the use of certain phrases marked by +a peculiar cadence and parallelism. Thus he emancipates his mind +from the influence of the senses, and is enabled to attain an +imperfect contact with the spiritual world." Ibn Khaldoun regards +the "contact" as extremely "imperfect." He describes similar efforts +made by concentrating the gaze on a mirror, a bowl of water, or the +like. Tennyson was doubtless unaware that he had stumbled +accidentally on a method of "ancient sages." Psychologists will +explain his experience by the word "dissociation." It is not +everybody, however, who can thus dissociate himself. The temperament +of genius has often been subject to such influence, as M. Lefebure +has shown in the modern instances of George Sand and Alfred de +Musset: we might add Shelley, Goethe, and even Scott. + +The poet's versatility was displayed in the appearance with these +records of "weird seizures", of the Irish dialect piece To-morrow, +the popular Spinster's Sweet-Arts, and the Locksley Hall Sixty Years +After. The old fire of the versification is unabated, but the hero +has relapsed on the gloom of the hero of Maud. He represents +himself, of course, not Tennyson, or only one of the moods of +Tennyson, which were sometimes black enough. A very different mood +chants the Charge of the Heavy Brigade, and speaks of + + +"Green Sussex fading into blue + With one gray glimpse of sea." + + +The lines To Virgil were written at the request of the Mantuans, by +the most Virgilian of all the successors of the + + +"Wielder of the stateliest measure + ever moulded by the lips of man." + + +Never was Tennyson more Virgilian than in this unmatched panegyric, +the sum and flower of criticism of that + + +"Golden branch amid the shadows, + kings and realms that pass to rise no more." + + +Hardly less admirable is the tribute to Catullus, and the old poet is +young again in the bird-song of Early Spring. The lines on Poets and +their Bibliographies, with The Dead Prophet, express Tennyson's +lifelong abhorrence of the critics and biographers, whose joy is in +the futile and the unimportant, in personal gossip and the sweepings +of the studio, the salvage of the wastepaper basket. The Prefatory +Poem to my Brother's Sonnets is not only touching in itself, but +proves that the poet can "turn to favour and to prettiness" such an +affliction as the ruinous summer of 1879. + +The year 1880 brought deeper distress in the death of the poet's son +Lionel, whose illness, begun in India, ended fatally in the Red Sea. +The interest of the following years was mainly domestic. The poet's +health, hitherto robust, was somewhat impaired in 1888, but his vivid +interest in affairs and in letters was unabated. He consoled himself +with Virgil, Keats, Wordsworth, Gibbon, Euripides, and Mr Leaf's +speculations on the composite nature of the Iliad, in which +Coleridge, perhaps alone among poets, believed. "You know," said +Tennyson to Mr Leaf; "I never liked that theory of yours about the +many poets." It would be at least as easy to prove that there were +many authors of Ivanhoe, or perhaps it would be a good deal more +easy. However, he admitted that three lines which occur both in the +Eighth and the Sixteenth Books of the Iliad are more appropriate in +the later book. Similar examples might be found in his own poems. +He still wrote, in the intervals of a malady which brought him "as +near death as a man could be without dying." He was an example of +the great physical strength which, on the whole, seems usually to +accompany great mental power. The strength may be dissipated by +passion, or by undue labour, as in cases easily recalled to memory, +but neither cause had impaired the vigour of Tennyson. Like Goethe, +he lived out all his life; and his eightieth birthday was cheered +both by public and private expressions of reverence and affection. + +Of Tennyson's last three years on earth we may think, in his own +words, that his + + + "Life's latest eve endured +Nor settled into hueless grey." + + +Nature was as dear to him and as inspiring as of old; men and affairs +and letters were not slurred by his intact and energetic mind. His +Demeter and other Poems, with the dedication to Lord Dufferin, +appeared in the December of the year. The dedication was the lament +for the dead son and the salutation to the Viceroy of India, a piece +of resigned and manly regret. The Demeter and Persephone is a modern +and tender study of the theme of the most beautiful Homeric Hymn. +The ancient poet had no such thought of the restored Persephone as +that which impels Tennyson to describe her + + +"Faint as a climate-changing bird that flies +All night across the darkness, and at dawn +Falls on the threshold of her native land." + + +The spring, the restored Persephone, comes more vigorous and joyous +to the shores of the AEgean than to ours. All Tennyson's own is +Demeter's awe of those "imperial disimpassioned eyes" of her +daughter, come from the bed and the throne of Hades, the Lord of many +guests. The hymn, happy in its ending, has no thought of the grey +heads of the Fates, and their answer to the goddess concerning "fate +beyond the Fates," and the breaking of the bonds of Hades. The +ballad of Owd Roa is one of the most spirited of the essays in +dialect to which Tennyson had of late years inclined. Vastness +merely expresses, in terms of poetry, Tennyson's conviction that, +without immortality, life is a series of worthless contrasts. An +opposite opinion may be entertained, but a man has a right to express +his own, which, coming from so great a mind, is not undeserving of +attention; or, at least, is hardly deserving of reproof. The poet's +idea is also stated thus in The Ring, in terms which perhaps do not +fall below the poetical; or, at least, do not drop into "the utterly +unpoetical":- + + +"The Ghost in Man, the Ghost that once was Man, +But cannot wholly free itself from Man, +Are calling to each other thro' a dawn +Stranger than earth has ever seen; the veil +Is rending, and the Voices of the day +Are heard across the Voices of the dark. +No sudden heaven, nor sudden hell, for man, +But thro' the Will of One who knows and rules - +And utter knowledge is but utter love - +AEonian Evolution, swift or slow, +Thro' all the Spheres--an ever opening height, +An ever lessening earth." + + +The Ring is, in fact, a ghost story based on a legend told by Mr +Lowell about a house near where he had once lived; one of those +houses vexed by + + +"A footstep, a low throbbing in the walls, +A noise of falling weights that never fell, +Weird whispers, bells that rang without a hand, +Door-handles turn'd when none was at the door, +And bolted doors that open'd of themselves." + + +These phenomena were doubtless caused by rats and water-pipes, but +they do not destroy the pity and the passion of the tale. The lines +to Mary Boyle are all of the normal world, and worthy of a poet's +youth and of the spring. Merlin and the Gleam is the spiritual +allegory of the poet's own career:- + + +"Arthur had vanish'd +I knew not whither, +The king who loved me, +And cannot die." + + +So at last + + + "All but in Heaven +Hovers The Gleam," + + +whither the wayfarer was soon to follow. There is a marvellous hope +and pathos in the melancholy of these all but the latest songs, +reminiscent of youth and love, and even of the dim haunting memories +and dreams of infancy. No other English poet has thus rounded all +his life with music. Tennyson was in his eighty-first year, when +there "came in a moment" the crown of his work, the immortal lyric, +Crossing the Bar. It is hardly less majestic and musical in the +perfect Greek rendering by his brother-in-law, Mr Lushington. For +once at least a poem has been "poured from the golden to the silver +cup" without the spilling of a drop. The new book's appearance was +coincident with the death of Mr Browning, "so loving and +appreciative," as Lady Tennyson wrote; a friend, not a rival, however +the partisans of either poet might strive to stir emulation between +two men of such lofty and such various genius. + + + +CHAPTER X.--1890. + + + +In the year 1889 the poet's health had permitted him to take long +walks on the sea-shore and along the cliffs, one of which, by reason +of its whiteness, he had named "Taliessin," "the splendid brow." His +mind ran on a poem founded on an Egyptian legend (of which the source +is not mentioned), telling how "despair and death came upon him who +was mad enough to try to probe the secret of the universe." He also +thought of a drama on Tristram, who, in the Idylls, is treated with +brevity, and not with the sympathy of the old writer who cries, "God +bless Tristram the knight: he fought for England!" But early in +1890 Tennyson suffered from a severe attack of influenza. In May Mr +Watts painted his portrait, and + + +"Divinely through all hindrance found the man." + + +Tennyson was a great admirer of Miss Austen's novels: "The realism +and life-likeness of Miss Austen's Dramatis Personae come nearest to +those of Shakespeare. Shakespeare, however, is a sun to which Jane +Austen, though a bright and true little world, is but an asteroid." +He was therefore pleased to find apple-blossoms co-existing with ripe +strawberries on June 28, as Miss Austen has been blamed, by minute +philosophers, for introducing this combination in the garden party in +Emma. The poet, like most of the good and great, read novels +eagerly, and excited himself over the confirmation of an adult male +in a story by Miss Yonge. Of Scott, "the most chivalrous literary +figure of the century, and the author with the widest range since +Shakespeare," he preferred Old Mortality, and it is a good choice. +He hated "morbid and introspective tales, with their oceans of sham +philosophy." At this time, with catholic taste, he read Mr Stevenson +and Mr Meredith, Miss Braddon and Mr Henry James, Ouida and Mr Thomas +Hardy; Mr Hall Caine and Mr Anstey; Mrs Oliphant and Miss Edna Lyall. +Not everybody can peruse all of these very diverse authors with +pleasure. He began his poem on the Roman gladiatorial combats; +indeed his years, fourscore and one, left his intellectual eagerness +as unimpaired as that of Goethe. "A crooked share," he said to the +Princess Louise, "may make a straight furrow." "One afternoon he had +a long waltz with M- in the ballroom." Speaking of + + +"All the charm of all the Muses + Often flowering in a lonely word" + + +in Virgil, he adduced, rather strangely, the cunctantem ramum, said +of the Golden Bough, in the Sixth AEneid. The choice is odd, because +the Sibyl has just told AEneas that, if he be destined to pluck the +branch of gold, ipse volens facilisque sequetur, "it will come off of +its own accord," like the sacred ti branches of the Fijians, which +bend down to be plucked for the Fire rite. Yet, when the predestined +AEneas tries to pluck the bough of gold, it yields reluctantly +(cunctantem), contrary to what the Sibyl has foretold. Mr Conington, +therefore, thought the phrase a slip on the part of Virgil. "People +accused Virgil of plagiarising," he said, "but if a man made it his +own there was no harm in that (look at the great poets, Shakespeare +included)." Tennyson, like Virgil, made much that was ancient his +own; his verses are often, and purposefully, a mosaic of classical +reminiscences. But he was vexed by the hunters after remote and +unconscious resemblances, and far-fetched analogies between his lines +and those of others. He complained that, if he said that the sun +went down, a parallel was at once cited from Homer, or anybody else, +and he used a very powerful phrase to condemn critics who detected +such repetitions. "The moanings of the homeless sea,"--"moanings" +from Horace, "homeless" from Shelley. "As if no one else had ever +heard the sea moan except Horace!" Tennyson's mixture of memory and +forgetfulness was not so strange as that of Scott, and when he +adapted from the Greek, Latin, or Italian, it was of set purpose, +just as it was with Virgil. The beautiful lines comparing a girl's +eyes to bottom agates that seem to + + + "Wave and float +In crystal currents of clear running seas," + + +he invented while bathing in Wales. It was his habit, to note down +in verse such similes from nature, and to use them when he found +occasion. But the higher criticism, analysing the simile, detected +elements from Shakespeare and from Beaumont and Fletcher. + +In June 1891 the poet went on a tour in Devonshire, and began his +Akbar, and probably wrote June Bracken and Heather; or perhaps it was +composed when "we often sat on the top of Blackdown to watch the +sunset." He wrote to Mr Kipling - + + +"The oldest to the youngest singer + That England bore" + + +(to alter Mr Swinburne's lines to Landor), praising his Flag of +England. Mr Kipling replied as "the private to the general." + +Early in 1892 The Foresters was successfully produced at New York by +Miss Ada Rehan, the music by Sir Arthur Sullivan, and the scenery +from woodland designs by Whymper. Robin Hood (as we learn from Mark +Twain) is a favourite hero with the youth of America. Mr Tom Sawyer +himself took, in Mark Twain's tale, the part of the bold outlaw. + +The Death of OEnone was published in 1892, with the dedication to the +Master of Balliol - + + + "Read a Grecian tale retold +Which, cast in later Grecian mould, + Quintus Calaber +Somewhat lazily handled of old." + + +Quintus Calaber, more usually called Quintus Smyrnaeus, is a writer +of perhaps the fourth century of our era. About him nothing, or next +to nothing, is known. He told, in so late an age, the conclusion of +the Tale of Troy, and (in the writer's opinion) has been unduly +neglected and disdained. His manner, I venture to think, is more +Homeric than that of the more famous and doubtless greater +Alexandrian poet of the Argonautic cycle, Apollonius Rhodius, his +senior by five centuries. His materials were probably the ancient +and lost poems of the Epic Cycle, and the story of the death of +OEnone may be from the Little Iliad of Lesches. Possibly parts of +his work may be textually derived from the Cyclics, but the topic is +very obscure. In Quintus, Paris, after encountering evil omens on +his way, makes a long speech, imploring the pardon of the deserted +OEnone. She replies, not with the Tennysonian brevity; she sends him +back to the helpless arms of her rival, Helen. Paris dies on the +hills; never did Helen see him returning. The wood-nymphs bewail +Paris, and a herdsman brings the bitter news to Helen, who chants her +lament. But remorse falls on OEnone. She does not go + + + "Slowly down +By the long torrent's ever-deepened roar," + + +but rushes "swift as the wind to seek and spring upon the pyre of her +lord." Fate and Aphrodite drive her headlong, and in heaven Selene, +remembering Endymion, bewails the lot of her sister in sorrow. +OEnone reaches the funeral flame, and without a word or a cry leaps +into her husband's arms, the wild Nymphs wondering. The lovers are +mingled in one heap of ashes, and these are bestowed in one vessel of +gold and buried in a howe. This is the story which the poet +rehandled in his old age, completing the work of his happy youth when +he walked with Hallam in the Pyrenean hills, that were to him as Ida. +The romance of OEnone and her death condone, as even Homer was apt to +condone, the sins of beautiful Paris, whom the nymphs lament, despite +the evil that he has wrought. The silence of the veiled OEnone, as +she springs into her lover's last embrace, is perhaps more affecting +and more natural than Tennyson's + + + "She lifted up a voice +Of shrill command, 'Who burns upon the pyre?'" + + +The St Telemachus has the old splendour and vigour of verse, and, +though written so late in life, is worthy of the poet's prime:- + + + "Eve after eve that haggard anchorite +Would haunt the desolated fane, and there +Gaze at the ruin, often mutter low +'Vicisti Galilaee'; louder again, +Spurning a shatter'd fragment of the God, +'Vicisti Galilaee!' but--when now +Bathed in that lurid crimson--ask'd 'Is earth +On fire to the West? or is the Demon-god +Wroth at his fall?' and heard an answer 'Wake +Thou deedless dreamer, lazying out a life +Of self-suppression, not of selfless love.' +And once a flight of shadowy fighters crost +The disk, and once, he thought, a shape with wings +Came sweeping by him, and pointed to the West, +And at his ear he heard a whisper 'Rome,' +And in his heart he cried 'The call of God!' +And call'd arose, and, slowly plunging down +Thro' that disastrous glory, set his face +By waste and field and town of alien tongue, +Following a hundred sunsets, and the sphere +Of westward-wheeling stars; and every dawn +Struck from him his own shadow on to Rome. + Foot-sore, way-worn, at length he touch'd his goal, +The Christian city." + + +Akbar's Dream may be taken, more or less, to represent the poet's own +theology of a race seeking after God, if perchance they may find Him, +and the closing Hymn was a favourite with Tennyson. He said, "It is +a magnificent metre":- + + +"HYMN. + +I. + +Once again thou flamest heavenward, once again we see thee rise. +Every morning is thy birthday gladdening human hearts and eyes. + Every morning here we greet it, bowing lowly down before thee, +Thee the Godlike, thee the changeless in thine ever-changing skies. + +II. + +Shadow-maker, shadow-slayer, arrowing light from clime to clime, +Hear thy myriad laureates hail thee monarch in their woodland rhyme. + Warble bird, and open flower, and, men, below the dome of azure +Kneel adoring Him the Timeless in the flame that measures Time!" + + +In this final volume the poet cast his handful of incense on the +altar of Scott, versifying the tale of Il Bizarro, which the dying +Sir Walter records in his Journal in Italy. The Churchwarden and the +Curate is not inferior to the earlier peasant poems in its expression +of shrewdness, humour, and superstition. A verse of Poets and +Critics may be taken as the poet's last word on the old futile +quarrel:- + + +"This thing, that thing is the rage, +Helter-skelter runs the age; +Minds on this round earth of ours +Vary like the leaves and flowers, + Fashion'd after certain laws; +Sing thou low or loud or sweet, +All at all points thou canst not meet, + Some will pass and some will pause. + +What is true at last will tell: +Few at first will place thee well; +Some too low would have thee shine, +Some too high--no fault of thine - + Hold thine own, and work thy will! +Year will graze the heel of year, +But seldom comes the poet here, + And the Critic's rarer still." + + +Still the lines hold good - + + +"Some too low would have thee shine, +Some too high--no fault of thine." + + +The end was now at hand. A sense of weakness was felt by the poet on +September 3, 1892: on the 28th his family sent for Sir Andrew Clark; +but the patient gradually faded out of life, and expired on Thursday, +October 6, at 1.35 A.M. To the very last he had Shakespeare by him, +and his windows were open to the sun; on the last night they were +flooded by the moonlight. The description of the final scenes must +be read in the Biography by the poet's son. "His patience and quiet +strength had power upon those who were nearest and dearest to him; we +felt thankful for the love and the utter peace of it all." "The life +after death," Tennyson had said just before his fatal illness, "is +the cardinal point of Christianity. I believe that God reveals +Himself in every individual soul; and my idea of Heaven is the +perpetual ministry of one soul to another." He had lived the life of +heaven upon earth, being in all his work a minister of things +honourable, lovely, consoling, and ennobling to the souls of others, +with a ministry which cannot die. His body sleeps next to that of +his friend and fellow-poet, Robert Browning, in front of Chaucer's +monument in the Abbey. + + + +CHAPTER XI.--LAST CHAPTER. + + + +"O, that Press will get hold of me now," Tennyson said when he knew +that his last hour was at hand. He had a horror of personal tattle, +as even his early poems declare - + + +"For now the Poet cannot die, + Nor leave his music as of old, + But round him ere he scarce be cold +Begins the scandal and the cry." + + +But no "carrion-vulture" has waited + + +"To tear his heart before the crowd." + + +About Tennyson, doubtless, there is much anecdotage: most of the +anecdotes turn on his shyness, his really exaggerated hatred of +personal notoriety, and the odd and brusque things which he would say +when alarmed by effusive strangers. It has not seemed worth while to +repeat more than one or two of these legends, nor have I sought +outside the Biography by his son for more than the biographer chose +to tell. The readers who are least interested in poetry are most +interested in tattle about the poet. It is the privilege of genius +to retain the freshness and simplicity, with some of the foibles, of +the child. When Tennyson read his poems aloud he was apt to be moved +by them, and to express frankly his approbation where he thought it +deserved. Only very rudimentary psychologists recognised conceit in +this freedom; and only the same set of persons mistook shyness for +arrogance. Effusiveness of praise or curiosity in a stranger is apt +to produce bluntness of reply in a Briton. "Don't talk d-d nonsense, +sir," said the Duke of Wellington to the gushing person who piloted +him, in his old age, across Piccadilly. Of Tennyson Mr Palgrave +says, "I have known him silenced, almost frozen, before the eager +unintentional eyes of a girl of fifteen. And under the stress of +this nervous impulse compelled to contradict his inner self +(especially when under the terror of leonisation . . . ), he was +doubtless at times betrayed into an abrupt phrase, a cold +unsympathetic exterior; a moment's 'defect of the rose.'" Had he not +been sensitive in all things, he would have been less of a poet. The +chief criticism directed against his mode of life is that he WAS +sensitive and reserved, but he could and did make himself pleasant in +the society of les pauvres d'esprit. Curiosity alarmed him, and +drove him into his shell: strangers who met him in that mood carried +away false impressions, which developed into myths. As the Master of +Balliol has recorded, despite his shyness "he was extremely +hospitable, often inviting not only his friends, but the friends of +his friends, and giving them a hearty welcome. For underneath a +sensitive exterior he was thoroughly genial if he was understood." +In these points he was unlike his great contemporary, Browning; for +instance, Tennyson never (I think) was the Master's guest at Balliol, +mingling, like Browning, with the undergraduates, to whom the +Master's hospitality was freely extended. Yet, where he was +familiar, Tennyson was a gay companion, not shunning jest or even +paradox. "As Dr Johnson says, every man may be judged of by his +laughter": but no Boswell has chronicled the laughters of Tennyson. +"He never, or hardly ever, made puns or witticisms" (though one pun, +at least, endures in tradition), "but always lived in an attitude of +humour." Mr Jowett writes (and no description of the poet is better +than his) - + + +If I were to describe his outward appearance, I should say that he +was certainly unlike any one else whom I ever saw. A glance at some +of Watts' portraits of him will give, better than any description +which can be expressed in words, a conception of his noble mien and +look. He was a magnificent man, who stood before you in his native +refinement and strength. The unconventionality of his manners was in +keeping with the originality of his figure. He would sometimes say +nothing, or a word or two only, to the stranger who approached him, +out of shyness. He would sometimes come into the drawing-room +reading a book. At other times, especially to ladies, he was +singularly gracious and benevolent. He would talk about the +accidents of his own life with an extraordinary freedom, as at the +moment they appeared to present themselves to his mind, the days of +his boyhood that were passed at Somersby, and the old school of +manners which he came across in his own neighbourhood: the days of +the "apostles" at Cambridge: the years which he spent in London; the +evenings enjoyed at the Cock Tavern, and elsewhere, when he saw +another side of life, not without a kindly and humorous sense of the +ridiculous in his fellow-creatures. His repertory of stories was +perfectly inexhaustible; they were often about slight matters that +would scarcely bear repetition, but were told with such lifelike +reality, that they convulsed his hearers with laughter. Like most +story-tellers, he often repeated his favourites; but, like children, +his audience liked hearing them again and again, and he enjoyed +telling them. It might be said of him that he told more stories than +any one, but was by no means the regular story-teller. In the +commonest conversation he showed himself a man of genius. + + +To this description may be added another by Mr F. T. Palgrave:- + + +Every one will have seen men, distinguished in some line of work, +whose conversation (to take the old figure) either "smelt too +strongly of the lamp," or lay quite apart from their art or craft. +What, through all these years, struck me about Tennyson, was that +whilst he never deviated into poetical language as such, whether in +rhetoric or highly coloured phrase, yet throughout the substance of +his talk the same mode of thought, the same imaginative grasp of +nature, the same fineness and gentleness in his view of character, +the same forbearance and toleration, the aurea mediocritas despised +by fools and fanatics, which are stamped on his poetry, were +constantly perceptible: whilst in the easy and as it were unsought +choiceness, the conscientious and truth-loving precision of his +words, the same personal identity revealed itself. What a strange +charm lay here, how deeply illuminating the whole character, as in +prolonged intercourse it gradually revealed itself! Artist and man, +Tennyson was invariably true to himself, or rather, in Wordsworth's +phrase, he "moved altogether"; his nature and his poetry being +harmonious aspects of the same soul; as botanists tell us that flower +and fruit are but transformations of root and stem and leafage. We +read how, in mediaeval days, conduits were made to flow with claret. +But this was on great occasions only. Tennyson's fountain always ran +wine. + +Once more: In Mme. Recamier's salon, I have read, at the time when +conversation was yet a fine art in Paris, guests famous for esprit +would sit in the twilight round the stove, whilst each in turn let +fly some sparkling anecdote or bon-mot, which rose and shone and died +out into silence, till the next of the elect pyrotechnists was ready. +Good things of this kind, as I have said, were plentiful in +Tennyson's repertory. But what, to pass from the materials to the +method of his conversation, eminently marked it was the continuity of +the electric current. He spoke, and was silent, and spoke again: +but the circuit was unbroken; there was no effort in taking up the +thread, no sense of disjunction. Often I thought, had he never +written a line of the poems so dear to us, his conversation alone +would have made him the most interesting companion known to me. From +this great and gracious student of humanity, what less, indeed, could +be expected? And if, as a converser, I were to compare him with +Socrates, as figured for us in the dialogues of his great disciple, I +think that I should have the assent of that eminently valued friend +of Tennyson's, whose long labour of love has conferred English +citizenship upon Plato. + + +We have called him shy and sensitive in daily intercourse with +strangers, and as to criticism, he freely confessed that a midge of +dispraise could sting, while applause gave him little pleasure. Yet +no poet altered his verses so much in obedience to censure unjustly +or irritatingly stated, yet in essence just. He readily rejected +some of his "Juvenilia" on Mr Palgrave's suggestion. The same friend +tells how well he took a rather fierce attack on an unpublished +piece, when Mr Palgrave "owned that he could not find one good line +in it." Very few poets, or even versifiers (fiercer they than poets +are), would have continued to show their virgin numbers to a friend +so candid, as Tennyson did. Perhaps most of the genus irritabile +will grant that spoken criticism, if unfavourable, somehow annoys and +stirs opposition in an author; probably because it confirms his own +suspicions about his work. Such criticism is almost invariably just. +But Campbell, when Rogers offered a correction, "bounced out of the +room, with a 'Hang it! I should like to see the man who would dare +to correct me.'" + +Mr Jowett justly recognised in the life of Tennyson two circumstances +which made him other than, but for these, he would have been. He had +intended to do with the Arthurian subject what he never did, "in some +way or other to have represented in it the great religions of the +world. . . . It is a proof of Tennyson's genius that he should have +thus early grasped the great historical aspect of religion." His +intention was foiled, his early dream was broken, by the death of +Arthur Hallam, and by the coldness and contempt with which, at the +same period, his early poems were received. + +Mr Jowett (who had a firm belief in the "great work") regretted the +change of plan as to the Arthurian topic, regretted it the more from +his own interest in the History of Religion. But we need not share +the regrets. The early plan for the Arthur (which Mr Jowett never +saw) has been published, and certainly the scheme could not have been +executed on these lines. {18} Moreover, as the Master observed, the +work would have been premature in Tennyson's youth, and, indeed, it +would still be premature. The comparative science of religious +evolution is even now very tentative, and does not yield materials of +sufficient stability for an epic, even if such an epic could be +forced into the mould of the Arthur legends, a feat perhaps +impossible, and certainly undesirable. A truly fantastic allegory +must have been the result, and it is fortunate that the poet +abandoned the idea in favour of more human themes. Moreover, he +recognised very early that his was not a Muse de longue haleine; that +he must be "short." We may therefore feel certain that his early +sorrow and discouragement were salutary to him as a poet, and as a +man. He became more sympathetic, more tender, and was obliged to put +forth that stoical self-control, and strenuous courage and endurance, +through which alone his poetic career was rendered possible. "He had +the susceptibility of a child or a woman," says his friend; "he had +also" (it was a strange combination) "the strength of a giant or of a +god." Without these qualities he must have broken down between 1833 +and 1842 into a hypochondriac, or a morose, if majestic, failure. +Poor, obscure, and unhappy, he overcame the world, and passed from +darkness into light. The "poetic temperament" in another not gifted +with his endurance and persistent strength would have achieved ruin. + +Most of us remember Taine's parallel between Tennyson and Alfred de +Musset. The French critic has no high approval of Tennyson's +"respectability" and long peaceful life, as compared with the wrecked +life and genius of Musset, l'enfant perdu of love, wine, and song. +This is a theory like another, and is perhaps attractive to the +young. The poet must have strong passions, or how can he sing of +them: he must be tossed and whirled in the stress of things, like +Shelley's autumn leaves; - + + +"Ghosts from an enchanter fleeing." + + +Looking at Burns, Byron, Musset, or even at Shelley's earlier years, +youth sees in them the true poets, "sacred things," but also "light," +as Plato says, inspired to break their wings against the nature of +existence, and the flammantia maenia mundi. But this is almost a +boyish idea, this idea that the true poet is the slave of the +passions, and that the poet who dominates them has none, and is but a +staid domestic animal, an ass browsing the common, as somebody has +written about Wordsworth. Certainly Tennyson's was no "passionless +perfection." He, like others, was tempted to beat with ineffectual +wings against the inscrutable nature of life. He, too, had his dark +hour, and was as subject to temptation as they who yielded to the +stress and died, or became unhappy waifs, "young men with a splendid +past." He must have known, no less than Musset, the attractions of +many a paradis artificiel, with its bright visions, its houris, its +offers of oblivion of pain. "He had the look of one who had suffered +greatly," Mr Palgrave writes in his record of their first meeting in +1842. But he, like Goethe, Scott, and Victor Hugo, had strength as +well as passion and emotion; he came unscorched through the fire that +has burned away the wings of so many other great poets. This was no +less fortunate for the world than for himself. Of his prolonged dark +hour we know little in detail, but we have seen that from the first +he resisted the Tempter; Ulysses is his Retro Sathanas! + +About "the mechanism of genius" in Tennyson Mr Palgrave has told us a +little; more appears incidentally in his biography. "It was his way +that when we had entered on some scene of special beauty or grandeur, +after enjoying it together, he should always withdraw wholly from +sight, and study the view, as it were, in a little artificial +solitude." + +Tennyson's poems, Mr Palgrave says, often arose in a kind of point de +repere (like those forms and landscapes which seem to spring from a +floating point of light, beheld with closed eyes just before we +sleep). "More than once he said that his poems sprang often from a +'nucleus,' some one word, maybe, or brief melodious phrase, which had +floated through the brain, as it were, unbidden. And perhaps at once +while walking they were presently wrought into a little song. But if +he did not write it down at once the lyric fled from him +irrecoverably." He believed himself thus to have lost poems as good +as his best. It seems probable that this is a common genesis of +verses, good or bad, among all who write. Like Dickens, and like +most men of genius probably, he saw all the scenes of his poems "in +his mind's eye." Many authors do this, without the power of making +their readers share the vision; but probably few can impart the +vision who do not themselves "visualise" with distinctness. We have +seen, in the cases of The Holy Grail and other pieces, that Tennyson, +after long meditating a subject, often wrote very rapidly, and with +little need of correction. He was born with "style"; it was a gift +of his genius rather than the result of conscious elaboration. Yet +he did use "the file," of which much is now written, especially for +the purpose of polishing away the sibilants, so common in our +language. In the nine years of silence which followed the little +book of 1833 his poems matured, and henceforth it is probable that he +altered his verses little, if we except the modifications in The +Princess. Many slight verbal touches were made, or old readings were +restored, but important changes, in the way of omission or addition, +became rare. + +Of nature Tennyson was scrupulously observant till his very latest +days, eagerly noting, not only "effects," as a painter does, but +their causes, botanical or geological. Had man been scientific from +the beginning he would probably have evolved no poetry at all; +material things would not have been endowed by him with life and +passion; he would have told himself no stories of the origins of +stars and flowers, clouds and fire, winds and rainbows. Modern poets +have resented, like Keats and Wordsworth, the destruction of the old +prehistoric dreams by the geologist and by other scientific +characters. But it was part of Tennyson's poetic originality to see +the beautiful things of nature at once with the vision of early +poetic men, and of moderns accustomed to the microscope, telescope, +spectrum analysis, and so forth. Thus Tennyson received a double +delight from the sensible universe, and it is a double delight that +he communicates to his readers. His intellect was thus always +active, even in apparent repose. His eyes rested not from observing, +or his mind from recording and comparing, the beautiful familiar +phenomena of earth and sky. In the matter of the study of books we +have seen how deeply versed he was in certain of the Greek, Roman, +and Italian classics. Mr Jowett writes: "He was what might be +called a good scholar in the university or public-school sense of the +term, . . . yet I seem to remember that he had his favourite +classics, such as Homer, and Pindar, and Theocritus. . . . He was +also a lover of Greek fragments. But I am not sure whether, in later +life, he ever sat down to read consecutively the greatest works of +AEschylus and Sophocles, although he used occasionally to dip into +them." The Greek dramatists, in fact, seem to have affected +Tennyson's work but slightly, while he constantly reminds us of +Virgil, Homer, Theocritus, and even Persius and Horace. Mediaeval +French, whether in poetry or prose, and the poetry of the "Pleiad" +seems to have occupied little of his attention. Into the oriental +literatures he dipped--pretty deeply for his Akbar; and even his +Locksley Hall owed something to Sir William Jones's version of "the +old Arabian Moallakat." The debt appears to be infinitesimal. He +seems to have been less closely familiar with Elizabethan poetry than +might have been expected: a number of his obiter dicta on all kinds +of literary points are recorded in the Life by Mr Palgrave. "Sir +Walter Scott's short tale, My Aunt Margaret's Mirror (how little +known!), he once spoke of as the finest of all ghost or magical +stories." Lord Tennyson adds, "The Tapestried Chamber also he +greatly admired." Both are lost from modern view among the short +pieces of the last volumes of the Waverley novels. Of the poet's +interest in and attitude towards the more obscure pyschological and +psychical problems--to popular science foolishness--enough has been +said, but the remarks of Professor Tyndall have not been cited:- + + +My special purpose in introducing this poem, however, was to call +your attention to a passage further on which greatly interested me. +The poem is, throughout, a discussion between a believer in +immortality and one who is unable to believe. The method pursued is +this. The Sage reads a portion of the scroll, which he has taken +from the hands of his follower, and then brings his own arguments to +bear upon that portion, with a view to neutralising the scepticism of +the younger man. Let me here remark that I read the whole series of +poems published under the title "Tiresias," full of admiration for +their freshness and vigour. Seven years after I had first read them +your father died, and you, his son, asked me to contribute a chapter +to the book which you contemplate publishing. I knew that I had some +small store of references to my interview with your father carefully +written in ancient journals. On the receipt of your request, I +looked up the account of my first visit to Farringford, and there, to +my profound astonishment, I found described that experience of your +father's which, in the mouth of the Ancient Sage, was made the ground +of an important argument against materialism and in favour of +personal immortality eight-and-twenty years afterwards. In no other +poem during all these years is, to my knowledge, this experience once +alluded to. I had completely forgotten it, but here it was recorded +in black and white. If you turn to your father's account of the +wonderful state of consciousness superinduced by thinking of his own +name, and compare it with the argument of the Ancient Sage, you will +see that they refer to one and the same phenomenon. + + + And more, my son! for more than once when I +Sat all alone, revolving in myself +The word that is the symbol of myself, +The mortal limit of the Self was loosed, +And past into the Nameless, as a cloud +Melts into heaven. I touch'd my limbs, the limbs +Were strange, not mine--and yet no shade of doubt, +But utter clearness, and thro' loss of Self +The gain of such large life as match'd with ours +Were Sun to spark--unshadowable in words, +Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world. + + +Any words about Tennyson as a politician are apt to excite the +sleepless prejudice which haunts the political field. He probably, +if forced to "put a name to it," would have called himself a Liberal. +But he was not a social agitator. He never set a rick on fire. "He +held aloof, in a somewhat detached position, from the great social +seethings of his age" (Mr Frederic Harrison). But in youth he helped +to extinguish some flaming ricks. He spoke of the "many-headed +beast" (the reading public) in terms borrowed from Plato. He had no +higher esteem for mobs than Shakespeare or John Knox professed, while +his theory of tyrants (in the case of Napoleon III. about 1852) was +that of Liberals like Mr Swinburne and Victor Hugo. Though to modern +enlightenment Tennyson may seem as great a Tory as Dr Johnson, yet he +had spoken his word in 1852 for the freedom of France, and for +securing England against the supposed designs of a usurper (now +fallen). He really believed, obsolete as the faith may be, in +guarding our own, both on land and sea. Perhaps no Continental or +American critic has ever yet dispraised a poetical fellow-countryman +merely for urging the duties of national union and national defence. +A critic, however, writes thus of Tennyson: "When our poet descends +into the arena of party polemics, in such things as Riflemen, Form! +Hands all Round, . . . The Fleet, and other topical pieces dear to +the Jingo soul, it is not poetry but journalism." I doubt whether +the desirableness of the existence of a volunteer force and of a +fleet really is within the arena of PARTY polemics. If any party +thinks that we ought to have no volunteers, and that it is our duty +to starve the fleet, what is that party's name? Who cries, "Down +with the Fleet! Down with National Defence! Hooray for the +Disintegration of the Empire!"? + +Tennyson was not a party man, but he certainly would have opposed any +such party. If to defend our homes and this England be "Jingoism," +Tennyson, like Shakespeare, was a Jingo. But, alas! I do not know +the name of the party which opposes Tennyson, and which wishes the +invader to trample down England--any invader will do for so +philanthropic a purpose. Except when resisting this unnamed party, +the poet seldom or never entered "the arena of party polemics." +Tennyson could not have exclaimed, like Squire Western, "Hurrah for +old England! Twenty thousand honest Frenchmen have landed in Kent!" +He undeniably did write verses (whether poetry or journalism) tending +to make readers take an unfavourable view of honest invaders. If to +do that is to be a "Jingo," and if such conduct hurts the feelings of +any great English party, then Tennyson was a Jingo and a partisan, +and was, so far, a rhymester, like Mr Kipling. Indeed we know that +Tennyson applauded Mr Kipling's The English Flag. So the worst is +out, as we in England count the worst. In America and on the +continent of Europe, however, a poet may be proud of his country's +flag without incurring rebuke from his countrymen. Tennyson did not +reckon himself a party man; he believed more in political evolution +than in political revolution, with cataclysms. He was neither an +Anarchist nor a Home Ruler, nor a politician so generous as to wish +England to be laid defenceless at the feet of her foes. + +If these sentiments deserve censure, in Tennyson, at least, they +claim our tolerance. He was not born in a generation late enough to +be truly Liberal. Old prejudices about "this England," old words +from Henry V. and King John, haunted his memory and darkened his +vision of the true proportions of things. We draw in prejudice with +our mother's milk. The mother of Tennyson had not been an Agnostic +or a Comtist; his father had not been a staunch true-blue anti- +Englander. Thus he inherited a certain bias in favour of faith and +fatherland, a bias from which he could never emancipate himself. But +tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner. Had Tennyson's birth been +later, we might find in him a more complete realisation of our poetic +ideal--might have detected less to blame or to forgive. + +With that apology we must leave the fame of Tennyson as a politician +to the clement consideration of an enlightened posterity. I do not +defend his narrow insularities, his Jingoism, or the appreciable +percentage of faith which blushing analysis may detect in his honest +doubt: these things I may regret or condemn, but we ought not to let +them obscure our view of the Poet. He was led away by bad examples. +Of all Jingoes Shakespeare is the most unashamed, and next to him are +Drayton, Scott, and Wordsworth, with his + + +"Oh, for one hour of that Dundee!" + + +In the years which followed the untoward affair of Waterloo young +Tennyson fell much under the influence of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, +and the other offenders, and these are extenuating circumstances. By +a curious practical paradox, where the realms of poetry and politics +meet, the Tory critics seem milder of mood and more Liberal than the +Liberal critics. Thus Mr William Morris was certainly a very +advanced political theorist; and in theology Mr Swinburne has written +things not easily reconcilable with orthodoxy. Yet we find Divine- +Right Tories, who in literature are fervent admirers of these two +poets, and leave their heterodoxies out of account. But many Liberal +critics appear unable quite to forgive Tennyson because he did not +wish to starve the fleet, and because he held certain very ancient, +if obsolete, beliefs. Perhaps a general amnesty ought to be passed, +as far as poets are concerned, and their politics and creeds should +be left to silence, where "beyond these voices there is peace." + +One remark, I hope, can excite no prejudice. The greatest of the +Gordons was a soldier, and lived in religion. But the point at which +Tennyson's memory is blended with that of Gordon is the point of +sympathy with the neglected poor. It is to his wise advice, and to +affection for Gordon, that we owe the Gordon training school for poor +boys,--a good school, and good boys come out of that academy. + +The question as to Tennyson's precise rank in the glorious roll of +the Poets of England can never be determined by us, if in any case or +at any time such determinations can be made. We do not, or should +not, ask whether Virgil or Lucretius, whether AEschylus or Sophocles, +is the greater poet. The consent of mankind seems to place Homer and +Shakespeare and Dante high above all. For the rest no prize-list can +be settled. If influence among aliens is the test, Byron probably +takes, among our poets, the next rank after Shakespeare. But +probably there is no possible test. In certain respects Shelley, in +many respects Milton, in some Coleridge, in some Burns, in the +opinion of a number of persons Browning, are greater poets than +Tennyson. But for exquisite variety and varied exquisiteness +Tennyson is not readily to be surpassed. At one moment he pleases +the uncritical mass of readers, in another mood he wins the verdict +of the raffine. It is a success which scarce any English poet but +Shakespeare has excelled. His faults have rarely, if ever, been +those of flat-footed, "thick-ankled" dulness; of rhetoric, of common- +place; rather have his defects been the excess of his qualities. A +kind of John Bullishness may also be noted, especially in derogatory +references to France, which, true or untrue, are out of taste and +keeping. But these errors could be removed by the excision of half- +a-dozen lines. His later work (as the Voyage of Maeldune) shows a +just appreciation of ancient Celtic literature. A great critic, F. +T. Palgrave, has expressed perhaps the soundest appreciation of +Tennyson:- + + +It is for "the days that remain" to bear witness to his real place in +the great hierarchy, amongst whom Dante boldly yet justly ranked +himself. But if we look at Tennyson's work in a twofold aspect,-- +HERE, on the exquisite art in which, throughout, his verse is +clothed, the lucid beauty of the form, the melody almost audible as +music, the mysterious skill by which the words used constantly strike +as the INEVITABLE words (and hence, unforgettable), the subtle +allusive touches, by which a secondary image is suggested to enrich +the leading thought, as the harmonic "partials" give richness to the +note struck upon the string; THERE, when we think of the vast +fertility in subject and treatment, united with happy selection of +motive, the wide range of character, the dramatic force of +impersonation, the pathos in every variety, the mastery over the +comic and the tragic alike, above all, perhaps, those phrases of +luminous insight which spring direct from imaginative observation of +Humanity, true for all time, coming from the heart to the heart,--his +work will probably be found to lie somewhere between that of Virgil +and Shakespeare: having its portion, if I may venture on the phrase, +in the inspiration of both. + + +A professed enthusiast for Tennyson can add nothing to, and take +nothing from, these words of one who, though his friend, was too +truly a critic to entertain the admiration that goes beyond idolatry. + + + +Footnotes: + +{1} Macmillan & Co. + +{2} To the present writer, as to others, The Lover's Tale appeared +to be imitative of Shelley, but if Tennyson had never read Shelley, +cadit quaestio. + +{3} F. W. H. Myers, Science and a Future Life, p. 133. + +{4} The writer knew this edition before he knew Tennyson's poems. + +{5} The author of the spiteful letters was an unpublished anonymous +person. + +{6} The Lennox MSS. + +{7} Spencer and Gillen, Natives of Central Australia, pp. 388, 389. + +{8} Tennyson, Ruskin, and Mill, pp. 11, 12. + +{9} Life, p. 37, 1899. + +{10} Poem omitted from In Memoriam. Life, p. 257, 1899. + +{11} Mr Harrison, Tennyson, Ruskin, and Mill, p. 5. + +{12} The English reader may consult Mr Rhys's The Arthurian Legend, +Oxford, 1891, and Mr Nutt's Studies of the Legend of the Holy Grail, +which will direct him to other authorities and sources. + +{13} I have summarised, with omissions, Miss Jessie L. Watson's +sketch in King Arthur and his Knights. Nutt, 1899. The learning of +the subject is enormous; Dr Sommer's Le Mort d'Arthur, the second +volume may be consulted. Nutt, 1899. + +{14} [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]. He is referred to in +inscriptions, e.g. Berlin, Corpus, iii. 4774, V. 732, 733, 1829, +2143-46; xii. 405. See also Ausonius (Leipsic, 1886, pp. 52, 59), +cited by Rhys, The Arthurian Legend p. 159, note 4. + +{15} Brebeuf; Relations des Jesuites, 1636, pp. 100-102. + +{16} Malory, xviii. 8 et seq. + +{17} Notices et Extraits des MSS. de la Bibliotheque Imperiale, I. +xix. pp. 643-645. + +{18} See the Life, 1899, p. 521. + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Alfred Tennyson, by Andrew Lang** + diff --git a/old/alftn10.zip b/old/alftn10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..66d9b87 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/alftn10.zip |