diff options
Diffstat (limited to '38420-h/38420-h.htm')
| -rw-r--r-- | 38420-h/38420-h.htm | 18186 |
1 files changed, 18186 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/38420-h/38420-h.htm b/38420-h/38420-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3476966 --- /dev/null +++ b/38420-h/38420-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,18186 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + Tennyson And His Friends, by Hallam, Lord Tennyson + </title> + + <style type="text/css"> + + p {margin-top: .75em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: .75em;} + + body {margin-left: 12%; margin-right: 12%;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right; font-style: normal;} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {text-align: center; clear: both;} + + hr {width: 33%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; clear: both;} + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + .indent {padding-left: 2em;} + + .giant {font-size: 200%} + + .blockquot {margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + .poem {margin-left: 15%;} + .note {margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%;} + .title {text-align: center; font-size: 150%;} + + .right {text-align: right;} + .center {text-align: center;} + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .smcaplc {text-transform: lowercase; font-variant: small-caps;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .bbox {border: solid 2px; color: gray; margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + a:link {color:#0000ff; text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:#6633cc; text-decoration:none} + + .spacer {padding-left: 1em; padding-right: 1em;} + + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tennyson and His Friends, by Various + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Tennyson and His Friends + +Author: Various + +Editor: Hallam Tennyson + +Release Date: December 27, 2011 [EBook #38420] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TENNYSON AND HIS FRIENDS *** + + + + +Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images +generously made available by The Internet Archive/American +Libraries.) + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p> </p><p> </p> + +<h1>TENNYSON AND HIS FRIENDS</h1> + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img01.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p class="center">MACMILLAN AND CO., <span class="smcap">Limited</span><br /> +LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA<br /> +MELBOURNE</p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center">THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br /> +NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO<br /> +ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO</p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center">THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, <span class="smcap">Ltd.</span> +TORONTO</p> + + +<p> </p><p> <a name="front" id="front"></a></p><p> </p> +<div class="bbox" style="width: 356px; height: 500px;"><img src="images/img02.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p class="center"><small><i>Barraud, photographer</i><span class="spacer"> </span><span class="spacer"> </span><i>Emery Walker, Ph.sc.</i></small></p> +<p class="center"><i>Alfred, Lord Tennyson</i><br />(<i>in his 80<sup>th</sup> year</i>)</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p><p> </p> +<p class="center"><span class="giant">TENNYSON AND HIS<br /> +FRIENDS</span></p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center"> +EDITED<br /> +<small>BY</small><br /> +HALLAM, LORD TENNYSON</p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center">MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED<br /> +ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON<br /> +1911</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p class="center">Dedicated<br /> +TO<br /> +THE FRIENDS OF TENNYSON<br /> +BY<br /> +HIS SON</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p> +<h2>PREFACE</h2> + +<div class="note"> +<p>To those who have contributed to this volume their memories of my father, +criticisms of his work, or records of his friends, I owe a deep debt of +gratitude. Three of the writers, Henry Butcher, Sir Alfred Lyall, and +Graham Dakyns, have lately, to my great loss, passed away—into that +fuller “light of friendship”—</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table"> +<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 8em;">“a clearer day</span><br /> +Than our poor twilight dawn on earth.”</td></tr></table> + +<p class="right">TENNYSON.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span></p> +<p>[The following chapters about my father are arranged, as far as possible, +according to the sequence of his life. Further reminiscences by the Duke +of Argyll, Gladstone, Jowett, Lecky, Locker-Lampson, Palgrave, Lord +Selborne, Tyndall, Aubrey de Vere, and other friends, will be found in +<i>Tennyson, a Memoir</i>.]</p></div> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<table width="60%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="8" summary="table"> +<tr><td> </td><td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Recollections of my Early Life.</span> By <span class="smcap">Emily, Lady Tennyson</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Tennyson and Lincolnshire.</span> By <span class="smcap">Willingham Rawnsley</span>—</td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span style="margin-left: .25em;">I. <span class="smcap">Tennyson’s Country</span></span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_8">8</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent">II. <span class="smcap">The Somersby Friends</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_18">18</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Tennyson and his Brothers, Frederick and Charles.</span> By <span class="smcap">Charles Tennyson</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Tennyson on his Cambridge Friends</span>—</td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span class="smcap">Arthur Henry Hallam</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_71">71</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span class="smcap">To James Spedding</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_72">72</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span class="smcap">To Edward FitzGerald</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span class="smcap">To John Mitchell Kemble</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span class="smcap">To J. W. Blakesley</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span class="smcap">To R. C. Trench</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span class="smcap">To the Rev. W. H. Brookfield</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_80">80</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span class="smcap">To Edmund Lushington</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_81">81</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span class="smcap">Charles Tennyson-Turner</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_86">86</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Tennyson and Lushington.</span> By <span class="smcap">Sir Henry Craik, K.C.B., M.P.</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_89">89</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Tennyson, FitzGerald, Carlyle, and other Friends.</span> By <span class="smcap">Dr. Warren</span>, President +of Magdalen College, Oxford, and now Professor of Poetry</td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_98">98</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Some Recollections of Tennyson’s Talk from 1835 to +1853.</span> By <span class="smcap">Edward FitzGerald</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_142">142</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Tennyson and Thackeray.</span> By <span class="smcap">Lady Ritchie</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_148">148</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Tennyson on his Friends of Later Life</span>—</td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span class="smcap">To W. C. Macready</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_157">157</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span class="smcap">To the Rev. F. D. Maurice</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_157">157</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span class="smcap">To Sir John Simeon</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_159">159</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span><span class="smcap">To Edward Lear on his Travels in Greece</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_160">160</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span class="smcap">To the Master of Balliol</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span class="smcap">To the Duke of Argyll</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_162">162</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span class="smcap">To Gifford Palgrave</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_162">162</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span class="smcap">To the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_165">165</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span class="smcap">To W. E. Gladstone</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_167">167</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span class="smcap">To Mary Boyle</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_168">168</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span class="smcap">W. G. Ward</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_171">171</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span class="smcap">To Sir Richard Jebb</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_171">171</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span class="smcap">To General Hamley</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_172">172</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span class="smcap">Lord Stratford de Redcliffe</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_173">173</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span class="smcap">General Gordon</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_173">173</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="indent"><span class="smcap">G. F. Watts, R.A.</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_173">173</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Tennyson and Bradley (Dean of Westminster).</span> By <span class="smcap">Margaret L. Woods</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_175">175</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Notes on Characteristics of Tennyson.</span> By the late <span class="smcap">Master of Balliol (Professor Jowett)</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_186">186</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Tennyson, Clough, and the Classics.</span> By <span class="smcap">Henry Graham Dakyns</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_188">188</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Recollections of Tennyson.</span> By the Rev. <span class="smcap">H. Montagu Butler, D.D.</span>, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge</td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_206">206</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Tennyson and W. G. Ward and other Farringford Friends.</span> By <span class="smcap">Wilfrid Ward</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_222">222</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Tennyson and Aldworth.</span> By <span class="smcap">Sir James Knowles, K.C.V.O.</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_245">245</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Funeral of Dickens</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_253">253</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Fragmentary Notes of Tennyson’s Talk.</span> By <span class="smcap">Arthur Coleridge</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_255">255</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Music, Tennyson, and Joachim.</span> By <span class="smcap">Sir Charles Stanford</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_272">272</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Attitude of Tennyson towards Science.</span> By <span class="smcap">Sir Oliver Lodge, F.R.S.</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_280">280</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Tennyson as a Student and Poet of Nature.</span> By <span class="smcap">Sir Norman Lockyer, F.R.S.</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_285">285</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Memories.</span> By E. V. B.</td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_292">292</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Tennyson and his Talk on some Religious Questions.</span> By the Right Rev. the <span class="smcap">Bishop of Ripon</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_295">295</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span><span class="smcap">Tennyson and Sir John Simeon, and Tennyson’s Last +Years.</span> By <span class="smcap">Louisa E. Ward</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_306">306</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Sir John Simeon.</span> By <span class="smcap">Aubrey de Vere</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_321">321</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Tennyson</span>. By <span class="smcap">Arthur Sidgwick</span>, Fellow of Corpus Christi, Oxford, +and sometime Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge</td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_322">322</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Tennyson: His Life and Work.</span> By the Right Hon. <span class="smcap">Sir Alfred Lyall</span>, G.C.B.</td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_344">344</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Tennyson: The Poet and the Man.</span> By <span class="smcap">Professor Henry Butcher</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_385">385</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">James Spedding.</span> By <span class="smcap">W. Aldis Wright</span>, Vice-Master of Trinity College, Cambridge</td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_393">393</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Arthur Henry Hallam.</span> By <span class="smcap">Dr. John Brown</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_441">441</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">APPENDICES</td></tr> +<tr><td>A. <span class="smcap">The Comments of Tennyson on one of his later Ethical Poems</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_475">475</a></td></tr> +<tr><td>B. <span class="smcap">“Hands all Round,” set to music by Emily, Lady Tennyson</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_481">481</a></td></tr> +<tr><td>C. <span class="smcap">Miscellaneous Letters from Unknown Friends</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_485">485</a></td></tr> +<tr><td>D. <span class="smcap">Tennyson’s Arthurian Poem</span></td> + <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_498">498</a></td></tr></table> + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span></p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span></p> +<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> + +<table width="60%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td> </td><td align="right"><small>FACE PAGE</small></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">IN PHOTOGRAVURE</td></tr> +<tr><td>Alfred, Lord Tennyson (in his 80th year)</td> + <td align="right"><a href="#front"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr> +<tr><td>Emily, Lady Tennyson. From a drawing by G. F. Watts, R.A.</td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_2">3</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">IN BLACK AND WHITE</td></tr> +<tr><td>Frederick Tennyson</td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_32">33</a></td></tr> +<tr><td>Charles Tennyson-Turner</td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_59">58</a></td></tr> +<tr><td>A. H. H.</td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_70">71</a></td></tr> +<tr><td>Edmund Lushington</td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_88">89</a></td></tr> +<tr><td>The Drive at Farringford, showing on the left the “Wellingtonia” planted by Garibaldi</td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_162">163</a></td></tr> +<tr><td>Tennyson and his two Sons</td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_188">188</a></td></tr> +<tr><td>Arthur Tennyson</td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_223">222</a></td></tr> +<tr><td>Horatio Tennyson</td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_229">229</a></td></tr> +<tr><td>The South Side of Entrance from below the Terrace, Aldworth</td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_244">245</a></td></tr> +<tr><td>Summer-house at Farringford, where “Enoch Arden” was written</td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_292">292</a></td></tr> +<tr><td>The Corner of the Study at Farringford where Tennyson wrote, with his Deerhound “Lufra” and the Terrier “Winks” in the foreground</td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_307">306</a></td></tr> +<tr><td>Arthur Hallam reading “Walter Scott” aloud on board the “Leeds,” bound from Bordeaux to Dublin, Sept. 9, 1830</td> + <td align="right"><a href="#Page_440">441</a></td></tr></table> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> +<p class="title">TENNYSON AND HIS FRIENDS</p> + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p> +<h2>JUNE BRACKEN AND HEATHER</h2> +<p class="center">(<span class="smcap">Dedication of “The Death of Œnone” to Emily, Lady Tennyson</span>)</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>There on the top of the down,<br /> +The wild heather round me and over me June’s high blue,<br /> +When I look’d at the bracken so bright and the heather so brown,<br /> +I thought to myself I would offer this book to you,<br /> +This, and my love together,<br /> +To you that are seventy-seven,<br /> +With a faith as clear as the heights of the June-blue heaven,<br /> +And a fancy as summer-new<br /> +As the green of the bracken amid the gloom of the heather.</td></tr></table> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<div class="bbox" style="width: 358px; height: 500px;"><img src="images/img03.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p class="center"><i>Emery Walker, Ph.sc.</i></p> +<p class="center"><i>Emily Lady Tennyson</i><br /> +<i>from a drawing by G. F. Watts, R.A.</i></p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p> +<h2>RECOLLECTIONS OF MY EARLY LIFE</h2> +<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">Emily, Lady Tennyson</span></p> +<p class="center">Written for her son in 1896</p> + + +<p>You ask me to tell you something of my life before marriage at Horncastle +in Lincolnshire. It would be hard indeed not to do anything you ask of me +if within my power. To say the truth, this particular thing you want is +somewhat painful. The first thing I remember of my father<a name='fna_1' id='fna_1' href='#f_1'><small>[1]</small></a> is his +looking at me with sad eyes after my mother’s<a name='fna_2' id='fna_2' href='#f_2'><small>[2]</small></a> death. Her I recollect, +passing the window in a velvet pelisse, and then in a white shawl on the +sofa, and then crowned with roses—beautiful in death. I recollect, too, +being carried to her funeral; but I asked what they were doing, and in all +this had no idea of death.</p> + +<p>My life before marriage was in many ways sad: in one, however, unspeakably +happy. No one could have had a better father, or been happier with her two +sisters, Anne and Louisa. Although, if we were too merry and noisy in the +mornings, we were summoned by my Aunt Betsy (who lived with us) all three +into her room, to hold out our small hands for stripes from a certain +little riding-whip; or if, later in the day, our needlework was not well +done we had our fingers pricked with a needle, or if the lessons were not +finished, we had fools’ caps put on our heads, and were banished to a +corner of the room. My aunt’s nature was by no means cruel; she was, on +the whole, kind and dutiful to us, yet no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> doubt with effort on her part, +for she had no instinctive love of children.</p> + +<p>Among our neighbours we had as friends the Tennysons, the Rawnsleys, the +Bellinghams, and the Massingberds. The death of my cousin, Mr. Cracroft, +was among my early tragedies. He had been on public business at Lincoln: +and on his return to Horncastle, was seized at our house with Asiatic +cholera, a solitary case, which proved fatal. Ourselves and his daughters +heard of it in a strange way. We were in a tent at a sheep-shearing, the +great rustic festival of that day. A village boy came into our tent, and +swarmed up the pole, saying to us, “I know something; your father is +dead.” We hurried home, and we, three sisters, were put by my aunt (to +keep us quiet) to the hitherto-unwonted task of stoning raisins. This made +me so indignant that I threw my raisins over the edge of the bowl, and +forthwith my aunt caught me up, and—so rough was the treatment of +children then—banged my head against the door of our old wainscoted +rooms, until I called out for my father, crying aloud, “Murder”; when he +rushed in and saved me.</p> + +<p>My next memory of my father is his giving me Latin lessons; and at this +time I somehow came across a copy of <i>Cymbeline</i>, which I read with great +delight. Then we had our first riding-lessons. I well recall my dislike of +riding, when my pony was fastened to a circus stake, which I had to go +round and round. Unfortunately, much as my father wished it, I never +became a good horsewoman. He himself was so good a rider, when all the +gentlemen of the county were volunteers, that he could ride horses which +no one else could ride—so my grandmother would tell me with +pride—adding, “Your father and his brother (both six foot three) were the +handsomest men among them all.” At that time he kept guard with his +fellow-volunteers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> over the French prisoners, who, he said, were always +cheerful and always singing their patriotic songs.</p> + +<p>But to return to my sisters and myself. For exercise we generally took +long walks in the country, and I remember that when staying at my father’s +house in Berkshire<a name='fna_3' id='fna_3' href='#f_3'><small>[3]</small></a> we often used to wander up to a tower among our +woods where a gaunt old lady lived, called Black Jane, who told our +fortunes. We had our favourite theatricals, too, like other children. Our +dramatic performances were frequent, and our plays were, some of them, +drawn from Miss Edgeworth’s tales. I was always fond of music, and used to +sing duets with my soldier cousin, Richard Sellwood.</p> + +<p>At eight years old I was sent, with my sisters, to some ladies for daily +lessons, and later to schools in Brighton and London, for my father +disliked having a governess in the house. So, much as he objected to young +girls being sent from home, school in our case seemed the lesser evil. My +sisters liked school; to me it was dreadful. As soon as I reached the +Brighton seminary, I remember that for weeks I appeared to be in a +horrible dream, and the voices of the mistresses and the girls around me +seemed to be all thin, like voices from the grave. I could not be happy +away from my father, who was my idol, though after a while I grew more +accustomed to the strange life. My father would never let us go the long, +cold journey<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> at Christmas time from Brighton to Horncastle, but came up +to town for the vacation, and took us for treats to the National Gallery, +and other places of interest. Great was the joy, when the summer holidays +arrived, and after travelling by coach through the day and night, we three +sisters saw Whittlesea-mere gleaming under the sunrise. It seemed as if we +were within sight of home.</p> + +<p>When I was eighteen, my Aunt Betsy left us to live by herself alone. We +spent rather recluse lives, but we were perfectly happy, my father reading +to us every evening from about half-past eight to ten, the hour at which +we had family prayers. Most delightful were the readings; for instance, +all of Gibbon that could be read to us, Macaulay’s <i>Essays</i>, Sir Walter +Scott’s novels. For my private reading he gave me Dante, Ariosto, and +Tasso, Molière, Racine, Corneille. Later I read Schiller, Goethe, Jean +Paul Richter; and for English—Pearson, Paley’s <i>Translation of the Early +Fathers</i>, Coleridge’s works, Wordsworth, and of course Milton and +Shakespeare. We had walks and drives and music and needlework. Now and +again we dined in the neighbourhood, and some of the neighbours dined with +us; and once a year my father asked all the legal luminaries of Horncastle +to dinner with him.</p> + +<p>Before my sister Louy married your Uncle Charles (Tennyson-Turner) in +1836, my cousin, Catherine Franklin, daughter of Sir Willingham Franklin, +took up her abode with us, and we had several dances at our house. Two +fancy-dress dances I well remember. Louy and I disliked visiting in London +and in country-houses, and so we always refused, and sent Anne in our +stead. My first ball, I thought an opening of the great portals of the +world, and I looked forward to it almost with awe. It is rather curious +that at one of my very few balls, Mr. Musters (Jack Musters his intimates +called<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> him), who married Byron’s Mary Chaworth, should have asked for, +and obtained, an introduction to me.</p> + +<p>In 1842 came Catherine’s marriage to our true friend, Drummond Rawnsley, +the parson of the Rawnsley family; and then my sister Anne married Charles +Weld. After this my father and I lived together alone. The only change we +had from our routine life was a journey, one summer, to Tours, with Anne +and Charles Weld, and his brother Isaac Weld, the accomplished owner of +Ravenswell, near Bray, in Ireland.</p> + +<p>At your father’s home, Somersby, we used to have evenings of music and +singing. Your Aunt Mary played on the harp as her father used to do. She +was a splendid-looking girl, and would have made a beautiful picture. Then +your Aunt Emily (beloved of Arthur Hallam) had wonderful eyes—depths on +depths they seemed to have—and a fine profile. “Testa Romana” an old +Italian said of her. She had more of the colouring of the South, +inherited, perhaps, from a member of Madame de Maintenon’s family who +married one of the Tennysons. Your father had also the same kind of +colouring. All, brothers and sisters, were fair to see. Your father was +kingly, masses of fine, wavy hair, very dark, with a pervading shade of +gold, and long, as it was then worn. His manner was kind, simple, and +dignified, with plenty of sportiveness flashing out from time to time. +During my ten years’ separation from him the doctors believed I was going +into a consumption, and the Lincolnshire climate was pronounced to be too +cold for me; and we moved to London, to look for a home in the south of +England. We found one at last at Hale near Farnham, which was called by +your father “my paradise.” The recollection of this delightful country +made me persuade your father eventually to build a house near Haslemere. +We were married on June 13, 1850, at Shiplake on the Thames.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p> +<h2>TENNYSON AND LINCOLNSHIRE</h2> +<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">Willingham Rawnsley</span></p> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">I</p> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Tennyson’s Country</span></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>Calm and deep peace on this high wold,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And on these dews that drench the furze,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And all the silvery gossamers</span><br /> +That twinkle into green and gold.<br /> +<br /> +Calm and still light on yon great plain<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That sweeps with all its autumn bowers,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And crowded farms and lessening towers,</span><br /> +To mingle with the bounding main.</td></tr></table> + +<p>Lincolnshire is a big county, measuring seventy-five miles by forty-five, +but it is perhaps the least well known of all the counties of England. The +traveller by the Great Northern main line passes through but a small +portion of its south-western fringe near Grantham; and if he goes along +the eastern side from Peterborough to Grimsby or Hull, he gains no insight +into the picturesque parts of the county, for the line takes him over the +rich flat fenlands with their black vegetable mould devoid of any kind of +stone or pebble, and intersected by those innumerable dykes or drains +varying from 8 to 80 feet across, which give the southern division of +Lincolnshire an aspect in harmony with its Batavian name “the parts of +Holland.”</p> + +<p>The Queen of this flat fertile plain is Boston, with her wonderful +church-tower and lantern 280 feet high, a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> marvel of symmetry when you are +near it, and visible for more than twenty miles in all directions. Owing +to its slender height it seems, from a distance, to stand up like a tall +thick mast or tree-trunk, and is hence known to all the countryside as +“Boston stump.”</p> + +<p>At this town, the East Lincolnshire line divides: one section goes to the +left to Lincoln; the other, following the bend of the coast at about seven +miles’ distance from the sea, turns when opposite Skegness and runs, at +right angles to its former course, to Louth,—Louth whose beautiful church +spire was painted by Turner in his picture of “The Horse Fair.”</p> + +<p>The more recent Louth-to-Lincoln line completes the fourth side of a +square having Boston, Burgh, Louth, and Lincoln for its corners, which +contains the fairest portion of the Lincolnshire wolds, and within this +square is Somersby, Tennyson’s birthplace and early home. It is a tiny +village surrounded by low green hills; and close at hand, here nestling in +a leafy hollow, and there standing boldly on the “ridgèd wold,” are some +half a dozen churches built of the local “greensand” rock, from whose +towers the Poet in his boyhood heard:</p> + +<p class="poem">The Christmas bells from hill to hill<br /> +Answer each other in the mist—</p> + +<p>the mist which lay athwart those “long gray fields at night,” and marked +the course of the beloved Somersby brook.</p> + +<p>If we go past the little gray church with its perfect specimen of a +pre-Reformation cross hard by the porch, and past the modest house almost +opposite, which was for over thirty years the home of the Tennysons, we +shall come at once to the point where the road dips to a little wood +through which runs the rivulet so lovingly described by the Poet when he +was leaving the home of his youth:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thy tribute wave deliver:</span><br /> +No more by thee my steps shall be,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For ever and for ever.</span></p> + +<p>and again:</p> + +<p class="poem">Unloved, by many a sandy bar,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The brook shall babble down the plain,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">At noon or when the lesser wain</span><br /> +Is twisting round the polar star;<br /> +<br /> +Uncared for, gird the windy grove,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And flood the haunts of hern and crake;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Or into silver arrows break</span><br /> +The sailing moon in creek and cove.</p> + +<p>Northward, beyond the stream, the white road climbs the wold above +Tetford, and disappears from sight. These <i>wolds</i> are chalk; the greensand +ridge being all to the south of the valley, except just at Somersby and +Bag-Enderby, where the sandrock crops up by the roadside, and in the +little wood by the brook.</p> + +<p>This small deep channelled brook with sandy bottom—over which one may on +any bright day see, as described in “Enid,”</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">a shoal</span><br /> +Of darting fish, that on a summer morn...<br /> +Come slipping o’er their shadows on the sand,<br /> +But if a man who stands upon the brink<br /> +But lift a shining hand against the sun,<br /> +There is not left the twinkle of a fin<br /> +Betwixt the cressy islets white with flower—</p> + +<p>was very dear to Tennyson. When in his “Ode to Memory” he bids Memory</p> + +<p class="poem">Come from the woods which belt the gray hillside,<br /> +The seven elms, the poplars four<br /> +That stand beside my father’s door,</p> + +<p>he adds:</p> + +<p class="poem">And <i>chiefly</i> from the brook that loves<br /> +To purl o’er matted cress and ribbèd sand,<br /> +Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves,<br /> +Drawing into his narrow earthen urn<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">In every elbow and turn,</span><br /> +The filter’d tribute of the rough woodland,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><i>O! hither lead thy feet!</i></span></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>If we follow this</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">pastoral rivulet that swerves</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To left and right thro’ meadowy curves,</span><br /> +That feed the mothers of the flock,</p> + +<p>we, too, shall hear</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 10em;">the livelong bleat</span><br /> +Of the thick fleecèd sheep from wattled folds<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Upon the ridgèd wolds.</span></p> + +<p>And shall see the cattle in the rich grass land, and mark on the right the +green-gray tower of Spilsby, where so many of the Franklin family lived +and died, the family of whom his future bride was sprung.</p> + +<p>Still keeping by the brook, we shall see, past the tower of Bag-Enderby +which adjoins Somersby, “The gray hill side” rising up behind the Old Hall +of Harrington, and</p> + +<p class="poem">The Quarry trenched along the hill<br /> +And haunted by the wrangling daw,</p> + +<p>above which runs the chalky “ramper” or turnpike-road which leads along +the eastern ridge of the wold to Alford, whence you proceed across the +level Marsh to the sea at Mablethorpe.</p> + +<p><i>The Marsh</i> in Lincolnshire is a word of peculiar significance. The whole +country is either <i>fen</i>, <i>wold</i>, or <i>marsh</i>. The wolds, starting from Keal +and Alford, run in two ridges on either side of the Somersby Valley, one +going north to Louth and onwards, and one west by Spilsby and Horncastle +to Lincoln. Here it joins the great spine-bone of the county on which, +straight as an arrow for many a mile northwards, runs the Roman Ermine +Street; and but for the Somersby brook these two ridges from Louth and +Lincoln would unite at Spilsby, whence the greensand formation, which +begins at Raithby, sends out two spurs, one eastwards, ending abruptly at +Halton, while the other pushes a couple of miles farther south, until at +Keal the road drops suddenly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> into the level fen, giving a view—east, +south, and west—of wonderful extent and colour, ending to the east with +the sea, and to the south with the tall pillar of Boston Church standing +up far above the horizon. This flat land is <i>the fen</i>; all rich cornland +and all well drained, but with few habitations, and with absolutely no +hill or even rise in the ground until, passing Croyland or Crowland Abbey, +which once dominated a veritable land of fens only traversable by boats, +you come, on the farther side of Peterborough, to the great North Road. +Such views as this from Keal, and the similar one from Lincoln Minster, +which looks out far to the south-west over a similar large tract of fen, +are not to be surpassed in all the land.</p> + +<p>But the Poet’s steps from Somersby would not as a rule go westwards. The +coast would oftener be his aim; and leaving Spilsby to the right, and the +old twice-plague-stricken village of Partney, where the Somersby rivulet +becomes a river, he would pass from “the high field on the bushless pike” +to Miles-cross-hill, whence the panorama unfolds which he has depicted in +Canto XI. of “In Memoriam”:</p> + +<p class="poem">Calm and still light on yon great plain,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That sweeps with all its autumn bowers,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And crowded farms and lessening towers,</span><br /> +To mingle with the bounding main.</p> + +<p>Thence descending from the wold he would go through Alford, and on across +the sparsely populated pasture-lands, till he came at last to</p> + +<p class="poem">Some lowly cottage whence we see<br /> +Stretched wide and wild the waste enormous marsh,<br /> +Where from the frequent bridge,<br /> +Like emblems of infinity,<br /> +The trenchèd waters run from sky to sky.</p> + +<p>This describes the third section of Lincolnshire called <i>the Marsh</i>, a +strip between five and eight miles wide,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> running parallel with the coast +from Boston to Grimsby, and separating the wolds from</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 7em;">the sandbuilt ridge</span><br /> +Of heaped hills that mound the sea.</p> + +<p>This strip of land is not marsh in the ordinary sense of the word, but a +belt of the richest grass land, all level and with no visible fences, each +field being surrounded by a broad dyke or ditch with deep water, hidden in +summer by the tall feathery plumes of the “whispering reeds.” Across this +belt the seawind sweeps for ever. The Poet may allude to this when, in his +early poem, “Sir Galahad,” he writes:</p> + +<p class="poem">But blessed forms in whistling storms<br /> +Fly o’er waste fens and windy fields;</p> + +<p>and “the hard grey weather” sung by Kingsley breeds a race of hardy +gray-eyed men with long noses, the manifest descendants of the Danes who +peopled all that coast, and gave names to most of the villages there, +nine-tenths of which end in “by.”</p> + +<p>This rich pasture-land runs right up to the sand-dunes,—Nature’s own +fortification made by the winds and waves which is just outside the Dutch +and Roman embankments, and serves better than all the works of man to keep +out the waters of the North Sea from the low-lying levels of the <i>Marsh</i> +and <i>Fen</i>.</p> + +<p>The lines in the “Lotos-Eaters”:</p> + +<p class="poem">They sat them down upon the yellow sand<br /> +Between the sun and moon upon the shore,</p> + +<p>describes what the Poet might at any time of full moon have seen from that +“sand-built ridge” with the red sun setting over the wide marsh, and the +full moon rising out of the eastern sea; and “The wide winged sunset of +the misty marsh” recalls one of the most noticeable features of that +particular locality, where, across the limitless windy plain, the sun +would set in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> regal splendour; and when “cold winds woke the gray-eyed +morn” his rising over the sea would be equally magnificent in colour.</p> + +<p>Having crossed the “Marsh” by a raised road with deep wide dykes on either +side, and no vestige of hedge or tree in sight, except where a row of +black poplars or aspens form a screen from the searching wind round a +group of the plainest of farm buildings, red brick with roofing of black +glazed pan-tiles, you come to the once tiny village of Mablethorpe, +sheltering right under the sea-bank, the wind-blown sands of which are +held together by the penetrating roots of the tussocks of long, coarse, +sharp-edged grass, and the prickly bushes of sea buckthorn, gray-leaved +and orange-berried.</p> + +<p>You top the sand-ridge, and below, to right and left, far as eye can see, +stretch the flat, brown sands. Across these the tide, which at the full of +the moon comes right up to the barrier, goes out for three-quarters of a +mile; of this the latter half is left by the shallow wavelets all ribbed, +as you see it on the ripple-marked stone of the Horsham quarries, and +shining with the bright sea-water which reflects the low rays of the sun; +while far off, so far that they seem to be mere toys, the shrimper slowly +drives his small horse and cart, to the tail of which is attached the +primitive purse net, the other end of it being towed by the patient, +long-haired donkey, ridden by a boy whose bare feet dangle in the shallow +wavelets. Farther to the south the tide ebbs quite out of sight. This is +at “Gibraltar Point,” near Wainfleet Haven, where Somersby brook at length +finds the sea, a place very familiar to the Poet in his youth. The skin of +mud on the sands makes them shine like burnished copper in the level rays +of the setting sun, which here have no sandbank to intercept them, but at +other times it is a scene of dreary desolation, such as is aptly described +in “The Passing of Arthur”:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 9.5em;">a coast</span><br /> +Of ever-shifting sand, and far away<br /> +The phantom circle of a moaning sea.</p> + +<p>It was near this part of the shore that, as a young man, he often walked, +rolling out his lines aloud or murmuring them to himself, a habit which +was also that of Wordsworth, and led in each case to the peasants +supposing the Poet to be “craäzed,” and caused the Somersby cook to wonder +“what Mr. Awlfred was always a-praying for,” and caused also the +fisherman, whom he met on the sands once at 4 <span class="smcaplc">A.M.</span> as he was walking +without hat or coat, and to whom he bid good-morning, to reply, “Thou poor +fool, thou doesn’t knaw whether it be night or daä.”</p> + +<p>But at Mablethorpe the sea does not go out nearly so far, and at high tide +it comes right up to the bank with splendid menacing waves, the memory of +which furnished him, five and thirty years after he had left Lincolnshire +for ever, with the famous simile in “The Last Tournament”:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">as the crest of some slow-arching wave,</span><br /> +Heard in dead night along that table shore,<br /> +Drops flat, and after the great waters break<br /> +Whitening for half a league, and thin themselves,<br /> +Far over sands marbled with moon and cloud,<br /> +From less and less to nothing.</p> + +<p>This accurately describes the flat Lincolnshire coast with its +“interminable rollers” breaking on the endless sands, than which waves the +Poet always said that he had never anywhere seen grander, and the clap of +the wave as it fell on the hard sand could be heard across that flat +country for miles. Doubtless this is what prompted the lines in “Locksley +Hall”:</p> + +<p class="poem">Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,<br /> +And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.</p> + +<p>“We hear in this,” says the “Lincolnshire Rector,”<a name='fna_4' id='fna_4' href='#f_4'><small>[4]</small></a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> writing in +<i>Macmillan’s Magazine</i> of December 1873, “the mighty sound of the breakers +as they fling themselves at full tide with long-gathered force upon the +slope sands of Skegness or Mablethorpe on the Lincolnshire coast, nowhere +is ocean grander in a storm; nowhere is the thunder of the sea louder, nor +its waves higher, nor the spread of their waters on the beach wider.”</p> + +<p>It is not only of the breakers that the Poet has given us pictures. Along +these sands it was his wont, no doubt, as it has often been that of the +writer,</p> + +<p class="poem">To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,<br /> +And tender curving lines of creamy spray,</p> + +<p>and it is still Skegness and Mablethorpe which may have furnished him with +his simile in “The Dream of Fair Women”:</p> + +<p class="poem">So shape chased shape as swift as, when to land<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bluster the winds and tides the self-same way,</span><br /> +Crisp foam-flakes scud along the level sand,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Torn from the fringe of spray.</span></p> + +<p>Walking along the shore as the tide goes out, you come constantly on +creeks and pools left by the receding waves,</p> + +<p class="poem">A still salt pool, lock’d in with bars of sand,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Left on the shore; that hears all night</span><br /> +The plunging seas draw backward from the land<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Their moon-led waters white.<a name='fna_5' id='fna_5' href='#f_5'><small>[5]</small></a></span></p> + +<p>or little dimpled hollows of brine, formed by the wind-swept water washing +round some shell or stone:</p> + +<p class="poem">As the sharp wind that ruffles all day long<br /> +A little bitter pool about a stone<br /> +On the bare coast.<a name='fna_6' id='fna_6' href='#f_6'><small>[6]</small></a></p> + +<p>Many characteristics of Lincolnshire scenery and of Somersby in particular +are introduced in “In Memoriam.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>In Canto LXXXIX. the poet speaks of the hills which shut in the Somersby +Valley on the north:</p> + +<p class="poem">Nor less it pleased in lustier moods<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Beyond the bounding hill to stray.</span></p> + +<p>In XCV. he speaks of the knolls, elsewhere described as “The hoary knolls +of ash and haw,” where the cattle lie on a summer night:</p> + +<p class="poem">Till now the doubtful dusk reveal’d<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The knolls once more where, couch’d at ease,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The white kine glimmer’d, and the trees</span><br /> +Laid their dark arms about the field:</p> + +<p>and in Canto C. he calls to mind:</p> + +<p class="poem">The sheepwalk up the windy wold,</p> + +<p>and many other features seen in his walks with Arthur Hallam at Somersby.</p> + +<p>In “Mariana” we have:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">From the dark fen the oxen’s low</span><br /> +Came to her: without hope of change,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In sleep she seem’d to walk forlorn,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn,</span><br /> +About the lonely moated grange.</p> + +<p>But no picture is more complete and accurate and remarkable than that of a +wet day in the Marsh and on the sands of Mablethorpe:</p> + +<p class="poem">Here often when a child I lay reclined:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I took delight in this fair strand and free:</span><br /> +Here stood the infant Ilion of the mind,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And here the Grecian ships all seem’d to be.</span><br /> +And here again I come, and only find<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The drain-cut level of the marshy lea,</span><br /> +Gray sand-banks, and pale sunsets, dreary wind,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dim shores, dense rains, and heavy-clouded sea.</span></p> + +<p>From what we have said it will be clear to the reader that while it is the +<i>fen</i> land only that the railway traveller sees, it is the <i>Marsh</i> and the +<i>Wolds</i>—and particularly in Lord Tennyson’s mind the Wolds—that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> make +the characteristic charm of the county, a charm of which so many +illustrations are to be found throughout his poems. Certainly in her wide +extended views, in the open wolds with the villages and their gray church +towers nestling in the sheltered nooks at the wold foot, and also (to +quote again from the “Lincolnshire Rector”) “in her glorious parish +churches and gigantic steeples, Lincolnshire has charms and beauties of +her own. And as to fostering genius, has she not proved herself to be the +‘meet nurse of a poetic child’? for here, be it remembered, here in the +heart of the land, in Mid-Lincolnshire, Alfred Tennyson was born, here he +spent all his earliest and freshest days; here he first felt the divine +afflatus, and found fit material for his muse:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The Spirit of the Lord began to move him at times in the Camp of Dan +between Zorah and Eshtaol.”</p></div> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">II</p> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Somersby Friends</span></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>We leave the well-beloved place<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Where first we gazed upon the sky;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The roofs, that heard our earliest cry,</span><br /> +Will shelter one of stranger race.<br /> +<strong><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span></strong><br /> +I turn to go: my feet are set<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To leave the pleasant fields and farms;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They mix in one another’s arms</span><br /> +To one pure image of regret.</td></tr></table> + +<p>It is no wonder that the Tennysons loved Somersby. They were a large +family, and here they grew up together, making their own world and growing +ever more fond of the place for its associations. “How<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> often have I +longed to be with you at Somersby!” writes Alfred Tennyson’s sister, +Mary,<a name='fna_7' id='fna_7' href='#f_7'><small>[7]</small></a> thirteen years after leaving the old home. “How delightful that +name sounds to me! Visions of sweet past days rise up before my eyes, when +life itself was new,</p> + +<p class="poem">And the heart promised what the fancy drew.”</p> + +<p>Here, when childhood’s happy days were over, the Tennyson girls rejoiced +in the society of their brothers’ Cambridge friends, and, though the +village was so remote that they only got a post two or three times a +week,<a name='fna_8' id='fna_8' href='#f_8'><small>[8]</small></a> here they not only drank in contentedly the beauty of the +country, but also passed delightful days with talk and books, with music +and poetry, and dance and song, when, on the lawn at Somersby, one of the +sisters</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 3em;">brought the harp and flung</span><br /> +A ballad to the brightening moon.</p> + +<p>Here, as Arthur Hallam said, “Alfred’s mind was moulded in silent sympathy +with the everlasting forms of Nature.”</p> + +<p>I have said that they made their own world; and they were well able to do +it, for they were a very remarkable family. The Doctor was a very tall, +dark man, very strict with his boys, to whom he was schoolmaster as well +as parent. He was a scholar, and unusually well read, and possessed a good +library. Clever, too, he was with his hands, and carved the stone +chimney-piece in the dining-room, which his man Horlins built under his +direction. He and his wife were a great contrast, for she was very small +and gentle and highly sensitive.</p> + +<p>Edward FitzGerald speaks of her as “one of the most innocent and +tender-hearted ladies I ever saw”; and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> Poet depicts her in “Isabel,” +where he speaks of her gentle voice, her keen intellect and her</p> + +<p class="poem">Sweet lips whereon perpetually did reign<br /> +The summer calm of golden charity.</p> + +<p>Mary was the letter-writer of the family, and a very clever woman, and her +letters show that she knew her Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Keats, and +Coleridge as well as her brother’s poems.</p> + +<p>They were a united family, but Charles and Alfred were nearest to her in +age. She writes to one of her great friends: “O my beloved, what creatures +men are! my brothers are the exception to this general rule.” Accordingly, +of Charles she writes: “If ever there was a sweet delightful character it +is that dear Charley,” and of Alfred: “A. is one of the noblest of his +kind. You know my opinion of men in general is much like your own; they +are not like us, they are naturally <i>more</i> selfish and <i>not so +affectionate</i>.” She adds:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Alfred is universally beloved by all his friends, and was long so +before he came to any fame....</p> + +<p>We look upon him as the stay of the family; you know it is to him we +go when anything is to be done. Something lately occurred here which +was painful; we wrote to Alfred and he came immediately, after, I am +told, not speaking three days scarcely to any one from distress of +mind, and that <i>not</i> for himself, mind, but for others. Did this look +like selfishness?</p></div> + +<p>After leaving Somersby she felt the loss of these brothers sorely.</p> + +<p>Alfred’s devotion to his mother was always perfect. In October 1850 Mary +writes from Cheltenham:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Yesterday, Mamma, I, and Fanny went to look for houses, as Alfred has +written to say that he should like to live by his Mother or in the +same house with us, if we could get one large enough, and he would +share the rent, which would be a great deal better. He wishes us to +take a house in the neighbourhood of London, if we can give up ours, +with him, or to take<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> a small house for him and Emily<a name='fna_9' id='fna_9' href='#f_9'><small>[9]</small></a> on the +outskirts of Cheltenham till we can move; so what will be done I know +not, but this I know that Alfred must come here and choose for +himself, so we have written to him to come immediately, and we are +daily expecting him.</p></div> + +<p>But though life at Cheltenham when the brothers were all away was dull for +Mary, it had not been so at Somersby; for there they had home interests +sufficient to keep them always occupied, and they were not without +neighbours. Ormsby was close at hand, to the north, where lived as Rector, +Frank Massingberd, afterwards Chancellor of Lincoln, a man of cultivation +and old-world courtesy. His wife Fanny was one of the charming Miss +Barings of Harrington, which was but a couple of miles off to the east. +Her sister Rosa was that “sole rose of beauty, loveliness complete,” to +whom the Poet wrote such charming little birthday verses; and sixty-five +years afterwards Rosa, then Mrs. Duncombe Shafto, still spoke with +enthusiasm of those happy days. Mrs. Baring had married for her second +husband, Admiral Eden, a man of great conversational powers, and with a +very large circle of interesting friends. He took the old Hall of +Harrington, with its fine brick front, from the Cracrofts, who moved to +Hackthorn near Lincoln, and thus the families at Harrington and Somersby +saw a great deal of one another.</p> + +<p>There were two Eden daughters, the strikingly handsome Dulcibella and her +sister, who looked after the house and its guests. Hence their nicknames +of “Dulce” and “Utile.”</p> + +<p>A mile or two beyond Harrington was Langton, where Dr. Johnson came to +visit his friend Bennet Langton, who died only seven years before Dr. +Tennyson came to Somersby. But, though the Langtons were friends of the +Doctor’s, this was not a house the young people<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> much frequented. Mary, +having come back to the old neighbourhood, writes from Scremby: “I am +going to Langton to-morrow to spend a few days with the Langtons, don’t +you pity me? I hope I shall get something more out of Mrs. Langton than +Indeed, Yes, No!”</p> + +<p>Adjoining Langton the Tennysons had friends in the Swans of Saucethorpe, +and a little farther eastwards was Partney, where George Maddison and his +mother lived. He was a hero, of whom tales were told of many courageous +deeds, such as his going single-handed and taking a desperate criminal +who, being armed, had barricaded himself in an old building and set all +the police at defiance. It was a question whether people most admired the +courage of the man or the beauty of his charming wife, Fanny, one of the +three good-looking daughters of Sir Alan Bellingham, who all found +husbands in that neighbourhood. In the Lincolnshire poem, “The Spinster’s +Sweet-Arts,” the Poet has immortalized their name:</p> + +<p class="poem">Goä to the laäne at the back, and loök thruf Maddison’s gaäte!</p> + +<p>From Partney the hill rises to Dalby, where lived John Bourne, whose wife +was an aunt of the young Tennysons, and here they would meet the handsome +Miss Bournes of Alford; one, Margaret, was dark, the other was Alice, a +beautiful fair girl. They married brothers, Marcus and John Huish. Mrs. +John Bourne was the Doctor’s sister Mary, and the young Tennysons would +have been oftener at Dalby had it been their Aunt Elizabeth Russell<a name='fna_10' id='fna_10' href='#f_10'><small>[10]</small></a> +who lived there, of whom they always spoke in terms of the strongest +affection.</p> + +<p>The old house at Dalby was burnt down in 1841. About this Mr. Marcus Huish +tells me that his mother wrote in a diary at the time:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span><i>Jan. 5, 1841.</i>—On this day +Dalby House, the seat of the Bournes, and round whose simple Church, standing embosomed in trees, my family, +including my dear sister Mary Hannah, lie buried, was burnt to the +ground;</p></div> + +<p>and on the 7th Mrs. Huish wrote:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I have this morning received intelligence that the dear House at Dalby +was on Tuesday night burnt down, and is now a wreck. I feel very +deeply this disastrous circumstance, endeared as it was to me by ties +of time and association. Mr. Tennyson has written to me as follows on +this catastrophe.</p></div> + +<p>The letter was a long one, two pages being left for it in the diary, but +unfortunately it was never copied in.</p> + +<p>The villages here are very close together, and going from Partney, two +miles eastward, you come to Skendleby, where Sir Edward Brackenbury lived, +whose elder brother Sir John was Consul at Cadiz, and used to send over +some good pictures and some strong sherry, known by the diners-out as “the +Consul’s sherry.” The Rector of the next village of Scremby was also a +Brackenbury, and here Mary Tennyson most loved to visit. Mrs. Brackenbury, +whom she always calls “Gloriana,” was adored by all who knew her. Mary +says, “She is so sweet a character, and she has always been so kind and so +anxious for our family ... I look upon her as already a saint.” Two of the +Rectors of Halton had also been Brackenburys—a father and son in +succession, and they were followed by two generations of Rawnsleys—Thomas +Hardwicke and his son Drummond.</p> + +<p>Adjoining Scremby is Candlesby, where Tennyson’s genial friend, John +Alington, who had married another of the beautiful Miss Bellinghams, was +Rector; and within half a mile is Gunby, the delightful old home of the +Massingberds. In Dr. Tennyson’s time Peregrine Langton, who had married +the heiress of the Massingberds and taken her name, was living there.</p> + +<p>It was from Gunby that Algernon Massingberd disappeared, going to America +and never being heard<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> of again, which gave rise to a romance in “Novel” +form, that came out many years later called <i>The Lost Sir Massingberd</i>. +Going on eastward still, by Boothby, where Dr. Tennyson’s friends the +Walls family lived, in a house to which you drove up across the grass +pasture, the sheep grazing right up to the front door, a thing still +common in the Lincolnshire Marsh, you come to Burgh, with its magnificent +Church tower and old carved woodwork. Here was the house of Sir George +Crawford, and here from the edge of the high ground on which the Church +stands you plunge down on to the level Marsh across which, at five miles’ +distance, is Skegness, at that time only a handful of fishermen’s +cottages, with “Hildred’s Hotel,” one good house occupied by a large +tenant farmer, and a reed-thatched house right on the old Roman sea bank, +built by Miss Walls, only one room thick, so that from the same room she +could see both the sunrise and the sunset. Here all the neighbourhood at +different times would meet, and enjoy the wide prospect of sea and Marsh +and the broad sands and the splendid air. When the tide was out the only +thing to be seen, as far as eye could reach, were the two or three +fishermen, like specks on the edge of the sea, and the only sounds were +the piping of the various sea-birds, stints, curlews, and the like, as +they flew along the creeks or over the gray sand-dunes. Mablethorpe was +nearer to Somersby, but had no house of any size at which, as here, the +dwellers on the wold knew that they were always welcome.</p> + +<p>But we have other houses to visit, so let us return by Burgh and Bratoft, +where above the chancel arch of the ugly brick Church is a remarkable +picture of the Spanish Armada, represented as a huge red dragon, with the +ships of Effingham’s fleet painted in the corner of the picture.</p> + +<p>Passing Bratoft, the next thing we come to is the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> Somersby brook, which +is here “the Halton River,” and on the greensand ridge, overlooking the +fen as far as “Boston Stump,” stands the fine Church of Halton Holgate. In +this Church, as at Harrington, Alfred as a boy must have seen the old +stone effigy of a Crusader as described in “Locksley Hall Sixty Years +After”</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 13em;">with his feet upon the hound,</span><br /> +Cross’d! for once he sailed the sea to crush the Moslem in his pride.</p> + +<p>The road ascends the “hollow way” cut through the greensand, and a timber +footbridge is flung across it leading from the Church to the Rectory. Dr. +Tennyson could tell the story of how his old friend T. H. Rawnsley, the +Rector, and Mr. Eden, brother of the Admiral, being in London, looked in +at the great Globe in Leicester Square and heard a man lecturing on +Geology. They listened till they heard “This Greensand formation here +disappears” (he was speaking of Sussex) “and crops up again in an obscure +little village called Halton Holgate in Lincolnshire.” “Come along, Eden!” +said the Rector; “this is a very stupid fellow.”</p> + +<p>Halton was the house, and Mr. and Mrs. Rawnsley the people, whom Dr. +Tennyson most loved to visit. She had been previously known to him as the +beautiful Miss Walls of Boothby. The Rector was the most genial and +agreeable of men, and her charm of look and manner made his wife a +universal favourite.</p> + +<p>Here are two characteristic letters from Dr. Tennyson to Mr. Rawnsley:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="right"><i>Tuesday 28th, 1826.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Dear Rawnsley</span>—In your not having come to see me for so many months, +when you have little or nothing to do but warm your shins over the +fire while I, unfortunately, am frozen or rather suffocated with Greek +and Latin, I consider myself as not only slighted but spifflicated. +You deserve that I should take no notice of your letter whatever, but +I will comply with your invitation partly to be introduced to the +agreeable and clever lady, but more especially to have the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> pleasure +of seeing Mrs. Rawnsley, whom, you may rest assured, I value +considerably more than I do you. Mrs. T. is obliged by your +invitation, but the weather is too damp and hazy, Mr. Noah,—so I +remain your patriarchship’s neglected servant,</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">G. C. Tennyson.</span></span></p></div> + +<p>This letter was addressed to the Rev. T. H. Rawnsley, Halton Parsonage. +The next was addressed to Halton Palace, and runs thus:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Somersby</span>, <i>Monday</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Dear Rawnsley</span>—We three shall have great pleasure in dining with you +to-morrow. We hope, also, that Mr. and Mrs. Clarke and yourselves will +favour us with their and your company to dinner during their stay. I +like them very much, and shall be very happy to know more of +them.—Very truly yours,</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">G. C. Tennyson.</span></span></p> + +<p><i>P.S.</i>—How the devil do you expect that people are to get up at seven +o’clock in the morning to answer your notes? However, I have not kept +your Ganymede waiting.</p></div> + +<p>The friendship between the families, which was further cemented when the +Rector’s son Drummond married Kate Franklin, whose cousin, Emily Sellwood, +afterwards became the Poet’s wife, has been maintained for three +generations. Alfred shared his father’s opinion of Halton, and often wrote +both to the Rector and his wife. In one letter to her, after pleading a +low state of health and spirits as his reason for not joining her party at +Halton, he says: “At the same time, believe me it is not without +considerable uneasiness that I absent myself from a house where I visit +with greater pleasure than at any other in the country, if indeed I may be +said to visit any other.”</p> + +<p>After leaving Somersby, he wrote on Jan. 28, 1838, from High Beech, Epping +Forest:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">My dear Mrs. Rawnsley</span>—I have long been intending to write to you, for +I think of you a great deal, and if I had not a kind of antipathy +against taking pen in hand I would write to you oftener; but I am +nearly as bad in this way as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> Werner, who kept an express (horse and +man) from his sister at an inn for two months before he could prevail +upon himself to write an answer to her, and her letter to him was, +nevertheless, on family business of the last importance. But my chief +motive in writing to you now is the hope that I may prevail upon you +to come and see us as soon as you can. I understood from some of my +sisters that Mr. Rawnsley was coming in February to visit his friend +Sir Gilbert. Now I trust that you and Sophy will come with him—of +course he would not pass without calling, whether alone or not. I was +very sorry not to have seen Drummond. I wish he would have dropt me a +line a few days before, that I might have stayed at home and been +cheered with the sight of a Lincolnshire face; for I must say of +Lincolnshire, as Cowper said of England,</p> + +<p class="poem">With all thy faults I love thee still.</p> + +<p>You hope our change of residence is for the better. The only advantage +in it is that one gets up to London oftener. The people are +sufficiently hospitable, but it is not in a good old-fashioned way, so +as to do one’s feelings any good. Large set dinners with stores of +venison and champagne are very good things of their kind, but one +wants something more; and Mrs. Arabin seems to me the only person +about who speaks and acts as an honest and true nature dictates: all +else is artificial, frozen, cold, and lifeless.</p> + +<p>Now that I have said a good word for Lincolnshire and a bad one for +Essex, I hope I have wrought upon your feelings, and that you will +come and see us with Mr. Rawnsley. Pray do. You could come at the same +time with Miss Walls when she pays her visit to the Arabins, and so +have all the inside of the mail to yourselves; for though you were +very heroic last summer on the high places of the diligence, I presume +that this weather is sufficient to cool any courage down to +zero.—Believe me, with love from all to all, always yours,</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">A. Tennyson.</span></span></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Beech Hill, High Beech, Loughton, Essex.</span></p></div> + +<p>To this letter Mrs. Tennyson, the Poet’s mother, adds a postscript, though +she complains that Alfred has scarcely left her room to do so. The letter +is dated in her hand.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>The Halton family consisted of Edward, Drummond, and Sophy. The latter, +with Rosa Baring, were two of Alfred’s favourite partners at the Spilsby +and Horncastle balls. Sophy Rawnsley became Mrs. Ed. Elmhirst; she often +talked of the old Halton and Somersby days. “He was,” she said, “so +interesting, because he was so unlike other young men; and his +unconventionality of manner and dress had a charm which made him more +acceptable than the dapper young gentleman of the ordinary type at ball or +supper party. He was a splendid dancer, for he loved music, and kept such +time; but you know,” she would say, “we liked to talk better than to dance +together at Horncastle, or Spilsby, or Halton; he always had something +worth saying, and said it so quaintly.” Rosa at eighty-three recalled the +same times with animation, and said to me, “You know we used to spoil him, +for we sat at his feet and worshipped him; and he read to us, and how well +he read! and when he wrote us those little poems we were more than proud. +Ah, those days at Somersby and Harrington and Halton, how delightful they +were!”</p> + +<p>The Halton family were a decade younger than Charles, Alfred, and Mary +Tennyson, but Drummond married eight years before Alfred. Emily Sellwood, +just before her marriage with Alfred, wrote to Mrs. Drummond Rawnsley:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">My dearest Katie</span>—You and Drummond are among the best and kindest +friends I have in the world, and let me not be ungrateful, I have some +very good and very kind—Thy loving sister</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Emily</span>.</span></p></div> + +<p>The use of the <i>thy</i> is very frequent with the Sellwoods, and in all Mary +Tennyson’s letters too.</p> + +<p>It was at Halton, in the time of its next Rector, Drummond Rawnsley, that +the farmer Gilbey Robinson gave his son Canon H. D. Rawnsley the famous +advice<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> which the Poet has preserved in his Lincolnshire poem “The +Churchwarden and the Curate”:</p> + +<p class="poem">But creeäp along the hedge bottoms an thou’ll be a Bishop yit.</p> + +<p>And it was at Halton that Mr. Hoff, a large tenant farmer, lived of whom +Dr. Tennyson heard many a story from the Rector. He was quite a character, +and the Lord Chancellor Brougham was brought over by Mr. Eden from +Harrington to see and talk with him. I knew Mr. Hoff, and have heard the +Rector describe the lively afternoon they had. Farming was one of Lord +Brougham’s hobbies, and he talked of farming to his heart’s content, and +was delighted with the old fellow’s shrewdness and independence, and his +racy sayings in the Lincolnshire dialect, the kind of sayings which +Tennyson has preserved in his “Northern Farmer.” The farmer, too, was +pleased with his visitor, but he said to the Rector afterwards, “He is +straänge cliver mon is Lord Brougham, and he knaws a vast, noä doubt, but +he knaws nowt about ploughing.” It was the same farmer who was introduced +by the Rector to the leading Barrister at the Spilsby sessions, where both +the Rector and Dr. Tennyson were always in request to dine with the bar, +when the Judge was at Spilsby, for the charm of their presence and the +brightness of their conversation. Mr. Hoff had seen “Councillor Flowers” +in Court in his wig and gown, but meeting him now in plain clothes, and +finding him a very small man, he said to him straight out, “Why, you’re +nobbut a meän-looking little mon after all.” These tenant farmers, whether +in the Marsh, wold, or fen, were very considerable people in days when +agriculture was at its best. In the Marsh, one in particular, Marshal +Heanley, was always termed the Marsh King. He it was who at the Ram-show +dinner at Halton, when Ed. Stanhope, the Minister for War, had spoken of +the future which was opening for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> great agriculturists, and, after +alluding to Lord Brougham’s visit to the Shire and the sending of some +farmers’ sons to the Bar, had suggested the possibility of one of them +arriving at the top of the tree and sitting some day on the Woolsack. The +“Marsh King” got up and said, “I allus telled yer yer must graw wool; but +when you’ve grawed it, yer mustn’t sit on it, yer must sell it.”</p> + +<p>There was a good deal of humour and also of characteristic independence +about both the farmers and their men in those days; the Doctor’s own man, +when found fault with, had flung the harness in a heap on the drawing-room +floor, saying, “Cleän it yersen then.” And at Halton Rectory an old +Waterloo cavalryman was coachman, who kept in the saddle-room the sword he +had drawn at Quatre-Bras, a delight to us boys to see and hear about. He +had a way of thinking aloud, and when, driving once at Skegness, he saw +the Halton schoolmaster, his particular aversion, Mrs. Rawnsley heard him +say, “If there ain’t that conceäted aäpe of ourn.” On a later occasion, +when, at a rent-day dinner, he was handing round the beer, and the +schoolmaster asked, “Is it ale or porter?” in a voice heard by all the +table he replied, “It’s näyther aäle nor poörter, but very good beer, much +too good for the likes o’ you, so taäke it and be thankful.” Perhaps his +most famous saying was addressed to my younger brother who, when +attempting to copy his elders who always jumped the quickset hedge +opposite the saddle-room as a short cut to the house, had stuck in the +thorns and cried, “Grayson, Grayson, come and help me out!” The old man +slowly wiped his hands, and with his usual deliberation said, “Yis, I’m +a-coming.” “But look sharp, confound you, it’s pricking me.” “Oh, if +you’re going to sweër you may stay theër, and be damned to you.”</p> + +<p>From Halton the way is short to Spilsby, the market<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> town where the +Franklins had lived, and the statue of Sir John resting his hand on an +anchor looks down every Monday on the chaffering Market folk at one end of +the Market Place, whilst the women still crowd round the old Butter-cross +at the other end. In the Church is the Willoughby chapel, full of +interesting monuments.</p> + +<p>Many of the Franklin family lie in the Churchyard, and on the Church wall +are three tablets to the three most distinguished brothers,—James, the +soldier, who made the first ordnance survey of India; Sir Willingham, the +Judge of the Supreme Court of Madras; and Sir John, the discoverer of the +North-West Passage. Hundleby adjoins Spilsby where Mr. John Hollway lived, +of whom the Poet wrote: “People say and I feel that you are the man with +the finest taste and knowledge in literary matters here.” Next to Hundleby +comes Raithby, the home of the Edward Rawnsleys, where the Poet was a +frequent visitor, and thence passing Mavis-Enderby on the left, the road +runs on the Ridge of the Wold through Hagworthingham to Horncastle, the +home of the Sellwoods. Mavis-Enderby is referred to in Jean Ingelow’s +poem, “The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire, 1571”:</p> + +<p class="poem">Play uppe, play uppe, O Boston bells!<br /> +<strong><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span></strong><br /> +The brides of Mavis Enderby.</p> + +<p>After a visit to Raithby in 1874 Alfred wrote to Mrs. Edward Rawnsley:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">My dear Mary</span>—I stretch out arms of love to you all across the +distance,—all the Rawnsleys are dear to me, and you, though not an +indigenous one, have become a Rawnsley, and I invoke you in the same +embrace of the affection, tho’ memory has not so much to say about +you.</p></div> + +<p>At Keal, east of Mavis-Enderby, the Cracrofts, whom the Doctor knew well, +were living; and below the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> far-famed Keal Hill, in the flat fen, lay +Hagnaby Priory, the home of Thomas Coltman, whose nephews Tom and George +were often there. George, a genial giant of the heartiest kind, became +Rector of Stickney, half-way between Keal and Boston; he was one of the +Poet’s closest friends. In a letter to the Rector of Halton he says, +“Remember me to all old friends, particularly to George Coltman”; and in +after years he seldom met a Lincolnshire man without asking, “How is +George Coltman? He was a good fellow.” Agricultural depression has altered +things in Lincolnshire. Among the farmers the larger holders have +disappeared in many places, and in the pleasant homes of Halton and +Somersby, such men as the Rectors in those Georgian and early Victorian +days, Nature does not repeat.</p> + +<p>The departure of the Tennyson family made a blank which could never be +filled. The villagers whom they left behind never forgot them, and even in +extreme old age they were still full of memories of the family, and talked +of the learning and cleverness of “the owd Doctor,” the fondness of the +children for their mother and, most noticeable of all, their +“book-larning,”</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>And boöks, what’s boöks? thou knaws thebbe naither ’ere nor theer.</p></div> + +<p>The old folk all seemed to think that “to hev owt to do wi boöks” was a +sign of a weak intellect. “The boys, <i>poor things!</i> they would allus hev a +book i’ their hands as they went along.” A few years ago there was still +one old woman in Somersby who remembered going, seventy-one years back, +when she was eleven years old, for her first place to the Tennysons. What +she thought most of was “the young laädies.” She was blind, but she said, +“I can see ’em all now plaän as plaän; and I would have liked to hear Mr. +Halfred’s voice ageän—sich a voice it wer.”</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<div class="bbox" style="width: 363px; height: 500px;"><img src="images/img04.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Frederick Tennyson.</span></p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p> +<h2>TENNYSON AND HIS BROTHERS FREDERICK AND CHARLES</h2> +<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">Charles Tennyson</span><a name='fna_11' id='fna_11' href='#f_11'><small>[11]</small></a></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>My uncle Frederick lived near St. Heliers, and my father and I visited +him (1887) in his house, overlooking the town and harbour of St. +Heliers, Elizabeth Castle, and St. Aubyn’s Bay. The two old brothers +talked much of bygone days; of the “red honey gooseberry,” and the +“golden apples” in Somersby garden, and of the tilts and tourneys they +held in the fields; of the old farmers and “swains”; of their college +friends; and of the waste shore at Mablethorpe: and then turned to +later days, and to the feelings of old age. My father said of +Frederick’s poems that “they were organ-tones echoing among the +mountains.” Frederick told Alfred as they parted that “not for twenty +years had he spent such a happy day.”—<i>Tennyson: a Memoir, by his +Son.</i></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td align="center">To C. T.</td></tr> +<tr><td>True poet, surely to be found<br /> +When Truth is found again.</td></tr></table> +</div> + + +<p>Of all the brothers of Alfred Tennyson the closest akin to him were +Frederick and Charles. The three were born in successive years, Frederick +in 1807, Charles in 1808, and Alfred in 1809. They slept together in a +little attic under the roof of the old white Rectory at Somersby, they +played together, read together, studied together under the guidance of +their father, and all three left home to go together to the school at +Louth, which Alfred and Charles at least held in detestation until their +latest years. Frederick was the first to break up the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> brotherhood, for, +in 1817, he left Louth for Eton, but to the end of his long life—he +outlived all his brothers—he seems to have looked back on the days of his +childhood through the medium of this fraternal trinity. Years afterwards +he wrote of their common submission to the influence of Byron, who “lorded +it over them, with an immitigable tyranny,” and a fire at Farringford in +1876 brings to his mind the destruction of their Aunt Mary’s house at +Louth, in the gardens of which he wrote: “I, and Charles, and Alfred, +enthusiastic children, used to play at being Emperors of China, each +appropriating a portion of the old echoing garden as our domain, and +making them reverberate our tones of authority.”</p> + +<p>At school the brothers seem to have kept much to themselves; they took +little interest in the school sports, in which their great size and +strength would have well qualified them to excel, and passed their time +chiefly in reading and wandering over the rolling wold and flat shores of +their native Lincolnshire. They began at an early age their apprenticeship +to poetry. Alfred, at least, had written a considerable volume of verse by +the time he was fourteen, and all three contributed to the <i>Poems by Two +Brothers</i>, which were published at Louth in 1827, when Frederick, the +author of four of the poems, had just entered St. John’s, Cambridge (his +father’s old College). Charles used to tell how, when the tiny volume was +published, he and Alfred hired a conveyance out of the £10 which the +publisher had given them, and drove off for the day to their favourite +Mablethorpe, where they shouted themselves hoarse on the shore as they +rolled out poem by poem in one another’s ears. The notes and headings to +the poems give some idea of the breadth and variety of reading for which +the brothers had found opportunity in their quiet country life, for the +volume contains twenty quotations from Horace, eight from Virgil, six from +Byron, five<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> from Isaiah, four from Ossian, three from Cicero, two apiece +from Moore, Xenophon, Milton, Claudian, and the Book of Jeremiah, with +others from Addison, John Clare, Juvenal, Ulloa’s <i>Voyages</i>, Beattie, +Rennel’s <i>Herodotus</i>, Savary’s <i>Letters</i>, Tacitus’ <i>Annals</i>, Pliny, +Suetonius’ <i>Lives of the Caesars</i>, Gibbon’s <i>Decline and Fall</i>, Racine, +the <i>Mysteries of Udolpho</i>, <i>La Auruncana</i>, the <i>Songs of Jayadeva</i>, Sir +William Jones (<i>History of Nadir Shah</i>, <i>Eastern Plants</i>, and <i>Works</i>, +vol. vi.), Cowper, Ovid, <i>Burke on the Sublime and Beautiful</i>, Dr. +Langhorne’s <i>Collins</i>, Mason’s <i>Caractacus</i>, Rollin, Contino’s <i>Epitaph on +Camoens</i>, Hume, Scott, the Books of Joel and Judges, Berquin, Young, +Sale’s Koran, Apollonius of Rhodes, Disraeli’s <i>Curiosities of +Literature</i>, Sallust, Terence, Lucretius, Coxe’s <i>Switzerland</i>, Rousseau, +the <i>Ranz des Vaches</i>, <i>Baker on Animalculae</i>, Spenser, Shakespeare, +Chapman and various old English ballads, while many notes give odd scraps +of scientific, geographical, and historical learning.</p> + +<p>Alfred and Charles followed Frederick to Cambridge in 1828 and entered +Trinity, whither their elder brother had just migrated from John’s. All +the three brothers attained a certain amount of rather unconventional +distinction at the University; Frederick, who had taken a high place on +his entrance into Eton and subsequently became Captain of the Oppidans, +obtained the Browne Gold Medal for a Greek Ode (in Sapphic metre) on the +Pyramids, the last cadence of which, “ὀλλυμένων +γὰρ ἄχθων ἐξαπολειται,” +is the only fragment which tradition has preserved. Charles +obtained a Bell Scholarship in 1829, chiefly through the beauty of his +translations into English (one line, “And the ruddy grape shall droop from +the desert thorn,” was always remembered by Alfred), and the youngest +brother secured, as is well known, the University Prize for English Verse +with his “Timbuctoo.” None of the brothers, however, attained<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> great +distinction in the schools, though Frederick and Charles graduated B.A. in +1832. With the end of their Cambridge careers the brotherhood finally +dissolved. It was at first proposed that all three should (in deference to +the wish of their grandfather), become clergymen. Frederick had always +shown a certain independence and intractability of character. At Eton, +though a skilful and ardent cricketer, he acquired a reputation for +eccentricity, and Sir Francis Doyle describes him as “rather a silent, +solitary boy, not always in perfect harmony with Keate,”—a gentleman with +whom most spirits, however ardent, generally found it convenient to agree.</p> + +<p>Sir Francis recounts one typical incident: Frederick, then in the sixth +form, had returned to school four days late after the Long Vacation. Keate +sent for him and demanded an explanation. None was forthcoming. Keate +stormed in his best manner, his prominent eyebrows shooting out, and his +Punch-like features working with fury, Frederick remaining all the while +cynically calm. Finally the fiery doctor insists with many objurgations on +a written apology from the boy’s father, whereupon the culprit leisurely +produces a crumpled letter from his pocket and hands it coolly to the +head-master. A fresh tirade follows, accusing Frederick of every defect of +character and principle known to ethics, and concluding, “<i>and showing +such a temper too</i>”!</p> + +<p>How little Frederick regarded himself as fitted for Holy Orders may be +judged from a letter he wrote in 1832 to his friend John Frere: “I +expect,” he says, “to be ordained in June, without much reason, for +hitherto I have made no kind of preparation, and a pretty parson I shall +make, I’m thinking.” The grandfather came apparently to share this +conclusion, for the ordination never took place.</p> + +<p>It must have been about this time that Frederick<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> made the acquaintance of +Edward FitzGerald, who was two years his junior. The pair maintained a +close correspondence for many years, and “Fitz” became godfather to one of +his friend’s sons and left a legacy to be divided among his three +daughters.</p> + +<p>Frederick’s fine presence and frank, tempestuous, independent nature seem +to have made a powerful appeal to the younger man, for he had the great +height, noble proportions, and dome-like forehead of the Tennyson family, +and was so robustly built that it is said that in later years, when he +lived in Florence, a new servant girl, on seeing him for the first time +speeding up his broad Italian staircase in British knee-breeches, fell +back against the wall in astonishment, exclaiming, “Santissima Madonna, +che gambe!” Unlike his brothers, however, his hair (which he wore rather +longer than was common even at that time) was fair and his eyes blue.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“I remember,” wrote Fitz in 1843, “the days of the summer when you and +I were together quarrelling and laughing.... Our trip to Gravesend has +left a perfume with me. I can get up with you on that everlastingly +stopping coach on which we tried to travel from Gravesend to Maidstone +that Sunday morning: worn out with it we got down at an Inn and then +got up on another coach, and an old smiling fellow passed us holding +out his hat—and you said, “That old fellow must go about as Homer +did,” and numberless other turns of road and humour, which sometimes +pass before me as I lie in bed.”</p></div> + +<p>And in the next year he writes:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>How we pulled against each other at Gravesend! You would stay—I +wouldn’t—then I would—then we did. Do you remember that girl at the +bazaar ... then the gentleman who sang at Ivy Green?</p></div> + +<p>And seven years later Gravesend and its ἀνήριθμοι shrimps are +still in his memory.</p> + +<p>Very soon, however, after leaving Cambridge,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> Frederick, who had inherited +a comfortable property at Grimsby, set out for Italy, and in Italy and +near the Mediterranean he remained, with the exception of an occasional +visit to England, until 1859.</p> + +<p>He was passionately fond of travel, which, as he used to say, “makes +pleasure solemn and pain sweet,” and even his marriage in 1839 to Maria +Giuliotti, daughter of the chief magistrate of Siena, could not induce him +to make a settled home. In 1841 we hear of him (through “Fitz”) in Sicily, +playing a cricket match against the crew of the <i>Bellerophon</i> on the +Parthenopaean Hills, and “<i>sacking</i> the sailors by ninety runs.” “I like +that such men as Frederick should be abroad,” adds the writer, “so strong, +haughty, and passionate,” and in 1842 “Fitz” pictures him “laughing and +singing, and riding into Naples with huge self-supplying beakers full of +the warm South.” All the while he continued to write to FitzGerald +“accounts of Italy, finer” (says the latter) “than any I ever heard.”</p> + +<p>Once he describes himself coming suddenly upon Cicero’s Formian villa, +with its mosaic pavement leading through lemon gardens down to the sea, +and a little fountain bubbling up “as fresh as when its silver sounds +mixed with the deep voice of the orator sitting there in the stillness of +the noonday, devoting the siesta hours to study.” FitzGerald replies with +letters full of affection; he sighs for Frederick’s “Englishman’s +humours”—for their old quarrels: “I mean quarrel in the sense of a good, +strenuous difference of opinion, supported on either side by occasional +outbursts of spleen. Come and let us try,” he adds, “you used to irritate +my vegetable blood.” “I constantly think of you,” he writes, “and as I +have often sincerely told you, with a kind of love I feel towards but two +or three friends ... you, Spedding, Thackeray, and only one or two more.” +And again: “It is because there are so few F. Tennysons in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> world that +I do not like to be wholly out of hearing of the one I know.... I see so +many little natures that I must draw to the large.”</p> + +<p>All this time Frederick was writing verse and Fitz constantly urges him to +publish. “You are now the only man I expect verse from,” he writes in +1850, after he had given Alfred up as almost wholly fallen from grace. +“Such gloomy, grand stuff as you write.” Again: “We want some bits of +strong, genuine imagination.... There are heaps of single lines, couplets, +and stanzas that would consume the ——s and ——s like stubble.”</p> + +<p>Much of their correspondence is taken up with the discussion of music. +They both agree in placing Mozart above all other composers. Beethoven +they find too analytical and erudite. Original, majestic, and profound, +they acknowledge him, but at times bizarre and morbid.</p> + +<p>“We all raved about Byron, Shelley, and Keats,” wrote Frederick long +after, in 1885, “but none of them have retained their hold on me with the +same power as that little tone poet with the long nose, knee-breeches, and +pigtail.” Indeed he was at different times told by two mediums that the +spirit of Mozart in these same knee-breeches and pigtail accompanied him, +invisibly to the eye of sense, as a familiar. Music was the passion of +Frederick Tennyson’s life. It was said among his friends that when he +settled in Florence (as he did soon after 1850), he lived in a vast Hall +designed by Michael Angelo, surrounded by forty fiddlers, and he used to +improvise on a small organ until he was over eighty years of age.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“After all,” he wrote in 1874, “Music is the Queen of the Arts. What +are all the miserable concrete forms into which we endeavour to throw +‘thoughts too deep for tears’ or too rapturous for mortal mirth, +compared with the divine, abstract, oceanic utterances of that voice +which can multiply a thousandfold and exhaust in infinite echoes the +passions that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> on canvas, in marble, or even in poesy (the composite +style in aesthetics), so often leave us cold and emotionless! I +believe Music to be as far above the other Arts as the affections of +the soul above the rarest ingenuity of the perfect orator! Perhaps you +are far from agreeing with me. Indeed the common charge brought +against her by her sisters among the Pierides—and by the +transcendentalists and philosophical Critics—is that She has no type +like the other Arts on which to model her creations and to regulate +her inspirations. I say her inexhaustible spring is the soul itself, +and its fiery inmost—the chamber illuminated from the centre of +Being—as the finest and most subtle ethers are begotten of, and flow +nearest to the Sun.”</p></div> + +<p>Frederick lived at Florence till 1857 and found there, after years of +wandering, his first settled home. The idea of settling tickled his +humour, and in 1853 he writes: “I am a regular family man now with four +children (the last of whom promises to be the most eccentric of a humorous +set) and an Umbrella.” In Florence he came in contact with Caroline Norton +and her son Brinsley, of the latter of whom he writes an amusing account:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Young Norton has married a peasant girl of Capri, who, not a year ago, +was scampering bare-footed and bare-headed over the rocks and shingles +of that island. He has turned Roman Catholic among other +accomplishments—being in search, he said, of a “graceful faith.”... +Parker has just published a volume of his which he entitled “Pinocchi: +or Seeds of the Pine,” meaning that out of this small beginning he, +Brin, would emerge, like the pine, which is to be “the mast of some +great Admiral,” from its seedling. He is quite unable to show the +applicability of this title, and, seeing that the book has been very +severely handled in one of the periodicals under the head of “Poetical +Nuisances,” some are of opinion that “Pedocchi” would have been a more +fitting name for it. However, to do him no injustice, he has sparks of +genius, plenty of fancy and improvable stuff in him, and is, moreover, +a young gentleman of that irrepressible buoyancy which, to use the +language of the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, “rises by its own<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> rottenness....” +As I said, he is not more than three-and-twenty, but is very much in +the habit of commencing narrative in this manner: “In my young days +when I used to eat off gold plate!” to which I reply, “Really a fine +old gentleman like you should have more philosophy than to indulge in +vain regrets.”</p> + +<p>While we were located at Villa Brichieri, up drove one fine day the +famous Caroline, his mother, who, not to speak of her personal +attractions, is really, I should say, a woman of genius, if only +judged by her novel, <i>Stuart of Dunleath</i>, which is full of deep +pathos to me. I asked Brin one day what his mother thought of me. He +stammers very much, and he said, “She th-th-th-thinks very well of +you, but I d-d-don’t think she likes your family.” “Good heavens! +here’s news,” I said. Well, afterwards she told me of having met +Alfred at Rogers’, and of having heard that he had taken a dislike to +her. “Why, Mrs. Norton,” I said, “that must be nearly thirty years +ago, and do you harbour vindictive feelings so long?” “Oh!” she said, +“why, I’m not thirty!”</p> + +<p>Again, one day we met her in a country house where we were invited to +meet her, and soon after she had shaken hands with me she said, with a +dubious kind of jocosity, “I should like to see all the Tennysons hung +up in a row before the Villa Brichieri.” Upon the whole, I thought her +a strange creature, and she has not yet lost her beauty—a grand +Zenobian style certainly, but, like many celebrated beauties, she +seems to have won the whole world. Among other things she said in +allusion to some incident, “What mattered it to me whether it was an +old or a young man—I who all my life have made conquests?” It seemed +to me that to dazzle in the great world was her principal ambition, +and literary glory her second.<a name='fna_12' id='fna_12' href='#f_12'><small>[12]</small></a></p></div> + +<p>But Frederick was too much of a man of moods to care for society. He used +to describe himself as a “person of gloomy insignificance and unsocial +monomania.” Society he dismissed contemptuously as “Snookdom,” and would +liken it gruffly to a street row. The “high-jinks of the high-nosed” (to +use another phrase of his) angered him, as did all persons “who go about +with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> well-cut trousers and ill-arranged ideas.” The consequence was that +his acquaintance in Florence long remained narrow. In 1854, shortly after +the birth of his second son, he wrote:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Sponsors I have succeeded in hooking, one in this manner: A friend of +mine called yesterday and introduced a Mr. Jones. “Sir,” said I, +“happy to see you. Like to be a godfather?” “Really,” he said, not +quite prepared for the honour, “do my best.” “Thank you, then I’ll +call for you on my way to the church”; so Mr. Jones was booked.</p></div> + +<p>One hears, however, of a visit of Mrs. Sartoris (Adelaide Kemble) in 1854. +“I had not seen her for twenty years,” writes Frederick; “she is grown +colossal, but all her folds of fat have not extinguished the love of music +in her.” But one friendship which Frederick made in Florence was destined +to be a lifelong pleasure to him. In 1853 he writes:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The Brownings I have but recently become acquainted with. They really +are the very best people in the world, and a real treasure to that +Hermit, a Poet. Browning is a wonderful man with inexhaustible memory, +animal spirits, and bonhomie. He is always ready with the most apropos +anecdote, and the happiest bon mot, and his vast acquaintance with +out-of-the-way knowledge and the quaint Curiosity Shops of Literature +make him a walking encyclopaedia of marvels. Mrs. B., who never goes +out—being troubled like other inspired ladies with a chest—is a +little unpretending woman, yet full of power, and, what is far better, +loving-kindness; and never so happy as when she can get into the thick +of mysterious Clairvoyants, Rappists, Ecstatics, and Swedenborgians. +Only think of their having lived full five years at Florence with all +these virtues hidden in a bushel to me!</p></div> + +<p>In 1854 he published his first volume of verse, <i>Days and Hours</i>. The book +was, on the whole, well received. Charles Kingsley (whose early and +discriminating recognition of the merits of George Meredith places him +high among the critics of his day) wrote: “The poems are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> the work of a +finished scholar, of a man who knows all schools, who has profited more or +less by all, and who often can express himself, while revelling in +luxurious fancies, with a grace and terseness which Pope himself might +have envied.” There was, however, a good deal of adverse criticism, and it +was probably mainly owing to his irritation at many of the strictures +(often futile enough) which were passed upon him at this time that he kept +silence for the next thirty-six years. At any rate, he was always ready to +the end of his life for a growl or a thunder at the critics.</p> + +<p>In 1857 Frederick Tennyson left Florence and after spending some time in +Pisa and Genoa finally settled in Jersey, where he made his home for +nearly forty years. During all this period he maintained a regular and +detailed correspondence with Mrs. Brotherton, the wife of his friend +Augustus Brotherton, the artist, with whom he had begun to exchange +letters while still at Florence. His life was now a very quiet one, for, +except for an occasional visit to England, he never left home. His +children with their families visited him from time to time. His brother +Charles came with his wife to see him in 1867, as did the Brownings on +their way to Italy, and Alfred also paid him visits, the last of which was +in 1892. On the whole, however, his days, for one who had been so +passionately fond of travel and of a life of colour, warmth, and +excitement, were singularly peaceful. But he retained to the last his +astonishing vitality. His health remained tolerably good in spite of the +nervous irritability and reactions of melancholy which were inseparable +from the extraordinary energy and vivacity of his temperament. “Poor +Savile Morton used to stare at me with wonder,” he writes. “‘I cannot +conceive,’ he said, ‘how a man with such a stomach can be subject to +hypochondria.’” In 1867, at the age of sixty, he batted for an hour to his +nephew Lionel’s bowling, hoping<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> thereby to be able “to revive the cricket +habit,” and his mind continued extraordinarily active; not a movement in +world politics or thought escaped him; he read voraciously and continued +to write verse in a rather desultory fashion. His appetite for beauty, +too, remained as keen as ever and even developed. “The longer I live,” he +wrote in 1885, “the more delicate become my perceptions of beautiful +nature.” And that appetite found ample food in the scenery of the bowery +island, the whole ambit of which, with its curling tree-tops and distant +lawny spaces dappled with sunshine and surrounded, as it seemed, by the +whole immensity of the globe, could be seen from a point near his house.</p> + +<p>In his isolation, however, his active mind tended to become more and more +possessed by certain ideas, with which everything he read and heard was +brought into relation. While still at Florence he had (possibly under the +influence of Mrs. Browning) become greatly interested in the teachings of +Swedenborg and the phenomena of spiritualism which seemed to him a natural +development of Swedenborg’s theories. At first he was apt to speak rather +lightly of spirit revelations. In 1852 he wrote to Alfred:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Powers the sculptor here, who is a Swedenborgian, says he once had a +vision of two interwoven angels upon a ground of celestial azure +clearly revealed to him by supernatural light after he had put out his +candle and was lying awake in bed, and believes that these are only +the beginning of wonders; the spirits themselves announce the dawn of +a new time and the coming of the Millennium, and he firmly believes +that all we now do by costly material processes will in the returning +Golden Age of the world be accomplished for us by ministering spirits. +‘Thou shalt see the angels of heaven ascending and descending on the +Son of man.’ I go with him as far as to believe that these are +spiritual revelations, but I confess I cannot accompany him in his +belief in their beneficent intentions. God speaks to the heart of man +by His Spirit, not thro’ table legs; the miracles of Christ were of +inestimable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> worth, but these unfortunate ghosts either drivel like +schoolgirls or bounce out at once into the most shameful falsehoods, +and by their actual presence, pretending to be in their final state, +they seem to have for their object, tho’ they carefully avoid touching +on those subjects, to undermine in the hearts of Christians the +spiritual doctrines of the Resurrection of the spiritual body and of +the judgment to come. And the more effectually to unsettle the old +Theology, the cant of these spirits is that God is a God of Love, +Love, Love, continually repeated <i>ad nauseam</i>. So He is, but ‘My +thoughts are not your thoughts, nor My ways your ways,’ ‘He scourgeth +every son that He receiveth,’ ‘He loveth those whom He chasteneth,’ +‘it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God,’ ‘the +pitiful God trieth the hearts and the reins.’ But these spirits, by +for ever harping upon the Love of God in their insipid language, seem +to me to be anxious to persuade us that He is a ‘fine old country +gentleman with large estate,’ or something of that kind, seated in a +deeply-cushioned armchair, and patting the heads of His rebellious +children when they come whimpering to Him, yielding to anything in the +shape of intercession, and, rather than that St. Joseph or any other +saint should be offended, ready to admit a brigand into Heaven. So +that I thoroughly distrust your spirits and expect no virtue will come +out of them. They only seem to me last links in the chain of modern +witchcrafts which will probably end with the Devil.”<a name='fna_13' id='fna_13' href='#f_13'><small>[13]</small></a> And a little +later he writes: “Owen the Socialist and a host of infidels by a +peculiar logical process of their own, after seeing a table in motion, +instantly believe in the immortality of the Soul. To me it is +astounding and even awful, that in this nineteenth century after +Christ—whose resurrection of the body rests on as strong a ground of +proof as many of the best attested historical events—men should be +beginning again with that vague and unsatisfactory phantom of a creed +which must have been old in the time of Homer.”</p></div> + +<p>It was not long before he became a complete convert to Swedenborgianism +and firmly convinced of the reality of the Spiritualistic phenomena with +which the press and literature of the day began to be flooded. Indeed at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> +one time he believed that spirits communicated with himself by a kind of +electrical ticking, which he was constantly hearing in his room at night, +and used at their dictation to do a certain amount of automatic writing. +The results, however, were so unsatisfactory that he was forced to +conclude the spirits to be of an evil and untrustworthy nature, and he +therefore abandoned the practice of spiritualism altogether. He remained, +however, convinced of the fact that living men were able to communicate +with the spirits of the departed, who had been able, since the end (in +1757) of the second dispensation (according to Swedenborg) and the +abolition of the intermediate state of purgatory which accompanied it, to +establish direct intercourse with our world, and he believed that this +rapid increase of communication was a sign of the approach of the kingdom +of heaven, that is to say, of the total abolition of all barriers between +the material and spiritual worlds, and the actual physical regeneration of +man in the Millennium predicted by Christ and the prophets. The natural +and political tumults of which the nineteenth century was so prolific +seemed to him to point in the same direction, and to fall in with the +prophecy of Daniel which he was never tired of quoting.</p> + +<p>Frederick abandoned these views at the end of his life, but it is not +difficult to see how they came to acquire such a hold on him. He was +essentially a mystic and clung most fervently to the belief in a future +life, where all good things should be taken up into the spiritual life and +glorified.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“My daylight,” he wrote in 1853, “is sombered by a natural instinct of +unearthliness, a looking backwards and forwards for that sunny land +which Imagination robes in unfailing Summer where no tears dim the +Light, and no graves lie underneath our feet, by the side of which +Riches, honors, even Health the first of blessings, all, in short, +that is commonly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> called Happiness, looks cold and imperfect—while +the great Shadow of Death fills up the distance, and the steps to it +lie over withered garlands and dry bones.” And again: “For an +illustration of the bliss and delight of that higher state of being +which under the influence of that Spirit-Sun shall hereafter rise +daily to its appointed task, whatever that may be, with full heart and +mind—I go back to ‘the days that are no more,’ when I used to dive +into the sunny morn, rejoicing in my strength, refreshed with +dreamless sleep ‘like a giant with wine,’ carrying my whole soul with +me without fears or regrets, with a joy focussed like sunlight through +a lens, on the infinite present moment! Such memories, tho’ mournful, +are blessed if they bring with them analogies of the ‘Higher State to +Be.’ For the angel is but the infant sublimated—the rapture and the +innocence, with the Wisdom and the Power adjoined, and crowned with +Immortality! That is to say his will being in all things conformable +to the Divine—he receives the divine influences which are heaven! And +surely my unshakable belief is that all created beings—even those who +have chosen the lowest Hell—will be eventually redeemed, exalted, and +glorified—or there would be an Infinite Power of Good unable or +unwilling to subdue Finite Evil.”</p></div> + +<p>His mind, however, was too independent to accept any of the creeds of +orthodoxy. He is perpetually thundering against the “frowzy diatribes of +black men with white ties—too often the only white thing about them” (one +can hear him rap out the parenthesis), and the “little papacies” that +dominate a country town or village. Rome he regarded with an excessive +hatred, and Oxford and Cambridge, twin homes of orthodoxy, did not escape +his wrath.</p> + +<p>Indeed, he regarded most modern Christianity as a perversion of the +original truth, and Atheism in all its guises he hated with an even +greater bitterness, as the following letter shows:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>This, as you truly say, is the age of Atheism—both practical and +professional. But it is not only Bradlaugh and Mrs. —— who +distinguish it as such—multitudes of most worthy and respectable +people (in their own estimation) are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> classifiable under this +category. Indeed all worldly people whose religion consists in saving +appearances, all self-interested folk whose lives are passed in +struggles with their neighbour for their own advantage—all such as +wear down heart and mind and even physical well-being in the feverish +ambition to pile up riches, not knowing who shall gather them or +purely for the renown of possessing them. All ritualists who think +they get to heaven by peculiar haberdashery, and intoning the prayers, +which makes a farce of them by depriving them of articulate meaning. +All believers in the vicarious atonement of faith alone, which creed +signifies that all <i>has been done</i> instead of all has <i>to be done</i> for +them. All who hurry to conventicles on Sunday with gilt-edged +prayer-books, and begin on Monday morning to slander, ill-treat, or +cheat their neighbours. In short all that excludes the spiritual from +<i>this</i> life—which generally indicates unbelief in any other and +virtually denies the <i>necessity</i>, and therefore the existence, of a +Divine Governor. All Professors —— and —— in Physical science, all +Herbert Spencers, etc. in metaphysical—who arrive by different +courses at the same conclusion, viz. that God is <i>unknowable</i> [<i>sic</i>] +and that therefore they need not take the trouble to know Him. All +this is but Atheism virtual and avowed.</p></div> + +<p>And materialism he considered little better than rank Atheism.</p> + +<p>It was not unnatural, therefore, that he should have come to regard the +phenomena of spiritualism as the strongest evidence of those beliefs which +were to him more important than life itself, and, this conviction once +established, submission to the strange genius of Swedenborg followed +almost as a matter of course, for by his “science of correspondencies,” +the new phenomena seemed to fall naturally and inevitably into their +proper place in that strange dual scheme of spirit and matter into which +Swedenborg had resolved the Universe. When he had once embarked upon +Occultism, other curious beliefs followed in the train of these main +convictions. He became greatly impressed with the work of a certain Mr. +Melville who believed that he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> had rediscovered an ancient and long +forgotten method of reading the stars which was in fact the original +mystery of Freemasonry. Frederick took eagerly to this idea which seemed +to fall naturally into place with the Swedenborgian science of +correspondencies, and in 1872 he actually came to England with Mr. +Melville in the hope of being able to convince the Freemasons that all +modern Masonry with its boasted mysteries was futile and meaningless +without the key of Mr. Melville’s discovery in which lay the true +explanation of all the masonic signs and symbols. Unfortunately an +interview with the Duke of Leinster, the then Grand Master, gave the two +apostles little satisfaction. It was on this visit that Frederick saw +FitzGerald for the last time, and the latter described him to Mrs. Kemble +as being “quite grand and sincere in this as in all else; with the Faith +of a gigantic child—pathetic and yet humorous to consider and consort +with.”</p> + +<p>The influence of these ideas gradually coloured Frederick’s view on all +current subjects. His years in Florence had been spent in the “hubbub of +imminent war,” and he writes indignantly of “the rottenness of these +pitiable petty States and the incredible fantastic tricks of their +abominable rulers.” None the less, though he hated and despised most +existing monarchies, he was too much imbued with the romance and dignity +of the past to look with a very favourable eye on revolution. At first he +dismissed Mazzini as “deserving a hempen collar with Nana Sahib and the +King of Delhi,” an opinion which the experience of later years compelled +him to reverse. The story of nineteenth-century Europe seemed to him +chaos, but it was the chaos which was to precede the new spiritual +dispensation, and political prejudice never hindered him from the true +appreciation of progress. Thus he writes in 1869:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>It is certain that Evil has never been more rampant than during the +last century—witness the great French Revolution, subsequent wars, +minor revolutions, and minor wars throughout the globe, the hundreds +of millions wasted on warlike machinery, the countless numbers of +young men sacrificed to the fiends of ambition and racial jealousy, +society honeycombed with frauds, conspiracies, and class animosities, +etc. etc. On the other hand, never has knowledge of all kinds been +more progressive, never have the Arts and Sciences and Literature been +so rapidly multiplied and so various. Never were charitable +institutions more widely extended or practically beneficent. Never, in +short, were the researches into all kinds of truths, especially those +which concern the relations of man to God and his neighbour, more +earnest, and if this seems to contradict the notorious fact that we +are living at present in a world of Atheism and Materialism—which is +the same thing—it does not really do so, for the two movements, +though separate, are parallel and simultaneous. In short, “The Time of +the End” is a transitional state—which will eventually issue in the +triumph of Good over Evil once and for ever.</p></div> + +<p>France he always hated as the leader of materialism, and he would repeat +with a snort of disgust the remark of M. Bert, who, during the debate in +the Chamber on the secularization of Education, observed that it was +superfluous to exclude what did not exist. The debacle of 1870 seemed a +just if tragic retribution.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“One cannot help, however,” he wrote on October 19, 1870, “feeling for +beautiful Paris as one would for a Marie Antoinette passing on her way +to execution. There she is in her solitude and in her beauty. Around +her a circle of iron and fire—within her a restless seething of +tumultuous passions embittering the present—her future a prospect of +burning and famine. Such a downfall is unparalleled in history, and +the agonies of her expiration—if things are carried to their bitter +end—promise to equal those of the terrible siege of Jerusalem.”</p></div> + +<p>As might be expected, he tended to Conservatism in politics; Home Rule was +anathema, and Disraeli,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> endeared to him as the possible leader of a +United Israel, he regarded as a sincerer statesman than Gladstone. None +the less he was able to applaud Gladstone’s action on the occasion of the +Bulgarian atrocities, though “even he” seemed to have yielded so much</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>... to the delicacies and squeamish sensibility, and fluttering nerves +of a lolling generation—an age of sofas and carpets—the rousing of +which even in the justest of causes, the vindication of the rights of +unoffending humanity outraged by savages in comparison with whom +niggers and Red Indians are angels, is not to be attempted without +careful thought—and though a great cry has gone through the land I +fear there will be little wool. There is, however, one +consolation—neither Turkey, nor Egypt, nor any ruffian with a bundle +of dirty clothes upon his head instead of a hat, will ever get another +farthing of <i>our</i> money.</p></div> + +<p>None the less he hated a bigoted Toryism, and thought that “a proper +democratic spirit which aims at a reconstruction of society on the +principle of ‘each for all and all for each,’ the correlation of +privileges and duties, worth and honour, wealth and charity (in its best +sense), the substitution of altruism for egoism, ought to find its echo in +every loyal heart—and would in fact be the very ‘end of Sin, and bringing +in of the Everlasting Righteousness’ foretold.”</p> + +<p>In literature, too, his mind—in spite of an occasional failure to +recognize individual genius—was remarkably alive to the progressive +movements of the day. Indeed, for a man so steeped in classicism, his +freedom from prejudice was remarkable. Browning’s poetry, however, in +spite of his affection for the author, he could never appreciate. He wrote +to Mrs. Brotherton:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“What you say of Browning’s <i>Ring and the Book</i>,” he says, soon after +the publication of that work, “I have no doubt is strictly applicable, +however slashing.... I confess, however, that I have never had the +courage to read the book.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> He is a great friend of mine.... But it +does not follow that I should put up with obsolete horrors, and +unrhythmical composition. What has come upon the world that it should +take any metrical (?) arrangement of facts for holy Poesy? It has been +my weakness to believe that the Fine Arts and Imaginative Literature +should do something more than astonish us by <i>tours de force</i>, black +and white contrasts, outrageous inhumanities, or anything criminally +sensational, or merely intellectually potent. As you say a good heart +is better than a clever head, so I say better a page of feeling than a +volume of spasms. Spasms, I fear, is the order of the day. The late +Lord Robertson, a legal celebrity at Edinburgh, pleading on behalf of +some one, said, with his serious face, which was more tickling than +the happiest efforts of Pantaloon: ‘We are bound to respect his +feelings as a man and a butcher.’ Here the man and the butcher are +bound up in one. Now, in Browning’s case, I separate the man from the +butcher. I have nothing to say to him in his blue apron and steel by +his side, but if I meet him in plain clothes I honour him as a +gentleman.” And in 1885 he writes: “The Public, it would seem, is +beginning to rouse itself to a perception of the unreliability of the +Browningian school—I have seen several articles on that subject. How +is it that it has never struck his partisans that the probability of +one man being so infinitely superior to his contemporaries as to be +totally unintelligible to them—is infinitely small?</p> + +<p>“One thing appears to me certain in Browning, that all his +performances are pure <i>brain-work</i>—whatever that may be worth—but as +for the ‘divine heat of temperament,’ where is it? I can find nothing +but the inextricably hard and the extravagantly fantastical. On such +diet I cannot live.”</p></div> + +<p>Nevertheless, it was always the future of Art, not its past, which stirred +his interest, and a letter of his written in 1885, when he was +seventy-eight, shows a youth and vitality of mind truly remarkable in one +whose life had been so cloistered.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“There can never,” he says, “be a second Shakespeare, that is to say, +given a man of equal Genius he cannot in this complex and analytical +age of Literature embody himself in the metrical and dramatic form if +his purpose is to ‘hold up <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>the mirror to Nature, and to give the Time +its form and pressure.’ The form of prose fiction is a vastly greater +one, indeed it may be termed all-comprehensive, and admits of the +introduction of lyric or epic verse, in all varieties, as well as the +profoundest analysis of character and motive, and is susceptible of +the highest range of eloquence and unrhythmical poetry, and whatever +it may lose in metrical melody (which, however, is not greatly +regarded in dramatic dialogue) it gains immeasurably in its other +elements. All things considered, I am of opinion that if a man were +endowed with such faculties as Shakespeare’s, they would be more +freely and effectively exercised in prose fiction with its wider +capabilities than when ‘cribbed, cabined, and confined’ in the +trammels of verse.”</p></div> + +<p>It may be that the very remoteness of his life was in part the cause of +this lasting freshness and freedom of his mind. He lived so far from the +world as to be almost entirely removed from any bias of self-interest—the +most fruitful source of prejudice. Ambition played no part in his life.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Once,” he wrote in 1888, “I used to have some ambition—that is when +I was a boy at school—I verily believe that at that early age I +exhausted the demoniacal passion which chains you to fixed purposes +like a Prometheus and preys upon you like a Vulture. Though many great +works have been accomplished under the spur of this (so-called) noble +passion, think how much chaotic rubbish has been projected into Space +and Time which ought to have been imprisoned to Eternity—how many +heart-burnings, jealousies, and disappointments—how often the love of +the Beautiful and True is entirely subordinated to that of mere +distinction to be won at any cost. How seldom do we hear writers of +the same school speak well of one another. Especially poisonous are +poets, I think, wherever they apprehend a rival—Honey-suckers like +the Bee, they know how to use their stings even while sipping the +flowers. The unambitious man is at any rate free to use his eyes, to +walk up to and contemplate in the pure clear air and solitude of his +mountain-top the face and form of Nature, and like Turner a-fishing, +see wonderful effects never to be come at by the hosts of those who +get on (or off) <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>by copying one another. I daresay you will disapprove +all this and attribute it to indolent epicurism.</p> + +<p>“Latterly since the supernatural and the Future Life, and its +conditions ‘such as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it +entered into the heart of man to conceive,’ have occupied and absorbed +my whole soul to the exclusion of almost every subject which the +Gorillas of this world most delight in, whether scientific, political, +or literary—I have been led to see what men in general consider a +proper use of their stewardship, <i>i.e.</i> ruin of body and soul by +inordinate superhuman struggles for supremacy—Samson-like heavings to +upset the neighbour, or supplant him—carbonic acid-breathing +creepings along the dark floors of stifling caverns such as may enable +them to scrape together a preponderance of a certain mineral, etc. +etc.—as the most lamentable examples of Phrenitis—arising simply +from the ineradicable instinct—of Immortality it is true, but +misplaced Immortality—Immortality in this life.”</p></div> + +<p>The death of his wife in 1880 was a severe blow to him.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“In answer to your kind letters of sympathy,” he wrote to Mr. and Mrs. +Brotherton, “I can say but little. Sorrow such as mine when it falls +upon the aged is virtual paralysis, mental and bodily. I know not what +I may do for the brief period remaining to me in this world. At +present my daughter-in-law attends to household matters, and I still +have the presence of children and grandchildren to remind me that I am +not left entirely desolate. But my chief consolation is that the +beloved of my youth and the friend of my age is already risen, and has +cast off the burthen of her mortal cares and pains, and my only hope +that, God willing, I may follow quickly.”</p></div> + +<p>A great but less tremendous shock to him was the death in 1887 of his +sister Emily, once the betrothed of Arthur Hallam. On this occasion he +sent the following lines to his friend:</p> + +<p class="poem">Farewell, dear sister, thou and I<br /> +Will meet no more beneath the sky:<br /> +But in the high world where thou art<br /> +Mind speaks to Mind, and Heart to Heart,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>Not in faint wavering tones, but heard<br /> +As twin sweet notes that sound accord.<br /> +Thy dwelling in the Angel sphere<br /> +Looks forth on a sublimer whole,<br /> +Where all that thou dost see and hear<br /> +Is in true concord with thy soul—<br /> +A great harp of unnumbered strings<br /> +Answering to one voice that sings:<br /> +Where thousand blisses spring and fade<br /> +Swiftly, as in diviner dream,<br /> +And inward motions are portrayed<br /> +In outward shows that move with them:<br /> +After the midnight and dark river<br /> +No more to be o’erpast for ever.<br /> +Behold the lover of thy youth,<br /> +That spirit strong as Love and Truth,<br /> +Many a long year gone before,<br /> +Awaits thee on the sunny shore:<br /> +In that high world of endless wonder<br /> +Nor Space, nor Time can hold asunder<br /> +Twin souls—as Space and Time have done—<br /> +Whom kindest instincts orb in One.</p> + +<p>It was inevitable that the later years of one so aged and so solitary +should be more and more filled with the chronicle and anticipation of +death. But he never sank into lethargy, as the following letter, written +in his eighty-first year, shows:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>My own sorrow is indeed continually revived by memories continually +reawakened, not only by the comparatively recent occurrence of my own +temporarily final separation from my best friend—but also by that +bird’s-eye—so to speak—retrospect, which carries the imagination +over lovely landscapes of the days of youth—out of the golden morning +light of which emerge, in that unaccountable manner which is quite +involuntary, even the most trivial circumstances—moments of no +moment—yet somehow clothed in a more glittering light than the vast +tracts drowned in the general splendour of the dawn, some tiny +pinnacle that reflects the sun, some far off rillet that gushes out +from the wayside.</p></div> + +<p>Even when in his eighty-fourth year his sight began to fail him and the +loss drove him still more back into his inner life, the old eagerness of +mind remained, though<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> finding a melancholy occupation in noting the +changes to which age was daily subjecting his mental and physical +constitution. The note of hope is, however, ineradicable:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>An old man of my great age is already dead—old age being the only +Death—and the faculties which I once possessed receive no impulse, as +of old, for activity—no joyous inspiration. The intellect is cold and +frozen like the mountain streams in Winter, a moonless midnight; and +were it not for the increasing illumination of the immortal spirit +which already beholds the dawn of a greater Day beyond the mountains, +I should indeed be desolate, lost! For I am 84 years of age next +June—and in looking back through my long life—it often seems to me +like a dream—many movements, intellectual and physical, seem to me +like impossibilities. When I see my little grandson Charlie skipping +and hear him shouting and singing, and the light-limbed and +light-hearted girls darting like living lightning down the staircase +(which if I were to attempt to imitate I should undoubtedly break my +neck), I say to myself, is it possible that I can ever have been like +them? Alas! for old age. What can be more mournful than a retrospect +of the days of childhood? But a truce to solemn thoughts—the Spring +is come again, the leaves are unfolding, the birds are singing, the +sun is shining, and surely, next to the human countenance, this is the +most lovely emblem, the most beautiful representative material of +inner spiritualities and the resurrection, and ought to have been so +regarded since the dawn of Christianity; for as sure as Winter +blossoms into Summer, the Winter of old age will spring into the +Eternal Life. Fear not, hope all things! What a contrast to these +consoling aspirations is presented in the touching fragment of the old +Greek poet Moschus which no doubt expresses the scepticism of the +ancient world—I give a free translation:</p> + +<p class="poem">Aye, aye the garden mallows, mint and thyme<br /> +When they have wither’d in the winter clime,<br /> +After a little space do reappear,<br /> +And live again and see another year:<br /> +But we, the brave, the noble, and the wise,<br /> +When once for all pale Death hath closed our eyes,<br /> +Sink into dread oblivion dark and deep,<br /> +The everlasting, never-waking sleep.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>With the approach of death he seemed to himself to undergo a kind of +physical regeneration.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Apropos to spiritual matters,” he writes in 1890, “I have had +recently for several consecutive days some very strange experiences. +One morning I awoke and seemed to have lost my natural memory. Objects +daily presented to me for years seemed no longer familiar as of +old—but as when a man after years of travel returning to his home and +the chamber he formerly occupied takes some time and labour of thought +to bring back to his recollection the whereabouts of objects once (as +it were) instinctively known to him—I had the same difficulty in +recovering my relations to my own surroundings. And this for days was +supplemented by a strange sense of having been far away and conversant +with wonderful things—movements and tumults—which only immeasurable +distance deadened to my perception like great music borne away by the +wind. Ever and anon there flashed up within me what I can only +describe symbolically as Iridescences of feeling as when the prismatic +colours of a rainbow succeed one another, or the coloured lights in +Pyrotechnics cause objects in midnight darkness to assume their own +hues. But all this, wonderful though it may seem, is not the only +change that has come upon me—I am happy to say that simultaneously +with these phenomena a revolution in my spiritual economy of far +greater moment has, I believe, taken place. I have always prayed for +that regeneration, or second birth (‘Thou must be born again,’ said +the Lord to Nicodemus), to be shielded from selfhood—and as the +divine answer to such prayers continually repeated, I can declare, +without any self-delusion, that the answer has actually been a +sensible change in the nature of my affections. Never have I felt +towards those around me, such tender inclinations, such earnest desire +to do them all possible good regardless of self-interest, such a +spirit of forgiveness of any wrongs; and my earnest prayerful +thankfulness for such inestimable benefits has been invariably +acknowledged by that Voice from the Lord Himself by which He has +repeatedly ratified to my spiritual ear His promise of blessing and +the continuation thereof—and that ‘Thou hast nothing to fear, for I +am with thee night and day, body and soul!’ Think of this! But for +God’s sake do not attribute these statements of mine, which are +comprehended in a period of many years, to self-delusion or +self-righteousness.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> God knows, from whom nothing is hid, that I have +never approached Him except in the spirit of profound humility and +self-condemnation, and the answer has always been, ‘Thou hast nothing +to fear. I am with thee.’”</p></div> + +<p>As age settled upon him the violence of many of his views abated. His +faith in Spiritualism and Swedenborgianism lost their hold on him and gave +way to a more philosophic condition of mind. His activity, however, +continued unabated. In 1890, after a silence of thirty-six years, he +published his <i>Isles of Greece</i>, and the success of the volume encouraged +him to give to the world two others, <i>Daphne and other Poems</i> in 1891, and +<i>Poems of the Day and Year</i> (in which were included some of the verses +contained in the volume of 1854) in 1898. In 1896 he left Jersey to join +his eldest son, Captain Julius Tennyson, in whose house in Kensington he +died on February 26, 1898.</p> + +<p>It would be difficult to imagine two persons more strongly contrasted in +life and character than Frederick and Charles. Charles (who was always +Alfred’s favourite brother) had nothing of the powerful, erratic, +tempestuous mind of his elder brother. One does not think of him, as +FitzGerald did of Frederick, as a being born for the warmth and glow of +the South, yet in appearance he was (like Alfred) far more Southern than +the eldest brother. So Spanish were his swarthy complexion, brown eyes, +and curly, dark hair, that Thackeray, meeting him in middle age, called +him a “Velasquez <i>tout craché</i>.” Like Alfred, too, he had a magnificent +deep bass voice; and even in dress the two brothers seem to have +maintained their affinity, for Charles used to wear a soft felt hat and +flowing black cloak much like those which the Millais portrait has +identified with his brother, and these garments, with the addition of +white cuffs, which he wore turned back over his coat sleeves, intensified +the strangely foreign effect of his appearance. But the kinship of the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>two brothers extended beyond purely physical resemblance. They remained +inseparable companions till Charles was ordained, and there was hardly a +taste possessed by either which the other did not share. They read, +played, and rambled together; both were extremely fond of dancing (one of +Charles’s last Sonnets was “On a County Ball”) and were much sought after +as partners at the balls of their countryside. The <i>Poems by Two +Brothers</i>, which were almost entirely the work of Alfred and Charles, +while displaying the differing qualities of each, were a joint production, +the fruit of common reading and common enthusiasm. Both the brothers were +regarded by their contemporaries at Cambridge as destined to achieve +poetical greatness. Both possessed the unwearying patience of the +craftsman, the same devotion to science and the same power of close and +loving observation. Charles, however, lacked the fire and energy of +temperament which made Frederick’s character remarkable and was to a great +extent shared by Alfred. With all Alfred’s sensitiveness and shrinking +from society, he had little of that sympathetic and passionate interest in +the hopes and achievements of their age which drove the younger brother +ever more and more into public life.</p> + +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img05.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Charles Tennyson-Turner.</span></p> +<p> </p> + +<p>Nothing quieter and less eventful than Charles Tennyson’s life can well be +imagined. He was ordained in 1835 (three years after taking his degree) +and immediately obtained a Curacy at Tealby. In the same year he became +Vicar of Grasby, a small village in the Lincolnshire wolds between Caistor +and Brigg.</p> + +<p>In the following year he married Louisa Sellwood, whose sister was to +become Alfred’s wife, and from that time until just before his death on +April 25, 1879, his life, save for an occasional holiday and too frequent +lapses from health, knew little variation. Like all the Tennysons, Charles +was of a nervous temperament, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> this condition often induced acute +suffering. So severe indeed was his struggle with this disorder and the +still more perilous condition which resulted from it that at one time, +soon after his marriage, he was compelled to leave his parish for some +months in search of strength. Throughout these trying interludes the +devotion of his wife, a woman of great humour and power of mind and +character, was of the utmost service to him. Indeed, his debt to her was +great at all times of his life. She would often act almost as a curate to +him in the straggling parish, tirelessly visiting and nursing the sick (a +duty which they both unflinchingly observed even in the epidemics of +small-pox which were then frequent), keeping all his accounts, both +personal and parochial, and even sometimes writing his sermons. The +devotion of the pair was remarkable, retaining a certain youthful ardour +to the end, and when Charles died his wife was carried to the grave within +a month.</p> + +<p>As early as 1830, Charles had published a small volume of sonnets, which +(as is well known) earned the hearty commendation of Coleridge and Leigh +Hunt. As in the case of Frederick, however, there followed a prolonged +silence, the next volume not making its appearance till 1864; others +followed in 1868 and 1873, and all were collected and republished, with a +sage, benevolent, and affectionate Introduction by his friend James +Spedding, in 1880. The reason for this long silence was a slightly +different one from that which was responsible for Frederick’s +intermission. In both cases, no doubt, the feeling that it would be +impertinent for another person of the name of Tennyson to put his work +before the public had some influence. In Charles’s case, however, there +were further considerations. The violent shock which his health sustained +by that prolonged early illness and his subsequent troubles to some extent +numbed his powers. “The edge of thought was blunted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> by the stress of the +hard world,” and the same cause probably increased his natural modesty +till it became almost morbid. He was perpetually haunted by the fear that +his poetry was not original, and the only word of satisfaction which +Spedding ever heard him use of any of his sonnets was with regard to one +which owed its origin to a period of deep affliction, of which the poet +said that he thought it was good because he <i>knew</i> it to be true. Whatever +the cause, however, during these thirty-four years Charles Turner +published nothing and, indeed, hardly even wrote anything. Spedding, in +his Introduction, has collected a few fragments which were gathered from +the poet’s notebooks, and show that his mind still occasionally noted a +stray simile or description, doubtless intended to be subsequently worked +up into a poem. A few of these are in his happiest manner. One may quote +the following picture of goldfish in a glass bowl:</p> + +<p class="poem">As though King Midas did the surface touch,<br /> +Constraining the clear water to their change<br /> +With shooting motions and quick trails of light.<br /> +Now a rich girth and then a narrow gleam,<br /> +And now a shaft and now a sheet of gold.</p> + +<p>and the lines on the opening of the tomb of Charlemagne:</p> + +<p class="poem">They rove the marble where the ancient King,<br /> +Like one forspent with sacred study sate,<br /> +Robed like a King, but as a scholar pale.</p> + +<p>His mind, too, was always working in the same direction on his rambles +about the countryside, and he would sometimes, when walking with Agnes +Weld, “the little, ambling, stile-clearing niece,” who was often his +guest, hit on some phrase which took his fancy and was imparted to his +companion, who remembers his description of the slanting light-bars on a +cloudy day as “the oars of the golden Galley of the sun,” and many another +phrase<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> as happy as any of the homely and perfect touches in his published +works.</p> + +<p>But though these years were barren of actual output, they were of value in +many ways, and not the least as a period of incubation, for many a phrase +or idea first formed in them was subsequently perfected and published. The +intermission, too, left him freer to study and to labour among his +parishioners. At the beginning and end of his life, poetry occupied a +great deal of his time, for each of his sonnets, in spite of their +apparent facility, was the result of much toil. He would work at the same +lines morning after morning, and read the results aloud to his wife, or +niece, or other companion after dinner, the same poem going through a +great succession of forms. A letter to Miss Weld, in answer to some +suggestion of a subject connected with the then recent excavations at +Mycenae, shows his method of work and something of the manifold interests +of his secluded life:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“I never can undertake to work to order,” he writes, “though the order +comes from the dearest of customers. If I get a good hold of that +poor, noble, nodding head I will put him on board of a respectable +sonnet and try to save his memory from drowning.... Mycenae is a very +exciting subject, but I have Kelsey Moor Chapel to write on—a +commission from Mrs. Townsend ... and a poor dead dog haunts me” (see +Sonnet 97—Collected Edition).</p></div> + +<p>During these barren years Charles Turner’s devotion to his parochial work +was intense. Grasby was a somewhat barbarous village when he obtained the +living. Belief in witchcraft was still rife, and one of the popular charms +against its influence was to cut a sheep in half, put the body on a +scarlet cloth, and walk between the pieces. Such religion as there was +among the poor was of a rather harsh spirit, as may be seen from an +anecdote preserved by Miss Weld of an old cottager, who, hearing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> Mrs. +Turner mention the name of Hobbes, exclaimed to his wife: “Why, loovey, +that’s the graate Hobbes that’s in hell!” The climate, too, was as harsh +as the character of the people, for the village stands high and bleak. +Friends remember Louisa Turner going about her ministrations in clogs, and +during one particularly sharp winter she writes: “I am in a castle now of +double cotton wool petticoat and thick baize drawers and waistcoat.” The +Turners soon found it necessary to leave the house at Caistor, three miles +off, where Sam Turner, Charles’s uncle, the preceding vicar, had lived, +for the distance made any real intimacy with the people impossible. +Charles had inherited a small property from his uncle (the event was the +occasion of his change of name), and this made it possible for him to +build a new vicarage and to further enrich the village with new schools +and a new church. He also took the very practical step of buying the +village inn and putting it in charge of a reliable servant, a scheme +which, for a time at least, had excellent effects on the temperance of the +inhabitants.</p> + +<p>There were no children of the marriage, but the pair adopted the children +of the whole village, opening their house and grounds to them for +Christmas trees and summer festivities. Children and animals were always +devoted to Charles Turner, as he to them. He was, as the villagers said, +“Strangen gone upon birds and things.” He never shot after that tragedy of +the swallow which he never forgot (see Sonnet 200), and birds of every +kind flocked to him daily as he fed them on his lawn. Flowers and trees, +too, he loved almost as keenly as he did children. He quarrelled seriously +with one of his curates whom he found exorcising the flowers, which were +to be used for church decoration, by means of the service contained in the +Directorium Anglicanum, maintaining stoutly that if any spirits dwelt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> in +flowers they must be angels and not devils. His garden was a jungle of +old-fashioned flowers, golden-rod, sweet-william, convolvulus, and rose of +Sharon; figs and apricots ripened on his walls, and the house was covered +with roses, honeysuckle, white clematis, and blue ceanothus. The grounds, +too, boasted some fine timber, which Charles never would allow to be +pruned or cut, even permitting the willow-props to outgrow and destroy the +rose trees (Sonnet 270), and once, when it was proposed to fell some large +trees within sight of his house, he threatened to throw up his living and +leave Grasby.</p> + +<p>In this peaceful world Charles found plenty to occupy his time. He saw +little of society except when Alfred or Frederick, or one of his old +college friends, came to visit him, and the resources of the neighbourhood +were strained to the utmost to afford them entertainment. He found, +however, a congenial companion in Mr. Townsend, a neighbouring clergyman +of wide culture much interested in science. And the care of his parish +occupied the greater part of his time. Theology, too, was a favourite +study with him. He began life as an Evangelical, but in later years tended +(partly under the influence of his wife, who would often, on the vigil of +a saint, spend half the night on her knees) more and more towards the High +Church.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“I have been reading,” he wrote to Alfred in 1865, “Pusey’s <i>Daniel +the Prophet</i>, which (thank God) completely—as I think and as very +many will think with me—disposes of the rickety and crotchety +arguments of those who vainly thought they had found a ποῦ στῶ +in him whereby to upheave all prophecy and miracle. It is a noble +book from its learning and its logic. I knew he was a holy and +noble-minded and erudite man, but for some reason I had not credited +him with such ‘act offence’ and powers of righteous satire.... I have +never in my old desultory reading days found such a charm and interest +as in the study of the Queen Science, as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> Trench calls Theology, and +those who assume that they will find there no food for the mature +reason will be surprised at its large provision for the intellect and +rich satisfaction of the highest imagination. It is reading round +about a subject and not the subject itself which damages the intellect +so much. Maurice said the study of the Prophets had saved him from the +Tyranny of books.”</p></div> + +<p>He and his wife also spent much time in the study of Italian, in which +they were assisted by their occasional visits to and from the Frederick +Tennysons. Charles’s Italian Grammar is annotated with numberless quaint +rhymes made to fix its rules in his memory. On one page one finds in his +wonderfully neat fluent hand (strangely like those of Frederick and +Alfred):</p> + +<p class="poem">From use of the following is no ban,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">“The fair of the fair is Mistress Ann”</span><br /> +or “Smith’s a learned, learned man”<br /> +In English or Italian,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Though the English use is far less common</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Speaking of Doctor or fine woman.</span></p> + +<p>On another:</p> + +<p class="poem">Say profeta, profeti<br /> +Or else I shall bate ye.</p> + +<p>On another a couplet which has all the subtle romance of Edward Lear:</p> + +<p class="poem">Rare and changeless, firm and few,<br /> +Are the Italian nouns in U.</p> + +<p>The life at Grasby Vicarage was of the simplest. The hall-floor rattled +with loose tiles, the furniture was reduced to the barest necessities. +Breakfast and lunch were movable feasts, for Charles had all a poet’s +carelessness of time, lingering over morning prayers while his agonized +guest saw the bacon cooling to the consistency of marble before his eyes, +and prolonging his mid-day walk to such distances in the study of flower +and bird and butterfly that it sometimes took a half-hour’s tolling of the +outdoor bell to recall him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> The cook (who in times of scarcity was at the +service of the whole village) must have led a life of irritation, yet +servants stayed long at the Vicarage.</p> + +<p>This sweet, even life knew little variety. The days of quiet service +filled the year, and were succeeded by evenings no less quiet in the +book-lined study, or, if the season were warm, in the hayfield near the +house, where husband and wife would sit reading and talking to each other +till the evening glow died away and left the haycocks and the steep side +of the wold, which backed the red-brick Vicarage, gray and cold and +silent.</p> + +<p>Troubles they had beyond the recurrent anxiety for Charles’s health. A +rascally agent, a man of great plausibility and charm of manner, pillaged +them for some years, and they were only able to recover a portion of his +plunderings (most of which Charles subsequently devoted to the repair of +the church) after a great deal of trouble. It is characteristic that in +after years they always spoke of this gentleman as though <i>he</i> had been +the person who had suffered most in the transaction and deserved most +pity. Charles was indeed possessed of an almost saintly patience, and no +crisis could ever wring from him any ejaculation more forcible than a +half-humorous “I wish we were all in heaven.” His wife’s letters +occasionally give us glimpses of days when the wish must often have been +upon his lips, as when he was reluctantly compelled to join in a +Harvest-Festival gathering in another parish. First of all we read how +“poor Cubbie” (his wife’s pet name for him) “was caught and dressed in a +surplice which hung about him like a clothes bag.” “Then he must join in a +procession, with much singing and chanting, and then read the lessons in +spite of a bad cold and hoarseness, and finally at the end of the day, in +the full hubbub of a garden party, at which all the neighbourhood were +present in their finery (poor Cubbie!), a cannon, which had been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> charged +with blank cartridge for the occasion, went off unexpectedly and knocked +down three boys who were standing in front of it. The boys, whose clothes +were torn to rags and their faces burnt black, shrieked as though in the +death agony, women fainted and men stampeded—and Cubbie ‘wished we were +all in heaven.’”</p> + +<p>But Charles Turner’s poems are, after all, the best mirror of his life. +With Frederick it is otherwise. In spite of his great lyric gift, +Frederick lacked the persistence and enthusiasm necessary for full +self-expression. The want of proportion, which gave his ardent, erratic +personality so much charm, prevented his longer poems being really +successful. In spite of much beauty of phrase and richness of feeling, +they lack architecture and have not sufficient unity to make them vital. +Had he continued to work at lyrical writing after his first volume, he +might have avoided falling into the desultory method, which marred his +later work, and left a really large body of first-class poetry.</p> + +<p>In the best of Charles’s Sonnets, in all, that is, which spring from his +daily experience, there breathes a spirit perpetually quickened by the +beauty and holiness of common life and common things, an imagination which +saw a life and a purpose not only in the ways of men and of all wild +creatures and growing things, but in the half-human voice of the buoy-bell +ringing on the shoals, the sad imprisoned heart-beat of the water-ram in +the little wood-girt field, the welcome of the sunbeam in the copse +running through the yielding shade to meet the wanderer, in the “mystic +stair” of the steam thrashing-machine:</p> + +<p class="poem">Accepting our full harvests like a God<br /> +With clouds about his shoulders.</p> + +<p>and the “mute claim” of the old rocking-horse:</p> + +<p class="poem">In the dim window where disused, he stands<br /> +While o’er him breaks the flickering limewalks’ shade;<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>No provender, no mate, no groom has he—<br /> +His stall and pasture is your memory.<a name='fna_14' id='fna_14' href='#f_14'><small>[14]</small></a></p> + +<p>But in spite of the intimate correspondence between Charles Turner’s life +and his art, an intimacy which only the seclusion of that life made +possible, one cannot help regretting that fortune did not force upon him +some calling which would have afforded a progressive stimulus to his +creative powers. These years of devotion amongst the bleak hill-sides and +flowery dingles of his remote parish did for him what a life of ease and +sunshine did for Frederick. Both had great talents, but neither the tender +felicity of Charles nor Frederick’s heart of cloud and fire ever came to +full development. They represent two extremes of the Tennyson temperament, +the mean and perfection of which is found in Alfred. In the elder the +lyric fury, in the younger the craftsman’s humility of the more perfect +poet were developed to excess, and both suffered for the affection and +respect in which they held him whom they knew to be their master. Yet each +has left himself a monument, some part at least of which is worthy to rank +with the more complete achievement of their younger brother.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p> +<h2>TENNYSON ON HIS CAMBRIDGE FRIENDS</h2> + + +<p> </p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> </p> +<div class="bbox" style="width: 382px; height: 500px;"><img src="images/img06.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p class="center">A. H. H.<br />Obiit 1833.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></p> +<p class="title">ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>I past beside the reverend walls<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In which of old I wore the gown;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I roved at random thro’ the town,</span><br /> +And saw the tumult of the halls;<br /> +<br /> +And heard once more in college fanes<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The storm their high-built organs make,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And thunder-music, rolling, shake</span><br /> +The prophet blazon’d on the panes;<br /> +<br /> +And caught once more the distant shout,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The measured pulse of racing oars</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Among the willows; paced the shores</span><br /> +And many a bridge, and all about<br /> +<br /> +The same gray flats again, and felt<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The same, but not the same; and last</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Up that long walk of limes I past</span><br /> +To see the rooms in which he dwelt.<br /> +<br /> +Another name was on the door:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I linger’d; all within was noise</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Of songs, and clapping hands, and boys</span><br /> +That crash’d the glass and beat the floor;<br /> +<br /> +Where once we held debate, a band<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Of youthful friends, on mind and art,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And labour, and the changing mart,</span><br /> +And all the framework of the land;<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span><br /> +When one would aim an arrow fair,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">But send it slackly from the string;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And one would pierce an outer ring,</span><br /> +And one an inner, here and there;<br /> +<br /> +And last the master-bowman, he,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Would cleave the mark. A willing ear</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">We lent him. Who, but hung to hear</span><br /> +The rapt oration flowing free<br /> +<br /> +From point to point, with power and grace<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And music in the bounds of law,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">To those conclusions when we saw</span><br /> +The God within him light his face,<br /> +<br /> +And seem to lift the form, and glow<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In azure orbits heavenly-wise;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And over those ethereal eyes</span><br /> +The bar of Michael Angelo.</td></tr></table> + +<p> </p> +<p class="title">TO JAMES SPEDDING</p> +<p class="center">ON THE DEATH OF HIS BROTHER</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>The wind, that beats the mountain, blows<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">More softly round the open wold,</span><br /> +And gently comes the world to those<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That are cast in gentle mould.</span><br /> +<br /> +And me this knowledge bolder made,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Or else I had not dared to flow</span><br /> +In these words toward you, and invade<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Even with a verse your holy woe.</span><br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span><br /> +’Tis strange that those we lean on most,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Those in whose laps our limbs are nursed,</span><br /> +Fall into shadow, soonest lost:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Those we love first are taken first.</span><br /> +<br /> +God gives us love. Something to love<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">He lends us; but, when love is grown</span><br /> +To ripeness, that on which it throve<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Falls off, and love is left alone.</span><br /> +<br /> +This is the curse of time. Alas!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In grief I am not all unlearn’d;</span><br /> +Once thro’ mine own doors Death did pass;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">One went, who never hath return’d.</span><br /> +<br /> +He will not smile—not speak to me<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Once more. Two years his chair is seen</span><br /> +Empty before us. That was he<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Without whose life I had not been.</span><br /> +<br /> +Your loss is rarer; for this star<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Rose with you thro’ a little arc</span><br /> +Of heaven, nor having wander’d far<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Shot on the sudden into dark.</span><br /> +<br /> +I knew your brother; his mute dust<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I honour and his living worth:</span><br /> +A man more pure and bold and just<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Was never born into the earth.</span><br /> +<br /> +I have not look’d upon you nigh,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Since that dear soul hath fall’n asleep.</span><br /> +Great Nature is more wise than I:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I will not tell you not to weep.</span><br /> +<br /> +And tho’ mine own eyes fill with dew,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Drawn from the spirit thro’ the brain,</span><br /> +I will not even preach to you,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">“Weep, weeping dulls the inward pain.”</span><br /> +<br /> +Let Grief be her own mistress still.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">She loveth her own anguish deep</span><br /> +More than much pleasure. Let her will<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Be done—to weep or not to weep.</span><br /> +<br /> +I will not say, “God’s ordinance<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Of Death is blown in every wind”;</span><br /> +For that is not a common chance<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That takes away a noble mind.</span><br /> +<br /> +His memory long will live alone<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In all our hearts, as mournful light</span><br /> +That broods above the fallen sun,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And dwells in heaven half the night.</span><br /> +<br /> +Vain solace! Memory standing near<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Cast down her eyes, and in her throat</span><br /> +Her voice seem’d distant, and a tear<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Dropt on the letters as I wrote.</span><br /> +<br /> +I wrote I know not what. In truth,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">How <i>should</i> I soothe you anyway,</span><br /> +Who miss the brother of your youth?<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Yet something I did wish to say:</span><br /> +<br /> +For he too was a friend to me:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Both are my friends, and my true breast</span><br /> +Bleedeth for both; yet it may be<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That only silence suiteth best.</span><br /> +<br /> +Words weaker than your grief would make<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Grief more. ’Twere better I should cease</span><br /> +Although myself could almost take<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The place of him that sleeps in peace.</span><br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span><br /> +Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul,</span><br /> +While the stars burn, the moons increase,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And the great ages onward roll.</span><br /> +<br /> +Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Nothing comes to thee new or strange.</span><br /> +Sleep full of rest from head to feet;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.</span></td></tr></table> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="title">TO EDWARD FITZGERALD</p> +<p class="center">(Dedication of “Tiresias,” written in 1882)</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>Old Fitz, who from your suburb grange,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where once I tarried for a while,</span><br /> +Glance at the wheeling Orb of change,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And greet it with a kindly smile;</span><br /> +Whom yet I see as there you sit<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Beneath your sheltering garden-tree,</span><br /> +And while your doves about you flit,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And plant on shoulder, hand and knee,</span><br /> +Or on your head their rosy feet,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As if they knew your diet spares</span><br /> +Whatever moved in that full sheet<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Let down to Peter at his prayers;</span><br /> +Who live on milk and meal and grass;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And once for ten long weeks I tried</span><br /> +Your table of Pythagoras,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And seem’d at first “a thing enskied”</span><br /> +(As Shakespeare has it) airy-light<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To float above the ways of men,</span><br /> +Then fell from that half-spiritual height<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chill’d, till I tasted flesh again</span><br /> +One night when earth was winter-black,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And all the heavens flash’d in frost;</span><br /> +And on me, half-asleep, came back<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That wholesome heat the blood had lost,</span><br /> +And set me climbing icy capes<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And glaciers, over which there roll’d</span><br /> +To meet me long-arm’d vines with grapes<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of Eshcol hugeness; for the cold</span><br /> +Without, and warmth within me, wrought<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To mould the dream; but none can say</span><br /> +That Lenten fare makes Lenten thought,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who reads your golden Eastern lay,</span><br /> +Than which I know no version done<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In English more divinely well;</span><br /> +A planet equal to the sun<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Which cast it, that large infidel</span><br /> +Your Omar; and your Omar drew<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Full-handed plaudits from our best</span><br /> +In modern letters, and from two,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Old friends outvaluing all the rest,</span><br /> +Two voices heard on earth no more;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But we old friends are still alive,</span><br /> +And I am nearing seventy-four,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">While you have touch’d at seventy-five,</span><br /> +And so I send a birthday line<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of greeting; and my son, who dipt</span><br /> +In some forgotten book of mine<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With sallow scraps of manuscript,</span><br /> +And dating many a year ago,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Has hit on this, which you will take</span><br /> +My Fitz, and welcome, as I know<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Less for its own than for the sake</span><br /> +Of one recalling gracious times,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When, in our younger London days,</span><br /> +You found some merit in my rhymes,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And I more pleasure in your praise.</span><br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></td></tr></table> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="title">EPILOGUE AT END OF “TIRESIAS”</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>“One height and one far-shining fire”<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And while I fancied that my friend</span><br /> +For this brief idyll would require<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A less diffuse and opulent end,</span><br /> +And would defend his judgment well,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">If I should deem it over nice—</span><br /> +The tolling of his funeral bell<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Broke on my Pagan Paradise,</span><br /> +And mixt the dream of classic times<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And all the phantoms of the dream,</span><br /> +With present grief, and made the rhymes,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That miss’d his living welcome, seem</span><br /> +Like would-be guests an hour too late,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who down the highway moving on</span><br /> +With easy laughter find the gate<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Is bolted, and the master gone.</span><br /> +Gone into darkness, that full light<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of friendship! past, in sleep, away</span><br /> +By night, into the deeper night!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The deeper night? A clearer day</span><br /> +Than our poor twilight dawn on earth—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">If night, what barren toil to be!</span><br /> +What life, so maim’d by night, were worth<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Our living out? Not mine to me</span><br /> +Remembering all the golden hours<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Now silent, and so many dead,</span><br /> +And him the last; and laying flowers,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">This wreath, above his honour’d head,</span><br /> +And praying that, when I from hence<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shall fade with him into the unknown,</span><br /> +My close of earth’s experience<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">May prove as peaceful as his own.</span><br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span></td></tr></table> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="title">TO JOHN MITCHELL KEMBLE</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>My hope and heart is with thee—thou wilt be<br /> +A latter Luther, and a soldier-priest<br /> +To scare church-harpies from the master’s feast;<br /> +Our dusted velvets have much need of thee:<br /> +Thou art no sabbath-drawler of old saws,<br /> +Distill’d from some worm-canker’d homily;<br /> +But spurr’d at heart with fieriest energy<br /> +To embattail and to wall about thy cause<br /> +With iron-worded proof, hating to hark<br /> +The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone<br /> +Half God’s good sabbath, while the worn-out clerk<br /> +Brow-beats his desk below. Thou from a throne<br /> +Mounted in heaven wilt shoot into the dark<br /> +Arrows of lightnings. I will stand and mark.</td></tr></table> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="title">TO J. W. BLAKESLEY</p> +<p class="center">AFTERWARDS DEAN OF LINCOLN</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td align="center">I</td></tr> +<tr><td>Clear-headed friend, whose joyful scorn,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Edged with sharp laughter, cuts atwain</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The knots that tangle human creeds,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The wounding cords that bind and strain</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The heart until it bleeds,</span><br /> +Ray-fringed eyelids of the morn<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Roof not a glance so keen as thine:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">If aught of prophecy be mine,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thou wilt not live in vain.</span></td></tr> +<tr><td> <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">II</td></tr> +<tr><td>Low-cowering shall the Sophist sit;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Falsehood shall bare her plaited brow:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fair-fronted Truth shall droop not now</span><br /> +With shrilling shafts of subtle wit.<br /> +Nor martyr-flames, nor trenchant swords<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Can do away that ancient lie;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A gentler death shall Falsehood die,</span><br /> +Shot thro’ and thro’ with cunning words.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">III</td></tr> +<tr><td>Weak Truth a-leaning on her crutch,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wan, wasted Truth in her utmost need,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thy kingly intellect shall feed,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Until she be an athlete bold,</span><br /> +And weary with a finger’s touch<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Those writhed limbs of lightning speed;</span><br /> +Like that strange angel which of old,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Until the breaking of the light,</span><br /> +Wrestled with wandering Israel,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Past Yabbok brook the livelong night,</span><br /> +And heaven’s mazed signs stood still<br /> +In the dim tract of Penuel.</td></tr></table> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="title">TO R. C. TRENCH</p> +<p class="center">AFTERWARDS ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN</p> +<p class="center">(Dedication of “The Palace of Art”)</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>I send you here a sort of allegory,<br /> +(For you will understand it) of a soul,<br /> +A sinful soul possess’d of many gifts,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>A spacious garden full of flowering weeds,<br /> +A glorious Devil, large in heart and brain,<br /> +That did love Beauty only, (Beauty seen<br /> +In all varieties of mould and mind)<br /> +And Knowledge for its beauty; or if Good,<br /> +Good only for its beauty, seeing not<br /> +That Beauty, Good, and Knowledge, are three sisters<br /> +That doat upon each other, friends to man,<br /> +Living together under the same roof,<br /> +And never can be sunder’d without tears.<br /> +And he that shuts Love out, in turn shall be<br /> +Shut out from Love, and on her threshold lie<br /> +Howling in outer darkness. Not for this<br /> +Was common clay ta’en from the common earth<br /> +Moulded by God, and temper’d with the tears<br /> +Of angels to the perfect shape of man.</td></tr></table> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="title">TO THE REV. W. H. BROOKFIELD</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>Brooks, for they call’d you so that knew you best,<br /> +Old Brooks, who loved so well to mouth my rhymes,<br /> +How oft we two have heard St. Mary’s chimes!<br /> +How oft the Cantab supper, host and guest,<br /> +Would echo helpless laughter to your jest!<br /> +How oft with him we paced that walk of limes,<br /> +Him, the lost light of those dawn-golden times,<br /> +Who loved you well! Now both are gone to rest.<br /> +You man of humorous-melancholy mark,<br /> +Dead of some inward agony—is it so?<br /> +Our kindlier, trustier, Jaques, past away!<br /> +I cannot laud this life, it looks so dark:<br /> +Σκιᾶς ὄναρ—dream of a shadow, go—<br /> +God bless you. I shall join you in a day.</td></tr></table> + + +<p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p> +<p class="title">TO EDMUND LUSHINGTON</p> +<p class="center">ON HIS MARRIAGE WITH CECILIA TENNYSON</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>O true and tried, so well and long,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Demand not thou a marriage lay;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In that it is thy marriage day</span><br /> +Is music more than any song.<br /> +<br /> +Nor have I felt so much of bliss<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Since first he told me that he loved</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A daughter of our house; nor proved</span><br /> +Since that dark day a day like this;<br /> +<br /> +Tho’ I since then have number’d o’er<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Some thrice three years: they went and came,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Remade the blood and changed the frame,</span><br /> +And yet is love not less, but more;<br /> +<br /> +No longer caring to embalm<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In dying songs a dead regret,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">But like a statue solid-set,</span><br /> +And moulded in colossal calm.<br /> +<br /> +Regret is dead, but love is more<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Than in the summers that are flown,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">For I myself with these have grown</span><br /> +To something greater than before;<br /> +<br /> +Which makes appear the songs I made<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">As echoes out of weaker times,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">As half but idle brawling rhymes,</span><br /> +The sport of random sun and shade.<br /> +<br /> +But where is she, the bridal flower,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">That must be made a wife ere noon?</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">She enters, glowing like the moon</span><br /> +Of Eden on its bridal bower:<br /> +<br /> +On me she bends her blissful eyes<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And then on thee; they meet thy look</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And brighten like the star that shook</span><br /> +Betwixt the palms of paradise.<br /> +<br /> +O when her life was yet in bud,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">He too foretold the perfect rose.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">For thee she grew, for thee she grows</span><br /> +For ever, and as fair as good.<br /> +<br /> +And thou art worthy; full of power;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">As gentle; liberal-minded, great,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Consistent; wearing all that weight</span><br /> +Of learning lightly like a flower.<br /> +<br /> +But now set out: the noon is near,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And I must give away the bride;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">She fears not, or with thee beside</span><br /> +And me behind her, will not fear.<br /> +<br /> +For I that danced her on my knee,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And watch’d her on her nurse’s arm,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That shielded all her life from harm</span><br /> +At last must part with her to thee;<br /> +<br /> +Now waiting to be made a wife,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Her feet, my darling, on the dead;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Their pensive tablets round her head,</span><br /> +And the most living words of life<br /> +<br /> +Breathed in her ear. The ring is on,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The “wilt thou” answer’d, and again</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The “wilt thou” ask’d, till out of twain</span><br /> +Her sweet “I will” has made you one.<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span><br /> +Now sign your names, which shall be read,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Mute symbols of a joyful morn,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">By village eyes as yet unborn;</span><br /> +The names are sign’d, and overhead<br /> +<br /> +Begins the clash and clang that tells<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The joy to every wandering breeze;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The blind wall rocks, and on the trees</span><br /> +The dead leaf trembles to the bells.<br /> +<br /> +O happy hour, and happier hours<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Await them. Many a merry face</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Salutes them—maidens of the place,</span><br /> +That pelt us in the porch with flowers.<br /> +<br /> +O happy hour, behold the bride<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">With him to whom her hand I gave.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">They leave the porch, they pass the grave</span><br /> +That has to-day its sunny side.<br /> +<br /> +To-day the grave is bright for me,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">For them the light of life increased,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Who stay to share the morning feast,</span><br /> +Who rest to-night beside the sea.<br /> +<br /> +Let all my genial spirits advance<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">To meet and greet a whiter sun;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">My drooping memory will not shun</span><br /> +The foaming grape of eastern France.<br /> +<br /> +It circles round, and fancy plays,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And hearts are warm’d and faces bloom,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">As drinking health to bride and groom</span><br /> +We wish them store of happy days.<br /> +<br /> +Nor count me all to blame if I<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Conjecture of a stiller guest,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Perchance, perchance, among the rest,</span><br /> +And, tho’ in silence, wishing joy.<br /> +<br /> +But they must go, the time draws on,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And those white-favour’d horses wait;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">They rise, but linger; it is late;</span><br /> +Farewell, we kiss, and they are gone.<br /> +<br /> +A shade falls on us like the dark<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">From little cloudlets on the grass,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">But sweeps away as out we pass</span><br /> +To range the woods, to roam the park,<br /> +<br /> +Discussing how their courtship grew,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And talk of others that are wed,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And how she look’d, and what he said,</span><br /> +And back we come at fall of dew.<br /> +<br /> +Again the feast, the speech, the glee,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The shade of passing thought, the wealth</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Of words and wit, the double health,</span><br /> +The crowning cup, the three-times-three,<br /> +<br /> +And last the dance;—till I retire:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Dumb is that tower which spake so loud,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And high in heaven the streaming cloud,</span><br /> +And on the downs a rising fire:<br /> +<br /> +And rise, O moon, from yonder down,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Till over down and over dale</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">All night the shining vapour sail</span><br /> +And pass the silent-lighted town,<br /> +<br /> +The white-faced halls, the glancing rills,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And catch at every mountain head,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And o’er the friths that branch and spread</span><br /> +Their sleeping silver thro’ the hills;<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span><br /> +And touch with shade the bridal doors,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">With tender gloom the roof, the wall;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And breaking let the splendour fall</span><br /> +To spangle all the happy shores<br /> +<br /> +By which they rest, and ocean sounds,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And, star and system rolling past,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A soul shall draw from out the vast</span><br /> +And strike his being into bounds,<br /> +<br /> +And, moved thro’ life of lower phase,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Result in man, be born and think,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And act and love, a closer link</span><br /> +Betwixt us and the crowning race<br /> +<br /> +Of those that, eye to eye, shall look<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">On knowledge; under whose command</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Is Earth and Earth’s, and in their hand</span><br /> +Is Nature like an open book;<br /> +<br /> +No longer half-akin to brute,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">For all we thought and loved and did,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And hoped, and suffer’d, is but seed</span><br /> +Of what in them is flower and fruit;<br /> +<br /> +Whereof the man, that with me trod<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">This planet, was a noble type</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Appearing ere the times were ripe,</span><br /> +That friend of mine who lives in God,<br /> +<br /> +That God, which ever lives and loves,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">One God, one law, one element,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And one far-off divine event,</span><br /> +To which the whole creation moves.</td></tr></table> + + +<p> <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p> +<p class="title">CHARLES TENNYSON-TURNER</p> +<p class="center"><i>Midnight, June 30, 1879</i></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td align="center">I</td></tr> +<tr><td>Midnight—in no midsummer tune<br /> +The breakers lash the shores:<br /> +The cuckoo of a joyless June<br /> +Is calling out of doors:<br /> +<br /> +And thou hast vanish’d from thine own<br /> +To that which looks like rest,<br /> +True brother, only to be known<br /> +By those who love thee best.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">II</td></tr> +<tr><td>Midnight—and joyless June gone by,<br /> +And from the deluged park<br /> +The cuckoo of a worse July<br /> +Is calling thro’ the dark:<br /> +<br /> +But thou art silent underground,<br /> +And o’er thee streams the rain,<br /> +True poet, surely to be found<br /> +When Truth is found again.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">III</td></tr> +<tr><td>And, now to these unsummer’d skies<br /> +The summer bird is still,<br /> +Far off a phantom cuckoo cries<br /> +From out a phantom hill;<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span><br /> +And thro’ this midnight breaks the sun<br /> +Of sixty years away,<br /> +The light of days when life begun,<br /> +The days that seem to-day,<br /> +<br /> +When all my griefs were shared with thee,<br /> +As all my hopes were thine—<br /> +As all thou wert was one with me,<br /> +May all thou art be mine!</td></tr></table> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p> +<div class="bbox" style="width: 397px; height: 500px;"><img src="images/img07.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Edmund Lushington</span><br />(Who married Cecilia Tennyson, and was<br />Professor of Greek in the University of Glasgow).</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p> +<h2>TENNYSON AND LUSHINGTON</h2> +<p class="center">By Sir <span class="smcap">Henry Craik</span>, K.C.B., M.P.</p> + + +<p>Amongst the group of men attached to Lord Tennyson by bonds of early and +life-long friendship, and of reverent affection, there is none in whose +case the tie is surrounded with more of peculiar interest than Edmund +Lushington. Those who in later years were privileged to know the Poet’s +brother-in-law, and learned to appreciate his character, could well +understand the closeness of the sympathy between them.</p> + +<p>Edmund Law Lushington was the son of Edmund Henry Lushington, who at one +time held important office in Ceylon. The eldest of four<a name='fna_15' id='fna_15' href='#f_15'><small>[15]</small></a> gifted +brothers, Edmund was born on the 10th of January 1811. The family house +was, at first, at Hanwell, from which, some years later, they moved to +Park House, near Maidstone. That continued to be the home to which Edmund +Lushington returned at every break in his work at Glasgow, and was his +permanent residence from his retirement in 1875 until his death on the +13th of July 1893. Young Lushington went to Charterhouse School, and +there—as afterwards for a time at Trinity—he had Thackeray as his +contemporary. To the friendship thus early begun Thackeray, in long after +years, paid a gracious tribute in <i>The Virginians</i>, where he cites the +Professor at Glasgow and one at Cambridge (W. H. Thompson) as scholars who +could more than hold their own against the great names of older days.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>As his junior at Trinity, Lushington had at first no acquaintance with +Tennyson, and he has himself told us how he first came to know him by +sight, when Arthur Hallam declaimed his prize essay in the College Chapel, +and Tennyson sat on the bench just below listening intently to the words +of his friend. Already Tennyson’s name was well known in the University; +many of his poems were handed about in manuscript, and the rank to which +they were entitled was a topic of discussion in College societies. It was +only after two years at Cambridge that Lushington’s friendship with +Tennyson began, and as joint members of the “Apostles’” Society they were +thrown into close intercourse. In 1832 Lushington was Senior Classic in a +notable list, which contained also the names of Shilleto, the famous +coach; Alford, afterwards Dean of Canterbury and Biblical commentator; and +William Hepworth Thompson, afterwards Master of Trinity. Six years later, +in 1838, he was chosen as Professor of Greek in Glasgow from a field which +comprised competitors so notable as Robert Lowe, afterwards Lord +Sherbrooke, and Archibald Campbell Tait, afterwards Archbishop of +Canterbury. As bearing on this we may quote—as a specimen of his quaint +and kindly humour—a letter which Lushington wrote to Tennyson from +Addington Park, where he was staying on a visit to the Archbishop on +October 13, 1880:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>On Monday there came on a visit Lord Sherbrooke (R. Lowe).... It was +good that yesterday morning one pony chaise held three men who, +forty-two years ago, were regarded as rival candidates for the Greek +Chair at Glasgow, whereby you will at once admit the cogency of the +argument that if I had not become Greek Professor I should probably +have been either Archbishop of Canterbury or Chancellor of the +Exchequer—possibly both, as no doubt in old times the same back has +borne both offices.</p></div> + +<p>This appointment, which banished young Lushington<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> from all the scenes of +his early days, did not break the friendship with Tennyson, which had +quickly ripened into closest intimacy. In 1840 Tennyson came to visit at +Park House,—still Lushington’s home during the long summer vacation,—and +in 1842 he was present at that festival of the Maidstone Institute which +is described in the opening verses of “The Princess.” The same summer saw +the bond drawn tighter by the marriage of Lushington to the Poet’s +youngest and best-loved sister, Cecilia. It is that marriage which is +acclaimed in immortal words in the Epilogue to “In Memoriam,” and the +tribute there paid to the bridegroom is one which comes home to all who +knew him, as a faithful epitome of his personality:</p> + +<p class="poem">And thou art worthy; full of power;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">As gentle, liberal-minded, great,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Consistent; wearing all that weight</span><br /> +Of learning lightly like a flower.</p> + +<p>The marriage became one link more in that enduring friendship. Those who +knew Mrs. Lushington in later years—when jet-black hair and brilliant +clearness of complexion were still marvellously preserved—can easily +picture her earlier beauty, which must have had much of that “profile like +that on a coin”—which, we are told, was characteristic of Emily, the +betrothed of Arthur Hallam. Mrs. Lushington had a fine contralto voice, +with something of the music that one felt in the Poet’s rich tones.<a name='fna_16' id='fna_16' href='#f_16'><small>[16]</small></a> +She was a charming and even a brilliant companion, and, when in good +health, enjoyed society. But Glasgow College—as it was then generally +called, amidst the murky surroundings of its old site, close to the +reeking slums of the New Vennel—was an abode little fitted for one +accustomed to warmer suns and more congenial scenes. Mrs. Lushington’s +health was grievously broken, and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> northern chills and fogs told +heavily on her spirits. She could rarely join her husband at Glasgow, and +it became necessary for him, during the session which lasted through the +six winter months, to take a house in Edinburgh and rejoin his wife only +for week-ends. Attached as Lushington was to his home and his family, the +burden of ill-health that lay heavily on his household was a grievous one. +It caused him much anxiety. Long pain often racked the nerves and dulled +the bright spirit of his wife; his only son died after a long and painful +illness, and took the light from his life; a daughter followed that son to +the grave; and his brother Henry,<a name='fna_17' id='fna_17' href='#f_17'><small>[17]</small></a> whose brilliant poetic gifts had +been fully proved in the volume of poems entitled <i>Points of War</i>, which +he wrote in conjunction with his brother Franklin, died at Paris in the +fulness of his powers. He learned, as he writes in one of his letters to +Tennyson, that “the roots of love and sorrow are verily twined together +abysmally deep.” But never once, in all his letters, or in any of his +views of his fellow-men, did grief or sorrow drive him into bitterness or +cynicism, or make him bate a jot of his calm and reverent fortitude or of +his deep and generous charity to his fellow-men.</p> + +<p>Throughout that long life, sustained by great thoughts, enriched by wide +and varied learning, and blessed by ties of closest affection, Lushington +preserved consistently the ideals of the early days, and remained to the +last the same strong yet gentle friend, at once generous in admiration and +judicial in criticism, that he had been when Tennyson drew his portrait in +those immortal lines. We know what were the interests and tastes of these +early days. Dean Bradley, in his reminiscences of visits to Park House in +1841 and 1842, tells us how the brothers, and especially the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>Professor—“Uncle Edmund”—seemed as much at home in the language of the +Greek dramatists as if it was their native tongue; and the present writer +remembers how, fifty years later, he heard Lord Tennyson recall the +quotation from the <i>Ecclesiazousae</i>, by which one or other of the +brothers, on an occasion at Park House which must have been almost +contemporaneous with the Dean’s reminiscences, marked the propensity of +the ladies of the party to assiduous attendance at Church. Dean Bradley +remarks how remote was their outlook on the world from that of the Oxford +of his time, dominated by the Tractarian movement. Tolerance, breadth of +view, balanced judgment, and deep reverence for all that was noblest in +human thought and achievement—these gave the keynote to their minds and +energies. Partisanship, sectarian controversy, ecclesiastical disputes, +seemed to belong to an alien world.</p> + +<p>To those who knew him as Professor at Glasgow the secret of Lushington’s +influence was not far to seek. He came there into surroundings singularly +unlike those of his earlier days, and with little to compensate in their +grimy aspect for the beauty of his home and the hallowed associations of +Trinity. It was not long before he had attuned himself to the scene of his +new work, and gathered about him a circle of cherished friends, and had +won the respect and regard of the great body of these Scottish students +drawn from every class. For those who were touched by his enthusiastic +love of the Greek language and its literature, his influence was something +far deeper. He made no stirring appeals, and followed no startling +methods. His perfect courtesy, combined with a firmness which needed no +emphasis of manner to assert itself, sufficed to maintain absolute order +amongst those large classes whose traditions made them not always amenable +to discipline. But for those to whom his teaching was something of an +inspiration, there was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> much more in his personality than this. Consummate +dignity, combined with absolute simplicity of manner, a voice rich and +melodious in tone, a diction graceful and harmonious but never studied or +artificial—these, with a massive head and features of almost ideal +beauty, made him a figure in the life of the College, deepened the +impression of his calm and reverent enthusiasm for all that was noblest in +thought and language, and gave to his influence an abiding force +throughout the lifetime of his pupils. He offered no ready intimacy, and +sought to form no following. But his words, few and well chosen, made +themselves felt as pure gold, and a sentence of praise or of sympathy sank +into the heart, and brought to life and work something that stirred +reverence and enthusiasm. His work planted its root deeply, and sought for +no outward recognition. It was only after his long career at Glasgow ended +by his retirement in 1875 that what he had achieved in reviving an ideal +of Greek scholarship was felt; and it was abiding enough to make him the +choice of the students for an honour, rarely accorded to a former +Professor—that of election as Lord Rector of the University in 1884. He +pursued the even tenor of his way with no thought of self-aggrandizement; +only slowly did that absolute modesty, linked with unassailable dignity, +make itself felt as a power, radiating into the hearts of others his own +illuminating enthusiasm for the ideals of noblest literature.</p> + +<p>No poet could have had, bound to him by ties of closest affection, a +critic more sympathetic, more reverent, and withal, more faithful in his +appreciation. In the genius of Tennyson, he found the central joy and +pride of his life; but his judgment was the more valuable, in that it was +at all times absolutely sincere:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“You took my criticism on ‘Maud’ like an angel,” he writes in 1856, +“which was very good indeed of you. I wish <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>only you could be as glad +whenever I thoroughly admire your poems, as I am sorry whenever I cannot.”</p></div> + +<p>One reference to a hint of criticism in a letter of June 1857, after the +publication of the early Idylls “Enid” and “Nimue (Vivien)” is not without +interest. Lushington writes to Tennyson:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I am very much grieved if anything that I wrote distrest you. I said +it all in love, and only my love could have prompted me to say it. My +tenderness for your fame will not let me be silent when I fear +anything that may cast a shade upon it, and few things can be more +certain to me than that these two poems, coming out by themselves, +would not receive their due of admiration. It would be quite different +if they were, as I hope they will be, supported by others of varied +matter and interest, giving more completeness and beauty of circular +grouping and relation. Such a work I want you to produce, and believe +you can, which would surpass all you have written yet.</p></div> + +<p>The Idylls always had a peculiar interest for Lushington, and he had long +encouraged their production. “I am beyond measure delighted,” he writes in +1856, “to hear of Merlin and his compeers”; and again in the same year, +and in his deepest pangs of anxiety about his boy, he does not forget the +wish, “All genial inspiration from home breezes come to ‘Enid.’” “Is +anything of the Arthurian plan getting into shape?” he writes again in +1859. He was fervent in his admiration of the Dedication to Prince Albert +of the new edition of the Idylls in 1862: “Its truth and loftiness and +tenderness will be felt in a hundred years as much as now.” “Anything of +our own Arthur?” he writes again in 1866, “That’s the true subject.”</p> + +<p>His letters (published and unpublished) to Tennyson convey not only the +picture of a circle knit by warmest affection, but estimates of others +always generous, and sometimes warm with enthusiastic admiration. Carlyle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> +he met at Edinburgh in 1866, and was “struck with the beauty and sweetness +of his face; through all its grimness ... there seems to be an infinite +freshness of spirit with infinite sadness. His laugh is exactly like a +boy’s.” In 1856 he writes: “Have you seen Browning’s new volumes? I have +been trying to construe them, and no gold had ever to be digged out +through more stubborn rocks. But he is a poet as well as good fellow.”</p> + +<p>Through all these long years, with their vicissitudes of joy and sorrow, +their long partings, and amid varied and widely separate occupations, the +friendship remained as fresh as in the early days, an association of +common delight in all that was noblest in literature, inspired by a bond +of deepest poetic sympathy. To those who knew and venerated Lushington, it +might seem that his deep and abiding reverence for the genius of one knit +to him, as Tennyson was, by more than a brother’s love, had in it +something which inspired him in his work, and came in place of all thought +of personal ambition. His learning enriched his life, and gave to his work +as teacher its perfection and its illumination; but it never prompted him +to publication, and he gave nothing to the press under his own name except +his opening address as professor, his address to the students as Lord +Rector, and a short Life of his friend Professor Ferrier, whose posthumous +works he edited. In the one friendship he found the chief solace of his +life. In the last letter addressed to Tennyson on the anniversary of his +birthday, August 6, 1892—only three months before the Poet’s +death—Lushington wrote:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>May the day be blest to you and all who are dear to you, and may the +year bring more blessing as it goes forward, must be the warm wish of +all who have felt the knowledge of you and your writings to be among +the greatest blessings of their life. Year after year my deep love and +admiration has grown,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> though I have not often of late had the +opportunity of expressing it, as we now so seldom meet. But I think +you know how largely indebted to you I feel for whatever is best and +truest in myself—a debt one cannot hope to repay.</p></div> + +<p>No better picture of the friendship could be given than that enshrined in +these words. Lushington survived Tennyson less than a year.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p> +<h2>TENNYSON, FITZGERALD, CARLYLE, AND OTHER FRIENDS</h2> +<p class="center">By Dr. <span class="smcap">Warren</span>, President of Magdalen College, Oxford, and now Professor of +Poetry</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>Old Fitz, who from your suburb grange,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where once I tarried for a while,</span><br /> +Glance at the wheeling Orb of change,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And greet it with a kindly smile;</span><br /> +Whom yet I see as there you sit<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Beneath your sheltering garden-tree</span><br /> +And watch your doves about you flit,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And plant on shoulder, hand, and knee,</span><br /> +Or on your head their rosy feet,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As if they knew your diet spares</span><br /> +Whatever moved in that full sheet<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Let down to Peter at his prayers.</span><br /> +<strong><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span></strong><br /> +And so I send a birthday line<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of greeting; and my son, who dipt</span><br /> +In some forgotten book of mine<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With sallow scraps of manuscript,</span><br /> +And dating many a year ago,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Has hit on this, which you will take</span><br /> +My Fitz, and welcome, as I know<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Less for its own than for the sake</span><br /> +Of one recalling gracious times,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When, in our younger London days,</span><br /> +You found some merit in my rhymes,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And I more pleasure in your praise.</span><br /><br /> +<span style="margin-left: -3em;">To <span class="smcap">E. FitzGerald</span> (<i>Tiresias and other Poems</i>, p. 1).</span></td></tr></table> + + +<p>Alfred Tennyson and Edward FitzGerald; <i>In Memoriam</i> and <i>The Rubáiyát of +Omar Khayyám</i>; “The Eternal Yea” and “The Eternal No,” “the larger hope” +and “the desperate sort of thing unfortunately at the bottom of all +thinking men’s minds, made Music <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>of”—few friendships, few conjunctions, +personal or literary, could be more interesting or more piquant.</p> + +<p>What adds to the interest of the friendship is that it remained so long +unknown to the literary or the general world, and is even now, perhaps, +only partially appreciated. Yet it subsisted for nearly fifty years. It +was close and constant. Though, as time went on, the two friends met less +and less often, it was maintained by a steady interchange of letters and +messages. The letters were naturally more on FitzGerald’s side. Like most, +though not perhaps quite all good letter-writers, FitzGerald was a great +letter-writer. He was, as he often said, an idle man, and as he also said, +he rather liked writing letters, “unlike most Englishmen (but I am +Irish),” he added. Indeed, he seemed almost to prefer communication with +his friends by letter to personal meetings, though these he enjoyed +greatly when brought to the point.</p> + +<p>Tennyson and FitzGerald were old friends, born in the same year, the +notable year 1809. It is true that though they were at Cambridge together +they were not then known to each other, except by sight. “I remember him +there well,” said FitzGerald, speaking of Tennyson, “a sort of Hyperion.” +They had many friendships, acquaintances, associations in common. Carlyle, +Thackeray, Spedding, Merivale, Trench, W. H. Thompson, J. D. Allen, W. B. +Donne, Brookfield, Cowell, Mrs. Kemble, Samuel Laurence, were known to +them both. In their formative years they fell under the same influences, +and read many of the same books. It was about 1835 that they became +acquainted. They were brought together probably by their common and +uncommon friend, James Spedding. They certainly met at his father’s house, +Mirehouse, near Bassenthwaite Lake, in the spring of 1835.</p> + +<p>Tennyson had begun writing “In Memoriam” a little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> before this, <i>i.e.</i> +early in 1834, soon after his friend Hallam’s sudden death and sad +home-bringing in the winter of 1833. He kept it on the stocks, as all +know, for some seventeen years. It was published, at first anonymously, in +1850. The secret of its authorship was soon revealed, the poem found +immediate acceptance and popularity. It became and has remained one of the +most widely read poems in the language. In the meantime Tennyson, though +not so famous as “In Memoriam” made him, had become well known through the +1842 volumes.</p> + +<p>FitzGerald, on the contrary, was at that time quite unknown, except by his +friendships, and to his friends. An Irishman, with the easygoing and +<i>dolce far niente</i> qualities which so often temper the brilliant genius of +that race, sufficiently provided with means, he was naturally inclined for +a quiet and easy, not to say indolent life. He deliberately chose from the +first the <i>fallentis semita vitae</i>. He had some literary ambitions, and he +wrote a few early poems, one or two of rare promise and beauty. One gift +in particular was his—not, it is true, always leading him to action, yet +in its passive or dynamic form constant and abundant almost to +excess—loyalty in friendship. Once and fatally, it led him to take or +submit to a positive step. He had been the attached friend of Bernard +Barton the Quaker poet, the friend of Charles Lamb. When Barton died, from +a mistaken sense of duty, FitzGerald not only collected his poems, a task +more pious than profitable, but afterward, having meanwhile hesitated and +halted too long in offering himself to one who was his real love, married +his daughter who was not this. He left her, not indeed as is sometimes +said, on the morrow of the wedding, but after separations and repeated +attempts—in town and country—at reunion, and lived, as he had done +before, alone and somewhat drearily ever afterwards.</p> + +<p>Speculation has busied itself about his unfortunate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> marriage. The +briefest but also the best pronouncement is probably his own letter +written at the time to Mrs. Tennyson:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">31 Portland Street, London</span>,<br /> +<span style="padding-right: 2em;"><i>March 19th, 1858</i>.</span></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Dear Mrs. Tennyson</span>—My married life has come to an end: I am back +again in the old quarters, living as for the last thirty years—only +so much older, sadder, uglier, and worse!—If people want to go +further for the cause of this blunder, than the fact of two people of +very determined habits and temper first trying to change them at close +on fifty—they may lay nine-tenths of the blame on me. I don’t want to +talk more of the matter, but one must say something.</p></div> + +<p>The old life to which he returned was monotonous, recluse, unconventional. +He spent most of his days in East Anglia, an unromantic region, yet not +unbeautiful or wanting a charm of its own; in summer emerging into the +sunshine, sitting on a chair in his garden as Tennyson’s poem paints him, +or on another chair on the deck of his boat, coasting the shores, or +sailing up and down the creeks and estuaries with which that country +abounds; in winter crouching over the fire, and in either chair smoking +and endlessly reading.</p> + +<p>In the earlier part of his life he moved about from one home to another, +though never very far. In 1860 he settled down at Woodbridge in Suffolk, a +pleasant, old-fashioned, provincial town, a sort of East Anglian Totnes, +where the Deben, like the more famous Dart, seems to issue from a doorway +of close-guarding hills to meet the salt tide, and begins the last stage +of its cheerful journey to the open sea.</p> + +<p>Just before this, in January of 1859, FitzGerald printed a small edition +of a translation of a poem by a Persian astronomer, who died about 1123 +<span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> The whole production of this famous piece seemed almost an accident. +FitzGerald had been introduced, some half-dozen years earlier, to the +study of Persian by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> his friend Mr. E. B. Cowell, a brother East Anglian, +then in business in Ipswich. Cowell, wishing to pursue his studies further +and take a Degree, went in 1851 as a married and somewhat mature student +to Oxford, and there, in the Bodleian Library, came on a rare MS. of the +“Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.” It is a beautiful little volume, written upon +parchment sprinkled with gold dust, in a fine black ink, with blue +headings, gold divisions, and delicate Oriental illuminations in blue, +gold, and green, at the beginning and the end, and is the earliest known +MS. of the poem, dating from 1450 <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> Of this he made a copy for +FitzGerald, who kept it by him, and gradually produced a translation, if +not rather a paraphrase. “I also amuse myself,” he wrote in December 1853, +“with poking out some Persian which E. Cowell would inaugurate me with. I +go on with it because it is a point in common with him and enables me to +study a little together.”</p> + +<p>In 1858 he had got his version into a shape somewhat to his mind, and sent +it to <i>Fraser’s Magazine</i>. It was kept for about a year, when FitzGerald +asked for it back, and had 250 copies printed early in 1859. He gave away +a few and sent the rest to Quaritch.</p> + +<p>What ensued is one of the curiosities of literature. FitzGerald did not +expect any success or vogue for the work. True, he had toiled at it. “Very +few People,” he said, “have ever taken such Pains in Translation as I +have; though certainly not to be literal.” And when he had finished he +liked “to make an end of the matter by print.” But that was all. “I hardly +know,” he added, “why I print any of these things which nobody buys.”</p> + +<p>Quaritch, as FitzGerald expected, found no sale for <i>Omar</i>. He reduced the +price from five shillings to one shilling, and then to one penny. Rossetti +heard of it through Whitley Stokes, and showed it to Swinburne. They were +attracted by it and bought sixpenny-worth.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> Quaritch raised his price to +twopence. They carried off a few more, and the rest, a little later, were +eagerly bought up at a guinea or more apiece. Yet the poem remained long +known to very few. Quaritch published a second edition, again a small one, +nine years later in 1868, and four years later still, a third small +edition in 1872, and in 1879 a fourth edition, including Salámán and +Absál. The third edition came out just about the time I was going to +Oxford as an undergraduate, and it was then that I first heard of it +through J. A. Symonds and H. G. Dakyns, who gave me in 1874 a copy which +Symonds had presented to him, and which I still possess. Even at Oxford I +found only a few, either graduates or undergraduates, who heeded it or +knew anything about it. Professor Henry Smith was the only senior I can +remember who spoke to me about it, telling me of the previous editions, +and praising its merits one day as we turned it over together in Parker’s +shop. But stealthily and underground it made its way. Edition followed +edition, with increasing rapidity. Suddenly it became ubiquitously +popular, and it is now certainly one of the best-known pieces of the kind +in the language. Messrs. Macmillan put it, in 1899, after a dozen times +reprinting it, into their Golden Treasury Series. They had to reprint +three times in that year, and this edition has been in constant demand. +But there are ever so many others. The poem has been reproduced in a +hundred forms, both in England and America, illustrated, illuminated, +decorated, annotated. A reprint of the first edition is once more sold for +a penny. It has been translated into Latin verse. There is a Concordance +to it. A whole literature has sprung up around it. An “Omar Khayyam Club” +was founded in 1892. Pious pilgrimages have been made to the translator’s +tomb, and Omar’s roses planted over it, and verses recited in celebration +of both poet and poem.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>Of all this immense vogue and success, as his letters show, FitzGerald +himself never dreamed. Even when in 1885 Tennyson published, as the +dedication of <i>Tiresias and other Poems</i>, the lines “To E. FitzGerald,” +the translator of <i>Omar</i> was still, for most readers, “a veiled prophet.” +To-day, when the poem has become one of the utterances of the century, +lovers of paradox have even ventured to hint that instead of FitzGerald +being known as the friend of Tennyson, Tennyson might be known hereafter +as the friend of FitzGerald.</p> + +<p>FitzGerald is certainly known on his own account. The publication of his +letters by his loyal old friend, Dr. Aldis Wright, revealed the man +himself to the world. The publication of Tennyson’s Life by his son aided +the process. Every one will remember the part which FitzGerald plays +there, beginning with the meeting at James Spedding’s house in the Lakes +in 1835, his early enthusiastic admiration, when he fell in love both with +the man and his poems, and then his ever-constant friendship, tempered by +grumbling, and what appears sometimes almost grudging criticism. He became +the friend, it must be remembered, not only of Alfred, but of the whole +family, and especially of Frederick, the eldest brother. “All the +Tennysons are to be wished well,” he says in a letter of 1845. Though he +affected to think little of society and hated snobbery as much as Tennyson +or his other friend Thackeray himself, he greatly admired the better +qualities of the English gentry, and had even a kindly weakness for their +foibles. When Frederick went to live in Italy he wrote: “I love that such +men as Frederick should be abroad: so strong, haughty, and passionate.”</p> + +<p>When FitzGerald first met Alfred, the poetic family was still living on at +Somersby after their father’s death. He went there and fell in love with +their mother, and with their mode of life, and with the region, where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> +“there were not only such good seas, but such fine Hill and Dale among the +Wolds as people in general scarce thought on.” It was characteristic of +him that he used to say that Alfred should never have left Lincolnshire.</p> + +<p>FitzGerald kept up the friendship mainly, as he did most of his +friendships, by letter. In particular, he made a point of writing to the +Alfred Tennysons twice a year, once in the summer and again about +Christmas time. He addressed himself sometimes to the Poet himself, +sometimes to Mrs. Tennyson, and in later days to their eldest son. To +Frederick Tennyson, who went to live in Italy, as the readers of Dr. Aldis +Wright’s volume will remember, he wrote a whole series of letters, many of +them very long and full. Of all these letters—to his father, his mother, +himself, and his uncle—the present Lord Tennyson has placed a collection +in my hands for the purpose of this article. The story of the friendship +which it is an attempt to sketch will best be told by pretty full +quotations from them. Many of them, and indeed most of those to his father +and mother, are now published for the first time.</p> + +<p>FitzGerald did not always succeed, and indeed did not expect to succeed, +in drawing a reply from Tennyson himself. In a letter written in the +summer of 1860 to Mrs. Tennyson he makes a very amusing reference to this, +and also throws some light on his own habits:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Thank old Alfred for his letter which was an unexpected pleasure. I +like to hear of him and you once or twice in the year: but I know he +is no dab at literature at any time, poor fellow. “Paltry Poet”—Let +him believe it is anything but want of love for him that keeps me out +of the Isle of Wight: nor is it indolence neither.—But to say <i>what +it is</i> would make me write too much about myself. Only let him believe +what I <i>do</i> say.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>Their relations were always of this playful, intimate kind, resting on +long acquaintance. If FitzGerald was amused by “Alfred,” Tennyson, on the +other hand, was well used to his old friend’s humour. When we spoke about +him, he dwelt, I recollect, on this particular trait, and told me, to +illustrate it, the story which is now, I think, pretty well known, how, +when some common acquaintance had bored them with talking about his titled +friends, “Old Fitz,” as at last he took up his candle to go to bed, turned +to Tennyson and said, quietly and quaintly, “I knew a Lord once, but he’s +dead.”</p> + +<p>When Tennyson spoke of <i>Omar</i> he said, what he has said in verse, that he +admired it greatly:</p> + +<p class="poem">Than which I know no version done<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In English more divinely well;</span><br /> +A planet equal to the sun<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Which cast it.</span></p> + +<p>But of course he was aware that it was by no means always faithful to the +original. It is indeed a liberal, rather than a literal translation—how +liberal, all know who have been at the pains to compare FitzGerald’s poem +with any of the many literal versions to which it has given rise.</p> + +<p>In quite the early Twickenham days, just after their marriage, he would +invite himself to dine or stay with Tennyson and his wife, nay more, would +ask to bring friends to see them, such as the Cowells and W. B. Donne. In +1854 he stayed at Farringford for a fortnight, a visit he always +remembered, and often referred to, with pleasure. Together he and Tennyson +worked at Persian. He also sketched, and botanized with the Poet. But he +could not be got to repeat the visit; and indeed, as he said himself, it +was the last of the kind he paid anywhere, except to Mrs. Kemble. When he +reached London, just after this visit, he wrote to Tennyson:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p> +<p class="right">60 <span class="smcap">Lincoln’s Inn Fields</span>,<br /> +<span style="padding-right: 2em;"><i>June 15th, 1854</i>.</span></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">My dear Alfred</span>—I called at Quaritch’s to look for another Persian +Dictionary. I see he has a copy of Eastwick’s Gulistan for <i>ten +shillings</i>: a translation (not Eastwick’s, however, but one quite +sufficient for the purpose) can be had for five shillings. Would you +like me to buy them and send them down to you by the next friend who +travels your way: or will you wait till some good day I can lend you +<i>my</i> Eastwick (which is now at Oxford)? I could mark some of the +pieces which I think it might not offend you to read: though you will +not care greatly for anything in it.</p> + +<p>Oh, such an atmosphere as I am writing in!—Yours,</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">E. F. G.</span></p> + +<p>I left my little Swedenborg at Farringford. Please keep it for me, as +it was a gift from my sister.</p></div> + +<p>The note of the letters is always the same—warm affection, deep +underlying admiration and regard, superficial banter and play of humour, +and humorous, half-grumbling criticism. When they met face to face, after +being parted for twenty years, they fell at once into exactly the old +vein. FitzGerald was surprised at this, but he need not have been. Both +were the sincerest and most natural of men, and nothing but distance and +absence had occurred to sever them.</p> + +<p>From the first he had conceived an intense and almost humble-minded +admiration for Alfred. One of his earliest utterances describes his +feelings, and strikes, with his keen critical perception, the true note. +“I will say no more of Tennyson,” he wrote, “than that the more I have +seen of him, the more cause I have to think him great. His little humours +and grumpinesses were so droll that I was always laughing,—I must, +however say further, that I felt, what Charles Lamb describes, a sense of +depression at times from the over-shadowing of a so much more lofty +intellect than my own—<i>I could not be mistaken in the universality of his +mind</i>.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>His descriptions in <i>Euphranor</i>, published some sixteen years later, of +“the only living and like to live poet he had known,” tell the same tale. +They speak of Tennyson’s union of passion and strength. “As King Arthur +shall bear witness, no young Edwin he, though as a great Poet +comprehending all the softer stops of human Emotion in that Register where +the Intellectual, no less than what is called the Poetical, faculty +predominated. As all who knew him know, a Man at all points, +Euphranor—like your Digby, of grand proportion and feature....”</p> + +<p>There was no one for whose opinion he had so much regard, grumble though +he might, and criticize as he would. He had a special preference for the +poems at whose production he had assisted, which he had seen in MS., or +heard rehearsed orally. Toward the later poems his feeling was not the +same. The following extracts are all equally characteristic:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Markethill, Woodbridge</span>,<br /> +<span style="padding-right: 2em;"><i>November 20th, 1861</i>.</span></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">My dear old Alfred</span>—It gives me a strange glow of pleasure when I come +upon your verses, as I now do in every other book I take up, with no +name of author, as every other person knows whose they are. I love to +light on the verses for their own sake, and to remember having heard +nearly all I care for—and what a lot that is!—from your own lips.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Markethill, Woodbridge</span>,<br /> +<span style="padding-right: 2em;"><i>December 14th, 1862</i>.</span></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">My dear old Alfred</span>—Christmas coming reminds me of my half-yearly call +on you.</p> + +<p>I have, as usual, nothing to tell of myself: boating all the summer +and reading Clarissa Harlowe since. You and I used to talk of the Book +more than twenty years ago. I believe I am better read in it than +almost any one in existence now—No wonder: for it is almost +intolerably tedious and absurd—But I can’t read the “Adam Bedes,” +“Daisy Chains,” etc., at all. I look at my row of Sir Walter Scott and +think with comfort that <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>I can always go to him of a winter evening, +when no other book comes to hand.</p> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="center"><i>To Frederick Tennyson.</i></p> + +<p class="right"><i>November 15th, 1874.</i></p> + +<p>I wrote my yearly letter to Mrs. Alfred a fortnight ago, I think; but +as yet have had no answer. Some Newspaper people make fun of a Poem of +Alfred’s, the “Voice and the Peak,” I think: giving morsels of which +of course one could not judge. But I think he had better have done +singing: he has sung well—<i>tempus silere</i>, etc.</p></div> + +<p>But his love for the man and his underlying belief in his opinion and +genius never varied. “I don’t think of you so little, my dear old Alfred,” +he wrote one day in the middle of their friendship, “but rejoice in the +old poems and in yourself, young or old, and worship you (I may say) as I +do no other man, and am glad I can worship one man still.”</p> + +<p>His delight when he found that Alfred had really liked <i>Omar</i> was +unusually <i>naïf</i> and keen. He forgot his grumbling, and wrote to Mrs. +Tennyson:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p> </p> +<p class="center"><i>To Mrs. Tennyson.</i></p> + +<p class="right"><i>November 4/67.</i></p> + +<p>To think of Alfred’s approving my old Omar! I never should have +thought he even knew of it. Certainly <i>I</i> should never have sent it to +him, always supposing that he would not approve anything but a literal +Prose translation—unless from such hands as can do original work and +therefore do <i>not</i> translate other People’s! Well: now I have got +Nicolas and sent a copy to Cowell, and when he is at liberty again we +shall beat up old Omar’s Quarters once more.</p> + +<p>I’ll tell you a very pretty Book. Alfred Tennyson’s Pastoral Poems, or +rather Rural Idylls (only I must hate the latter word) bound up in a +volume, Gardener’s, Miller’s, Daughters; Oak; Dora; Audley Court, etc.</p> + +<p>Oh the dear old 1842 days and editions! Spedding thinks I’ve shut up +my mind since. Not to “Maud, Maud, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>Maud, Maud.” When I ask People +what Bird says that of an evening, they say “The Thrush.”</p> + +<p>I wish you would make one of your Boys write out the “Property” Farmer +Idyll. Do now, pray.</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">E. F. G.</span></p></div> + +<p>When he had first “discovered” Omar, and was beginning to work upon him, +Tennyson (who was then finishing the early “Idylls of the King”) had been +one of the first to whom he wrote. It is worth remembering that FitzGerald +was then in deep depression. It was the middle of the sad period of his +brief, unhappy married life. This had proved a failure in London. It was +proving a failure now in the country. He wrote:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Gorlestone, Great Yarmouth</span>,<br /> +<span style="padding-right: 2em;"><i>July 1857</i>.</span></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">My dear old Alfred</span>—Please direct the enclosed to Frederick. I wrote +him some months ago getting Parker to direct; but have had no reply. +<i>You</i> won’t write to me, at which I can’t wonder. I keep hoping for +King Arthur—or part of him. I have got here to the seaside—a dirty, +Dutch-looking sea, with a dusty Country in the rear; but the place is +not amiss for one’s Yellow Leaf. I keep on reading foolish Persian +too: chiefly because of it’s connecting me with the Cowells, now +besieged in Calcutta. But also I have really got hold of an old +Epicurean so desperately impious in his recommendations to live only +for <i>To-day</i> that the good Mahometans have scarce dared to multiply +MSS. of him. He writes in little quatrains, and has scarce any of the +iteration and conceits to which his people are given. One of the last +things I remember of him is that—“God gave me this turn for drink, +perhaps God was drunk when he made me”—which is not strictly pious. +But he is very tender about his roses and wine, and making the most of +this poor little life.</p> + +<p>All which is very poor stuff you will say. Please to remember me to +the Lady. I don’t know when I shall ever see you again; and yet you +can’t think how often I wish to do so, and never forget you, and never +shall, my dear old Alfred, in spite of Epicurus. But I don’t grow +merrier.—Yours ever,</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">E. F. G.</span></p></div> + +<p>In 1872 he was busy with the <i>third</i> edition of <i>Omar</i>,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> and wrote to +consult Tennyson. The first edition had contained only seventy-five +quatrains. The second was a good deal longer, containing one hundred and +ten. The third was again shortened to one hundred and one:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Woodbridge</span>, <i>March 25th, 1872</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">My dear Alfred</span>—It would be impertinent in me to trouble you with a +question about <i>my</i> grand Works. But, as you let me know (through Mrs. +T.) that you liked Omar, I want to know whether you read the <i>First</i> +or <i>Second</i> Edition; and, in case you saw <i>both, which you thought +best</i>? The reason of my asking you is that Quaritch (Publisher) has +found admirers in America who have almost bought up the whole of the +last enormous Edition—amounting to 200 copies, I think—so he wishes +to embark on 200 more, I suppose: and says that he, and his Readers, +like the first Edition best: so he would reprint these.</p> + +<p>Of course <i>I</i> thought the second best: and I think so still: partly (I +fear) because the greater number of verses gave more time for the day +to pass from morning till night.</p> + +<p>Well, what I ask you to do is, to tell me which of the two is best, if +you have seen the two. If you have <i>not</i>, I won’t ask you further:—if +you have, you can answer in two words. And your words would be more +than all the rest.</p> + +<p>This very little business is all I have eyes for now; except to write +myself once more ever your’s and Mrs. Tennyson’s,</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">E. F. G.</span></p></div> + +<p>Another letter a little later refers to the same reprinting of <i>Omar</i>:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">My dear Alfred</span>—I must thank you, as I ought, for your second note. +The best return I can make is <i>not</i> to listen to Mrs. Tennyson’s P.S., +which bids me send another Omar:—for I have only got Omar the Second, +I am sure now <i>you</i> would not like him so well as the first (mainly +because of “too much”). I think he might disgust you with both.</p> + +<p>So though two lines from you would have done more to decide on his +third appearance (if Quaritch still wishes that), I will not put you +to that trouble, but do as I can alone—cutting out some, and +retaining some; and will send you the result if it comes into type.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>You used to talk of my crotchets: but I am quite sure you have one +little crotchet about this Omar: which deserves well in its way, but +not so well as you write of it. You know that though I do not think it +worth while to compete with you in your paltry poetical capacity, I +won’t surrender in the critical, not always, at least. And, at any +rate, I have been more behind the scenes in this little matter than +you. But I do not the less feel your kindness in writing about it: for +I think you would generally give £100 sooner than write a letter. And +I am—Yours ever,</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">E. F. G.</span></p></div> + +<p>The next year, in 1873, he wrote again, touching on the same theme and +others:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Dear Mrs. Tennyson</span>—I remember Franklin Lushington perfectly—at +Farringford in 1854; almost the last visit I paid anywhere: and as +pleasant as any, after, or before. I have still some sketches I made +of the place: “Maud, Maud, Maud,” etc., was then read to me, and has +rung in my ears ever after. Mr. Lushington, I remember, sketched also. +If he be with you still, please tell him that I hope his remembrance +of me is as pleasant as mine of him.</p> + +<p>I think I told you that Frederick came here in August, having (of +course) missed you on his way. The Mistress of Trinity wrote to me +some little while ago, telling me, among other things, that she, and +others, were much pleased with your son Hallam, whom they thought to +be like the “Paltry Poet” (poor fellow).</p> + +<p>The Paltry one’s Portrait is put in a frame and hung up at my +<i>château</i>, where I talk to it sometimes, and every one likes to see +it. It is clumsy enough, to be sure; but it still recalls the old man +to me better than the bearded portraits<a name='fna_18' id='fna_18' href='#f_18'><small>[18]</small></a> which are now the fashion.</p> + +<p>But oughtn’t your Hallam to have it over his mantelpiece at Trinity?</p> + +<p>The first volume of Forster’s Dickens has been read to me of a night, +making me love him, up to 30 years of age at any rate; till then, +quite unspoilt, even by his American triumphs, and full of good +humour, generosity, and energy. I <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>wonder if Alfred remembers dining +at his house with Thackeray and me, me taken there, quite unaffected, +and seeming to wish any one to show off rather than himself. In the +evening we had a round game at cards and mulled claret. Does A. T. +remember?</p> + +<p>I have had my yearly letter from Carlyle, who writes of himself as +better than last year. He sends me a Mormon Newspaper, with a very +sensible sermon in it from the life of Brigham Young, as also the +account of a visit to a gentleman of Utah with eleven wives and near +forty children, all of whom were very happy together. I am just going +to send the paper to Archdeacon Allen to show him how they manage +these things over the Atlantic.</p> + +<p>About Omar I must say that <i>all</i> the changes made in the last copy are +not to be attributed to my own perverseness; the same thought being +constantly repeated with directions, whether by Omar or others, in the +500 quatrains going under his name. I had not eyes, nor indeed any +further appetite, to refer to the Original, or even to the French +Translation; but altered about the “Dawn of Nothing” as A. T. pointed +out its likeness to his better property.<a name='fna_19' id='fna_19' href='#f_19'><small>[19]</small></a> I really didn’t, and +don’t, think it matters what changes are made in that Immortal Work +which is to last about five years longer. I believe it is the +strong-minded American ladies who have chiefly taken it up; but they +will soon have something wickeder to digest, I dare say.</p> + +<p>I am going to write out for Alfred a few lines from a <i>Finnish</i> Poem +which I find quoted in Lowell’s “Among my Books”—which I think a good +Book. But I must let my eyes rest now.</p></div> + +<p>In September 1876 a lucky chance brought Tennyson and himself face to face +again after twenty years. The Poet was travelling with his son, and +together they visited him at Woodbridge. They found him, as Tennyson +describes, in his garden at Little Grange. He was delighted to see them, +and specially pleased with the son’s relation and attitude to his father.</p> + +<p>Together he and Tennyson walked about the garden and talked as of old. +When Tennyson complained of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> the multitude of poems which were sent him, +Old Fitz recommended him to imitate Charles Lamb and throw them into his +neighbour’s cucumber frames. Tennyson noticed a number of small +sunflowers, with a bee half-dying—probably from the wet season—on each, +“Like warriors dying on their shields, Fitz,” he said. He reverted, of +course, to his favourite Crabbe, and told the story of how Crabbe (when he +was a chaplain in the country) felt an irresistible longing to see the +sea, mounted a horse suddenly, rode thirty miles to the coast, saw it, and +rode back comforted.</p> + +<p>FitzGerald did not compliment them on their looks, because, he said, he +had always noticed men said, “How well you are looking!” whenever you were +going to be very ill. Therefore he had ceased saying it to any one. He +told, too, a story of a vision, how he had one day clearly seen from +outside his sister and her children having tea round the table in his +dining-room. He then saw his sister quietly withdraw from the room, so as +not to disturb the children. At that moment she died in Norfolk.<a name='fna_20' id='fna_20' href='#f_20'><small>[20]</small></a></p> + +<p>He wrote shortly after this visit to Tennyson:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Little Grange, Woodbridge</span>,<br /> +<span style="padding-right: 2em;"><i>October 31st, 1876</i>.</span></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">My dear Alfred</span>—I am reading delightful Boccacio through once more, +escaping to it from the Eastern Question as the company he tells of +from the Plague. I thought of you yesterday when I came to the +Theodore and Honoria story, and read of Teodoro “<i>un mezzo meglio per +la pineta entrato</i>”—“More than a Mile immersed within the wood,” as +you used to quote from Glorious John. This Decameron must be read in +its Italian, as my Don in his Spanish: the language fits either so +exactly. I am thinking of trying Faust in German, with Hayward’s Prose +Translation. I never could take to it in any Shape yet: and—<i>don’t +believe</i> in it: which I suppose is a piece of Impudence.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>But neither this, nor <i>The Question</i> are you called on to answer—much +use if I did call. But I am—always yours,</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">E. F. G.</span></p> + +<p>When I thought of you and Boccacio, I was sitting in the Sun on that +same Iron Seat with the pigeons about us, and the Trees still in Leaf.</p></div> + +<p>One of the poems after 1842 which he liked was the “Ode on the Duke of +Wellington,” though characteristically he made a somewhat fastidious +criticism on the “vocalization” of the opening.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“I mumble over your old verses in my memory as often as any one’s,” he +wrote, “and was lately wishing you had found bigger vowels for the +otherwise fine opening of the Duke’s Funeral:</p> + +<p class="poem">’Twas at the Royal Feast for Persia won, etc.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 15em;">(Dryden.)</span><br /> +<br /> +Bury the great Duke, etc.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">(A. T.)</span></p> + +<p>So you see I am always the same crotchetty</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Fitz.</span>”</span></p></div> + +<p>The paradox is that it was FitzGerald who was always urging “Alfred” to go +on, and finding fault with him for not doing more, and not singing in +grander, sterner strains,—not becoming the Tyrtaeus of his country. In +truth, Tennyson’s strength and physical force and his splendid appearance +in youth, added to his mental grandeur, seem to have deeply impressed his +youthful contemporaries. He was, they felt, heroic, and made for heroic +songs and deeds. When he did go on, in his own way, FitzGerald did not +like it, or only half liked it. For Tennyson did go forward on his own +lines. He had not a little to daunt and deter him. He, too, had his +sensitiveness and capacity for feeling and passion not less exquisite than +FitzGerald’s own. FitzGerald said his friendships were more like loves. He +was not alone in this attitude. “What <i>passions</i> our friendships were,” +wrote Thackeray, another of the set, the early friend of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> both FitzGerald +and Tennyson. But of no friendship could such language be used more truly +than of that which existed between Tennyson and Arthur Hallam. When, +however, the sundering blow fell, and the friendship which was a love lay +shattered, Tennyson braced himself and went on. For</p> + +<p class="poem">It becomes no man to nurse despair,<br /> +But in the teeth of clench’d antagonisms<br /> +To follow up the worthiest till he die.</p> + +<p>His faith, even to the last, was still at times dashed with doubt, for, +with “the universality of his mind,” he could not help seeing many sides +of a question. But he “followed the Gleam,” as he has himself described. +FitzGerald did the opposite. He drifted, he dallied, he delayed, he +despaired. He ruined his own life in great measure by his marriage. His +early ambitions seemed to wither prematurely, and he let his career slide. +Yet he was always, as Mr. A. C. Benson has excellently brought out, +admirable in his sincerity, his friendly kindliness, his innocence, his +conscientious adherence to his literary standards. Too much has been made +of his unconventionality, his slovenliness and slackness, his love of low +or common company. He remained a gentleman and a man of business. +Thackeray, a man of the world, when he was starting for America, wanted to +leave him the legal guardian of his daughters. He was an Epicurean, not a +Pyrrhonist. He took life seriously. He showed at times an austerity of +spirit which was surprising. His <i>Omar</i> has often, and naturally, been +compared to Lucretius and to Ecclesiastes. There is probably more of +Lucretius about the poem, but more of Ecclesiastes about the translator.</p> + +<p>There is another Epicurean, with whose tenets he might have been thought +to show even more sympathy—the easy-going poet-critic Horace. <i>Vitae +summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam</i> is the constant burden<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> of +FitzGerald’s strain. His friendship, early formed, with Tennyson, the +contrast of their divergent views, might be compared with the friendship +of Horace and Virgil. For Virgil, too, began as an Epicurean. But +FitzGerald was not content with Horace. “Why is it,” he wrote, “that I can +never take up with Horace, so sensible, agreeable, elegant, and sometimes +even grand?” It was, perhaps, just that masculine and worldly element that +put him off. Yet he not seldom quotes Horace, and perhaps liked him better +than he knew. “<i>Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret</i>,” he wrote +in a copy of Polonius which he gave to a special friend, and Nature was +what he was always seeking in poetry. Still he preferred Virgil, just as +he really preferred Tennyson.</p> + +<p>Though he was destined to produce a poem which bids as fair for +immortality as any of its time, he did not think highly of his own powers +as a poet. But he did plume himself on being a critic. “I pretend to no +Genius,” he said, “but to Taste, which according to my aphorism is the +feminine of Genius.” This was another gift in common. Tennyson was himself +a consummate critic, as FitzGerald was the first to recognize.</p> + +<p>FitzGerald had his limitations and his prejudices—his “crotchets.” He did +not like many even of those whom the world has agreed to admire. He did +not like Euripides or even Homer. With Goethe’s poems he could not get on. +He eschewed Victor Hugo. He liked, indeed, very little of the prose and +none of the poetry of his contemporaries, except that of the Tennysons. He +could not away with Browning. Arnold, he wrote down “a pedant.” He thought +very little of Rossetti and Swinburne, though the former, especially, was +a great admirer not only of <i>Omar</i> but of <i>Jami</i> and some of the Spanish +translations. He tried to read Morris’s <i>Jason</i>, but said, “No go.” He +“could not read<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> the <i>Adam Bedes</i> and the <i>Daisy Chains</i>.” All this must +be remembered when we read his criticism of Tennyson’s later work which +belonged to the period of these writers and their productions. But within +certain limits he was a very fine critic. It cannot be said of him as of +his special favourite among Greek poets, Sophocles, that</p> + +<p class="poem">He saw life steadily and saw it whole.</p> + +<p>As he was aware himself, he by no means saw it whole. But with his +detachment and his critical gift, it may, perhaps, be said:</p> + +<p class="poem">He saw life lazily, but saw it plain.</p> + +<p>To the question of Browning’s merits, or want of merits, he is always +returning. A very characteristic letter is a long, discursive one, written +to Tennyson himself in 1867:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Markethill, Woodbridge</span>,<br /> +<span style="padding-right: 2em;"><i>November 3rd, 1867</i>.</span></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">My dear old Alfred</span>—I abuse Browning myself; and get others to abuse +him; and write to you about it; for the sake of easing my own +heart—not yours. Why is it (as I asked Mrs. Tennyson) that, while the +Magazine critics are belauding him, <i>not one</i> of the men I know, who +are not inferior to the writers in the Athenæum, Edinburgh, etc., can +<i>endure</i>, and (for the most part) can read him at all? I mean his last +poem. Thus it has been with the Cowells, Trinity Thompsons, Donnes, +and some others whom you don’t know, but in whose candour and judgment +I have equal confidence, men and women too.</p> + +<p>Since I wrote to your wife, Pollock, a great friend of Browning’s, +writes to me. “I agree with you about Browning and A. T. I can’t +understand it. <i>Ter conatus eram</i> to get through the Ring and the +Book—and failing to perform the feat in its totality, I have stooped +to the humiliation to point out extracts for me (they having read it +<i>all quite through</i> three times) and still could not do it. So I +pretend to have read it, and let Browning so suppose when I talk to +him about it. But don’t you be afraid”? (N.B. I am <i>not</i>, only angry) +“things will come round, and A. T. will take his right place again, +and R. B. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>will have all the honours due to his learning, wit and +philosophy.”</p> + +<p>Then I had the curiosity to ask Carlyle in my yearly letter to him. He +also is, or was, a friend of B.’s, and used to say that he looked on +him as a sort of light-cavalry man to follow you. Well, Carlyle +writes, “Browning’s book I read—<i>insisted</i> on reading: it is full of +talent, of energy, and effort, but totally without <i>backbone</i>, or +basis of common sense. I think among the absurdest books ever written +by a gifted man.” (Italics are his.)</p> + +<p>Who, then, are the people that write the nonsense in the Reviews? I +believe the reason at the bottom is that R. B. is a clever London +diner-out, etc., while A. T. holds aloof from the newspaper men, etc. +“Long life to him!” But I don’t understand why Venables, or some of +the men who think as I do, and wield trenchant pens in high places, +why they don’t come out, and set all this right. I only wish I could +do it: but I can only see the right thing, but not prove it to others. +“I do not like you, Dr. Fell,” etc.</p> + +<p>I found a Memorandum the other day (I can’t now light on it) of a +Lincolnshire story about “Haxey Wood” or “Haxey Hood”—which—if I had +not told it to you, but left it as by chance in your way some thirty +years ago, you would have turned into a shape to outlast all R. B.’s +poems put together. There is no use in my finding and sending it now, +because it doesn’t do (with Paltry Poets) to try and drag them to the +water. The two longest and worst tales (I think) in Crabbe’s Tales of +the Hall, were suggested to him by Sir S. Romilly, and “a lady in +Wiltshire.” I wish Murray would let me make a volume of “Selections +from Crabbe”—which I know I could, so that <i>common</i> readers would +wish to read the whole original; which now scarce any one does; nor +can one wonder they do not. But Crabbe will flourish when R. B. is +dead and buried. Lots of lines which he cut out of his MS. would be +the beginning of a little fortune to others. I happened on this +couplet the other day:</p> + +<p class="poem">The shapeless purpose of a soul that feels,<br /> +And half suppresses wrath and half reveals.</p> + +<p>Not that Crabbe is to live by single couplets or epigrams, but by +something far better, as you know better than I. There is a long +passage in the Tales of the Hall (Old Bachelor) <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>which always reminds +me of you, A. T., where the Old Bachelor recounts how he pleaded with +his Whig father to be allowed to marry the Tory Squire’s daughter; +when,</p> + +<p class="poem">Coolly my father looked, and much enjoy’d<br /> +The broken eloquence his eye destroy’d, etc.</p> + +<p>and then pleads to the Tory mother of the girl.</p> + +<p class="poem">Methinks I have the tigress in my eye, etc.</p> + +<p>Do look at this, A. T., when you get the Book, and don’t let my praise +set you against it.</p> + +<p>I have written you a very long letter, you see, with one very bad eye +too. I thought it had mended, by help of cold water and goggles; but +these last three days it has turned rusty again. I believe it misses +the sea air.</p> + +<p class="poem">δεινῶν τ᾽ ἄημα πνευμάτων +ἐκοίμισε<a name='fna_21' id='fna_21' href='#f_21'><small>[21]</small></a><br /> +στένοντα πόντον</p> + +<p>Do you quite understand this ἐκοίμισε? But what lines, +understood or not! The two last words go alongside of my little ship +with me many a time. Well, Alfred, neither you, nor the Mistress, are +to answer this letter, which I still hope may please you, as it is +(all the main part) written very loyally, and is all true. Now, +good-bye, and remember me as your old</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">E. F. G.</span></p> + +<p class="poem"><i>Ne cherchez point, Iris, à percer les ténèbres</i><a name='fna_22' id='fna_22' href='#f_22'><small>[22]</small></a><br /> +<i>Dont les Dieux sagement ont voilé l’Avenir;<br /> +Et ne consultez point tant de Devins célèbres<br /> +Pour chercher le moment qui doit nous désunir.<br /> +Livrez-vous au plaisir; tout le reste est frivole;<br /> +Et songez que, trop court pour de plus longs projets,<br /> +Tandis que nous parlons le Temps jaloux s’envole,<br /> +Et que ce Temps, hélas! est perdu pour jamais.</i></p> + +<p>But wait—before I finish I must ask why you assure Clark of Trinity +that it is the <i>rooks</i> who call “Maud, Maud, etc.” Indeed it is the +<i>Thrush</i>, as I have heard a hundred times in a summer’s evening, when +scared in the evergreens of a garden. Therefore:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> +Rooks in a classroom quarrel up in the tall trees caw’d;<br /> +But ’twas the thrush in the laurel, that kept crying, Maud, Maud, Maud.</p></div> + +<p>Keats he put very high indeed. “I have been again reading Lord Houghton’s +<i>Life of Keats</i>” he wrote, “whose hastiest doggrel should show Browning, +Morris & Co., that they are not what the newspapers tell them they are.” +“What a fuss the cockneys make about Shelley just now, surely not worth +Keats’ little finger,” he wrote on another occasion. And again, “Is Mr. +Rossetti a Great Poet like Browning and Morris? So the <i>Athenæum</i> tells +me. Dear me, how thick Great Poets <i>do</i> grow nowadays.” And yet again, “I +can’t read G. Eliot as I presume you can; I really conclude that the fault +lies in me, not in her; so with Goethe (except in his letters, +Table-Talk,<a name='fna_23' id='fna_23' href='#f_23'><small>[23]</small></a> etc.), whom I try in vain to admire.”</p> + +<p>His real love was for Crabbe, the poet, not of “realism” but of reality.</p> + +<p class="poem">Life’s sternest painter and its best—</p> + +<p>the poet of disillusionment. This love, which has been felt in different +generations by Byron, Cardinal Newman, and Bishop Gore, he could get few +of his friends to share with him. Tennyson himself was one of the few. “I +keep reading Crabbe from time to time,” he writes to Tennyson; “nobody +else does unless it be another ‘paltry Poet’ whom I know. The edition only +sells at a shilling a volume—second-hand. I don’t wonder at young people +and women (I mean no disparagement at all) not relishing even the good +parts: and certainly there is plenty of bad for all readers.”</p> + +<p>What he loved before all was “touches of nature,”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> the humour, the pathos, +of ordinary life. He liked home-thrusts at human foibles and frailty, and +again the outwelling of native nobility, generosity, or love. Newman’s +early Sermons, “Plain and Parochial” as they were, perhaps for this very +reason he much affected. “The best that were ever written in my judgment,” +he said. He remained an admirer of Newman, and speaks enthusiastically of +the <i>Apologia</i> and its “sincerity.” But he did not like the ritualism of +the Oxford movement. His traditions were Evangelical,—one reason perhaps +why he liked Newman. John Wesley was “one of his heroes,” and he had much +sympathy with, and was at one period personally drawn by, evangelical and +revivalist Mission preaching.</p> + +<p>He would have sympathized with Keble’s lines teaching that his +fellow-creatures should not</p> + +<p class="poem">Strive to wind themselves too high<br /> +For sinful man beneath the sky.</p> + +<p>This was probably one of the reasons why he did not like “In Memoriam.” He +said indeed that he thought it too artistic, too machine-made. He said +that he thought Tennyson became gradually altogether too artistic and lost +in spontaneity, vigour, and freshness. Yet he himself was a most laborious +artist, both in his verse and in his prose. <i>Omar</i> is most carefully +elaborated, with correction on correction, and so are the best parts of +<i>Euphranor</i>. His reasons were really deeper, and went more against the +matter than the form. He did not like the early “Idylls of the King.” “The +Holy Grail” he liked as he had liked the “Vision of Sin.” But what moved +him to tears was the old-style “Northern Farmer,” the “substantial, +rough-spun Nature he knew,” and “the old brute, invested by the poet with +the solemn humour of Humanity like Shakespeare’s <i>Shallow</i>.” Yet even here +a “crotchet” cropped up, as appears from the following note:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p> +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Woodbridge</span>, <i>May 20th, 1877</i>.</p> + +<p>The enclosed scrap from Notes and Queries reminded me (as probably the +writer has been reminded) of your Old Farmer, the only part of which +that goes against me is the “canter and canter away” of the last line. +I can scarce tell you (as usual with me) why I don’t like Doctor Fell; +but you know I must be right.</p> + +<p>By the by, my old Crabbe in the Parish Register (Burials), says</p> + +<p class="poem">Bless me! I die—and not a warning giv’n—<br /> +With much to do on earth, and <i>all</i> for Heaven:<br /> +No preparation for my soul’s affairs,<br /> +No leave petitioned for the Barn’s repairs, etc.</p> + +<p>not very good; and (N.B.) I don’t mean it suggested anything in +Shakespeare’s Northern Farmer—for that may pair off with Shallow.</p></div> + +<p>Again, when it appeared in 1865, he was greatly taken with the “Captain.” +It was a return to the old personal mood and simple direct depiction of +character:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Markethill, Woodbridge</span>,<br /> +<span style="padding-right: 2em;"><i>October 22nd, 1865</i>.</span></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Dear Mrs. Tennyson</span>—Talking of ships again, I liked much <i>The Captain</i> +in the People’s Alfred. Was the last stanza (which I like also) an +afterthought?—I think a really <i>sublime</i> thing is the end of +Kingsley’s “Westward Ho!”—(which I never could read through)—The +Chase of the Ships: the Hero’s being struck blind at the moment of +revenge: then his being taken to <i>see</i> his rival and crew at the +bottom of the sea. Kingsley is a distressing writer to me: but I must +think this (the inspiration of it) of a piece with Homer and the +Gods—which you won’t at all.</p></div> + +<p>He liked, too, “Gareth and Lynette,” which again he thought more natural +and direct than some of the earlier Idylls. He liked, as might have been +expected, the “Ballads and other Poems.” But what is most significant, +perhaps, among his likes and dislikes, is his love for “Audley Court,” +“one of my old favourites,” he calls it. Why did FitzGerald like “Audley +Court”?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> It is not one of the poems which are generally best known and +most admired. Indeed, while it is in many ways beautiful and contains some +splendid things, such as the sonorous line</p> + +<p class="poem">The pillar’d dusk of sounding sycamores,</p> + +<p>it is just one of those poems which the severe critic of Tennyson picks +out for fault-finding and even for ridicule. It has what such critics call +the over-elaborate, the “drawing-room” manner. Like Milton’s picture of +Eve’s <i>déjeuner</i>, though with more humour and appropriateness, it employs +the grand and sumptuous style to describe trifles, such as the venison +pasty:</p> + +<p class="poem">Where quail and pigeon, lark and leveret lay,<br /> +Like fossils of the rock, with golden yolks<br /> +Imbedded and injellied.</p> + +<p>But on a closer consideration it will be seen that it has just what “Old +Fitz” himself loved—the easy realism, the contentment with the things of +this world; above all, that flavour of</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 6em;">After-dinner talk</span><br /> +Across the walnuts and the wine</p> + +<p>which he also found and loved in that other favourite, “The Miller’s +Daughter,” the harmless gossip about old friends</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 11em;">who was dead,</span><br /> +Who married, who was like to be, and how<br /> +The races went, and who would rent the hall.</p> + +<p>This suited “Old Fitz’s” temper absolutely. The humorous <i>pococurantism</i>, +for cynicism it hardly is, of the quatrains put into the mouth of the +Poet’s friend, each ending “but let me live my life,” breathes the very +spirit of his own indolent, kindly Epicureanism, and indeed the poem might +almost be taken as a record of a dialogue between the two friends in their +early days.</p> + +<p>He loved, too, the “Lord of Burleigh,” “The Vision<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> +of Sin,” and “The Lady of Shalott.” The delicious idealism of these youthful pieces did not +displease him. They had for him a “champagne flavour.” They were part of +his own youth. For a brief hour of that fast-fleeting day, the wine of +life had sparkled in his own glass, but then too soon turned flat and +flavourless.</p> + +<p>For two or three things every lover of Tennyson must thank FitzGerald. He +it was who, about 1838, soon after their friendship began, got his friend, +Samuel Laurence, to paint the earliest portrait of the Poet, “the only one +of the old days and still the best of all to my thinking,” as he wrote in +1871. He, too, preserved and gave to Tennyson the drawing by Thackeray of +the “Lord of Burleigh.” When the Poet was rather dilatory in calling at +Spedding’s house to claim this portrait, FitzGerald wrote: “Tell him I +don’t think Browning would have served me so, and I mean to prefer his +poems for the future.” He also rescued from the flames some of the pages +of the famous “Butcher’s Book,” the tall, ledger-like MS. volume, in which +many of the early poems he so much loved were written, and gave them to +the Library of Trinity College. About this he wrote:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Markethill, Woodbridge</span>,<br /> +<span style="padding-right: 2em;"><i>December 4th, 1864</i>.</span></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Dear Alfred</span>—Now I should be almost ready to be “yours ever, etc.” if +I didn’t remember to ask you if you have any objection to my giving +two or three of the leaves of your old “Butcher’s Book” (do you +remember?) to the Library at Trinity College? An admirer of your’s +there told me they would be glad of some such thing—It was in 1842, +when you were printing the two good old volumes:—in Spedding’s +rooms—and the “Butcher’s Book,” after its margins serving for +pipe-lights, went leaf by leaf into the fire: and I told you I would +keep two or three leaves of it as a remembrance. So I took a bit of my +old favourite “Audley Court”: and a bit of another, I forget which: +for I can’t lay my hands on them just now. But when I do, I shall give +them to Trinity College unless you are strongly opposed. I dare say, +however, you would give them <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>the whole MS. of one of your later +poems: which probably they would value more.</p></div> + +<p>Tennyson appreciated “Old Fitz’s” fine qualities as a critic, but he +recognized their limitations, and in particular his “crotchets” and +prejudices. He was himself, as is now generally recognized, a consummate +critic, and withal a most kindly and catholic one. In my first +conversation with him he said that he used to think Goethe a good critic. +“He always discovered all the good he could in a man.” To his own +contemporaries, especially towards Browning, for example, his attitude was +very different, as FitzGerald acknowledged, from FitzGerald’s own. I did +not like, I remember, to ask him what he thought of Browning, but his son +encouraged me to do so. “You ask him,” he said. “He’ll tell you at once.” +At last I did so. “A true genius, but wanting in art,” he said. And on +another occasion he spoke rather more in detail to the same purpose.</p> + +<p>A special friend of both Tennyson and FitzGerald was Thackeray. With him +FitzGerald had been intimate even earlier than with Tennyson. They were +friends at college, and had gone as young men together to Paris, Thackeray +ostensibly to study art. FitzGerald knew Paris of old. His father had a +home there when he was a child, and went there for a few months every year +for some years.</p> + +<p>When he was nearing seventy FitzGerald wrote the following delightful +account of some of his recollections to Thackeray’s daughter:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Woodbridge</span>, <i>May 18th, 1875</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Dear Annie Thackeray</span>—I suppose you love Paris as your Father did—as +I used to do till it was made so other than it was, in the days of +Louis XVIII. when I first lived in it. <i>Then</i> it was all irregular and +picturesque; with shops, hotels, <i>cafés</i>, theatres, etc. intermixed +all along the Boulevards, all of different sorts and sizes.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>Think of my remembering the <i>then</i> Royal Family going in several +carriages to hunt in the Forest of St. Germain’s—Louis XVIII. first, +with his <i>Gardes du Corps</i>, in blue and silver: then Monsieur +(afterwards Charles X.) with <i>his</i> Guard in green and gold—French +horns blowing—“tra, tra, tra” (as Madame de Sévigné says), through +the lines of chestnut and limes—in flower. And then <i>Madame</i> (of +Angoulême) standing up in her carriage, blear-eyed, dressed in white +with her waist at her neck—standing up in the carriage at a corner of +the wood to curtsey to the English assembled there—my mother among +them. This was in 1817. Now <i>you</i> would have made a delightful +description of all this; you will say <i>I</i> have done so, but that is +not so. And yet I saw, and see, it all.</p> + +<p>Whenever you write again—(I don’t wish you to write now) tell me what +you think of Irving and Salvini; of the former of whom I have very +different reports, Macready’s Memoirs seem to me very <i>conscientious</i> +and <i>rather dull</i>; <i>toujours Megready</i> (as one W. M. T. irreverently +called him). He seems to me to have had no humour—which I also +observed in his acting. He would have made a better scholar or divine, +I think: a very honourable, good man anywhere and anyhow.</p></div> + +<p>With Thackeray himself he always maintained the same cordial relations as +he did with Tennyson. But his literary attitude shifted and varied in the +same way. Here, again, he preferred the early work which he had seen in +process of creation. In later years, when they met him at Woodbridge, he +said to “Alfred” and his son, “I hardly dare take down Thackeray’s early +books, because they are so great. It’s like waking the Thunder.” He wrote +of Thackeray in 1849: “He is just the same. All the world ‘admires <i>Vanity +Fair</i>,’ and the author is courted by Dukes and Duchesses and wits of both +sexes. I like <i>Pendennis much</i>, and Alfred said he thought it was quite +delicious: it seemed to him so <i>mature</i> he said.” But a little later he +took alarm at the Dukes and Duchesses, and wrote to Frederick Tennyson: “I +am come to London, but I do not go to Operas or Plays, and have scarce +time (and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> it must be said, scarce inclination) to hunt up many friends—I +get shyer and shyer even of those I knew. Thackeray is in such a great +world that I am afraid of him; he gets tired of me and we are content to +regard each other at a distance. You, Alfred, Spedding, and Allen, are the +only men I ever care to see again.... As you know, I admire your poems, +the only poems by a living writer I do admire, except Alfred’s.”</p> + +<p>He told Hallam Tennyson that he greatly admired the charming scene in +“Philip” where the young lady unexpectedly discovered her lover (Philip) +on the box of the diligence, and quieted the screaming children inside by +saying, “Hush! <i>he’s</i> there.”</p> + +<p>In particular, he was very severe on anything he called “cockney,” +speaking, that is, the language of the town, not of the country; in other +words, dealing with nature and human nature at second-hand. To this his +letters again and again return. Of “fine writing,” as he called it, even +when it occurred in his own early work, he was unsparingly critical. Thus +of <i>Euphranor</i> he wrote to Mrs. Kemble: “The Dialogue is a pretty thing in +some respects but disfigured by some confounded <i>smart</i> writing in parts.” +He thought this fault in particular, so he says in a letter to Frederick +Tennyson, “the loose screw in American literature,” and deplored its +presence in Lowell, a writer whom otherwise he liked. “I honestly admire +his work in the main,” he says, “and I think he is altogether the best +critic we have, something of what Ste. Beuve is in French.” He thought +that Tennyson came to suffer from these defects in his later days, and +that the artist overpowered the man.</p> + +<p>The latest of Tennyson’s poems, of course, he did not live to see. He did +not see, for instance, “Crossing the Bar.” What would he have thought of +it? Another old friend of Tennyson, also a fastidious critic, the Duke of +Argyll, in an unpublished letter of February 1, 1892,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> writing of this and +of the lines on the “Death of the Duke of Clarence,” says: “Magnificent, +is all I can say of your lines in the <i>Nineteenth</i>. The two last things of +yours that I have seen, this and the ‘Bar,’ are both perfect in their +several ways, and such as no other man could have written. The ‘Bar’ is +the type of what I define Poetry to be, great thought in true imagery and +unusual expression. All the three are needed for the type thing. Much fine +poetry is to me only eloquence, which is quite another thing.” With the +last sentence FitzGerald would certainly have agreed, for it is what in +other words he was himself constantly saying. But he seemed to require +something more than great thoughts and true images and choice diction. +Poignant and revealing touches, what he called in Crabbe “shrewd hits”; +feeling, as well as, if not more than, thought—this was what he asked +for. All Browning’s genius seemed to him <i>emphase</i>, cleverness, curiosity, +“cockneyism.”</p> + +<p>“The Dramatic Idylls,” he writes to Frederick Tennyson, “seemed to me +‘Ingoldsby.’ It seems to me as if the Beautiful being already appropriated +by former men of genius, those who are not inspired, can only try for a +Place among them by recourse to the Quaint, Grotesque, and Ugly in all the +Arts,—what I call the Gargoyle style.” And again: “I always said he must +be a cockney, and now I find he is Camberwell-born—</p> + +<p class="poem">It once was the Pastoral cockney,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">It now is the cockney Profound.”</span></p> + +<p>The establishment of the Browning Society tried him specially. “Imagine a +man abetting all this,” he writes. Tennyson had, through life, a high +opinion of FitzGerald’s powers of criticism. They had often in their youth +discussed the classics of all time and all times together, and also, with +the poetic freedom of young men, their seniors, Shelley, and Byron, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> +Wordsworth. It was FitzGerald who invented for the last the name by which +he went in their circle, of the “Daddy.” They had fought for the ownership +of the Wordsworthian line, the “weakest blank verse in the language”:</p> + +<p class="poem">A Mr. Wilkinson, a clergyman.</p> + +<p>It really was FitzGerald’s description, given in conversation, of the +gentleman who was going to marry his sister. When he died in 1862 +FitzGerald, writing to Tennyson, reminded him of the line.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“This letter,” he writes, “ought to be on a black-edged paper in a +black-edged cover: for I have just lost a brother-in-law—one of the +best of Men. If you ask, ‘Who?’ I reply, in what you once called the +weakest line ever enunciated:</p> + +<p class="poem">A Mister Wilkinson, a Clergyman.</p> + +<p>You can’t remember this: in Old Charlotte Street, ages ago!”</p></div> + +<p>In the valedictory verses Tennyson makes allusion to this critical habit:</p> + +<p class="poem">And when I fancied that my friend<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For this brief idyll would require</span><br /> +A less diffuse and opulent end,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And would defend his judgment well,</span><br /> +If I should deem it over nice,——</p> + +<p>He himself was more catholic and generous. It was his generosity as well +as their admiration for him which gave him the place he held among his +brother poets and especially after he himself had won recognition among +the younger men.</p> + +<p>His relation to Browning, Patmore, and P. J. Bailey, to Matthew Arnold and +Swinburne, to Watson and Kipling as to Dickens, Thackeray, and George +Eliot, are well known. There is one writer who ought to be added to the +list, who received some of his earliest encouragement from +Tennyson—George Meredith. A letter, hitherto unpublished, written in +January 1851, may illustrate this.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> He had just, in some trepidation, sent +Tennyson his first volume of poems, containing the now well-known “Love in +the Valley.” As Meredith told me himself, Tennyson replied with an +exceedingly kind and “pretty” letter, saying that there was one poem in +the book he could have wished he had written, and inviting Meredith to +come to see him. The following is Meredith’s answer:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>—When I tell you that it would have been my chief ambition in +publishing the little volume of poems you have received, to obtain +your praise, you may imagine what pride and pleasure your letter gave +me; though, indeed, I do not deserve so much as your generous +appreciation would bestow, and of this I am very conscious. I had but +counted twenty-three years when the book was published, which may +account for, and excuse perhaps many of the immaturities. When you say +you would like to know me, I can scarcely trust myself to express with +how much delight I would wait upon you—a privilege I have long +desired. As I suppose the number of poetic visits you receive are +fully as troublesome as the books, I will not venture to call on you +until you are able to make an appointment. My residence and address is +Weybridge, but I shall not return to Town from Southend before Friday +week. If in the meantime you will fix any day following that date, I +shall gladly avail myself of the honour of your invitation. My address +here is care of Mrs. Peacock, Southend, Essex. I have the honour to +be, most faithfully yours,</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">George Meredith.</span></span></p> + +<p>Alfred Tennyson, Esq.</p></div> + +<p>The complement to “Old Fitz” was Carlyle. He was the friend of both +FitzGerald and Tennyson. Gruff, grumbling, self-centred, satirical, at +times even rude and rough, as he was, both of them seemed to have got not +so much on his blind, as on his kind side from the first, and always to +have remained there. Carlyle’s descriptions of Tennyson as a young man in +the early “forties” and of the pleasure he had in his company are well +known. “He seemed to take a fancy to me,” Tennyson said himself one day +while we talked about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> him at Farringford. They foregathered a good deal +at this period, sat and smoked silently, walked and talked together, both +by day and night. FitzGerald told Hallam Tennyson, years after, during the +visit to Woodbridge, that Carlyle was much concerned at this period about +his father’s poverty, and said to him, “Alfred must have a pension.” The +story of the way in which he spurred on “Dicky” Milnes to secure the +pension is now classical. What his special effect, if he had any, on +Tennyson was, it might be difficult to estimate or analyse.</p> + +<p>The younger generation to-day does not remember the period of Carlyle’s +immense influence. It lasted just into the youth of my contemporaries and +myself, or perhaps a little longer, and then began to wane and die away. +He certainly was a “radio-active” force in the days and with the men of +Tennyson’s youth,—Maurice, and Sterling, and “Dicky” Milnes, as he was a +little later with Ruskin and Kingsley. FitzGerald, with his detachment and +his fearless sincerity, estimated him as fairly as any one. “Do you see +Carlyle’s <i>Latter-Day Pamphlets</i>?” he wrote. “They make the world laugh, +and his friends rather sorry for him. But that is because people will +still look for practical measures from him. One must be content with him +as a great satirist who can make us feel when we are wrong, though he +cannot set us right. There is a bottom of truth in Carlyle’s wildest +rhapsodies.”</p> + +<p>He wrote to Frederick Tennyson in 1850: “When I spoke of the ‘Latter-Day +Prophet’ I conclude you have read or heard of Carlyle’s Pamphlets. People +are tired of them and of him; he only foams, snaps, and howls and no +progress people say. This is about true, and yet there is vital good in +all he has written.” Again, in 1854, he says, “Carlyle I did not go to +see, for I have really nothing to tell him, and I am<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> tired of hearing him +growl, tho’ I admire him as much as ever.” “I wonder if he ever thinks how +much sound and fury he has vented,” he writes on another occasion.</p> + +<p>But the posthumous publication of Carlyle’s Letters, as he wrote about a +fortnight before his own death, “raised him in FitzGerald’s esteem”; and +his last effort was to go to Chelsea to see his statue, and the old house +hard by which he had not seen for five-and-twenty years, to find it, alas, +“deserted, neglected, and ‘To let!’”</p> + +<p>Carlyle was indeed much what “Old Fitz” describes. He was a powerful +solvent of his age. He destroyed many shams, “Hebrew rags,” “old clothes,” +as he called them. Both by his own example and his fiery energy he +inculcated the “Gospel of Work.” He was not a modern realist, but a man +who dealt in realities, who perceived that virtue and beauty and faith are +as real as vice and ugliness and unfaith, nay, perhaps more real; but that +certainly neither are shams, neither God nor the Devil, though of shams, +of false gods and false devils, there are many. His appreciation of poetry +was, as is well known, but scant and intermittent. He used to banter +Tennyson and call him “a Life-Guardsman spoiled by making poetry,” but he +became converted even to his poems, though, as he said, this was +surprising to himself. He “felt the pulse of a real man’s heart” in the +1842 volumes. “Ulysses” was a special favourite. He quoted again and again +the lines:</p> + +<p class="poem">It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;<br /> +It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,<br /> +And see the great Achilles whom we knew.</p> + +<p>“These lines do not make me weep,” he said, “but there is in me what would +fill whole Lachrymatories as I read.” He, fortunately, also “took a fancy” +to Mrs. Tennyson when he met her as a bride at Tent Lodge, Coniston, +partly because, in answer to one of his wild grumbles, she said, “That is +not sane, Mr. Carlyle.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> An unpublished letter from Carlyle of the date +October 1850, describes an admirer of Tennyson’s poems, an ill-starred but +brave man, a skilful physician, a friend of Dr. John Carlyle at +Leamington, who, after losing the greater part of his face by <i>caries</i> of +the bone, had at last been cured, though awfully disfigured. “He fled to +Keswick,” writes Carlyle, “and there he now resides, not idle still, nor +forsaken of friends, or hope, or domestic joy—a monument of human +courtesy, and really a worthy and rather interesting man. Such is your +admirer and mine. Heaven be good to him and us.”</p> + +<p>FitzGerald, in a letter to Frederick Tennyson, quotes with approval a +criticism of Lowell’s that Carlyle “was a poet in all but rhythm”; and it +would not be difficult to find “parallel passages” between Tennyson and +Carlyle, between <i>Sartor Resartus</i> and “In Memoriam.” The <i>Life of +Sterling</i>, too, should be read by any student anxious to “reconstitute the +atmosphere” in which that poem grew up, and which, to a certain extent, it +still breathes. But “parallel passages” are misleading. Suffice it to say +that both went through the storm and stress of a doubting age, both took +their stand on the solid rock of God and of real, healthy human +nature,—both emerged in the “Eternal Yea.”</p> + +<p>Froude, in his history of Carlyle’s Life in London, has a most interesting +autobiographic passage about Carlyle’s position and influence in 1843, the +time of the publication of <i>Past and Present</i>, which brings this out with +special force. He says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>In this condition the best and bravest of my own contemporaries +determined to have done with insincerity, to find ground under their +feet, to let the uncertain remain uncertain, but to learn how much and +what we could honestly regard as true and believe that and live by it. +Tennyson became the voice of this feeling in poetry, Carlyle in what +was called prose, though prose it was not, but something by itself +with a form and melody of its own.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>Tennyson’s Poems, the group of Poems which closed with “In Memoriam,” +became to many of us what the “Christian Year” was to orthodox +Churchmen. We read them, and they became part of our minds, the +expression in exquisite language of the feelings which were working in +ourselves. Carlyle stood beside him as a prophet and teacher; and to +the young, the generous, to every one who took life seriously, who +wished to make an honourable use of it and could not be content with +sitting down and making money, his words were like the morning +<i>reveille</i>.</p> + +<p>Others may come at last to the sad conclusion that nothing can be +known about the world, that the external powers, whatever they may be, +are indifferent to human action or human welfare. To such an opinion +some men, and those not the worst, may be driven after weary +observation of life. But the young will never believe it; or if they +do they have been young only in name.</p></div> + +<p>If the first paragraphs aptly “place” Tennyson and Carlyle, the last, +though not intentionally, exactly suits their friend, the translator of +the <i>Rubáiyát</i>. FitzGerald remained, as his friend the Master of Trinity +College (W. H. Thompson) said, in “Doubting Castle.” Tennyson was the most +hopeful, as well as the most balanced and sane, and therefore the most +helpful of the three.</p> + +<p>Toward the end of his life, Carlyle, in the Inaugural Address given by him +as Rector of Edinburgh University, in which he summed up so many of the +convictions of a lifetime, put forward the following description of the +completely healthy human spirit. “A man all lucid and in equilibrium. His +intellect a clear mirror, geometrically plane, brilliantly sensitive to +all objects and impressions made on it, and imaging all things in their +correct proportions, not twisted up into convex or concave and distorting +everything so that he cannot see the truth of the matter without endless +groping and manipulation—healthy, clear and free, and discerning all +round about him.” He put this picture before young men as the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> ideal to be +aimed at by the intellectual student, and in particular by the man of +letters. “But,” he said, “we can never never attain that at all.” Perhaps +not altogether. Perhaps even he who invented the phrase for the poet’s +duty of “holding the mirror up to Nature,” did not wholly attain to it. +But, according to his measure, it is no bad description of Alfred +Tennyson, with the “universality of his mind,” the simplicity of his good +sense, the childlike sincerity of his spirit. This quality it was that +both Carlyle and FitzGerald found and liked in him.</p> + +<p>It has been said that Tennyson and FitzGerald read the same books. One of +the best instances of this is to be found in a long letter of FitzGerald’s +about posthumous fame and literary immortality. It was written to Cowell +in 1847, and is given by Dr. Aldis Wright in his first collection. After +speaking of Homer and the <i>Iliad</i>, FitzGerald writes:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Yet as I often think it is not the poetical imagination, but bare +Science that every day more and more unrolls a greater Epic than the +Iliad; the history of the world, the great infinitudes of Space and +Time! I never take up a book of Geology or Astronomy but this strikes +me. And when we think that Man must go on in the same plodding way, +one fancies that the Poet of to-day may as well fold his hands, or +turn them to dig and delve, considering how soon the march of +discovery will distance all his imaginations and dissolve the language +in which they are uttered. Martial, as you say, lives now after two +thousand years: a space that seems long to us whose lives are so +brief; but a moment, the twinkling of an eye, if compared (not to +Eternity alone), but to the ages which it is now known the world must +have existed, and (unless for some external violence) must continue to +exist.</p> + +<p>Lyell in his book about America, says that the Falls of Niagara, if +(as seems certain) they have worked their way back southwards for +seven miles, must have taken over 35,000 years to do so at the rate of +something over a foot a year! Sometimes they fall back on a stratum +that crumbles away from <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>behind them more easily: but then again they +have to roll over rock that yields to them scarce more perceptibly +than the anvil to the serpent. And these very soft strata, which the +Cataract now erodes, contain evidences of a race of animals, and of +the action of seas washing over them, long before Niagara came to have +a distinct current; and the rocks were compounded ages and ages before +those strata! So that, as Lyell says, the geologist, looking at +Niagara forgets even the roar of its waters in the contemplation of +the awful processes of time that it suggests. It is not only that the +vision of Time must wither the Poet’s hope of immortality, but it is +in itself more wonderful than all the conceptions of Dante and Milton.</p></div> + +<p>This train of thought was evidently often present to FitzGerald’s mind. It +oppressed him. It makes itself felt in the <i>Rubáiyát</i>. It was one of the +many great ideas he imported into, or educed from, the old Persian +Astronomer.</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">And fear not lest existence closing your</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Account, and mine, should know the like no more;</span><br /> +The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has poured<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Millions of Bubbles like us and will pour</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When you and I behind the Veil are past:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Oh but the long long while the world shall last,</span><br /> +Which of our coming and departure heeds<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As the Sev’n Seas should heed a pebble-cast.</span></p> + +<p>It was even more constantly present to the mind of Tennyson. Astronomy and +Geology had been among his favourite studies from his early youth, and +remained so all his life. When I was walking with him toward the Needles +and looking at the magnificent chalk cliff below the downs, and spoke +about his felicitous epithet for it—“the milky steep,” he said, “The most +wonderful thing about that cliff is to think it was all once alive.” The +allusions to it in his poems are innumerable:</p> + +<p class="poem">There rolls the deep where grew the tree,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">O earth, what changes hast thou seen!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">There where the long street roars, hath been</span><br /> +The stillness of the central sea.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>He was always “hearing the roll of the ages.” He, too, had read his Lyell, +and the contemplation of geological time suggested to him exactly the same +reflections which FitzGerald draws out. Indeed, it seems not unlikely that +he himself may have imparted them to FitzGerald. For he has embodied just +these thoughts in that noble late poem “Parnassus,” with a resemblance +which is startling. But while the parallel between “Parnassus” and +FitzGerald’s letter is extraordinarily close up to a certain point, the +contrast, when it is reached, is even more striking, and is the +fundamental contrast between the two men and their creeds:</p> + +<p class="poem">What be those two shapes high over the sacred fountain,<br /> +Taller than all the Muses, and huger than all the mountain?<br /> +On those two known peaks they stand, ever spreading and heightening;<br /> +Poet, that evergreen laurel is blasted by more than lightning!<br /> +Look, in their deep double shadow the crown’d ones all disappearing!<br /> +Sing like a bird and be happy, nor hope for a deathless hearing!<br /> +Sounding for ever and ever? pass on! the sight confuses—<br /> +These are Astronomy and Geology, terrible Muses!</p> + +<p>So far Tennyson agrees with <i>Omar</i>:</p> + +<p class="poem">Ah make the most of what we yet may spend<br /> +Before we too into the dust descend;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Dust into dust and under dust to lie,</span><br /> +Sans wine, sans song, sans singer and sans end!</p> + +<p>But then comes the divergence, conveyed with the exquisitely sympathetic +change of rhythm:</p> + +<p class="poem">If the lips were touch’d with fire from off a pure Pierian altar,<br /> +Tho’ their music here be mortal, need the singer greatly care?<br /> +Other songs for other worlds! the fire within him would not falter;<br /> +Let the golden Iliad vanish, Homer here is Homer there.</p> + +<p>The beautiful lines which form the Envoy to “Tiresias,” already alluded +to, never reached their address. I remember well, when we spoke of +FitzGerald, the sadness with which Tennyson said to me, “He never saw +them. He died before they were sent him.” After his death Tennyson added +the Epilogue on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> the same note. It is touching to see that in his closing +lines to his old friend he had hinted with tender delicacy at the same +creed to which he always clung:</p> + +<p class="poem">Gone into darkness, that full light<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of friendship! past, in sleep, away</span><br /> +By night, into the deeper night!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The deeper night? A clearer day</span><br /> +Than our poor twilight dawn on earth—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">If night, what barren toil to be!</span><br /> +What life, so maim’d by night, were worth<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Our living out? Not mine to me</span><br /> +Remembering all the golden hours<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Now silent, and so many dead</span><br /> +And him the last; and laying flowers,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">This wreath, above his honour’d head,</span><br /> +And praying that, when I from hence<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shall fade with him into the unknown,</span><br /> +My close of earth’s experience<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">May prove as peaceful as his own.</span></p> + +<p>Like many rough and overbearing men Carlyle liked those who stood up to +him and gave him back, in his own phrase, “shake for shake.” FitzGerald +was one of these. He made his better acquaintance by contradicting and +correcting him about the battlefield and the buried warriors of Naseby +Fight. Carlyle took it all in excellent part, and they became close +friends. Carlyle went to visit him and invited the many letters which +FitzGerald wrote. In his later years he sent one of these letters to C. E. +Norton as a “slight emblem and memorial of the peaceable, affectionate, +ultra-modest man and his innocent <i>far niente</i> life”; “and,” he adds, “the +connection (were there nothing more) of Omar, the Mahometan Blackguard, +and Oliver Cromwell, the English Puritan.”</p> + +<p>But “Old Fitz” could criticize and sum up Carlyle equally effectively. He +most happily pointed out his inconsistency in praising the “Hebrew rags” +of the old Evangelical beliefs when seen in Cromwell and his generals, and +not being willing to let them still serve for humble folk in his own day. +His tone here is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> singularly like that of Tennyson’s well-known lines, +beginning:</p> + +<p class="poem">Leave thou thy sister when she prays.</p> + +<p>“We may be well content,” FitzGerald writes, “even to suffer some +absurdities in the Form if the Spirit does well on the whole.” He would +probably have agreed with much of Tennyson’s “Akbar’s Dream,” which he did +not live to read. For the tenets of “Omar,” “The Mahometan Blackguard,” +must not be taken as representing the whole of FitzGerald’s philosophy, +any more than his eccentricities and negligent habits must be taken as a +complete expression of his life.</p> + +<p>Too exclusive attention has been paid to both. Dr. Aldis Wright, one of +the few surviving friends who knew him really well, speaks justly of “the +exaggerated stories of his slovenliness and his idleness,” and “of the way +in which he has been made responsible for all the oddities of his family.” +“Every tale,” he says, “that may be true of some of his kin, is fathered +upon him.”</p> + +<p>And FitzGerald’s own Preface to his translation of <i>Omar</i> shows what his +real moral and religious attitude toward the <i>Rubáiyát</i> was. He felt +bound, so far as the spirit, if not the letter, went, to present it +faithfully, if not literally; but he speaks very gravely of it. “The +quatrains here selected,” he writes in the Preface, “are strung into +something of an Eclogue, with perhaps a less than equal proportion of the +‘Drink and make merry’ which (genuine or not), recurs over frequently in +the original. Either way, the result is sad enough, saddest perhaps when +most ostentatiously merry, more apt to move sorrow than Anger toward the +old Tentmaker, who, after vainly endeavouring to unshackle his steps from +Destiny and to catch some authentic Glimpse of <span class="smcap">To-morrow</span>, fell back upon +<span class="smcap">To-day</span> (which has outlived so many To-morrows!) as the only ground he got<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> +to stand upon, however momentarily slipping from under his Feet.”</p> + +<p>The truth is, Old Fitz’s foibles, and indeed his faults, were only too +patent to others and to himself. But if <i>noscitur a sociis</i> holds good, +Carlyle and Tennyson and Thackeray, Spedding, Thompson, the Cowells, and +Mrs. Kemble, the friends of his whole lifetime, Lowell and C. E. Norton, +those of his later years, may be permitted to outweigh his at times too +tolerant cultivation and indulgence of his burly Vikings. Tennyson’s +relation to him was summed up in his letter to Sir Frederick Pollock which +Dr. Aldis Wright quotes, but which may fitly here be quoted again: “I had +no truer friend; he was one of the kindliest of men, and I have never +known one of so fine and delicate a wit.”</p> + +<p>These words, with Tennyson’s poetic picture already quoted, with Carlyle’s +epithets, “innocent, <i>far niente</i>, ultra-modest,” with his own writings +taken as a whole and not <i>Omar</i> alone, especially his Letters, may be left +to speak for him in life and in death,—these and the epitaph which he +asked to have placed upon his gravestone:</p> + +<p class="poem">“It is He that hath made us and not we ourselves.”</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p> +<h2>SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF TENNYSON’S TALK FROM 1835 TO 1853</h2> +<p class="center">[Many more were in a Notebook, which I have now lost.—E. F. G.]</p> +<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">Edward FitzGerald</span></p> +<p class="center">(Given to Hallam Lord Tennyson<a name='fna_24' id='fna_24' href='#f_24'><small>[24]</small></a>)</p> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">1835</p> + +<p>(Resting on our oars one calm day on Windermere, whither we had gone for a +week from dear Spedding’s Mirehouse at the end of May 1835,—resting on +our oars, and looking into the lake quite unruffled and clear, he quoted +from the lines he had lately read us from the MS. of “Morte d’Arthur” +about the lonely lady of the Lake and Excalibur.)</p> + +<p class="poem">Nine days she wrought it, sitting all alone<br /> +Upon the hidden bases of the Hills.</p> + +<p>“Not bad that, Fitz, is it?”</p> + +<p>(One summer day looking from Richmond Star and Garter.)</p> + +<p>“I love those woods that go triumphing down to the river.”</p> + +<p>“Somehow water is the element which I love best of all the four.” (He was +passionately fond of the sea and of babbling brooks.—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>)</p> + +<p>“Some one says that nothing strikes one more on returning from the +Continent than the look of our English country towns. Houses not so big, +nor such<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> rows of them as abroad; but each house, little or big, distinct +from one another, each man’s castle, built according to his own means and +fancy, and so indicating the Englishman’s individual humour.</p> + +<p>“I have been two days abroad—no further than Boulogne this time, but I am +struck as always on returning from France with the look of good sense in +the London people.”</p> + +<p>(Standing before a Madonna, by Murillo, at the Dulwich Gallery—her eyes +fixed on you.)</p> + +<p>“Yes—but they seem to look at something beyond—beyond the Actual into +Abstraction. I have seen that in a human face.” (I, E. F. G., have seen it +in <i>his</i>. Some American spoke of the same in Wordsworth. I suppose it may +be so with all <i>Poets</i>.)</p> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">1850</p> + +<p>“When I was sitting by the banks of Doon—I don’t know why—I wasn’t in +the least spoony—not thinking of Burns (but of the lapsing of the +Ages)—when all of a sudden I gave way to a passion of tears.”</p> + +<p>“I one day hurled a great iron bar over a haystack. Two bumpkins who stood +by said there was no one in the two parishes who could do it. I was then +about twenty-five.” (He could carry his mother’s pony round the +dinner-table.—E. F. G.)</p> + +<p>“The Sea at Mablethorpe is the grandest I know, except perhaps at Land’s +End.” (That is as he afterwards explained to me in a letter.)</p> + +<p>“Thackeray is the better artist, Dickens the [more affluent] Genius. He, +like Hogarth, has the moral sublime sometimes: but not the ideal sublime. +Perhaps I seem talking nonsense; I mean Hogarth could not conceive an +Apollo or a Jupiter.” (Or Sigismunda.—E. F. G.)—“I think Hogarth greater +than Dickens.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>(Looking at an engraving of the Sistine Madonna in which only She and the +Child, I think, were represented.)</p> + +<p>“Perhaps finer than the whole composition in so far as one’s eyes are more +concentrated on the subject. The Child seems to me the furthest result of +human art. His attitude is that of a man—his countenance a +Jupiter’s—perhaps rather too much so.”</p> + +<p>(He afterwards said (1852) that his own little boy, Hallam, explained the +expression of Raffaelle’s. He said he thought he had known Raffaelle +before he went to Italy—but not Michael Angelo—not only Statues and +Frescoes, but some picture (I think) of a Madonna “dragging a ton of a +Child over her Shoulder.”)</p> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">Seaford: December 27th-28th, 1852</p> + +<p>“Babies delight in being moved to and from anything: that is amusement to +them. What a Life of Wonder—every object new. This morning he (his own +little boy) worshipp’d the Bed-post when a gleam of sunshine lighted on +it.”</p> + +<p>“I am afraid of him. It is a Man. Babes have an expression of grandeur +that children lose. I used to think that the old Painters overdid the +Expression and Dignity of their infant Christs: but I see they did not.”</p> + +<p>“I was struck at the Duke’s (Wellington’s) Funeral with the look of sober +Manhood and Humanity in the British Soldiers.”</p> + +<p>(Of Laurence’s chalk drawing of ——’s head—“rather diplomatic than +inhuman”—he said in fun.—E. F. G.)</p> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">Brighton, 1852-1853</p> + +<p>“The finest Sea I have seen is at Valentia (Ireland), without any wind and +seemingly without a Wave, but with the momentum of the Atlantic behind it, +it dashes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> up into foam—blue diamond it looked like—all along the +rocks—like ghosts playing at Hide and Seek.”</p> + +<p>(At some other time on the same subject.)</p> + +<p>“When I was in Cornwall it had blown a storm of wind and rain for +days—all of a sudden fell into perfect calm; I was a little inland of the +cliffs, when, after a space of perfect silence, a long roll of +Thunder—from some wave rushing into a cavern, I suppose—came up from the +Distance and died away. I never <i>felt</i> Silence like that.”</p> + +<p>“<i>This</i>” (looking from Brighton Pier) “is not a grand sea: only an angry +curt sea. It seems to <i>shriek</i> as it recoils with its pebbles along the +beach.”</p> + +<p>“The Earth has light of her own—so has Venus—perhaps all the other +Planets—electrical light, or what we call Aurora. The light edge of the +dark hemisphere of the moon—the ‘old Moon in the new Moon’s arms.’”</p> + +<p>“Nay, they say she has no atmosphere at all.”</p> + +<p>(I do not remember when this was said, nor whether I have exactly set it +down; therefore must not make A. T. answerable for what he did not say, or +for what after-discovery may have caused him to unsay. He had a powerful +brain for Physics as for the Ideal. I remember his noticing that the +forward-bending horns of some built-up mammal in the British Museum would +never force its way through jungle, etc., and I observed on an after-visit +that they had been altered accordingly.)</p> + +<p>“Sometimes I think Shakespeare’s Sonnets finer than his Plays—which is of +course absurd. For it is the knowledge of the Plays that makes the Sonnets +so fine.”</p> + +<p>“Do you think the Artist ever feels satisfied with his Song? Not with the +Whole, I think; but perhaps the expression of parts.”</p> + +<p>(Standing one day with him looking at two busts—one of Dante, the other +of Goethe, in a London shop,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> I asked, “What is wanting to make Goethe’s +as fine as the other’s?”)</p> + +<p>“The Divine.” (“Edel sei der Mensch” was a poem in which he thought he +found “The Divine.”—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>)</p> + +<p>(Taking up and reading some number of <i>Pendennis</i> at my lodging.) “It’s +delicious—it’s so mature.”</p> + +<p>(Of Richardson’s <i>Clarissa</i>, etc.) “I love those great, still Books.”</p> + +<p>“What is it in Dryden? I always feel that he is greater than his works.” +(Though he thought much of “Theodore and Honoria,” and quoted +emphatically:</p> + +<p class="poem">More than a mile <i>immerst</i> within the wood.)</p> + +<p>“Two of the finest similes in poetry are Milton’s—that of the Fleet +hanging in the air (<i>Paradise Lost</i>), and the gunpowder-like ‘So started +up in his foul shape the Fiend.’ (Which latter A. T. used to enact with +grim humour, from the crouching of the Toad to the Explosion.) Say what +you please, I feel certain that Milton after Death shot up into some grim +Archangel.” <i>N.B.</i>—He used in earlier days to do the sun coming out from +a cloud, and returning into one again, with a gradual opening and shutting +of eyes and lips, etc. And, with a great fluffing up of his hair into full +wig, and elevation of cravat and collar, George the Fourth in as comical +and wonderful a way.</p> + +<p>“I could not read through <i>Palmerin of England</i>, nor <i>Amadis of Gaul</i>, or +any of those old romances—not even ‘Morte d’Arthur,’ though with so many +fine things in it—But all strung together without Art.”</p> + +<p>Old Hallam had been speaking of Shakespeare as the greatest of men, etc. +A. T. “Well, he was the Man one would have wished to introduce to another +Planet as a sample of our kind.”</p> + +<p><i>Àpropos</i> of physical stature, A. T. had been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> noticing how small Guizot +looked beside old Hallam (when he went with Guizot, Hallam, and Macaulay +over the Houses of Parliament.—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>).</p> + +<p>“I was skating one day at full swing and came clash against a man of my +own stature who was going at the same. We both fell asunder—got up—and +<i>laughed</i>. Had we been short men we might have resented.”</p> + +<p>(I blamed some one for swearing at the servant girl in a lodging.) “I +don’t know if women don’t like it from men: they think it shows Vigour.” +(Not that he ever did so himself.)</p> + +<p>“There is a want of central dignity about him—he excuses himself, etc.”</p> + +<p>“Most great men write terse hands.”</p> + +<p>“I like those old Variorum Classics—all the Notes make the Text look +precious.”</p> + +<p>(Of some dogmatic summary.) “That is the quick decision of a mind that +sees half the truth.”</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p> +<h2>TENNYSON AND THACKERAY</h2> +<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">Lady Ritchie</span></p> + + +<p>... You ask me what I can remember of your Father and of mine in early +days. I seem to <i>know</i> more than I actually remember....</p> + +<p>In looking over old letters and papers, I have found very few mentions of +the many actual meetings between them, though again and again the Poet’s +name is quoted and recorded, nor can I recall the time when I did not hear +it spoken of with trust and admiring regard. To this day we possess “The +Day Dream,” copied out from beginning to end in my Father’s writing.</p> + +<p>He was about twenty years of age when one day, in May 1832, he wrote down +in his diary:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Kemble and Hallam sat here for an hour. Read an article in <i>Blackwood</i> +about A. Tennyson, abusing Hallam for his essay in <i>The Englishman</i>.</p></div> + +<p>Then again ...</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Kemble read me some very beautiful verses of Tennyson’s.</p></div> + +<p>And again:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Found that B. and I did not at all agree about Tennyson. B. is a +clever fellow nevertheless, and makes money by magazine writing, in +which I should much desire to follow his example.</p></div> + +<p>After my Father’s marriage, when he was living in Coram Street, Tennyson +and FitzGerald both came to see him there. In an old letter of my mother’s +she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> describes Mr. Tennyson coming and my sitting at the table beside her +in a tall chair and with a new pinafore for the occasion. FitzGerald, I +think, also spoke of one of these meetings, and of my Father exclaiming +suddenly, “My dear Alfred, you do talk d—— well.”</p> + +<p>As we grew up, the Tennyson books were a part of our household life. I can +especially remember one volume, which came out when I was a little girl +and which my Father lent to a friend, and I also remember his laughing +vexation and annoyance when she returned the book all scored and defaced +with absurd notes and marks of exclamation everywhere.</p> + +<p>I once published an article in an American magazine from which I venture +to quote a passage which tells of one of the early meetings:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I can remember vaguely, on one occasion through a cloud of smoke, +looking across a darkening room at the noble, grave head of the Poet +Laureate. He was sitting with my Father in the twilight after some +family meal in the old house in Kensington; it was Tennyson himself +who afterwards reminded me how upon this occasion, while my Father was +speaking, my little sister looked up suddenly from the book over which +she had been absorbed, saying, in her sweet childish voice, “Papa, why +do you not write books like <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i>?” Then again, I seem +to hear across that same familiar table, voices, without shape or +name, talking and telling each other that Mr. Tennyson was married, +that he and his wife had been met walking on the terrace at Clevedon +Court, and then the clouds descend again, except, indeed, that I can +still see my Father riding off on his brown cob to Mr. and Mrs. +Tennyson’s house at Twickenham to attend the christening of Hallam +their eldest son.</p></div> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>Being <i>themselves</i>, when men, such as these two men, appreciate each +other’s work, they know, with their great instinct for truth and +directness, what to admire—smaller people are apt to admire the men +rather than the work.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> When Tennyson and my Father met, it was as when +knights meet in the field.</p> + +<p>How my Father appreciated the <i>Idylls</i> will be seen from the following +letter, which came as an answer to his own:<a name='fna_25' id='fna_25' href='#f_25'><small>[25]</small></a></p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Farringford, I.W.</span></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">My dear Thackeray</span>—Should I not have answered you ere this 6th of +November! surely; what excuse—none that I know of; except indeed that +perhaps your very generosity—boundlessness of approval—made me in a +measure shamefaced. I could scarcely accept it, being, I fancy, a +modest man and always more or less doubtful of my own efforts in any +line; but I may tell you that your little note gave me more pleasure +than all the journals and monthlies and quarterlies which have come +across me, not so much from being the Great Novelist, I hope, as from +your being my good old friend—or perhaps of your being both of these +in one. Well—let it be. I have been ransacking all sorts of old +albums and scrap-books, but cannot find anything worthy sending you. +Unfortunately, before your letter arrived, I had agreed to give +Macmillan the only available poem I had by me. I don’t think he would +have got it (for I dislike publishing in magazines), except that he +had come to visit me in my island, and was sitting and blowing his +weed <i>vis-à-vis</i>....</p> + +<p>Whenever you feel your brains as “the remainder biscuit,” or indeed +whenever you will, come over to me and take a blow on these downs +where the air, as Keats said, “is worth sixpence a pint,” and bring +your girls too.—Yours always,</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">A. Tennyson.</span></span></p></div> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>I can remember all my Father’s pleasure when Alfred Tennyson gave him +“Tithonus” for one of the early numbers of the <i>Cornhill Magazine</i>.</p> + +<p>He was once at Farringford, but this was before the time of the +<i>Cornhill</i>.</p> + +<p>From America, where people store their kindly records and from whence so +many echoes of the past<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> are apt to reach us again,—some in worthy, and +some, I fear, in less worthy voices,—I have received from time to time, +the gift of an hour from the past, vivid and unalloyed. One day in the +<i>Century</i> magazine, I came upon a page which retold for me the whole story +of a happy hour and of my Father’s affectionate regard for that chivalrous +American, Bayard Taylor, who came to see him, and for whom he had wished +to do his best, by sending him to Farringford. All this came back to me +when Alfred Tennyson’s letter was reproduced in the <i>Century</i>, his +charming answer to my Father, and my Father’s own note in the margin.... +Bayard Taylor himself has put the date to it all—June 1857.</p> + +<p>My Father writes to Bayard Taylor:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">My dear B. T.</span>—I was so busy yesterday that I could not keep my +agreeable appointment with Thompson, and am glad I didn’t fetch you to +Greenwich. Here’s a note which concerns you and I am ever yours,</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">W. M. T.</span></p></div> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>The letter from Lord Tennyson runs as follows:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Farringford, I.W.</span></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">My dear Thackeray</span>—Your American friend and poet-traveller has never +arrived; he has, I suppose, changed his mind. I am sure I should have +been very glad to see him, for my castle was never yet barricaded and +entrenched against good fellows. I write now, this time to say that +after the 30th I shall not be here.</p> + +<p>My best remembrances to your daughters, whom I have twice seen, once +as little girls, and again a year or so back.—Yours ever,</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">A. Tennyson.</span></span></p></div> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>Afterwards Bayard Taylor found his way to Farringford, and he has written +a happy account of the visit.<a name='fna_26' id='fna_26' href='#f_26'><small>[26]</small></a></p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>I hardly know whether or not to give the record of a meeting which I +myself remember. Once after a long<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> visit to Freshwater I returned home to +Palace Green, and hearing that Alfred Tennyson had come up soon after to +stay for a few days at Little Holland House close by, I told my Father, +and together we planned a visit, to which I eagerly looked forward, with +much pride and youthful excitement. It was not far to walk, the high road +leads straight to Holland House, in the grounds of which Little Holland +House then stood among the trees. Mr. and Mrs. Prinsep were living there +and Mr. Watts. When we reached the House and were let in, we saw Mr. Watts +in his studio; he seemed to hesitate to admit us; then came the ladies. +Mr. Tennyson was upstairs, we were told, not well. He had hurt his shin. +“He did not wish for visitors, nevertheless certainly we were to go up,” +they said, and we mounted into a side wing by some narrow staircase and +came to a door, by which cans of water were standing in a row. As we +entered, a man-servant came out of the little room.</p> + +<p>Tennyson was sitting in a chair with his leg up, evidently ill and out of +spirits.</p> + +<p>“I am sorry to find you laid up,” said my Father.</p> + +<p>“They insisted upon my seeing the doctor for my leg,” said Alfred, “and he +prescribed cold water dressing.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said my Father, “there’s nothing like it, I have tried it myself.”</p> + +<p>And then no more! No high conversation—no quotations—no recollections. +After a minute or two of silence we came away. My tall Father tramped down +the little wooden staircase followed by a bitterly disappointed audience.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>When I was writing that same magazine article from which I have already +given an extract, I asked Edward FitzGerald if he could help me, and if I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> +might quote anything from his letters and from <i>Euphranor</i>:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“<span class="smcap">My dear Anne Ritchie</span>”—Mr. FitzGerald wrote—“Your letter found me at +Aldburgh on our coast where I come to hear my old sea talk to me, as +more than sixty years ago, and to get a blow out on his back. Pray +quote anything you please, provided with Alfred’s permission and no +compliments to the author.</p> + +<p>“I do not think my <i>fanfaron</i> about him would be of any such service +as you suppose; strangers usually take all that as the flourish of a +friendly adviser, and would rather have some facts, such as that +perhaps of his words about the Raphael and the little Hallam’s worship +of the bed-post.<a name='fna_27' id='fna_27' href='#f_27'><small>[27]</small></a> I suppose it was in 1852 at Seaford near +Brighton. I can swear absolutely and can now hear and see him as he +said it; so don’t let him pretend to gainsay or modify that, whether +he may choose to have it quoted or not.</p> + +<p>“Ah, I have often thought that I might have done some good service if +I had kept to him and followed him and noted the fine true things +which fell from his lips on every subject, practical or aesthetic, as +they call it.</p> + +<p>“Bayard Taylor, in some essays lately published, quotes your Father +saying that Tennyson was the wisest man he knew—which, by the way, +would tell more in America than all I could write or say.</p> + +<p>“Your finding it hard to make an article about A. T. will excuse my +inability to help you, as you asked. I did not know (as in the case of +your Father also) where to begin or how to go on without a +beginning.—Ever yours,</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">E. F. G.”</span></p></div> + +<p>In 1863, just after our Father’s death, my sister and I came to +Freshwater. It seemed to us that perhaps there more than anywhere else we +might find some gleam of the light of our home, with the friend who had +known him and belonged to his life and whom he trusted.</p> + +<p>We arrived late in the afternoon. It was bitter weather, the snow lying +upon the ground. Mrs.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> Cameron had lent us a cottage, and the fires were +already burning, and as we rested aimlessly in the twilight, we seemed +aware of a tall figure standing in the window, wrapped in a heavy cloak, +with a broad-brimmed hat. This was Tennyson, who had walked down to see us +in silent sympathy.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p> +<h2>TENNYSON ON HIS FRIENDS OF LATER LIFE</h2> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p> + +<p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p> +<p class="title">TO W. C. MACREADY</p> +<p class="center">1851</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>Farewell, Macready, since to-night we part;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Full-handed thunders often have confessed</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Thy power, well-used to move the public breast.</span><br /> +We thank thee with our voice, and from the heart.<br /> +Farewell, Macready, since this night we part,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Go, take thine honours home; rank with the best,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Garrick and statelier Kemble, and the rest</span><br /> +Who made a nation purer through their art.<br /> +Thine is it that our drama did not die,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Nor flicker down to brainless pantomime,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And those gilt gauds men-children swarm to see.</span><br /> +Farewell, Macready; moral, grave, sublime;<br /> +Our Shakespeare’s bland and universal eye<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Dwells pleased, through twice a hundred years, on thee.</span></td></tr></table> + +<p> </p> +<p class="title">TO THE REV. F. D. MAURICE</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>Come, when no graver cares employ,<br /> +Godfather, come and see your boy:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Your presence will be sun in winter,</span><br /> +Making the little one leap for joy.<br /> +<br /> +For, being of that honest few,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>Who give the Fiend himself his due,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Should eighty-thousand college-councils</span><br /> +Thunder “Anathema,” friend, at you;<br /> +<br /> +Should all our churchmen foam in spite<br /> +At you, so careful of the right,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yet one lay-hearth would give you welcome</span><br /> +(Take it and come) to the Isle of Wight;<br /> +<br /> +Where, far from noise and smoke of town,<br /> +I watch the twilight falling brown<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">All round a careless-order’d garden</span><br /> +Close to the ridge of a noble down.<br /> +<br /> +You’ll have no scandal while you dine,<br /> +But honest talk and wholesome wine,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And only hear the magpie gossip</span><br /> +Garrulous under a roof of pine:<br /> +<br /> +For groves of pine on either hand,<br /> +To break the blast of winter, stand;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And further on, the hoary Channel</span><br /> +Tumbles a billow on chalk and sand;<br /> +<br /> +Where, if below the milky steep<br /> +Some ship of battle slowly creep,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And on thro’ zones of light and shadow</span><br /> +Glimmer away to the lonely deep,<br /> +<br /> +We might discuss the Northern sin<br /> +Which made a selfish war begin;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dispute the claims, arrange the chances;</span><br /> +Emperor, Ottoman, which shall win:<br /> +<br /> +Or whether war’s avenging rod<br /> +Shall lash all Europe into blood;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Till you should turn to dearer matters,</span><br /> +Dear to the man that is dear to God;<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span><br /> +How best to help the slender store,<br /> +How mend the dwellings, of the poor;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">How gain in life, as life advances,</span><br /> +Valour and charity more and more.<br /> +<br /> +Come, Maurice, come: the lawn as yet<br /> +Is hoar with rime, or spongy-wet;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But when the wreath of March has blossom’d,</span><br /> +Crocus, anemone, violet,<br /> +<br /> +Or later, pay one visit here,<br /> +For those are few we hold as dear;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nor pay but one, but come for many,</span><br /> +Many and many a happy year.<br /> +<br /> +<i>January, 1854.</i></td></tr></table> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="title">TO SIR JOHN SIMEON</p> +<p class="center">IN THE GARDEN AT SWAINSTON</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>Nightingales warbled without,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Within was weeping for thee:</span><br /> +Shadows of three dead men<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Walk’d in the walks with me,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shadows of three dead men<a name='fna_28' id='fna_28' href='#f_28'><small>[28]</small></a> and thou wast one of the three.</span><br /> +<br /> +Nightingales sang in his woods:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Master was far away:</span><br /> +Nightingales warbled and sang<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of a passion that lasts but a day;</span><br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Still in the house in his coffin the Prince of courtesy lay.</span><br /> +<br /> +Two dead men have I known<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In courtesy like to thee:</span><br /> +Two dead men have I loved<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With a love that ever will be:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Three dead men have I loved and thou art last of the three.</span></td></tr></table> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="title">TO EDWARD LEAR, ON HIS TRAVELS IN GREECE</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>Illyrian woodlands, echoing falls<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of water, sheets of summer glass,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The long divine Peneïan pass,</span><br /> +The vast Akrokeraunian walls,<br /> +<br /> +Tomohrit, Athos, all things fair,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With such a pencil, such a pen,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">You shadow forth to distant men,</span><br /> +I read and felt that I was there:<br /> +<br /> +And trust me while I turn’d the page,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And track’d you still on classic ground,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I grew in gladness till I found</span><br /> +My spirits in the golden age.<br /> +<br /> +For me the torrent ever pour’d<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And glisten’d—here and there alone</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The broad-limb’d Gods at random thrown</span><br /> +By fountain-urns;—and Naiads oar’d<br /> +<br /> +A glimmering shoulder under gloom<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of cavern pillars; on the swell</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The silver lily heaved and fell;</span><br /> +And many a slope was rich in bloom<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span><br /> +From him that on the mountain lea<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">By dancing rivulets fed his flocks</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To him who sat upon the rocks,</span><br /> +And fluted to the morning sea.</td></tr></table> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="title">TO THE MASTER OF BALLIOL</p> +<p class="center">(PROFESSOR JOWETT)</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td align="center">I</td></tr> +<tr><td>Dear Master in our classic town,<br /> +You, loved by all the younger gown<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">There at Balliol,</span><br /> +Lay your Plato for one minute down,</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">II</td></tr> +<tr><td>And read a Grecian tale re-told,<a name='fna_29' id='fna_29' href='#f_29'><small>[29]</small></a><br /> +Which, cast in later Grecian mould,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Quintus Calaber</span><br /> +Somewhat lazily handled of old;</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">III</td></tr> +<tr><td>And on this white midwinter day—<br /> +For have the far-off hymns of May,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">All her melodies,</span><br /> +All her harmonies echo’d away?—</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">IV</td></tr> +<tr><td>To-day, before you turn again<br /> +To thoughts that lift the soul of men,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Hear my cataract’s</span><br /> +Downward thunder in hollow and glen,</td></tr> +<tr><td> <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">V</td></tr> +<tr><td>Till, led by dream and vague desire,<br /> +The woman, gliding toward the pyre,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Find her warrior</span><br /> +Stark and dark in his funeral fire.</td></tr></table> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="title">TO THE DUKE OF ARGYLL</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>O Patriot Statesman, be thou wise to know<br /> +The limits of resistance, and the bounds<br /> +Determining concession; still be bold<br /> +Not only to slight praise but suffer scorn;<br /> +And be thy heart a fortress to maintain<br /> +The day against the moment, and the year<br /> +Against the day; thy voice, a music heard<br /> +Thro’ all the yells and counter-yells of feud<br /> +And faction, and thy will, a power to make<br /> +This ever-changing world of circumstance,<br /> +In changing, chime with never-changing Law.</td></tr></table> + + +<p> </p> +<div class="bbox" style="width: 600px; height: 362px;"><img src="images/img08.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Drive at Farringford, showing on the left the +“Wellingtonia” planted by Garibaldi.</span><br />From a drawing by W. Biscombe Gardner.</p> +<p> </p> + + +<p class="title">TO GIFFORD PALGRAVE<a name='fna_30' id='fna_30' href='#f_30'><small>[30]</small></a></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td align="center">I</td></tr> +<tr><td>Ulysses, much-experienced man,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Whose eyes have known this globe of ours,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Her tribes of men, and trees, and flowers,</span><br /> +From Corrientes to Japan,</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">II</td></tr> +<tr><td>To you that bask below the Line,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">I soaking here in winter wet—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The century’s three strong eights<a name='fna_31' id='fna_31' href='#f_31'><small>[31]</small></a> have met</span><br /> +To drag me down to seventy-nine</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">III</td></tr> +<tr><td>In summer if I reach my day—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To you, yet young, who breathe the balm</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of summer-winters by the palm</span><br /> +And orange grove of Paraguay,</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">IV</td></tr> +<tr><td>I tolerant of the colder time,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who love the winter woods, to trace</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On paler heavens the branching grace</span><br /> +Of leafless elm, or naked lime,</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">V</td></tr> +<tr><td>And see my cedar green, and there<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My giant ilex keeping leaf</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When frost is keen and days are brief—</span><br /> +Or marvel how in English air</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">VI</td></tr> +<tr><td>My yucca, which no winter quells,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Altho’ the months have scarce begun,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Has push’d toward our faintest sun</span><br /> +A spike of half-accomplish’d bells—</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">VII</td></tr> +<tr><td>Or watch the waving pine which here<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The warrior of Caprera set,<a name='fna_32' id='fna_32' href='#f_32'><small>[32]</small></a></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A name that earth will not forget</span><br /> +Till earth has roll’d her latest year—</td></tr> +<tr><td> <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">VIII</td></tr> +<tr><td>I, once half-crazed for larger light<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On broader zones beyond the foam,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But chaining fancy now at home</span><br /> +Among the quarried downs of Wight,</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">IX</td></tr> +<tr><td>Not less would yield full thanks to you<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For your rich gift, your tale of lands</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I know not,<a name='fna_33' id='fna_33' href='#f_33'><small>[33]</small></a> your Arabian sands;</span><br /> +Your cane, your palm, tree-fern, bamboo,</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">X</td></tr> +<tr><td>The wealth of tropic bower and brake;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Your Oriental Eden-isles,<a name='fna_34' id='fna_34' href='#f_34'><small>[34]</small></a></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where man, nor only Nature smiles;</span><br /> +Your wonder of the boiling lake;<a name='fna_35' id='fna_35' href='#f_35'><small>[35]</small></a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">XI</td></tr> +<tr><td> +Phra-Chai, the Shadow of the Best,<a name='fna_36' id='fna_36' href='#f_36'><small>[36]</small></a><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Phra-bat<a name='fna_37' id='fna_37' href='#f_37'><small>[37]</small></a> the step; your Pontic coast;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Crag-cloister;<a name='fna_38' id='fna_38' href='#f_38'><small>[38]</small></a> Anatolian Ghost;<a name='fna_39' id='fna_39' href='#f_39'><small>[39]</small></a></span><br /> +Hong-Kong,<a name='fna_40' id='fna_40' href='#f_40'><small>[40]</small></a> Karnac,<a name='fna_41' id='fna_41' href='#f_41'><small>[41]</small></a> and all the rest.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">XII</td></tr> +<tr><td>Thro’ which I follow’d line by line<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Your leading hand, and came, my friend,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To prize your various book, and send</span><br /> +A gift of slenderer value, mine.</td></tr></table> + + +<p> <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p> +<p class="title">TO THE MARQUIS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td align="center">I</td></tr> +<tr><td>At times our Britain cannot rest,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">At times her steps are swift and rash;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">She moving, at her girdle clash</span><br /> +The golden keys of East and West.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">II</td></tr> +<tr><td>Not swift or rash, when late she lent<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The sceptres of her West, her East,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To one, that ruling has increased</span><br /> +Her greatness and her self-content.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">III</td></tr> +<tr><td>Your rule has made the people love<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Their ruler. Your viceregal days</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Have added fulness to the phrase</span><br /> +Of “Gauntlet in the velvet glove.”</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">IV</td></tr> +<tr><td>But since your name will grow with Time,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Not all, as honouring your fair fame</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of Statesman, have I made the name</span><br /> +A golden portal to my rhyme:</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">V</td></tr> +<tr><td>But more, that you and yours may know<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">From me and mine, how dear a debt</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">We owed you, and are owing yet</span><br /> +To you and yours, and still would owe.</td></tr> +<tr><td> <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">VI</td></tr> +<tr><td>For he<a name='fna_42' id='fna_42' href='#f_42'><small>[42]</small></a>—your India was his Fate,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And drew him over sea to you—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">He fain had ranged her thro’ and thro’,</span><br /> +To serve her myriads and the State,—</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">VII</td></tr> +<tr><td>A soul that, watch’d from earliest youth,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And on thro’ many a brightening year,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Had never swerved for craft or fear,</span><br /> +By one side-path, from simple truth;</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">VIII</td></tr> +<tr><td>Who might have chased and claspt Renown<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And caught her chaplet here—and there</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In haunts of jungle-poison’d air</span><br /> +The flame of life went wavering down;</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">IX</td></tr> +<tr><td>But ere he left your fatal shore,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And lay on that funereal boat,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dying, “Unspeakable” he wrote</span><br /> +“Their kindness,” and he wrote no more;</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">X</td></tr> +<tr><td>And sacred is the latest word;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And now the Was, the Might-have-been,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And those lone rites I have not seen,</span><br /> +And one drear sound I have not heard,</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">XI</td></tr> +<tr><td>Are dreams that scarce will let me be,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Not there to bid my boy farewell,</span><br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">When That within the coffin fell,</span><br /> +Fell—and flash’d into the Red Sea,</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">XII</td></tr> +<tr><td>Beneath a hard Arabian moon<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And alien stars. To question, why</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The sons before the fathers die,</span><br /> +Not mine! and I may meet him soon;</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">XIII</td></tr> +<tr><td>But while my life’s late eve endures,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nor settles into hueless gray,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My memories of his briefer day</span><br /> +Will mix with love for you and yours.</td></tr></table> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="title">TO W. E. GLADSTONE</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>We move, the wheel must always move,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nor always on the plain,</span><br /> +And if we move to such a goal<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As Wisdom hopes to gain,</span><br /> +Then you that drive, and know your Craft,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Will firmly hold the rein,</span><br /> +Nor lend an ear to random cries,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or you may drive in vain,</span><br /> +For some cry “Quick” and some cry “Slow,”<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But, while the hills remain,</span><br /> +Up hill “Too-slow” will need the whip,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Down hill “Too-quick,” the chain.</span></td></tr></table> + + +<p> <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p> +<p class="title">TO MARY BOYLE</p> +<p class="center">(Dedicating “The Progress of Spring.”)</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td align="center">I</td></tr> +<tr><td>“Spring-flowers”! While you still delay to take<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Your leave of Town,</span><br /> +Our elmtree’s ruddy-hearted blossom-flake<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Is fluttering down.</span></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">II</td></tr> +<tr><td>Be truer to your promise. There! I heard<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Our cuckoo call.</span><br /> +Be needle to the magnet of your word,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Nor wait, till all</span></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">III</td></tr> +<tr><td>Our vernal bloom from every vale and plain<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">And garden pass,</span><br /> +And all the gold from each laburnum chain<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Drop to the grass.</span></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">IV</td></tr> +<tr><td>Is memory with your Marian gone to rest,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Dead with the dead?</span><br /> +For ere she left us, when we met, you prest<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">My hand, and said</span></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">V</td></tr> +<tr><td>“I come with your spring-flowers.” You came not, friend;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">My birds would sing,</span><br /> +You heard not. Take then this spring-flower I send,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">This song of spring,</span></td></tr> +<tr><td> <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">VI</td></tr> +<tr><td>Found yesterday—forgotten mine own rhyme<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">By mine old self,</span><br /> +As I shall be forgotten by old Time,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Laid on the shelf—</span></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">VII</td></tr> +<tr><td>A rhyme that flower’d betwixt the whitening sloe<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">And kingcup blaze,</span><br /> +And more than half a hundred years ago,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">In rick-fire days,</span></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">VIII</td></tr> +<tr><td>When Dives loathed the times, and paced his land<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">In fear of worse,</span><br /> +And sanguine Lazarus felt a vacant hand<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Fill with <i>his</i> purse.</span></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">IX</td></tr> +<tr><td>For lowly minds were madden’d to the height<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">By tonguester tricks,</span><br /> +And once—I well remember that red night<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">When thirty ricks,</span></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">X</td></tr> +<tr><td>All flaming, made an English homestead Hell—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">These hands of mine</span><br /> +Have helpt to pass a bucket from the well<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Along the line,</span></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">XI</td></tr> +<tr><td>When this bare dome had not begun to gleam<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Thro’ youthful curls,</span><br /> +And you were then a lover’s fairy dream,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">His girl of girls;</span></td></tr> +<tr><td> <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">XII</td></tr> +<tr><td>And you, that now are lonely, and with Grief<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Sit face to face,</span><br /> +Might find a flickering glimmer of relief<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">In change of place.</span></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">XIII</td></tr> +<tr><td>What use to brood? this life of mingled pains<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">And joys to me,</span><br /> +Despite of every Faith and Creed, remains<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">The Mystery.</span></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">XIV</td></tr> +<tr><td>Let golden youth bewail the friend, the wife,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">For ever gone.</span><br /> +He dreams of that long walk thro’ desert life<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Without the one.</span></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">XV</td></tr> +<tr><td>The silver year should cease to mourn and sigh—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Not long to wait—</span><br /> +So close are we, dear Mary, you and I<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">To that dim gate.</span></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">XVI</td></tr> +<tr><td>Take, read! and be the faults your Poet makes<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Or many or few,</span><br /> +He rests content, if his young music wakes<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">A wish in you</span></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">XVII</td></tr> +<tr><td>To change our dark Queen-city, all her realm<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Of sound and smoke,</span><br /> +For his clear heaven, and these few lanes of elm<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">And whispering oak.</span></td></tr></table> + + +<p> <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p> +<p class="title">TO W. G. WARD</p> +<p class="center">IN MEMORIAM</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>Farewell, whose living like I shall not find,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Whose Faith and Work were bells of full accord,</span><br /> +My friend, the most unworldly of mankind,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Most generous of all Ultramontanes, Ward,</span><br /> +How subtle at tierce and quart of mind with mind,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">How loyal in the following of thy Lord!</span></td></tr></table> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="title">TO SIR RICHARD JEBB</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>Fair things are slow to fade away,<br /> +Bear witness you, that yesterday<a name='fna_43' id='fna_43' href='#f_43'><small>[43]</small></a><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">From out the Ghost of Pindar in you</span><br /> +Roll’d an Olympian; and they say<a name='fna_44' id='fna_44' href='#f_44'><small>[44]</small></a><br /> +<br /> +That here the torpid mummy wheat<br /> +Of Egypt bore a grain as sweet<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">As that which gilds the glebe of England,</span><br /> +Sunn’d with a summer of milder heat.<br /> +<br /> +So may this legend<a name='fna_45' id='fna_45' href='#f_45'><small>[45]</small></a> for awhile,<br /> +If greeted by your classic smile,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Tho’ dead in its Trinacrian Enna,</span><br /> +Blossom again on a colder isle.</td></tr></table> + + +<p> <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p> +<p class="title">TO GENERAL HAMLEY</p> +<p class="center">(Prologue of “The Charge of the Heavy Brigade.”)</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>Our birches yellowing and from each<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The light leaf falling fast,</span><br /> +While squirrels from our fiery beech<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Were bearing off the mast,</span><br /> +You came, and look’d and loved the view<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Long-known and loved by me,</span><br /> +Green Sussex fading into blue<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With one gray glimpse of sea;</span><br /> +And, gazing from this height alone,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">We spoke of what had been</span><br /> +Most marvellous in the wars your own<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Crimean eyes had seen;</span><br /> +And now—like old-world inns that take<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Some warrior for a sign</span><br /> +That therewithin a guest may make<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">True cheer with honest wine—</span><br /> +Because you heard the lines I read<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nor utter’d word of blame,</span><br /> +I dare without your leave to head<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">These rhymings with your name,</span><br /> +Who know you but as one of those<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I fain would meet again,</span><br /> +Yet know you, as your England knows<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That you and all your men</span><br /> +Were soldiers to her heart’s desire,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When, in the vanish’d year,</span><br /> +You saw the league-long rampart-fire<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Flare from Tel-el-Kebir</span><br /> +Thro’ darkness, and the foe was driven,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And Wolseley overthrew</span><br /> +Arâbi, and the stars in heaven<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Paled, and the glory grew.</span></td></tr></table> + + +<p> <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span></p> +<p class="title">EPITAPH ON LORD STRATFORD DE REDCLIFFE</p> +<p class="center">IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>Thou third great Canning, stand among our best<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And noblest, now thy long day’s work hath ceased,</span><br /> +Here silent in our Minster of the West<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who wert the voice of England in the East.</span></td></tr></table> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="title">EPITAPH ON GENERAL GORDON</p> +<p class="center">IN THE GORDON BOYS’ NATIONAL MEMORIAL HOME NEAR WOKING<a name='fna_46' id='fna_46' href='#f_46'><small>[46]</small></a></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>Warrior of God, man’s friend, and tyrant’s foe,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Now somewhere dead far in the waste Soudan,</span><br /> +Thou livest in all hearts, for all men know<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">This earth has never borne a nobler man.</span></td></tr></table> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="title">G. F. WATTS, R.A.</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>Divinely, thro’ all hindrance, finds the man<br /> +Behind it, and so paints him that his face,<br /> +The shape and colour of a mind and life,<br /> +Lives for his children, ever at its best.</td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p> +<h2>TENNYSON AND BRADLEY (DEAN OF WESTMINSTER)</h2> +<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">Margaret L. Woods</span></p> + + +<p>Alum Bay, near Farringford, is now greatly changed. A big hotel stands up +dwarfing its cliffs, from which the famous layers of various-coloured sand +are being continually scooped into bottles, and on many a cottage +mantelpiece in the island there is a glass bottle showing a picture of a +lighthouse, or something else curiously wrought in Alum Bay sand. The +jagged white Needles still tip the westward point of its crescent, still +seeming to salute with greeting or farewell the majestic procession of +great ocean-going ships, and to smile on the frolic wings of yachts, that +all the summer long flirt and dance over the blue waters of the Solent, +like a flight of white butterflies. Formerly the rough track to the Bay +led over a lonely bit of common called the Warren, where furze grew, and +short brown-tasselled rushes marked the course of a hardly visible stream. +The Warren Farm lies on the landward edge of the Warren, and there on a +sunny 6th of August 1855, a third birthday was being solemnized with tea +and a tent. It was a blue tent on the top of a haystack, and under it +between her baby boy and girl, sat a blue-eyed mother, with the bloom of +youth and the freshness of the sea on her beauty. The mother and the two +children, lovely, too, with more than the usual loveliness of childhood, +were keeping their tiny festival<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> with a gay simplicity, and I do not +doubt that on that as on other birthdays, Edith, the birthday queen, was +wearing on her golden curls a garland of rosebuds and mignonette. The +wheels of a carriage were heard driving up to the farm gate, and in a +minute a tall dark man, like a Spanish señor in his long cloak and +sombrero, appeared under the haystack. The young woman noted the tall +figure, the hat and cloak, the long, dark, clear-cut face, with the +beardless and finely modelled mouth and chin, the splendid eyes under the +high forehead, and the deep furrows running from nose to chin. She +perceived at once it was Alfred Tennyson, whose poems she knew and loved +so well. Meantime the Poet, sensitive as all artists must be to human +loveliness, looked surely with delight on the pretty picture, the haystack +and the blue tent, the young mother and her babes: a picture which was to +form as it were a gracious frontispiece to a whole volume of friendship. +He bade her “throw the little maid into his arms,” caught the child and +asked her how old she was. “Three to-day,” answered little Edith proudly. +“Then you and I,” said he, “have the same birthday.”</p> + +<p>The friendship thus preluded was to last until death closed it. The record +of it lies here in old diaries and in sheaves of letters, faithfully +treasured; a chronicle of some forty years with all the little troubles, +the joys and sorrows of the two households, intimately shared. It was a +four-cornered friendship, one of husband and wife with husband and wife, +but the correspondence passed almost entirely between the wives. Men had +already for the most part abandoned the practice of letter-writing outside +their business and families, but at the little rosewood drawing-room +escritoires at which we of the many documents are tempted to smile, +Victorian women fed the flame of friendship with—here the metaphor +becomes a little mixed—a constant flow of ink. Not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> that the two women +who kept up this correspondence were idle. All that Emily Tennyson on her +invalid sofa did for her Poet, is it not written in the book of his +Biography? Her friend, Marian Bradley, was yet busier than she, having the +cares and duties of a mother of a large family, besides those incident to +the wife of a man who was successively Head Master of a great school, Head +of an Oxford College, and Dean of Westminster.</p> + +<p>Granville Bradley was twelve years younger than Alfred Tennyson; an +interval in age which permits at once of veneration and of intimacy. It +was at the Lushingtons’ house that my father, as an undergraduate of +one-and-twenty, first met the young Poet, and became his admirer; but it +was not until twelve years later that the admirer became also the friend.</p> + +<p>My mother tells in her diary how in that summer of the birthday meeting, +the two men roamed the country together, poetizing, botanizing, +geologizing. The enthusiasm of science had begun to seize on all thinking +humanity, and if botany was considered the only suitable science for +ladies, geology had something like a boom among the privileged males. I +can see my father now, a slight, active little figure, armed with a hammer +and girt with a capacious knapsack, setting forth joyous as a +chamois-hunter, for a day’s sport among the fossils of the Isle of Wight +cliffs. But above all it was the communion of spirit, the play of ideas +which interested the two and drew them together. “They talked from 12 noon +to 10 <span class="smcaplc">P.M.</span>, almost incessantly, this day,” writes my mother, “Tennyson +walking back with him (some three miles) to the Warren farm, still +talking.”</p> + +<p>One pictures the tall, long-cloaked Bard and the vivacious little scholar +pacing side by side, inconscient of time and distance, down the shingly +drive of Farringford, through the warm and dusky night of the deep-hedged +lanes, overhung with the heavy darkness of August trees,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> until they came +out on the clear pale spaces of the open seaward land, and the whisper and +scent of the sea. And one would guess this to be a picture of two very +young men, absorbed in the first joy of one of the romantic friendships of +youth, did one not know that the Poet was a man of middle age and the +scholar in the maturing thirties. But the artists know their way to the +Fountain of youth and meet there. Tennyson, the great creative artist, +retained all his life the simplicity of a child. My father was no creator, +but he, too, was in his way an artist; he was the artist as scholar and +teacher. Language and Style were to him things almost as splendid and +sacred as they were wont to be to a Renaissance scholar, and sins against +them roused the only bad passions of an otherwise sweet nature. History to +him was not history, it was real life; the rhythm and harmony of poetry +were what music is to the ardent music-lover. From childhood to old age he +was for ever crooning some favourite fragment of verse. With what delight, +then, he found himself crossing the threshold of a great poet’s mind; the +mind of one who did not, so to speak, keep his friends waiting in the +vestibule, but opened to them freely the palace chambers, rich with the +treasures of his knowledge, thought, and imagination.</p> + +<p>Those passages in my mother’s diary in which she speaks of the happiness +it gave my father and herself to make acquaintance with the Poet, and to +find him just what they would have wished him to be, have already appeared +in the Biography. Also her description of those evenings in the +Farringford drawing-room, so often recurring and through so many years, +when he would “talk of what was in his heart,” or read aloud some poem, +often yet unpublished, while they listened, looking out on the lovely +landscape and the glimpse of sea which, “framed in the dark-arched +bow-window,” seemed, like some beautiful picture, almost to form part of +the room.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>My father now bought a small estate between Yarmouth and Freshwater, and +built a house—Heathfield—upon it, in which to spend his holidays. The +Freshwater side of the Isle of Wight was not at that time a fashionable +neighbourhood. The lovely, lonely bays on the blue Solent, innocent of +lodging-house or bathing-machine, succeeded each other from Yarmouth to +the Needles. They were approached over open land, or by little stony +chines, deep in gorse and bracken, down which tiny streams trickled, to +spread themselves out shiningly on the sands and melt into the sea. I +remember my young mother killing a red adder in our chine with a +well-aimed stone, as we came up from our morning dip in the waves. There +was room for wild creatures and open country and for poetry then on the +little island. The islanders, smugglers from generation to generation, had +in them more of the wild creature than of poetry. Droll stories used to be +told of their inability to appreciate the honour done to Freshwater by the +Poet’s residence there. But perhaps the days when his “greatness” was +measured by the man-servant test<a name='fna_47' id='fna_47' href='#f_47'><small>[47]</small></a> were more comfortable days for the +Bard than those when his movements were marked and followed through +telescopes.</p> + +<p>There was a constant coming and going between Heathfield and Farringford, +the children of each house being equally at home in the other. I see now +the long Farringford drawing-room, full of the green shade of a cedar tree +which grew near the great window, and the slight figure of Lady Tennyson +rising from the red sofa—it was a red room—and gliding towards my mother +with a smile upon her lips. She always wore a soft gray cashmere gown, and +it was always made in the same<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> simple fashion; much as dresses were worn +in the days of Cruikshank, only that the gathered skirt was longer and +less full than the skirts of Cruikshank’s ladies. Her silky auburn-brown +hair, partly hidden by lace lappets, was untouched with gray, and her +complexion kept its rose-leaf delicacy, just as her strong and cultivated +intellect kept its alertness, to the last days of her life. No sooner were +the greetings over than ten to one the door would open, and the Poet would +come slowly, softly, silently, into the room, dressed in an old-fashioned +black tail-coat, and fixing my mother with his distant short-sighted gaze. +One day, she being seated with her back to the cedar-green window, he +approached her with such extreme deference, and so solemn a courtesy, as +made her all amazed; until in a minute, with a flash of amusement, both +discovered that he had mistaken her for—the Queen. Still more surely one +or both of the long-haired, gray-tunicked boys would appear, less +silently; and away the children scampered to their endless play about the +rambling house and grounds. But even the children’s play was informed with +the vital interest of the two houses: the story of King Arthur and his +knights. The first “Idylls of the King” had appeared, and others were +appearing. It was a red-letter evening indeed when Poet and new poem were +ready for a reading, either in the little upstairs study, or in the +drawing-room, where dessert was always laid after dinner, and he sat at +the head of the round table in a high carved chair. Country life was in +those days very simple and dinners early, so that even young children +appeared with the dessert, and my mother’s description of those evenings +recalls very clearly some of the earliest of the pictures in memory’s +picture-book, as well as some later ones. I remember now a story of +Tennyson’s which tickled my childish sense of humour exceedingly, the +point of it lying in a bit of bad French, the badness of which I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> could +appreciate. My father had a vein of dry humour, which being akin to that +of the Poet, doubtless assisted to knit the bonds of friendship, since to +find the same thing humorous is almost essential to real intimacy. There +was between the two the natural give-and-take of friendship, and to the +warm appreciation given as well as received, Emily Tennyson’s letters bear +constant witness. “Mr. Bradley’s intellectual activity, so warmed by the +heart, is very good for my Ally,” she writes; and again: “I know you would +be pleased if you could hear Ally recur to his talks with Mr. Bradley, and +one particular talk about the Resurrection and [illegible]. It is +difficult to express admiration, so I won’t say any more, except God bless +you both.”</p> + +<p>My father was now in the full stress of his great work at Marlborough, and +spent his summer holidays for the most part in Switzerland, but Christmas +and Easter still often found us at Freshwater. In 1866 Tennyson’s eldest +son, Hallam, was sent to school at Marlborough. “I am not sending my son +to Marlborough—I am sending him to Bradley,” he said in reply to the +Queen’s question. On another occasion he said: “I am sending him to +Marlborough because Bradley is a friend of mine, and Stanley tells me that +Marlborough is the best school in England.” There followed three visits to +Marlborough during the four years longer that my father remained there. +The second one, when Lady Tennyson came with her husband, was brought +about by the severe illness of the cherished son, and lasted seven weeks. +At first the anxiety about the boy was too great to admit of pleasure +either to them or to my parents, to whom—especially to my mother—Hallam +was almost as a son of their own. But later, and during the Poet’s other +visits, there were walks and drives in Savernake forest, beautiful at all +seasons of the year, and over the windy spaces of the gray silent +downland, where “the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> chronicles of wasted Time” are written in worn and +mysterious hieroglyphs of stone, and fosse, and hillock. During the first +visit “The Victim” was written by him in the room called the green +dressing-room, looking out on the clipped yews and tall lime-circle of +Lady Hertford’s old garden. In summer-time he had great pleasure in the +peaceful beauty of Marlborough and its landscape, and also in the wealth +of flowers with which my mother surrounded herself in her house and +garden; for she was a great gardener before it became fashionable to be +so. In the drawing-room at the Lodge, masters and their wives—then all +young—and Sixth Form boys gathered around the Poet. At that time he had +for years been living a life apart from the crowd, and it must have been +an effort to him to project himself into this young and wholly strange +school society. But he did it gallantly and seemed happy among the young +people. There were science evenings and poetry evenings. That is, there +were evenings when masters interested in science exhibited the wonders of +the microscope, and evenings when Tennyson read aloud his own poetry or +Hood’s comic verses. I remember well being allowed to stay up to hear him +read “Guinevere” to the Upper Sixth Form. He had a great deep voice like +the booming of waves in a sea-cave, and although the situation in the poem +was not one to appeal to a child, yet his reading of the farewell of +Arthur to Guinevere affected me so much that I crawled into a corner and +wept two pocket-handkerchiefs full of tears.</p> + +<p>During this visit Tennyson, who suffered sometimes from nervous +depression, said more than once that he envied my father’s life of active +and incessant goodness. In the man who at the height of his fame could +experience and express such a feeling, there was still something of the +heart of a good child—its simplicity, its humility, its “wanting to be +good.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>In June 1867, Aldworth—called at first Greenhill—appears in the letters. +Emily Tennyson writes to my mother: “We have agreed to buy thirty-five<a name='fna_48' id='fna_48' href='#f_48'><small>[48]</small></a> +acres of beautifully situated land. It is a ledge on a hill nearly 1000 +feet high, all copse and foxgloves almost, and a steep descent of wood and +field below; the ledge looking over an immense plain, and backed by a hill +slightly higher than itself.” I quote what follows because it shows how +simple had been the Freshwater life. “The order is gone for a small +sociable landau. This seems so luxurious that I am afraid I am perversely +more ready to cry than to laugh over it.”</p> + +<p>Aldworth was meant to be a small house, but somehow it grew to be a large +one. The Tennysons’ own design for it was followed in the main by Mr. +(afterwards Sir James) Knowles. The winds and rains of the great height +have weathered stone and slate until the house and the balustrade of its +wide terrace seem to have stood there two centuries, rather than not yet +half of one. The planting of the Italian cypresses along the edge of the +terrace was the Poet’s own particular fancy. It is strange that they +should have grown so grandly on this exposed English hill-side. The +darkness of their foliage, the severity of their lines, put an accent on +the visionary beauty of the immense view which lies spread below and +beyond them. There is the Sussex Weald, so far down that its hills and +dales appear one plain, the range of the South Downs, rising yonder to +Chanctonbury Ring, dropping nearer to a chalky gap which lets in the +distant glitter of the sea. Hindhead, the Surrey ranges, Windsor +Forest—the list grows too long of all that may be seen from Aldworth +terrace, and from the heathy height above, whence seven counties are said +to be visible. For my part, when looking from such heights, over the great +everlasting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> marriage festivals of Earth and Sky, it is with difficulty, +almost with reluctance, that I bring myself to connect them with the map.</p> + +<p>All things grow with a peculiar luxuriance on Black Down, and the +immediate surroundings of the house were beautiful from the first, though +the garden with its flowers and trees has added a beauty to those natural +ones. The Sussex country was lonely forty years ago, and the Poet could +pace his heathery ridge, brooding upon his verse, untroubled by any risk +of human intrusion.</p> + +<p>My parents and their family came to know and love this new home as well as +the old one at Freshwater, and although it represents a later stage of +Tennyson’s life, the interest of the house is almost as great. The fine +Laurence portrait is there, besides the admirable Watts portrait of the +Poet’s wife, and that of his sons as boys. And many other pictures and +things of interest and value have accumulated within its walls.</p> + +<p>In his old age a change, easily understood, came over the old Bard. He +lost his shyness of “the crowd,” and seemed thoroughly to enjoy his +glimpses of London society. He never visited us at Oxford, but when my +father succeeded Dean Stanley at Westminster, my parents once more enjoyed +some delightful visits from him. He was there in company with his eldest +son and his daughter-in-law, on the occasion of his taking his seat in the +House of Peers. Then and at other times there were memorable meetings of +great men—Gladstone and others—with the Poet, in the fitting frame of +the ancient Deanery.</p> + +<p>My mother writes of Tennyson in 1888, after thirty-three years of +friendship, “he grows more and more unselfish and thoughtful for others.” +She noted how the self-absorption and melancholy of his earlier years +passed away in the calm sunshine of his old age.</p> + +<p>The passing years had brought changes to others.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> The brilliant little +scholar with the tongue which had once held in check the boldest offender +against the laws of God or the Latin Grammar—although it never smote to +defend or advance himself—had ripened into the constant peacemaker; one +of the gentlest and humblest of that little band, who really walk in the +footsteps of their Master Christ, and make those footsteps clearer for +ever to all whose privilege it has been to live in their intimacy.</p> + +<p>At length the day came when, full of years and honours, the famous singer, +the Great Voice of Victorian England, lay silenced in the solemn shade of +Westminster Abbey, with the clamour of London about him instead of the +roar of his sea. It was his old friend, he who had walked and talked with +him those long hours of the summer day and night thirty-seven years +before, who pronounced the last blessing above his grave. And now that +friend also sleeps, as it were, in the next room.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p> +<h2>NOTES ON CHARACTERISTICS OF TENNYSON</h2> +<p class="center">By the late <span class="smcap">Master of Balliol (Professor Jowett)</span></p> + + +<p>Absolute truthfulness, absolutely himself, never played tricks.</p> + +<p>Never got himself puffed in the newspapers.</p> + +<p>A friend of liberty and truth.</p> + +<p>Extraordinary vitality.</p> + +<p>Great common sense and a strong will.</p> + +<p>The instinct of common sense at the bottom of all he did.</p> + +<p>Not a man of the world (in the ordinary sense) but a man who had the +greatest insight into the world, and often in a word or a sentence would +flash a light.</p> + +<p>Intensely needed sympathy.</p> + +<p>A great and deep strength.</p> + +<p>He mastered circumstances, but he was also partly mastered by them, <i>e.g.</i> +the old calamity of the disinheritance of his father and his treatment by +rogues in the days of his youth.</p> + +<p>Very fair towards other poets, including those who were not popular, such +as Crabbe.</p> + +<p>He had the high-bred manners not only of a gentleman but of a great man.</p> + +<p>He would have wished that, like Shakespeare, his life might be unknown to +posterity.</p> + + +<p> <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p> +<p class="center"><i>Conversation.</i></p> + +<p>In the commonest conversation he showed himself a man of genius. He had +abundance of fire, never talked poorly, never for effect. As Socrates +described Plato, “Like no one whom I ever knew before.”</p> + +<p>The three subjects of which he most often spoke were “God,” “Free-Will,” +and “Immortality,” yet always seeming to find an (apparent) contradiction +between the “imperfect world,” and “the perfect attributes of God.”</p> + +<p>Great charm of his ordinary conversation, sitting by a very ordinary +person and telling stories with the most high-bred courtesy, endless +stories, not too high or too low for ordinary conversation.</p> + +<p>The persons and incidents of his childhood very vivid to him, and the +Lincolnshire dialect and the ways of life.</p> + +<p>Loved telling a good story, which he did admirably, and also hearing one.</p> + +<p>He told very accurately, almost in the same words, his old stories, +though, having a powerful memory, he was impatient of a friend who told +him a twice-repeated tale.</p> + +<p>His jests were very amusing.</p> + +<p>At good things he would sit laughing away—laughter often interrupted by +fits of sadness.</p> + +<p>His absolute sincerity, or habit of saying all things to all kinds of +persons.</p> + +<p>He ought always to have lived among gentlemen only.</p> + +<p>Of his early friends (after Arthur Hallam) FitzGerald, Spedding, Sir John +Simeon, Lushington—A. T. was enthusiastic about them.</p> + +<p>Spedding very gifted and single-minded. He spent his life in defending the +character of Bacon.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p> +<h2>TENNYSON, CLOUGH, AND THE CLASSICS</h2> +<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">Henry Graham Dakyns</span></p> + + +<p>You ask me to write a little paper for you on my reminiscences of +Farringford, the Pyrenees, and, later, Aldworth; and, although I am still +beset by something of the old horror of biography which so obsessed me +when I had the chance that I religiously abstained from taking notes at +the time, I cannot refuse the opportunity you offer me of having my say +also about your father and mother, and certain others whose friendship was +and is so precious to me in its affection, and their image ineffaceable. +To your cairn of memories I wish to add my pebble. I might seem lacking in +affection otherwise, and that would be to do myself an injustice, and +yourselves, your father and mother, an injury, that of seeming insensible +to their true worth. <i>Semper ego auditor tantum? Nunquamne reponam?</i></p> + +<p>This then is, if somewhat meagre, a faithful record of what I recollect. +To avoid repetition and for reverence’ sake, I shall speak of Lord and +Lady Tennyson as Him and Her, and of yourselves, my two pupils, by your +names. If I have occasion to mention myself (your old tutor), I will use +the symbol Δ, the first letter of Δακυνίδιον, which, +being interpreted, is “Little Dakyns,” by which name your father spoke of +me, at least on one occasion.</p> + + +<p> </p> +<div class="bbox" style="width: 396px; height: 500px;"><img src="images/img09.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Tennyson and his two Sons.</span> By Julia Margaret Cameron.</p> +<p> </p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p> +<p class="center"><i>My first Introduction to her and the two Boys, and presently to him, at +Farringford, March (?) 1861</i></p> + +<p>I shall never forget the beauty of the scene—I wish I could actualize +it—and it was accompanied by what appealed not only to the eye, but to +the heart, a mysterious sense of at-homeness. Your mother, as I think I +have often told you, was seated half-reclining on the sofa which stood +with its back to the window, with that wonderful view of capes and sea +beyond. And you two stood leaning against her, one on either side. She +was, and always remained, supremely beautiful, not only in feature and the +bodily frame, but still more from the look in her eyes, the motion of her +lips, and the deep clear music of her voice. Such a combination of grace +and dignity with simplicity and frankness and friendliness of accost as +never was. Such gentle trustfulness and sincerity of welcome as must have +won a less susceptible heart than that of the diffidently intrusive +παιδαγωγὸς Δ. I thought she must be a queen who had stept down +from mediæval days into these more prosaic times which she ennobled. And +the two Boys. If I cannot speak about them to you, you will guess the +reason. But for the benefit of a younger generation, I appeal to the +portraits of her by Watts (now at Aldworth), and of Hallam and +Lionel—surely among the best he ever painted—which are given in your +father’s <i>Memoir</i> (vol. i. facing p. 330 and p. 370).</p> + +<p>And then he came in, a truly awful<a name='fna_49' id='fna_49' href='#f_49'><small>[49]</small></a> moment, but in an instant of time +he too had not only banished the nervousness of Δ, but won his +heart. His welcome resembled hers in its sincerity. And even if I had been +ten times more nervous than I was, and awe-stricken<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> I was, no doubt, +something set me at my ease at once. Of his look and manner I find it not +only hard, but absurd to attempt to speak. He must have been at that date +somewhat over fifty. I was twenty-three, not quite thirty years +younger.<a name='fna_50' id='fna_50' href='#f_50'><small>[50]</small></a> His figure, so well known in the photographs of the time, was +imposing, and it was awe-inspiring to be in the presence of the great Poet +we had hero-worshipped in our youth (though he, I think, was not the only +divinity in our Pantheon, there was Clough also—Browning at that date had +not appeared). But even so formidable as he was on these grounds, the +humanity of the man, and what I came to regard as the most abiding, +perhaps the deepest-seated, characteristic, his eternal youthfulness, +acted as a spell, and timidity melted into affection. I can still feel his +hand-grip, soft at once and large and strong, as he stood there peering +down on the relatively small mortal before him—so sane, and warm, and +trustful.</p> + +<p>As to his so-called gruffness of manner, I will speak about that later on, +but I want at once to make clear a certain quality of mind which I believe +helped things, so that he was not troubled by the presence of a stranger, +either then or when Δ was no longer a stranger, ever afterwards. +I suppose if there had been any occasion for comparing notes he might have +discovered much to object to in my attitude to the universe, especially +during my turbulent youth, but we had much in common, he in his great +grand way illimitably, and I in my tentative fashion diminutively. The +quality I refer to as a bond was a heartfelt detestation on Δ’s +part of what I venture to call the pseudo-biographic mania. The notion of +collecting tiny pinhead facts, or words actually spoken <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>but separated +from their context: the idea of collecting these and calling the result +biography I loathed. So when I found, as I did at once, that the great +man, the poet, and the equally great woman his wife, held similar views, I +applauded myself and became more and more rigidly unbiographic. Of course, +I see now that Δ was possibly over-scrupulous. Instead of +depending on mere recollection, how much more sensible, and not a whit the +less reverential, it would have been to have taken down at many a +conversation some catchword of what he said, and his remarks were apt to +be as incisive as they were laconic. And the Poet’s fore-ordained +biographer would have blessed the inspiration. Would Tennyson himself have +been equally pleased? I am not so sure. But what he really deprecated was +after all only the vulgar tales of the spurious biographer. “In life the +owls—at death the ghouls.”</p> + +<p>With this apology I come to some among the dicta current in my time. I +think it was the first night I happened to use the word “knowledge,” +pronouncing it as I had been brought up to do with the ō long, +whereupon he complimented me.<a name='fna_51' id='fna_51' href='#f_51'><small>[51]</small></a> “You say ‘knōwledge,’” and explained +that “knŏwledge” to rhyme with “college” was the only permissible +exception. I felt pleased with my domestic training. Then he went on to +denounce a solecism, the use of “like” with a verb, “like he did,” instead +of “as he did,” and humorously he begged me to correct any one guilty of +such barbarism, a pledge I undertook, and acted up to, correcting speakers +right and left till it came to the superior clergy, bishops, and so forth, +in the pulpit; then I desisted....</p> + +<p>But to proceed. Apropos of Voltaire saying that to listen to English +people talking was to overhear the hissing of serpents, he commented, “and +to listen to German was to overhear <i>k’s</i> like the scrunching of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>egg-shells.” He had two or three pithy sayings, which came straight home +to me and became part of my mental furniture, so much so that I have at +times given myself the credit of innovating them. One of these was that +the defect of most people—not critics only, but others, <i>la foule</i> in +general—is “to impute themselves.” I felt this to be at the root of the +matter, a profound if humorous extension of the wise man’s saw, πάντων μέτρον +ἄνθρωπος. He said it often and most seriously. The other I +might call the “<i>elogium vatis</i>” <i>par excellence</i>. It took the form of a +caution against “mixing up things that differ,” and to this also among his +<i>sententiae</i> I assented <i>quod latius patet</i>. I think I once used it +incidentally to him, and he at once pulled me up. “That’s mine.” He +certainly did so when I asked him his own riddle: “My first’s a kind of +butter, my second’s a kind of liquor, and my whole’s a kind of charger.” +Answer: “Ramrod.” And he exclaimed, “That’s my riddle.”<a name='fna_52' id='fna_52' href='#f_52'><small>[52]</small></a> Then there is +the old story how the Englishman, wishing to direct the <i>garçon</i> not to +let the fire go out, gently growled, “Ne permettez pas sortir le fou,” +whereupon the <i>garçon</i> locks up the other Englishman. I think it was +brought up by Frank Lushington as now told against the Poet, and Tennyson +gave us the correct version; originally he had invented it himself of +Edmund Lushington when they were in Paris, chaffing his friend’s French. +But it was a case of biter bit. In the vulgar version I find the Poet with +his long hair is made to play the part of the <i>fou</i>. Thus far these +trifles. I come to <i>memorabilia</i> more precious to me and of larger import. +I will head the section</p> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="center"><i>Tennyson and the Classics, English and Other</i>,</p> + +<p>and it is what you asked for. And let me make two preliminary remarks. In +reference to the defect of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>self-imputation above mentioned, I wish to +point out to any, consciously or unconsciously, critically minded person, +that the striking thing to me was the wide sympathy, the catholicity of +the Poet’s mind, his width of view. Thus he—I will not use the word +“displayed,” as if it were an external habit of any sort—but simply and +naturally he had ingrained in him the greatest generosity in his feeling +for, in his criticism of, contemporary authors. And this applies to his +appreciation of the great classical authors of the past. I do not say, of +course, that he had not his favourites, as we all have, especially, +perhaps, the smaller we are. For instance—and here other of his +contemporaries, Clough, Jowett, etc., would have borne him out—his +appreciation of Δ’s favourite poet Shelley was not so spontaneous +nor, I venture to think, so profound as, let us say, his appreciation of +Wordsworth (whom he also “criticized”<a name='fna_53' id='fna_53' href='#f_53'><small>[53]</small></a>) or Victor Hugo, or, to take an +opposite instance, his ready appreciation of Walt Whitman, or of Browning, +or possibly of Clough. But all this is admirably discussed in your +<i>Memoir</i>.<a name='fna_54' id='fna_54' href='#f_54'><small>[54]</small></a> I only wish to add my testimony, and I take as my text a +saying of his about Goethe, which I seem to recollect if I recollect +rightly: “In his smaller poems, <i>e.g.</i> those in <i>Wilhelm Meister</i>, Goethe +shows himself to be one of the great artists of the world. He is also a +great critic, yet he always said the best he could of an author. Good +critics are rarer than good authors” (cp. his own “And the critic’s rarer +still”).<a name='fna_55' id='fna_55' href='#f_55'><small>[55]</small></a></p> + +<p>And I must further premise that the samples given of quotations from the +Classics are from the particular ones he chanced upon—the artist in him, +perhaps, instinctively selecting—for the particular youth, and what he +needed, or because they fitted on to things on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> which his mind was working +at that date. Here, at all events, they are, or some of them. I omit +continual references to Shakespeare, to Dante, to Virgil, to Homer. He was +perpetually quoting Homer and Virgil, and to my mind there was nothing for +grandeur of sound like his pronunciation of Latin and Greek as he recited +whole passages or single lines in illustration of some point, of metre, +perhaps, or thought, or feeling; for instance, the line from Homer:</p> + +<p class="poem">βῆ δ᾽ ἀκέων παρὰ θῖνα +πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης,</p> + +<p>commenting on the possibility of pronouncing οι not in our +English fashion like <i>oy</i> in <i>boy</i>, but like the German <i>ö</i>—<i>o</i> of +“wood”—<i>phlösböo</i>—imitating the lisping whisper of the tideless +Mediterranean on a soft summer day. Then how he rolled out his Virgil, +giving first the thunder, then the wash of the sea in these lines:</p> + +<p class="poem">Fluctus ut in medio coepit quum albescere ponto<br /> +Longius, ex altoque sinum trahit; utque volutus<br /> +Ad terras immane sonat per saxa, neque ipso<br /> +Monte minor procumbit; at ima exaestuat unda<br /> +Verticibus, nigramque alte subiectat arenam.</p> + +<p>He used to say, “The Horatian alcaic is, perhaps, the stateliest metre +except the Virgilian hexameter at its best.”</p> + +<p>I take my samples in chance order. I suppose I knew my Catullus fairly +well before, but I am sure that, in a deeper sense, I learnt to know “the +tenderest of Roman poets” for the first time that day when he read to me +in that voice of his, with half-sad <i>Heiterkeit</i>, and with that refinement +of pronunciation which seemed—I am sure was—the right thing absolutely, +those well-known poems about his lady-love’s pet sparrow (translated +roughly here in case a reader should chance not to know Latin):</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="poem">Passer, deliciae meae puellae,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>Quicum ludere, quem in sinu tenere,<br /> +Cui primum digitum dare appetenti<br /> +Et acris solet incitare morsus,<br /> +Cum desiderio meo nitenti<br /> +Carum nescio quid libet iocari.<br /> +Credo ut, cum gravis acquiescet ardor,<br /> +Tecum ludere sicut ipsa possem<br /> +Et tristis animi levare curas!</p> + +<p>Sparrow, pet of my lady-love, with you she will play; she will hold +you in her bosom and give you her finger-tips to peck at, and tease to +quicken your sharp bite, when my shining heart’s desire is in the +humour for some darling jest. Doubtless, when the fever of passion +dies away she seeks to find some little solace<a name='fna_56' id='fna_56' href='#f_56'><small>[56]</small></a> for her pain. Oh, +if I could only play with you as she does, and so relieve the gloomy +sorrow of my soul!</p></div> + +<p>And then the tear-moving sequel in the minor:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="poem">Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque,<br /> +Et quantum est hominum venustiorum.<br /> +Passer mortuus est meae puellae,<br /> +Passer, deliciae meae puellae,<br /> +Quem plus illa oculis suis amabat;<br /> +Nam mellitus erat suamque norat<br /> +Ipsam tam bene quam puella matrem,<br /> +Nec sese a gremio illius movebat,<br /> +Sed circumsiliens modo huc modo illuc<br /> +Ad solam dominam usque pipillabat.<br /> +Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum<br /> +Illuc, unde negant redire quemquam.<br /> +At vobis male sit, malae tenebrae<br /> +Orci, quae omnia bella devoratis:<br /> +Tam bellum mihi passerem abstulistis.<br /> +Vae factum male! Vae miselle passer!<br /> +Tua nunc opera meae puellae<br /> +Flendo turgiduli rubent ocelli.</p> + +<p>Mourn, all ye Goddesses of Love, and all ye Cupids mourn: mourn, all +ye sons of men that know what love is. My lady’s sparrow is dead, +dead; her sparrow, my lady’s pet, whom she loved more than her own +eyes, for he was honey-sweet, and knew his own mistress as well as any +girl her mother; nor would he stir from his lady’s bosom, but hopping +about, now here, now there, he piped his little treble to her and her +alone. But now he goes along the darksome road, to that place whence +they say no one returns. Ah, my curse upon you! Cursed shades of +Orcus, that devour all things beautiful! So beautiful a sparrow have +ye taken from me! Alas for the ill deed done! Alas,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> poor little<a name='fna_57' id='fna_57' href='#f_57'><small>[57]</small></a> +sparrow! Now, because of you my lady’s dear eyes are swollen, they are +red with weeping.</p></div> + +<p>The tenderness of his voice when he came to the eleventh and twelfth +lines, and the measured outburst of passionate imprecation, come back +almost audibly. I wish I could reproduce the pathos. But in the poem he +next read to me, the tenderness of Catullus and his perfection of form +reach, I think, a climax. So I think he felt, he who so revived his manner +in “Frater Ave atque Vale,” and his reading gave me that impression. I +refer to the passionate poem:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="poem">Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,<br /> +Rumoresque senium severiorum<br /> +Omnes unius aestimemus assis.<br /> +Soles occidere et redire possunt:<br /> +Nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,<br /> +Nox est perpetua una dormienda.<a name='fna_58' id='fna_58' href='#f_58'><small>[58]</small></a><br /> +Da mi basia mille, deinde centum,<br /> +Dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,<br /> +Deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.<br /> +Dein, quum millia multa fecerimus,<br /> +Conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,<br /> +Aut nequis malus invidere possit,<br /> +Cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.</p> + +<p>Let us live, my Lesbia, live and love; and, as for the slanderous +tongues of greybeards, value them all at a farthing’s worth. Suns may +set and suns may rise again, but for us, when our short day has ended, +one long night comes, a night of sleep that knows no ending. Give me a +thousand kisses, then a hundred, and then another thousand and a +second hundred, and then once more a thousand and again a hundred, on +and on. And then, when we have made up many thousands, we will +overturn the reckoning that we may not know the number, nor any +villain cast an evil eye on us, though he discover all that huge +amount of kisses.</p></div> + +<p>Can’t you overhear his voice? <i>Conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus</i>, deep-toned +and fast, like a pent-up stream in spate, bursting its barriers, till the +tale is told.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>Two other poems of Catullus I must mention. The first of these he had much +on his mind, for he was just then in the mood for experiments on metre, +and the famous poem “Boädicea” was, I think, the first of these,<a name='fna_59' id='fna_59' href='#f_59'><small>[59]</small></a> +echoing the galliambics of Catullus in the “Attis”:</p> + +<p class="poem">Super alta vectus Attis celeri rate maria.</p> + +<p>How far his own metre corresponds to Catullus’ is a question for experts +like Bridges, Mayor, R. C. Trevelyan, etc., to determine, but I heard him +more than once read first the Attis poem and then his “Boädicea,” and I +thought at the time there was an extraordinary resemblance in rhythm. He +wished that the “Boädicea” were musically annotated, so that it might be +read with proper quantity and pace.</p> + +<p>The last of the Catullus poems I want to refer to he never read to me as a +whole. It is the lovely Epithalamium in honour of Junia and Manlius, +calling on Hymenaeus to attend and bless the marriage:</p> + +<p class="poem">Collis o Heliconii<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cultor, Uraniae genus,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Qui rapis teneram ad virum</span><br /> +Virginem, o Hymenaee Hymen,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">O Hymen Hymenaee!</span><br /> +<br /> +Dweller on the mount of Helicon,<br /> +Seed of the Heavenly One,<br /> +Thou that bearest off the tender maiden to her bridegroom,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">O Hymenaean Hymen,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">O Hymen Hymenaean!</span></p> + +<p>I do not know if he ever read it as a whole to any one. It would have been +splendid to hear, but towards the end of the long poem, where the poet, +like Spenser, prays, “Send us the timely fruit of this same marriage +night,” comes a verse he was very fond of quoting, and in particular the +third line:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p> +<p class="poem">Torquatus volo parvulus<br /> +Matris a gremio suae<br /> +Porrigens teneras manus<br /> +Dulce rideat ad patrem<br /> +Semhiante labello.</p> + +<p>I want a baby-boy Torquatus to stretch out his little hands from his +mother’s lap, and sweetly to smile upon his father with half-opened +lips.</p></div> + +<p>These, I think, were the most remarkable of the Catullus poems he showed +me, though of course there were others. I come now to the kindred Greek +genius, who had a special fascination for him, the poetess Sappho. He +loved her Sapphics, and greatly disliked the Sapphics of Horace, “with +their little tightly curled pigtails.” I believe I owe it to him that I am +a worshipper of that most marvellous muse of Sappho....</p> + +<p> </p> +<div class="blockquot"><p>[<span class="smcap">Editorial Note.</span>—Unhappily Mr. Dakyns never completed his paper. For, +while still engaged on it, he died suddenly, June 21, 1911. A friend, +Miss F. M. Stawell, has added the following notes from recollections +of what Mr. Dakyns said or wrote to her on the subject.]</p></div> + +<p>Mr. Dakyns’s manuscript breaks off abruptly, but he left some headings for +what he intended to write: Sappho, Goethe, Béranger, Walt Whitman, Victor +Hugo, Life at Farringford, The French Tour and Clough, Clough and the +Pyrenees. I think he would have quoted first from Sappho the lines +beginning:</p> + +<p class="poem">οἷον τὸ γλυκυμᾶλον ἐρεύθεται +ἀκρῷ ἐπ᾽ ὐσδῷ<br /> +<br /> +Like the sweet apple that reddens upon the topmost bough,</p> + +<p>for he loved the passage, and the book was left open at this page.</p> + +<p>No doubt he would have gone on to quote others that were favourites both +with the Poet and with himself. Such as the heart-sick cry of love:</p> + +<p class="poem">δέδυκε μὲν ἁ σελάννα<br /> +καὶ Πληιάδες, μέσαι δὲ<br /> +νύκτες, παρὰ δ᾽ ἔρχετ᾽ ὥρα,<br /> +ἐγὼ δὲ μόνα καθεύδω.<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span><br /> +The moon has set, the Pleiades have gone;<br /> +Midnight! The hour has past, and I<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Sleep here alone.</span></p> + +<p>Or again:</p> + +<p class="poem">γλυκεῖα μᾶτερ, οὔτοι δύναμαι +κρέκην τὸν ἱστόν,<br /> +πόθῳ δαμεῖσα παιδὸς +βραδινὰν δι᾽ ᾽Αφροδίταν<br /> +<br /> +Dear mother mine, I cannot weave my web—<br /> +My heart is sick with longing for my dear,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Through Aphrodite fair.</span></p> + +<p>And he would probably have included that longer poem of passion which has +been the wonder of the world, that invocation to</p> + +<p class="poem">Starry-throned, immortal Aphrodite.<br /> +<br /> +ποικιλόθρον᾽, ἀθάνατ᾽ +᾽Αφροδίτα.</p> + +<p>Mr. Dakyns did not tell me himself what he had learnt of Simonides from +Tennyson, but Tennyson quoted the following poems to his eldest son, +Hallam. The sad, comforting, beautiful chant of Danaë to her baby, afloat +on the waters, was quoted in one of Mr. Dakyns’s last letters to me, when +his mind was full of his unfinished article. He wrote: “Isn’t that lovely +and tear-drawing? true and tender and sempiternal?” And then he copied out +the whole song, in case I should chance not to have the text at hand, with +J. A. Symonds’s translation beside it:</p> + +<p class="poem">ὅτε λάρνακι ἐν δαιδαλέᾳ<br /> + +ἄνεμός τέ μιν πνέων +κινηθεῖσά τε λίμνα<br /> + +δείματι ἤριπεν, οὔτ᾽ +ἀδιάντοισι παρειαῖς,<br /> + +ἀμφί τε Περσέϊ βάλλε +φίλην χεῖρα,<br /> + +εἶπέ τ᾽· ὦ τέκος, οἷον ἔχω πόνον.<br /> + +σὺ δ᾽ ἀωτεῖς, γαλαθηνῷ +τ᾽ ἤτορι κνώσσεις ἐν ἀτερπεῖ<br /> + +δούρατι χαλκεογόμθῳ,<br /> + +νυκτὶ ἀλαμπεῖ κυανέῳ τε +δνόφῳ σταλείς·<br /> + +ἅλμαν δ᾽ ὕπερθε τεᾶν +κομᾶν βαθειᾶν<br /> + +παριόντος κύματος οὐκ ἀλέγεις,<br /> + +οὐδ᾽ ἀνέμου φθόγγον,<br /> + +πορφυρέᾳ κείμενος ἐν +χλανίδι, καλὸν πρόσωπον.<br /> +<br /> + +εἰ δέ τοι δεινὸν τό γε δεινὸν ἦν,<br /> + +καί κεν ἐμῶν ῥημάτων λεπτὸν +ὑπεῖχες οὖας.<br /> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>κέλομαι δ᾽, +εὗδε βρέφος, εὑδέτω δὲ πόντος,<br /> + +εὑδέτω δ᾽ ἄμετρον κακόν·<br /> + +μεταιβολία δέ τις φανείη, +Ζεῦ πάτερ, ἐκ σέο·<br /> + +ὅτι δὲ θαρσάλεον ἔπος<br /> + +εὔχομαι νόσφιν δίκας, +συγγνῶθί μοι.<br /> +<br /> +When in the carven chest<br /> +The winds that blew and waves in wild unrest<br /> +Smote her with fear, she not with cheeks unwet<br /> +Her arms of love round Perseus set,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And said: “O child, what grief is mine!</span><br /> +But thou dost slumber, and thy baby breast<br /> +Is sunk in rest.<br /> +Here in the cheerless, brass-bound bark,<br /> +Tossed amid starless night and pitchy dark,<br /> +Nor dost thou heed the scudding brine<br /> +Of waves that wash above thy curls so deep,<br /> +Nor the shrill winds that sweep—<br /> +Lapped in thy purple robe’s embrace<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Fair little face!</span><br /> +<br /> +But if this dread were dreadful, too, to thee,<br /> +Then would’st thou lend thy listening ear to me;<br /> +Therefore I cry, Sleep, babe, and sea be still,<br /> +And slumber our unmeasured ill!<br /> +Oh, may some change of fate, sire Zeus, from Thee<br /> +Descend our woes to end!<br /> +But if this prayer, too overbold, offends<br /> +Thy justice,—yet be merciful to me.</p> + +<p>It was natural also that the heroic poems of Simonides should have +appealed to both men, and of special interest to know the delight that +Tennyson took in one of these, and perhaps because of the similarity shown +by his own splendid lines in the “Duke of Wellington” Ode:</p> + +<p class="poem">He, that ever following her commands,<br /> +On with toil of heart and knees and hands,<br /> +Thro’ the long gorge to the far light has won<br /> +His path upward, and prevail’d,<br /> +Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scaled<br /> +Are close upon the shining table-lands<br /> +To which our God Himself is moon and sun.<br /> +<br /> + +ἔστι τις λόγος<br /> + +τὰν ἀρέταν ναίειν δυσανβάτοις +ἐπὶ πέτραις·<br /> + +ἁγνὰν δέ μιν θεὰν +χῶρον ἁγνὸν ἀμφέπειν.<br /> + +οὐδὲ πάντων βλεφάροις +θνατῶν ἔσοπτος,<br /> + +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> +ῳ μὴ δακέθυμος ἱδρῶς<br /> + +ἔνδοθεν μόλῃ, ἵκῃ τ᾽ ἐς ἄκρον<br /> + +ἀνδρείας.<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">There is a tale</span><br /> +That Valour dwells above the craggy peaks<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Hard, hard to scale,</span><br /> +A goddess pure in a pure land, and none<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">May see her face,</span><br /> +Save those who by keen Toil and sweat have won<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">That highest place,</span><br /> +That goal of manhood.</p> + +<p>And with these heroic lines go the others on the men who fell at +Thermopylae:</p> + +<p class="poem">τῶν ἐν Θερμοπύλαις θανόντων<br /> + +εὐκλεὴς μὲν ἁ τύχα, +καλὸς δ᾽ ὁ πότμος,<br /> + +βωμὸς δ᾽ ὁ τάφος, πρὸ γόων +δὲ μνᾶστις, ὁ δ᾽ οἶκτος ἔπαινος·<br /> + +ἐντάφιον δὲ τοιοῦτον +οὔτ᾽ εὐρὼς<br /> + + +οὔθ᾽ ὁ πανδαμάτωρ +ἀμαυρώσει χρόνος.<br /> + +ἀνδρῶν ἀγαθῶν ὅδε σακὸς +οἰκέταν εὐδοξίαν<br /> + +‘Ελλάδος εἵλετο· +μαρτυρεῖ δὲ Λεωνίδας,<br /> + +ὁ Σπάρτας βασιλεύς, +ἀρετᾶς μέγαν λελοιπὼς<br /> + +κόσμον ἀέναόν τε κλέος.<br /> + +<br /> +Of those who fell at far Thermopylae,<br /> +Fair is the fate and high the destiny:<br /> +Their tomb an altar, memory for tears<br /> +And praise for lamentation through the years.<br /> +On such a monument comes no decay,<br /> +And Time that conquers all takes not away<br /> +Their greatness: for this holy Sepulchre<br /> +Of valiant men has called to dwell with her<br /> +The glory of all Greece. Bear witness, Sparta’s king,<br /> +Leonidas! thy ever-flowing spring<br /> +Of fame and the high beauty of thy deed!</p> + +<p>There is a kindred note echoing through the popular catch in praise of the +tyrannicides, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, one of the first bits of Greek +that Tennyson made his sons learn:</p> + +<p class="poem">ἐν μύρτου κλαδὶ τὸ +ξίφος φορήσω,<br /> + +ὥσπερ ‘Αρμόδιος καὶ +᾽Αριστογείτων,<br /> + +ὅτε τὸν τύραννον κτανέτην<br /> + +ἰσονόμους τ᾽ +᾽Αθήνας ἐποιησάτην.<br /> + +<br /> +In myrtle I wreathe my sword<br /> +As they wreathed it, the brave,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>Brave Harmodius, Aristogeiton,<br /> +When they slew the oppressor, the lord,<br /> +And to Athens her freedom gave.</p> + +<p>Mr. Dakyns must have rejoiced in a spirit that could feed boys on such +gallant stuff as this.</p> + +<p>From Goethe he would have selected the noble proem to Faust:</p> + +<p class="poem">Ihr naht Euch wieder, schwankende Gestalten,</p> + +<p>for there was a note among his papers to that effect.</p> + +<p>And there is one note about Béranger (written in a letter):</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>It was he too who introduced me to Béranger, <i>e.g.</i> “Le Roi d’Yvetot,” +and the refrain:</p> + +<p class="poem">Toute l’aristocratie à la lanterne!<a name='fna_60' id='fna_60' href='#f_60'><small>[60]</small></a></p> + +<p>And how <i>he</i> read it! Like the <i>Conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus</i> of +Catullus quoted above—with fire and fury, <i>tauriformis +Aufidus</i>-like—a refrain which, like the “Marseillaise,” stirred my +republican spirit νόσφιν δίκας, inordinately, I mean, and in +a monstrous cruel sort of way: but what <i>he</i> liked was the form and +force of the language, the pure art and horror of it, I imagine.</p></div> + +<p>Mr. Dakyns, in the short time I knew him, often spoke to me about +Tennyson, and always with stress on “the width of his humanity,” and how +he could appreciate works at which a smaller man might have been shocked; +how, for example, he sympathized with the inmost spirit of Hugo’s cry to +the awful vastness of God:</p> + +<p class="poem">Je sais que vous avez bien autre chose à faire<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Que de nous plaindre tous;</span></p> + +<p>saw nothing irreverent in it, as lesser critics have done; found in it +rather a fortifying quality against “the grief that saps the mind.” “I +wish you could have heard him read it,” he wrote afterwards, “in his +organ-voice.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> Once he said to me how much he had wanted Tennyson to write +the Ode on the Stars which was always floating before his mind: “He could +have done it, for he had the sense of vastness. And it would have been a +far finer work than the ‘Idylls of the King.’”</p> + +<p>Tennyson also, he told me, was the first man to tell him about Walt +Whitman, and the first passage he showed him was one of the most daring +Whitman ever wrote. On his side Whitman had a deep feeling for Tennyson +and used to write of him affectionately as “the Boss,” a touch that +pleased Mr. Dakyns greatly, for he admired and loved Walt. He gave me a +vivid impression of Tennyson’s large-heartedness in all kinds of ways: for +instance, his own opinions were always intensely democratic, and the +Tennysons sympathized rather with the old Whig and Unionist policy, but he +said it never made any difference or any jar between them. “I remember his +coming into my little study at the top of the house and finding me +absorbed in Shelley, and asking me what I was reading, and I was struck at +the time by the quiet satisfied way in which he took my answer, no cavil +or criticism, though I knew he did not feel about Shelley as I did.... I +don’t know how to give in writing the true impression of his dear genial +nature. It often came out in what might seem like roughnesses when they +were written down. He was very fond of Clough: and Clough at that time was +very taciturn—he was ill really, near his death—and I remember once at a +discussion on metre Clough would not say one word, and at last Tennyson +turned to him with affectionate impatience, quoting Shakespeare in his +deep, kindly voice, ‘Well, goodman Dull, what do <i>you</i> say?’ How can I put +that down? I can’t give the sweet humorous tone that made the charm of it. +And then people called him ‘gruff.’ His ‘gruffness’ only gripped one +closer.”</p> + +<p>Another time he told me with keen enjoyment of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> Tennyson’s discovering a +likeness to him in some drawing on the cover of the old <i>Cornhill</i>—I +think it was the figure of a lad ploughing—pointing to it like a child +and saying, “Little Dakyns.” He would speak with delight of Tennyson’s +humour, far deeper and wilder, he said, than most people would have +guessed, Rabelaisian even in the noble sense of the word, and always fresh +and pure.</p> + +<p>“I remember an instance of my own audacity,” he said, “at which I almost +shudder now. We were riding into a French town, it was the evening of a +fête, and the whole population seemed to be capering about with the most +preposterous antics. It struck a jarring note, and the Poet said to me, ‘I +can’t understand them, it’s enough to make one weep.’ Somehow I couldn’t +help answering—but can you imagine the audacity? I assure you I trembled +myself as I did so—‘Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean.’ And he +took it, he took it! He did indeed!”</p> + +<p>The memories of Clough also were very dear to Mr. Dakyns, and he said he +could never help regretting that he had not heard him read his last long +work, “In Mari Magno,” to the Poet. “Tennyson said to me afterwards, +‘Clough’s Muse has lost none of her power,’ and I couldn’t help feeling a +little hurt that I had not been asked to hear the reading: perhaps it was +vanity on my part.”</p> + +<p>Clough always came down to see them bathe. He was very fond of bathing +himself, but could not take part in it then on account of his health. “I +never feel the water go down my back now,” Mr. Dakyns said, “without +thinking of Clough.”</p> + +<p>But the sweetest of all the memories was, I think, the memory of the +valley at Cauteretz, sacred to Tennyson because of Arthur Hallam. I heard +Mr. Dakyns speak of that the first time he was at our house. My mother +chanced to ask him what he did after taking his degree,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> and he said, “I +was with the Tennysons as tutor to their boys, and we went to the +Pyrenees.” The name and something in his tone made me start. “Oh,” I said, +“were you with them at Cauteretz?” He turned to me with his smile, “Yes, I +was, and if I had not already a family motto of which I am very proud, I +should take for my legend ‘Dakyns isn’t a fool’” (the last phrase in a +gruffly tender voice). And then he told us: “There was a fairly large +party of us, the Tennysons, Clough, and myself, some walking and some +driving. Tennyson walked, and I being the young man of the company, was +the great man’s walking-stick. When we came to the valley—I knew it was a +sacred place—I dropped behind to let him go through it alone. Clough told +me afterwards I had done well. He had noticed it, and the Poet said—and +it was quite enough—‘Dakyns isn’t a fool!’”</p> + +<p>It was that evening that Tennyson wrote “All along the Valley.”</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p> +<h2>RECOLLECTIONS OF TENNYSON</h2> +<p class="center">By the Rev. <span class="smcap">H. Montagu Butler</span>, D.D., Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.</p> + + +<p>You have asked me to put on paper some recollections of the many happy +visits which it was my good fortune to pay to Farringford and Aldworth +between 1860 and 1890. I wish that I could respond to this kind request +more worthily; but the truth is, that, though I have always counted those +visits among the happiest events of my life, and though my memory of the +general impression left upon me on each occasion is perfectly clear, it is +not clear, but on the contrary most confused and hazy, as to any +particular incidents.</p> + +<p>Speaking first generally in the way of preface, I may say that it would be +difficult to exaggerate the hero-worship with which I regarded the great +Poet, ever since I was a boy. Before I went up to Trinity in 1851, he had +been the delight of my friends and myself at Harrow. And further, through +members of the Rawnsley family, I had heard much of his early days when +the Tennysons lived at Somersby.</p> + +<p>During my life at Trinity, from 1851 to 1855, and then, with long +intervals of absence, till the end of 1859, Coleridge and Wordsworth and +Tennyson, but especially Tennyson, were the three poets of the nineteenth +century who mainly commanded the reverence and stirred the enthusiasm of +the College friends with whom I lived. Robert Browning became a power +among them almost immediately after, but by that time I had gone back to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> +Harrow. Matthew Arnold and Clough and Kingsley also attracted us greatly +in their several ways, and of course Shelley and Keats, but Tennyson was +beyond a doubt our chief luminary. “In Memoriam” in particular, followed +by “Maud” and the first four “Idylls of the King,” was constantly on our +lips, and, I may truly say, in our hearts, in those happy hours.</p> + +<p>It was with these feelings, then, and these prepossessions that I was +prepared to make the acquaintance of the great Poet, should such an honour +ever be granted me. It came first, to the best of my recollection, when my +late brother-in-law, Francis Galton, and I were taking one of our +delightful walking trips or tramps in the Easter holidays. Galton used to +plan everything—district, hours, stopping-places, length of each day’s +march. One Easter—I forget which, but it must have been about 1859—was +devoted to the New Forest. From there we crossed over to the Isle of +Wight; and after visiting Shanklin and Bonchurch, we walked round to +Freshwater. To leave Freshwater without paying our homage to the Poet at +Farringford was impossible. Whether we had any definite introduction to +him, I cannot now remember, but we had reason to think that we should be +kindly received. My brother Arthur had lately been paying more than one +visit to that part of the Island, and had keenly enjoyed several long +walks with him. His report of these was not lost upon me.</p> + +<p>Galton had known intimately some of Tennyson’s friends, such as Sumner +Maine, W. G. Clark, Franklin Lushington, and specially “Harry” Hallam, +younger brother of Arthur. He was, I think, as full of hero-worship for +the Poet as I was myself. The fame which he has since won in connexion +with Science may make it difficult, even for his later friends, to +understand the passion—I can use no weaker word—which he then<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> cherished +for some branches of imaginative literature, in particular for Chaucer, +Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, and for at least three of Kingsley’s novels, +<i>Alton Locke</i>, <i>Yeast</i>, and <i>Westward Ho!</i> These we used in the course of +our Easter rambles to read out in the open air after an <i>al-fresco</i> lunch.</p> + +<p>Tennyson’s works were all very familiar to Galton. He had known them at +Cambridge as each came out, and had discussed them eagerly with admiring +friends, some of them first-rate critics. He delighted not only in the +subtlety and elevation and freedom of the thoughts, but also in the beauty +and perfection and melody of the expression.</p> + +<p>We went, as I have said, to call on the Poet. We went together with rather +beating hearts. He received us cordially as Trinity men, but unfortunately +I can remember no detail of any kind. I am not sure whether we were even +introduced to Mrs. Tennyson. All I remember is that we left the house +happy and exhilarated.</p> + +<p>But my real acquaintance with the Tennyson family dates from the end of +1861 and the early days of 1862. My first marriage had been on December +19, 1861, and a few days afterwards we came to Freshwater, and stayed at +the hotel close to the sea, where Dr. and Mrs. Vaughan had sometimes +stayed during his Harrow Mastership. It was then that we first met the +Granville Bradleys, destined to be our dear friends for life, and it was +in their company that we soon found ourselves most kindly welcomed guests +at Farringford.</p> + +<p>The two first incidents that I remember were the Poet showing us the proof +of his “Dedication of the Idylls,” and, at our request, reading out to us +“Enoch Arden.” The “Dedication” must have been composed almost immediately +after the death of the Prince Consort on December 14. He seemed himself +pleased with it. I thought at the time, and I have felt ever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> since, that +these lines rank high, not only among his other tributes of the same kind, +but in the literature of epitaphs generally. We felt it a proud privilege +to be allowed to stand at his side as he looked over the proof just +arrived by the post, and it led us of course to talk sympathetically of +the late Prince and the poor widowed Queen.</p> + +<p>Very soon after, the Bradleys and we dined at Farringford. The dinner hour +was, I think, as early as six, and then, after he had retreated to his +<i>sanctum</i> for a smoke, he would come down to the drawing-room, and read +aloud to his guests. On this occasion he read to us “Enoch Arden,” then +only in manuscript. I had before heard much of his peculiar manner of +reading, with its deep and often monotonous tones, varied with a sudden +lift of the voice as if into the air, at the end of a sentence or a +clause. It was, as always, a reading open to criticism on the score of +lack of variety, but my dear bride and I were in no mood to criticize. The +spell was upon us. Every note of his magnificent voice spoke of majesty or +tenderness or awe. It was, in plain words, a prodigious treat to have +heard him. We walked back through the winter darkness to our hotel, +conscious of having enjoyed a unique privilege.</p> + +<p>During this vacation I had, as often in after years, not a few walks with +him on the downs, leaving the Beacon on the left and going on to the +Needles. It was a walk of about two hours. It is here that my memory so +sadly fails me as to his talk. In tone it was friendly, manly, and +perfectly simple, without a touch of condescension. He seemed quite +unconscious that he was a great man, one of the first Englishmen of his +time, talking to one young and utterly obscure. Almost any subject +interested him, grave or gay. He would often talk of metres, Greek and +Latin; of attempts to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>translate Homer; of the weak points in the English +hexameter; or again of more serious topics, on which he had thought much +and felt strongly, such as the life after death, the so-called “Eternity +of Future Punishment,” the unreality of the world as known to the senses, +the grander Human Race, the “crowning race,” still to be born.</p> + +<p>Occasionally, not very often in these days, he would speak of his own +poems. Once, I remember, a few days after an examination of the sixth form +at Harrow, I told him that we had set for Greek Iambics the fine passage +in “Elaine,” where Lancelot says to Lavaine:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 7em;">... in me there dwells</span><br /> +No greatness, save it be some far-off touch<br /> +Of greatness to know well I am not great.<br /> +<i>There</i> is the man,</p> + +<p>pointing to King Arthur. “Yes,” he said in substance, “when I wrote that, +I was thinking of Wordsworth and myself.”</p> + +<p>I noticed that he never spoke of Wordsworth without marked reverence. +Obviously, with his exquisite ear for choice words and rhythm, he must +have been more sensitive than most men to the prosaic, bathetic side of +Wordsworth; but I never heard him say a word implying that he felt this, +whereas I <i>have</i> heard him qualify his admiration for Robert Browning’s +genius and his affection for his person by some allusion to the roughness +of his style. This, he thought, must lead to his being less read than he +deserved in years to come, and he evidently regretted it.</p> + +<p>It was in the period, roughly speaking, between 1862 and 1880 that I saw +most of him, for it was then our habit to make frequent visits to +Freshwater or Alum Bay, generally at Christmas, and we were always +received with the same cordial kindness. It was then that the long walks +and the readings of his poetry after<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> dinner continued as a kind of +institution, and never palled. Among the poems that he read out to us were +“Aylmer’s Field,” the “Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington,” parts +of “Maud,” “Guinevere,” “The Holy Grail,” “The Charge of the Light +Brigade,” “The Revenge,” “The Defence of Lucknow,” “In the Valley of +Cauteretz.” With regard to this beautiful poem I cannot help recalling an +amusing and most unexpected laugh. He had read the third and fourth lines +in his most sonorous tones:</p> + +<p class="poem">All along the valley, where thy waters flow,<br /> +I walked with one I loved two and thirty years ago;</p> + +<p>and then suddenly, changing his voice, he said gruffly, “A brute of a —— +has discovered that it was thirty-one years and not thirty-two. +Two-and-thirty is better than one-and-thirty years ago, isn’t it? But +perhaps I ought to alter it.”</p> + +<p>It was at this time that we used often to meet Mr. Jowett and also the +Poet’s great friend and admirer, the gifted Mrs. Cameron and her dignified +and gray-bearded husband, who looked like a grand Oriental Chief.</p> + +<p>One trifling incident occurs to me as I write, the Poet’s remarkable skill +at battledore. One duel with him in particular comes back to my mind, in +which I found it hard to hold my own. He was a very hard hitter. He did +not care merely to “keep up” long scores. He liked each bout to be a trial +of strength, and to aim the shuttlecock where it would be difficult for +his opponent to deal with it. In spite of his being short-sighted he +played a first-rate game. With the exception of my brother Arthur, I never +came upon so formidable an antagonist.</p> + +<p>But I must leave these earlier years, of which I cannot find any written +record, and pass on to the end of 1886, when, nearly four years after the +death of my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> dear wife and a year and a half after my leaving Harrow, I +was, to my great surprise, appointed Master of Trinity.</p> + +<p>On December 3 I was installed, and on December 13 I was invited to +Farringford, with the prospect of returning on the 16th to Davos Platz, +where I had left my invalid daughter. Of this short visit I find I have +made a few notes. The Poet was as cordial as ever. After dinner he took me +to his <i>sanctum</i>, and read me his new Jubilee Ode in Catullian metre, and +then “Locksley Hall Sixty Years After.” Next morning there came a letter +from Dr. W. H. Thompson’s executor containing an early poem of Tennyson’s +of 1826, and a Sonnet, once famous, complaining of defects in the College +system of his day:</p> + +<p class="poem">Therefore your Halls, your ancient Colleges,<br /> +Your portals statued with old kings and queens,<br /> +Your gardens, myriad-volumed libraries,<br /> +Wax-lighted chapels, and rich carven screens,<br /> +Your doctors, and your proctors, and your deans,<br /> +Shall not avail you, when the Day-beam sports<br /> +New-risen o’er awaken’d Albion. No!<br /> +Nor yet your solemn organ-pipes that blow<br /> +Melodious thunders thro’ your vacant courts<br /> +At noon and eve, because your manner sorts<br /> +Not with this age wherefrom ye stand apart,<br /> +Because the lips of little children preach<br /> +Against you, you that do profess to teach<br /> +And teach us nothing, feeding not the heart.</p> + +<p>About eleven o’clock the Poet took me out alone. We went first to +Freshwater Gate, where he said the “maddened scream of the sea” in “Maud” +had been first suggested to him. He talked of our late friend, Philip +Stanhope Worsley, the translator of the <i>Odyssey</i> and half of the <i>Iliad</i>, +who was living there a good many years ago, and whom I had met at his +table. He admired him much. He talked also, but I forget to what effect, +of “The Holy Grail” and the old Arthur myth, but before this we talked of +the Cambridge Sonnet just mentioned. “There was no <i>love</i>,” he said, “in +the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> system.” I understood him to mean that the dons, as a rule, were out +of sympathy with the young men. He spoke also of the bullying he had +undergone at his first school; how, when he was a new boy of only seven +and a half, he was sitting on the school steps crying and homesick. Up +came a big fellow, between seventeen and eighteen, and asked him roughly +who he was and what he was crying for, and then gave him a kick in the +wind! This experience had evidently rankled in his mind for more than +seventy years. Again, in April 1890, he told me the same story.</p> + +<p>But to return to our morning walk of December 14, 1886. Something led me +to speak of my favourite lines:</p> + +<p class="poem">The old order changeth, yielding place to new,<br /> +And God fulfils Himself in many ways,<br /> +Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.</p> + +<p>Spedding, it seems, and others had wanted him to alter the “one <i>good</i> +custom.” “I was thinking” he said, “of knighthood.” He went on to speak of +his “Experiments in Quantity,” and in particular of the Alcaic Ode to +Milton, beginning:</p> + +<p class="poem">O mighty-mouth’d inventor of harmonies.</p> + +<p>“I thought <i>that</i>,” he said, “a bit of a <i>tour de force</i>,” and surely he +was right there. He tilted a little at C. S. Calverley for demurring to</p> + +<p class="poem">God-gifted organ-voice of England.</p> + +<p>“I didn’t mean it to be like your</p> + +<p class="poem">‘September, October, November’;</p> + +<p>I was imitating, not Horace, but the original Greek Alcaic, though +Horace’s is perhaps the finest metre.” The two Latin metres which I have +more than once heard him admire were the Hexameter and the Alcaic.</p> + +<p>I find that in my Journal I wrote as regards this walk: “I wish I could +remember more. He was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> wholly <i>facilis</i>, and I never felt less afraid of +him or more reverent.” Perhaps I should add that during the walk he told +me an extraordinary number of ghost stories—a man appearing to several +people, and then vanishing before their eyes.</p> + +<p>After dinner that evening we went to his <i>sanctum</i> to hear him read the +last Act of the “Promise of May.” “Well, isn’t that tragic?” he naïvely +asked at one point, I think where Eva falls down dead.</p> + +<p>Next morning, I had to leave quite early for London. He just appeared at +the top of the stairs, and offered to come down to say good-bye, but I +would not let him. “I can remember little more of this delightful visit,” +so I wrote at the time. “He was full, as usual, of the public lies, and +the necessity of England being strong at sea.”</p> + +<p>I did not see him again till after my second marriage, which took place on +August 9, 1888. We paid a flying visit to Lambert’s Hotel, Freshwater, in +April 1889. Of this I have made only the scantiest record. Something led +us to speak of the famous line in the chorus of the <i>Agamemnon</i>:</p> + +<p class="poem">ὀμμάτων ἐν ἀχηνίαις.</p> + +<p>“So modern,” he remarked. He also spoke of the pathos of Euripides, and of +the grandeur of the “Passing of Oedipus” in the <i>Oedipus Coloneus</i>, and +<i>Theseus</i></p> + +<p class="poem">χεῖρ᾽ +ἀντέχοντα +κρατός.</p> + +<p>He referred again to lack of sympathy in his time between dons and +undergraduates. This seemed to be a memory often present to his mind.</p> + +<p>Our next visit was in March 1890, when, with my wife’s sister, we stayed +at Lambert’s Hotel. On Friday, March 28, we went to tea at Farringford, +and found him in his little sun-trap of a summer-house, the evening sun +playing full upon us, and bringing into perfect<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> beauty the green lawn, +the spreading trees, and the clumps of daffodils. He began by speaking of +himself as depressed, but soon smiled away all such symptoms, and made us +laugh with a story of the Duke of Wellington, when some prosy personage +addressed him with a flattering compliment. He always seemed to enjoy +anecdotes of the Great Duke. He was wearing a red cap which, in the +sunlight, became him well; but he said playfully that Lady Tennyson +disliked it as too suggestive of a “bonnet rouge.” Something, I forget +what, led to a reference to the well-known verse:</p> + +<p class="poem">Birds in the high Hall-garden<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When twilight was falling,</span><br /> +Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They were crying and calling.</span></p> + +<p>He once asked a rather gushing lady what sort of birds she supposed these +to be. “Nightingales,” was the rather sentimental answer. “Who ever heard +a nightingale say ‘Maud’?” was the somewhat stern reply. “They were rooks +of course.”</p> + +<p>My wife mentioned that she and her sister had been reading the “Idylls” of +late. “Do you mean <i>my</i> Īdylls,” he said; “I am glad you don’t call +them Ĭdylls.” We soon got talking of his recently published “Crossing +the Bar.” When asked what was the precise grammatical reference in the +third line of the verse:</p> + +<p class="poem">But such a tide as moving seems asleep,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Too full for sound and foam,</span><br /> +<i>When that which drew from out the boundless deep</i><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Turns again home,</span></p> + +<p>he answered rather emphatically, “I meant <i>both</i> human life<a name='fna_61' id='fna_61' href='#f_61'><small>[61]</small></a> <i>and</i> the +water.” He went on, “They say I write so slowly. Well, that poem came to +me in five minutes. Anyhow, under ten minutes.” Afterwards, when I had +some quiet talk with Lady Tennyson, she confirmed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> what he had implied as +to the rapidity with which he usually composed.</p> + +<p>At this point I shall do well to insert extracts from my dear wife’s +journal, describing a few incidents in what proved our last visit to +Farringford. It was at the end of January 1892, when the Poet, born on +August 6,<a name='fna_62' id='fna_62' href='#f_62'><small>[62]</small></a> 1809, was well on in his eighty-third year. She writes as +follows:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="center">VISIT TO FARRINGFORD, JANUARY 1892</p> +<p class="center">By Mrs. <span class="smcap">Montagu Butler</span></p> + +<p>On January 26 Montagu and I left our two small boys at Eton Villa, +Shanklin, to spend the night at Lambert’s Hotel, Freshwater. After +leaving our traps at the hotel we walked up to Farringford in time for +two o’clock lunch. I sat next the Poet at table, and had some talk +with him. He spoke of the metres of Horace, and said that he always +thought his Sapphics uninteresting and monotonous. “What a relief it +is,” he said, “when he <i>does</i> allow himself some irregularity, for +instance:</p> + +<p class="poem">Laurea donandus Apollinari.”</p> + +<p>On the other hand, he admired his Alcaics immensely. The discovery for +which he always hoped the most was of some further writings of Sappho +herself. He considered the metre beautiful under her treatment.</p> + +<p>Then we spoke of Schliemann, of whom I had just been reading in +Schuchardt’s book, and he said he had no faith in him. “How could a +great city have been built on a little ridge like that (meaning +Hissarlik)? Where would have been the room for Priam’s fifty sons and +fifty daughters?”</p> + +<p>He also thought the supposed identifications of topography absurd, and +preferred to believe that Homer’s descriptions were entirely +imaginary. When I said that I thought that a disappointing view, he +called me “a wretched localizer.” “They try to localize me too,” he +said. “There is one man wants to make out that I describe nothing I +have not seen.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> Also, with some irritation, of other accounts of +himself: “Full of lies, and —— made me tell a big one at the end.”</p> + +<p>Next day we walked up at about 12.20 to accompany him in his morning +walk. Montagu and he were in front, Hallam Tennyson and I behind. +Montagu tells me how he was indignant with Z. for charging him with +general plagiarism, in particular about Lactantius and other classics, +“of whom,” he said, “I haven’t read a word.” Also, of taking from +Sophocles, “whom I never read since I was a young man”; and of owing +his “moanings of the sea” to Horace’s <i>gementis litora Bospori</i>. Some +one charged him with having stolen the “In Memoriam” metre from some +very old poet of whom he had never heard. He said, in answer to +Montagu’s question, that the metres of both “Maurice” and “The Daisy” +were original. He had never written in the metre of Gray’s <i>Elegy</i>, +except epitaphs in Westminster Abbey. He admired the metre much, and +thought the poem immortal<a name='fna_63' id='fna_63' href='#f_63'><small>[63]</small></a>.</p> + +<p>Hartley Coleridge, he said, spoke of Pindar as the “Newmarket Poet.” +He thought the loss of his Dithyrambs most serious, judging from the +remaining fragment. He had from early boyhood been familiar with the +fact that Wolsey and Cromwell in <i>Henry VIII.</i> were by Fletcher, but +he felt absolutely certain that the description of the Field of the +Cloth of Gold was by Shakespeare’s own hand. He quoted it, as well as +several lines from Wolsey. When I said how glad I was he had written +about the Duke of Clarence, he said, “Yes, but I wouldn’t write an +Installation Ode for the Chancellor.”</p> + +<p>So far Montagu reported. After this we others came up, and the old +Poet and I walked home together.</p> + +<p>We spoke a little of our projected tour to Greece. He had never been +there, but would have greatly liked to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>go—in a private yacht—“but +they tell me an old man is safest at home, and I dare say it is true; +and I couldn’t stand the vermin!” I told him I was hoping to study +classical architecture a little before going out, and he said that he +thought, after all, Gothic architecture was finer than classic. “It is +like blank verse,” he said; “it will suit the humblest cottage and the +grandest cathedral. It has more mystery than the classic.” He thought +many of our cathedrals spoiled by their vile glass. He had been +disappointed, in his late visit to Cambridge, to notice that the +windows in King’s seemed to be losing their brilliancy and to look +dark.</p> + +<p>After we had been walking a few minutes in silence, he said to me, “Do +you see what the beauty is in the line,</p> + +<p class="poem">That all the Thrones are clouded by your loss?”—</p> + +<p>quoting from his still unpublished poem on the young Prince. I said I +thought it very beautiful; but he asked if I saw why he had used the +word <i>clouded</i> instead of <i>darkened</i> or another. “It makes you think +of a great mountain,” he explained. Then he spoke of the great +richness of the English language due to its double origin, the Norman +and Saxon words. How hard it would be for a foreigner to feel the +difference in the line</p> + +<p class="poem">An <i>infant</i> crying for the light,</p> + +<p>had the word <i>baby</i> been substituted, which would at once have made it +ridiculous. He told me that his lines “came to” him; he did not make +them up, but that, when they had come, he wrote them down, and looked +into them to see what they were like. This was very interesting, +especially as he had told Montagu, at Easter, 1890, that he had +composed “Crossing the Bar” in less than ten minutes.</p> + +<p>Then he said again, what I have heard him say before, that though a +poet is <i>born</i>, he will not be much of a poet if he is not <i>made</i> too. +Then he asked me if I was fond of Pindar. I am very glad that he +admires him greatly. He could not believe Paley’s theory that Pindar +is earlier than Homer. I vented my dislike of Paley’s horribly prosaic +translations in his notes on Aeschylus, and he said <i>he</i> had always +used Blomfield, he found his Glossary such a help.</p> + +<p>We were now indoors, and in a few minutes went in to luncheon. I was +again seated next him, and we had some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> more talk. He got upon the +subject of College life, and told me anecdotes of himself and his +friends, one very amusing one about Tom Taylor. During some vacation +Tom Taylor’s rooms were lent by the College authorities to a farmer, a +member of an Agricultural Society which they were entertaining. Taylor +knew this perfectly well; but in the middle of the night suddenly +entered the room, in a long traveller’s cloak and with a lantern in +his hand, “Pray, what are you doing in my room, sir, and in my bed?” +feigning great surprise and indignation. The poor old farmer tried to +explain that he was honoured by being the guest of the College, but +Taylor refused to be pacified; when suddenly, in the midst of their +altercation, enter Charles Spring Rice, brother of Stephen, +personating the Senior Dean, who forthwith laid forcible hands on Tom +Taylor. Thereupon ensued a regular scuffle, in which they both tumbled +on to the bed, and Tom Taylor got so much the worst of it that the +kindly agriculturist began to intercede, “Oh, please, Mr. Dean, don’t +be too hard on the young man!”</p> + +<p>Tennyson himself had been proctorized once or twice. Once, during the +first few days of his College life, he came out to receive a parcel by +a midnight mail. “Pray, sir, what are you doing at this time of +night?” said the Proctor. “And pray, sir, what business of yours is it +to ask me?” replied the Freshman, who in his innocence knew nothing +about the Proctor. He was told to call upon him next day, but then +explained his ignorance, and was let off.</p> + +<p>On one occasion a throng of University men outside the Senate House +had been yelling against Whewell. Tennyson was standing by the door of +Macmillan’s shop, and raised a counter-cry <i>for</i> Whewell. He was, +however, seen standing, and was sent for to Whewell. “I was surprised, +sir, to see <i>you</i> among that shouting mob the other day.” “I was +shouting <i>for</i> you,” was the reply. Whewell was greatly pleased, and +grunted his approbation.</p> + +<p>Another funny story. A wine-party was going on in Arthur Hallam’s +rooms in the New Court, when enter angrily the Senior Dean, “Tommy +Thorp.” “What is the meaning, Mr. Hallam, of all this noise?” “I am +very sorry, sir,” said Hallam, “we had no idea we were making a +noise.” “Well, gentlemen, if you’ll all come down into the Court, +you’ll <i>hear</i> what a noise you’re making.” “Perhaps,” admits Tennyson, +“I may have put in the <i>all</i>.”</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>So ends my wife’s short journal, and it only remains for me to sum up very +briefly the impressions left upon me, after a lapse of fifty, forty, +thirty, twenty years, by these visits to Farringford which once made so +large a part of my interest and my happiness.</p> + +<p>Little as I am able to put these impressions into words, I can say with +truth that no personality with which I have ever come in close touch, +either seemed to me at the time, or has seemed in later recollection, to +cover so large, so rich, and so diverse a field for veneration, wonder, +and regard.</p> + +<p>Tennyson was, and is, to me the most remarkable man that I have ever met. +Often when I was with him, whether in long walks or in his study, and when +I came to think of him silently afterwards, I used to recall his own lines +on Wellington:</p> + +<p class="poem">Our greatest yet with least pretence...,<br /> +Rich in saving common-sense,<br /> +<i>And, as the greatest only are,<br /> +In his simplicity sublime</i>.</p> + +<p>Simple, natural, shrewd, humorous; feeling strongly on a vast variety of +subjects, and saying freely just what he felt; passing rapidly and easily +from the gravest matters of speculation or conduct to some trifling or +amusing incident of the moment, or some recollection of the years of his +youth; he seemed to me unconscious of being a great man, though he must +have known himself to be one of the foremost thinkers, and quite the +foremost poet of his day. He was wholly free from affectation. He was +never an actor of a part. There was about him always an atmosphere of +truth.</p> + +<p class="poem">Truth-teller was our Alfred named,</p> + +<p>was a line that again and again recurred to the memory as one heard him +speak out his mind either on men, or on politics, or on the deepest +mysteries of philosophy or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> religion. He was pre-eminently one of the +Children of Light. Of light, whether from science, or from literary +criticism, or from the progress of the human conscience, he hailed +thankfully and expectantly every fresh disclosure. There was a deep +reverence in him for the Unseen, the Undiscovered, the as yet Unrevealed. +This on the intellectual side; and on the moral side there was a manly, a +devout, and a tender veneration for purity and innocence and trustfulness, +and, to borrow his own stately words, written early in his life:</p> + +<p class="poem">Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control.</p> + +<p>I regret that I cannot convey more worthily what I have felt in the +presence of this great and truly noble man. To go to either of his +beautiful homes, to see him as the husband of his wife and the father of +his sons, was to me and mine for many years a true pilgrimage, both of the +mind and of the heart. That I was once able to feel this, and that I am +able to feel it gratefully even now, I count among the richer blessings of +a long and happy life.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p> +<h2>TENNYSON AND W. G. WARD AND OTHER FARRINGFORD FRIENDS</h2> +<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">Wilfrid Ward</span></p> + + +<p>Among Tennyson’s friends in his later years was my father—William George +Ward—who was his neighbour at Freshwater from 1870 to 1882. I have been +asked to contribute to the picture of “Tennyson and his Friends” some +account of their intercourse, and at the same time to set down some of the +extremely interesting comments on his own poems which I myself was +privileged yet later to hear from the Poet. I need not say that such an +act of piety in regard of two men for whom I have so deep a reverence is a +work of love, and I only regret that my recollections of what so well +deserves recording should be so imperfect and fragmentary.</p> + +<p>Tennyson’s friendship with my father began at a date considerably +subsequent to their first acquaintance. My father came rather unexpectedly +into the family property in the Isle of Wight in 1849 when his uncle died +without a son; but he did not desire to leave the house Pugin had built +for him in Hertfordshire, where he had settled immediately after he joined +the Catholic Church in 1845. He and the late Cardinal Vaughan were, in the +’fifties, doing a work for ecclesiastical education at St. Edmund’s +College, Ware—a work which came to my father naturally as the sequel to +his share in the Oxford Movement. Therefore, when Tennyson in 1853 came to +live in the Isle of Wight my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> father was an absentee. He tried in 1858 +for two years to live at his grandfather’s old home near Cowes, Northwood +Park, but his health broke down, and he returned to Hertfordshire. In the +’sixties, however, he used to pay long visits to Freshwater, in the +scenery of which he delighted; and, on one of these occasions, Tennyson +was introduced to him by their common friend, Dean Bradley. The meeting +was not, I think, a great success on either side. Later on, however, in +1870, when my father, despairing of the Cowes climate, built a house at +Freshwater, he was Tennyson’s near neighbour, and they soon became great +friends.</p> + +<p> </p> +<div class="bbox" style="width: 349px; height: 500px;"><img src="images/img10.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Arthur Tennyson.</span></p> +<p> </p> + +<p>Tennyson’s friendship with my father grew up from close neighbourhood, and +from the fact that they had so much more in common with each other than +with most of their other Isle of Wight neighbours. It was cemented by my +father’s devotion to Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Tennyson, who, in her +conversation, he always said, reminded him of the John Henry Newman of +Oxford days. Also they had many friends in common—such as Dean Stanley, +Lord Selborne, and Jowett—who often visited Freshwater. They were both +members of the Metaphysical Society, and loved to discuss in private +problems of religious faith which formed the subject of the Society’s +debates. They were also both great Shakespearians. But most of all they +were drawn together by a simplicity and directness of mind, in which, I +think, they had few rivals—if I may say of my own father what every one +else said. Nevertheless, their intimacy was almost as remarkable for +diversity of interests as for similarity. It might seem at first sight to +be a point of similarity between them that each revelled in his way in the +scenery of the beautiful island which was their home. Yet the love of +external nature was very different in the two men. It had that marked +contrast which Ruskin has described in his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> <i>Modern Painters</i>. Ruskin +contrasts three typical ways of being affected by what is beautiful. There +is first “the man who perceives rightly because he does not feel, and to +whom the primrose is very accurately the primrose because he does not love +it. Then, secondly, the man who perceives wrongly because he feels, and to +whom the primrose is anything else than a primrose—a star, or a sun, or a +fairy’s shield, or a forsaken maiden. And then lastly, there is the man +who perceives rightly in spite of his feelings, and to whom the primrose +is for ever nothing else than itself—a little flower apprehended in the +very plain and leafy fact of it, whatever and how many soever the +associations and passions may be that crowd around it.”</p> + +<p>My father’s imagination was of the second order, Tennyson’s of the third. +My father often perceived wrongly, or not at all, because he felt so +strongly. Consequently, while the bold outlines of mountain scenery and +the large vistas of sea and down in the Isle of Wight moved him greatly, +he did not look at them with the accurate eye of an artist; and the minute +beauty of flowers and trees was non-existent for him. Tennyson, on the +contrary, had the most delicate and true perception of the minute as well +as the great. Each man chose for his home a site which suited his taste. +Weston was on a high hill with a wide view. Farringford was lower down and +buried in trees. The two men used sometimes to walk together on the great +Down which stretches from the Needles rocks to Freshwater Bay, on which +the boundary between Tennyson’s property and my father’s is marked by the +dyke beyond the Tennyson memorial cross. At other times they walked in the +Freshwater lanes. And there was a suggestion in these different +surroundings of their sympathy and of their difference. The immense +expanse of scenery visible from the Beacon Down was equally inspiring to +both, but the lanes and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> fields which were full of inspiration to Tennyson +had nothing in them which appealed to W. G. Ward. If he heard a bird +singing, the only suggestion it conveyed to him was of a tiresome being +who kept him awake at night. Trees were only the unpleasant screens which +stood in the way of the view of the Solent from his house, and which he +cut down as fast as they grew up. To Tennyson, on the contrary—as we see +constantly in his poetry—there was a whole world of interest in Nature +created by his knowledge of botany and natural history, as well as by his +exceptionally accurate and observant eye.</p> + +<p>Let me quote the words of a great critic—the late Mr. Hutton—on this +characteristic of the Poet:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>No poet has so many and such accurate references to the vegetable +world, and yet at the same time references so thoroughly poetic. He +calls dark hair</p> + +<p class="poem">More black than ash-buds in the front of March;</p> + +<p>auburn hair,</p> + +<p class="poem">In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell<br /> +Divides three-fold to show the fruit within.</p> + +<p>He is never tired of reflecting in his poetry the physiology of +flowers and trees and buds. The “living smoke” of the yew is twice +commemorated in his poems. He tells us how the sunflower, “shining +fair,”</p> + +<p class="poem">Rays round with flames her disk of seed;</p> + +<p>observes on the blasts “that blow the poplars white”; and, to make a +long story short—for the list of instances might be multiplied to +hundreds—in his latest published “Idylls of the King,” he thus dates +an early hour in the night:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 9em;">Nigh upon that hour</span><br /> +When the lone hern forgets his melancholy,<br /> +<i>Lets down his other leg</i>, and, stretching, dreams<br /> +Of goodly supper in the distant pool.</p></div> + +<p>When Tennyson and W. G. Ward walked together<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> there was then a most +curious contrast in their attitude towards the Nature that surrounded +them,—Tennyson noting every bird, every flower, every tree, as he passed +it, Ward buried in the conversation, and alive only to the great, broad +effects in the surrounding country.</p> + +<p>W. G. Ward was himself not only no poet, but almost barbarously +indifferent to poetry, with some few exceptions. He was exceedingly frank +with Tennyson, and plainly intimated to him that there was very little in +his poetry that he understood or cared for. But this fact never impaired +their friendship. Indeed, I think Tennyson enjoyed his almost eccentric +candour in this and in other matters, and he used, in later years, to tell +me stories which illustrated it. Once when the question of persecution had +been debated at the Metaphysical Society he remarked to my father, “You +know you would try to get me put into prison if the Pope told you to.” +“Your father would not say ‘No,’” Tennyson said to me. “He only replied, +‘The Pope would never tell me to do anything so foolish.’”</p> + +<p>I think his intercourse with my father did a good deal to diminish a +certain prejudice against Roman Catholicism; and his intimacy with my +father’s chaplain—Father Haythornthwaite, a man as opposed to the popular +conception of a Jesuit as could well be imagined—told in the same +direction. “When Haythornthwaite dies,” Tennyson once said, “I shall write +as his epitaph: ‘Here lies Peter Haythornthwaite, Human by nature, Roman +by fate!’”</p> + +<p>W. G. Ward’s own extreme frankness led Tennyson to remark to a friend: +“The popular idea of Roman Catholics as Jesuitical and untruthful is +contrary to my own experience. The most truthful man I ever met was an +Ultramontane. He was grotesquely truthful.”</p> + +<p>Tennyson would sometimes retort in kind to my father’s frank criticisms, +and once, after vainly trying<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> to decipher one of his letters, observed +that the handwriting was “like walking-sticks gone mad,” a curiously true +description of my father’s very peculiar characters.<a name='fna_64' id='fna_64' href='#f_64'><small>[64]</small></a></p> + +<p>As with scenery, so with poetry; my father only took in broad effects and +simple pathos, and would single out for special admiration such a poem as +the “Children’s Hospital,” over which he shed many tears.</p> + +<p>Tennyson soon accustomed himself to my father’s indifference to his poetry +in general. But he hoped that, at all events, his metaphysical poems would +interest his neighbour, and sent him the MS. of “De Profundis” when he +wrote it; but the reply was only an entreaty that he would put explanatory +notes to it when it should be published. One exception, however, must be +made in favour of “Becket,” which Tennyson read aloud to Ward, who, +greatly to his own surprise, admired it enthusiastically. “How do you like +it?” Tennyson asked, and the reply was, “Very much, though I did not +expect to like it at all. It is quite splendid. The development of +character in Chancellor and Archbishop is wonderfully drawn. Where did you +learn it all?”</p> + +<p>I used to think there was a good deal that was alike between the +intercourse of Tennyson with my father and his intercourse with my +father’s old friend, Dr. Jowett of Balliol. In both cases there was the +same complete frankness—an unanswerable reply to those who gave it out +that Tennyson best enjoyed the society of flatterers. Jowett, however, +understood Tennyson’s poetry far better than my father did. It was +sometimes strange to see that impassive figure, so little given to +emotion, so ready to snub in others any display of feeling, under the +spell of the Poet’s lines. I recollect once at Farringford listening with +Jowett after dinner to Tennyson’s reading of his “Ode on the Death of the +Duke of Wellington.” It was a poem which his peculiar chant made most<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> +moving, and he read the concluding lines with special pathos:</p> + +<p class="poem">Speak no more of his renown,<br /> +Lay your earthly fancies down,<br /> +And in the vast cathedral leave him;<br /> +God accept him, Christ receive him.</p> + +<p>Tennyson then turned to address some observation to Jowett, but no reply +came, and we soon saw that the Master was unable to speak. The tears were +streaming down his cheeks. I ventured to allude to this some time later in +talking to Jowett, and he said, “What would you have? The two Englishmen +for whom I have the deepest feeling of reverence are Tennyson and the +great Duke of Wellington. And one of them was reading what he had himself +written in admiration of the other!”</p> + +<p>When my father died Tennyson visited his grave in company with Father +Haythornthwaite, who spoke to me of the visit directly afterwards. A cross +of fresh flowers had been placed on the grave until the monument should be +erected. Tennyson quoted Shirley’s couplet:</p> + +<p class="poem">Only the actions of the just<br /> +Smell sweet, and blossom in the dust.</p> + +<p>And then, standing over the grave, he recited the whole of the beautiful +poem from which these lines are taken. Tennyson’s eldest son wrote to me +at the same time:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>His wonderful simplicity in faith and nature, together with his subtle +and far-reaching grasp of intellect, make up a man never to be +forgotten. My father and mother and myself will miss him more than I +can say; I loved him somehow like an intimate college friend.</p></div> + +<p>A few years later Tennyson published the memorial lines in the volume +called <i>Demeter and other Poems</i>, which show how closely his observant +mind had taken in the character of his friend:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> +Farewell, whose living like I shall not find,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Whose Faith and Work were bells of full accord,</span><br /> +My friend, the most unworldly of mankind,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Most generous of all Ultramontanes, Ward,</span><br /> +How subtle at tierce and quart of mind with mind,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">How loyal in the following of thy Lord!</span></p> + +<p> </p> +<div class="bbox" style="width: 368px; height: 500px;"><img src="images/img11.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Horatio Tennyson.</span></p> +<p> </p> + +<p>Freshwater was in those days seething with intellectual life. The Poet +was, of course, its centre, and that remarkable woman, Mrs. Cameron, was +stage-manager of what was for us young people a great drama. For Tennyson +was still writing the “Idylls of the King,” which had so greatly moved the +whole country, and we felt that we were in the making of history. There +were many in Freshwater who were keenly alive to their privilege. Even +among the permanent residents in the neighbourhood there were not a few +who were worthy of remark, and Farringford was very hospitable and often +added to their number some of the most interesting people in England. Mrs. +Cameron herself was one of the well-known Miss Pattles, a sister of the +late Lady Somers and Lady Dalrymple. She was a great wit and a most +original and unconventional woman, with an enthusiasm for genius and for +art. Her large artistic photographs are a permanent record of the +remarkable people who congregated from time to time round the Poet’s home +in the island. They include Carlyle, Ruskin, Tyndall, Darwin, Lord +Dufferin, Palgrave, D. G. Rossetti, Holman Hunt, Lecky, Aubrey de Vere, +Sir Henry Taylor, Herschell, Longfellow, Auberon, Herbert, Pollock, +Allingham, and many another. Among other residents I would name the Rev. +Christopher Bowen, a man of very unusual ability, though he never had +enough ambition to become famous. His sons—Lord Justice Bowen and Mr. +Edward Bowen of Harrow—are better known. Then there were the Poet’s two +remarkable brothers, Horatio and Arthur Tennyson, and two fine old +admirals, Sir<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> Graham Hamond and Admiral Crozier. Then again from 1874 +onwards we had at the Briary G. F. Watts, and Mrs. Cameron’s sister, Mrs. +Prinsep and her husband, with Mr. Val Prinsep as an occasional guest. A +little earlier Sir John Simeon was still living at Swainston, and was one +of Tennyson’s most intimate friends. Again, Mrs. Grosvenor Hood and Mrs. +Brotherton were both people for whom literature and art counted for much.</p> + +<p>The large group of people who came to Freshwater in the summer for the +sole reason that Tennyson’s writings and himself were among the greatest +things in their lives, sometimes formed an almost unique society. Several +figures are especially prominent in my memory. One great friend of the +Tennysons’ was Sir Richard Jebb—intensely shy and intensely refined—with +whom, I may add, by the way, my first meeting at Haslemere was +unpromising. I got into the Tennysons’ large old-fashioned brougham to +drive to Aldworth on a dark night, and laid rough hands on what I took to +be a heap of rugs in the corner. I received in return a mild remonstrance +from the fellow-guest, of whose coat-collar I found myself possessed! +Jowett and Sir Alfred Lyall I often met at the Tennysons’ and elsewhere. +Each was in his way memorable, and congenial to the Poet’s taste, which +was fastidious owing to his very simplicity, to his love of reality and +dislike of affectation. The singular charm—both in person and in +conversation—of Samuel Henry Butcher, another great friend, stands out +vividly from the past. In addition to his brilliant gifts and acquirements +he was endowed in a remarkable degree with that justice of mind which +Tennyson so greatly prized. One used to feel for how much this counted in +the Poet’s mind when he talked of the “wisdom” of his old friend, James +Spedding. Henry Irving I once saw at Aldworth,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> though never at +Farringford, and it was curious to meet at close quarters one with whom I +had had for years the stranger’s intimacy which one has with a favourite +actor. But Irving was never an intimate friend of Tennyson’s, nor among +the typical figures of his circle. To my mind the friend of Tennyson’s +whose saintliness most completely had his sympathy was Aubrey de Vere, of +whom Sarah Coleridge said that he had more entirely a poet’s nature even +than her own father, or any other of the great poets she had known. Aubrey +de Vere’s simplicity and deep piety were as remarkable as his keen +perception and close knowledge on the subject which most interested +Tennyson himself. I wish I had seen more of the intercourse of two men +whose friendship was almost lifelong, and showed Tennyson at his very best +in conversation.</p> + +<p>Speaking generally, it was a society in which good breeding, literary +taste, general information, and personal distinction counted for much more +than worldly or official <i>status</i>. I think that we young people looked +upon a government official of average endowment as rather an outsider. +Genius was all in all for us—officialdom and conventionality in general +were unpopular in Freshwater.</p> + +<p>Indeed, how could conventionality obtain a footing in a society in which +Mrs. Cameron and Tennyson were the central figures? I recall Mrs. Cameron +pressing my father’s hand to her heart, and addressing him as “Squire +Ward.” I recall her, during her celebrated private theatricals at Dimbola, +when a distinguished audience tittered at some stage misadventure which +occurred during a tragic scene, mounting a chair and insisting loudly and +with angry gesticulation, “You must not laugh; you must cry.” I recall her +bringing Tennyson to my father’s house while she was photographing +representatives for the characters in the “Idylls of the King,” and +calling out directly she saw Cardinal Vaughan<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> (to whom she was a perfect +stranger), “Alfred, I have found Sir Lancelot.” Tennyson’s reply was, “I +want a face well worn with evil passion.”</p> + +<p>My own intercourse with the Poet was chiefly after my father’s death in +1882. Tennyson was then an old man who had passed his threescore years and +ten. His deeply serious mind brooded constantly on the prospect for the +future, and the meaning of human life, which was, for him, nearly over.</p> + +<p>There is much of autobiography in some of the poems of those years which +he discussed with me. I have elsewhere<a name='fna_65' id='fna_65' href='#f_65'><small>[65]</small></a> described his impressive +analysis of the “De Profundis.” I will here set down the substance of his +comments on two other poems dealing with his deep problems of human life, +the “Ancient Sage” and “Vastness.” “The Ancient Sage” is in form dramatic, +and the personality of the two interlocutors is a very important element +in it viewed as a work of art. An aged seer of high, ascetic life, a +thousand years before the birth of Christ, holds intercourse with a +younger man:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">that loved and honour’d him, and yet</span><br /> +Was no disciple, richly garb’d, but worn<br /> +From wasteful living...</p> + +<p>The younger man has set down his reflections on the philosophy of life in +a set of verses which the Ancient Sage reads, making his comments as the +reading proceeds. There seems to be a deep connection between the personal +characteristics of the two men—their habits and modes of living—and +their respective views. The younger man is wearied with satiety, impatient +for immediate pleasure:</p> + +<p class="poem">Yet wine and laughter, friends! and set<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The lamps alight, and call</span><br /> +For golden music, and forget<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The darkness of the pall.</span></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>He is dismayed by the first appearance of difficulty and pain in the +world, as he had been satisfied for a time with the immediate pleasures +within his reach. He is unable to steady the nerve of his brain (so to +speak), and trace the riddle of pain and trouble in the universe to its +ultimate solution. In thought, as in conduct, he is filled and swayed by +the immediate inclination and the first impression, without self-restraint +and without the habits of concentrated reflection which go hand in hand +with self-restraint. Failing, in consequence, to have any steady view of +his own soul or of the spiritual life within, he is impressed, probably by +experience, with this one truth, that uncontrolled self-indulgence leads +to regret and pain; and he is consequently pessimistic in his ultimate +view of things. The absence of spiritual light makes him see only the +immediate pain and failure in the universe. He has no patience to look +beyond or to reflect if there be not an underlying and greater purpose +which temporary failure in small things may further, as the death of one +cell in the human organism is but the preparation for its replacement by +another, and a part of the body’s natural development. It is a dissipated +character and a dissipated mind. The intangible beauty of moral virtue +finds nothing in the character capable of assimilating it; the spiritual +truth of Gods existence and the spiritual purpose of the universe elude +the mind.</p> + +<p>In marked contrast stands forth the “Ancient Sage.” He has no taste for +the dissipations of the town:</p> + +<p class="poem">I am wearied of our city, son, and go<br /> +To spend my one last year among the hills.</p> + +<p>His gospel is a gospel of <i>self-restraint</i> and long-suffering, of action +for high ends.</p> + +<p class="poem">Let be thy wail and help thy fellow-men,<br /> +And make thy gold thy vassal, not thy king,<br /> +And fling free alms into the beggar’s bowl,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>And send the day into the darken’d heart;<br /> +Nor list for guerdon in the voice of men,<br /> +A dying echo from a falling wall:<br /> +<strong><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span></strong><br /> +Nor roll thy viands on a luscious tongue,<br /> +Nor drown thyself with flies in honied wine.<br /> +<strong><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span></strong><br /> +And more—think well! Do-well will follow thought.</p> + +<p>And the patience and self-control which enable him to work for great +purposes and spiritual aims, characterize also his thought. “Things are +not what they seem,” he holds. The first view is ever incomplete, though +he who has not patience of thought will not get beyond the first view. +That concentration and that purity of manners which keep the spiritual +soul and self undimmed, and preserve the moral voice within articulate, +are indispensable if we are to understand anything beyond the most +superficial phenomena about us. The keynote is struck in the very first +words which the Seer speaks:</p> + +<p class="poem">This wealth of waters might but seem to draw<br /> +From yon dark cave, but, son, the source is higher,<br /> +Yon summit half-a-league in air—and higher,<br /> +The cloud that hides it—higher still, the heavens<br /> +Whereby the cloud was moulded, and whereout<br /> +The cloud descended. Force is from the heights.</p> + +<p>“<i>Force is from the heights</i>” is the thought which underlies the Sage’s +interpretation of all that perplexes the younger man. We cannot fully +understand what is beyond and above us, but if we are wise we shall +steadily look upwards, and enough light will eventually be gained for our +guidance. “Lucerna pedibus meis verbum tuum.” As God’s law is enough to +guide our footsteps, though we cannot hope to understand His full counsel, +so the light by which the spiritual world is disclosed is sufficient for +those who look for it, though its disclosure is only gradual and partial. +If we are said not to know what we cannot submit in its entirety to +scientific tests, we can never know anything worth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> knowing. If, again, we +are to disbelieve in the spiritual world because it is filled with +mystery, what are we to say of the mysteries which face us in this +earth—inexplicable yet undeniable? The conception of God is not more +mysterious than the thought that a grain of sand may be divided a million +times, and yet be no nearer its ultimate division than it is now. Time and +space are full of mystery. A man under chloroform has been known to pass +many hours of sensation in a few minutes. Time is made an objective +measure of things, and yet its phenomena are so subjective that Kant +conceived it to have no real existence. When the younger man complains +that “the Nameless Power or Powers that rule were never heard nor seen,” +the Sage thus replies:</p> + +<p class="poem">If thou would’st hear the Nameless, and wilt dive<br /> +Into the Temple-cave of thine own self,<br /> +There, brooding by the central altar, thou<br /> +May’st haply learn the Nameless hath a voice,<br /> +By which thou wilt abide, if thou be wise,<br /> +As if thou knewest, tho’ thou canst not know;<br /> +For Knowledge is the swallow on the lake<br /> +That sees and stirs the surface-shadow there<br /> +But never yet hath dipt into the abysm,<br /> +The Abysm of all Abysms, beneath, within<br /> +The blue of sky and sea, the green of earth,<br /> +And in the million-millionth of a grain,<br /> +Which cleft and cleft again for evermore,<br /> +And ever vanishing, never vanishes,<br /> +To me, my son, more mystic than myself,<br /> +Or even than the Nameless is to me.</p> + +<p>And so, too, when the youth calls for further proof of the “Nameless,” the +Sage reminds him that there are universally acknowledged truths incapable +of formal proof. The thought which the poet here dwells upon is similar to +Cardinal Newman’s teaching in the <i>Grammar of Assent</i>, though Tennyson’s +use of words does not here, as elsewhere, harmonize with Catholic +doctrine. There are truths, the knowledge of which is so intimately<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> +connected with our own personality, that the material for complete formal +proof eludes verbal statement. We reject, for example, with a clear and +unerring instinct, the notion that when we converse with our friends, the +words and thoughts which come to us proceed possibly from some principle +within us and not from an external cause, and yet it is not a matter on +which we can offer logical proof. The same sensations could conceivably be +produced from within, as they are in a dream. Logical proof, then, has (so +the Ancient Sage maintains) to be dispensed with in much that is of +highest moment:</p> + +<p class="poem">Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone,<br /> +Nor canst thou prove that thou art spirit alone,<br /> +Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one:<br /> +Thou canst not prove thou art immortal, no<br /> +Nor yet that thou art mortal—nay, my son,<br /> +Thou canst not prove that I, who speak with thee,<br /> +Am not thyself in converse with thyself,<br /> +For nothing worthy proving can be proven,<br /> +Nor yet disproven.</p> + +<p>And close upon this follows the beautiful passage in which the hopeful and +wistful upward gaze of faith is described. While melancholy and perplexity +constantly attend on the exercises of the speculative intellect, we are to +“cling to faith”:</p> + +<p class="poem">She reels not in the storm of warring words,<br /> +She brightens at the clash of “Yes” and “No,”<br /> +She sees the Best that glimmers thro’ the Worst,<br /> +She feels the Sun is hid but for a night.<br /> +She spies the summer thro’ the winter bud,<br /> +She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls,<br /> +She hears the lark within the songless egg,<br /> +She finds the fountain where they wailed “Mirage”!</p> + +<p>These lines present to the reader the hopefulness of the spiritual mind, +hopefulness not akin to the merely sanguine temperament, but based on a +deep conviction of the reality of the spiritual world, and on unfailing +certainty that there is in it a key to the perplexities of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> this universe +of which we men understand so little. We know from experience that +material Nature is working out her ends, however little we understand the +process, and however unpromising portions of her work might appear without +this knowledge. That an acorn should have within it forces which compel +earth, air, and water to come to its assistance and become the oak tree, +would seem incredible were it not so habitually known as a fact; and the +certainty which such experiences give in the material order, the eye of +faith gives in the spiritual order. However perplexing the universe now +seems to us we have this deep trust that there <i>is</i> an explanation, and +that when we are in a position to judge the <i>whole</i>, instead of looking on +from this corner of time and space, the truth of the spiritual +interpretation of its phenomena will be clear—“ut iustificeris in +sermonibus tuis et vincas cum iudicaris.” This view runs not only through +the passages I have just quoted, but through all the poem. The poet pleads +for steadfast trust and hope in the face of difficulty, as we would trust +a known and intimate friend in the face of ominous suspicions.</p> + +<p>It is, of course, just that keen realization of the plausibleness of the +sceptical view of life, to which some of our modern critics object as a +sign of weakness, which gives this poem its strength. Such assistance as +Tennyson gives us in seeing and realizing the spiritual view is needed +only or mainly by those to whom agnosticism in its various forms is a +plausible, and, at first sight, a reasonable attitude. The old-fashioned +“irrefragable arguments” are of little use by themselves to persons in +such a condition. However evident spiritual truths may be to an absolutely +purified reason, they are not evident to intellects which are impregnated +with a view of things opposed to the religious view. Moreover, we do not +consult a doctor with much confidence if he does not believe in the +reality of our illness; and one who finds<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> the sceptical view persuasive +will have little trust in those who tell him that it has no plausibility +at all. With Tennyson, as with Cardinal Newman, half the secret of his +influence in this respect is that the sceptically minded reader finds +those very disturbing thoughts which had troubled his own mind anticipated +and stated. And yet a truer and deeper view is likewise depicted, which +sees beyond these thoughts, which detects through the clouds the light in +the heavens beyond.</p> + +<p>In the “Ancient Sage” there is a striking instance of this characteristic. +The young philosopher, filled with the failure of fair promise and the +collapse of apparent purpose in Nature and in man, pours forth his +sceptical lament. Here is a selection from it, typical of the rest:</p> + +<p class="poem">The years that made the stripling wise<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Undo their work again,</span><br /> +And leave him, blind of heart and eyes,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The last and least of men;</span><br /> +<strong><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span></strong><br /> +His winter chills him to the root,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">He withers marrow and mind;</span><br /> +The kernel of the shrivell’d fruit<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Is jutting thro’ the rind;</span><br /> +The tiger spasms tear his chest,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The palsy wags his head;</span><br /> +The wife, the sons, who love him best<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Would fain that he were dead;</span><br /> +<strong><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span></strong><br /> +The statesman’s brain that sway’d the past<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Is feebler than his knees;</span><br /> +The passive sailor wrecks at last<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In ever-silent seas;</span><br /> +The warrior hath forgot his arms,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Learned all his lore;</span><br /> +The changing market frets or charms<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The merchant’s hope no more;</span><br /> +The prophet’s beacon burn’d in vain,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And now is lost in cloud;</span><br /> +The plowman passes, bent with pain,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">To mix with what he plow’d;</span><br /> +<br /> +The poet whom his Age would quote<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As heir of endless fame—</span><br /> +He knows not ev’n the book he wrote,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Not even his own name.</span><br /> +For man has overlived his day,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And, darkening in the light,</span><br /> +Scarce feels the senses break away<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To mix with ancient Night.</span></p> + +<p>The Sage—far from denying the force of what he says—contends for a +deeper and wider view. The “<i>darkness is in man</i>.” It is the result of the +incompleteness of his knowledge. That is to say, what is black to his +imperfect view, and taken by itself, may be a necessary part of a great +scheme. Not that the things are not really sad, but that the whole is not +sad. As there may be pain in tears of joy, and yet it is lost in exquisite +pleasure, so the dark elements of life, when our ultimate destiny is +attained and we can view age and suffering as part of the whole, may be so +entirely eclipsed, that we may say with truth that the “world is wholly +fair”:</p> + +<p class="poem">My son, the world is dark with griefs and graves,<br /> +So dark that men cry out against the Heavens.<br /> +Who knows but that the darkness is in man?<br /> +The doors of Night may be the gates of Light;<br /> +For wert thou born or blind or deaf, and then<br /> +Suddenly heal’d, how would’st thou glory in all<br /> +The splendours and the voices of the world!<br /> +And we, the poor earth’s dying race, and yet<br /> +No phantoms, watching from a phantom shore<br /> +Await the last and largest sense to make<br /> +The phantom walls of this illusion fade,<br /> +And show us that the world is wholly fair.</p> + +<p>“The doors of night may be the gates of light,” says the Sage; and in +unison with this note are his replies to some of the details of the +younger man’s wail, while his very argument presupposes that <i>all</i> cannot +now be answered until we have the “last and largest sense.” Thus, when the +dreary, hopeless vision of bodily decay,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> which seems to point to total +dissolution of a noble nature, is referred to, he says:</p> + +<p class="poem">The shell must break before the bird can fly.</p> + +<p>The breaking of the shell might seem, at first sight, total destruction, +but the forthcoming of the bird transforms the conception of decay into a +conception of new birth. And so, too, in answer to the complaint that “the +shaft of scorn that once had stung, but wakes the dotard smile,” he +suggests that a more complete view may show it to be “the placid gleam of +sunset after storm.” The transition may be not from intense life to +apathy, but from blinding passion to a calmer, a serener vision.</p> + +<p>Another of the later poems—“Vastness”—brings into especial relief a +parallel I have often noted between Lord Tennyson and Cardinal Newman in +their keen sense of the mysteries of the universe, which religion helps us +to bear with but does not solve. So far as this planet goes, and our own +human race, Cardinal Newman has expressed this sense in the <i>Apologia</i>, +and the parallel between his view and Tennyson’s is sufficiently +instructive to make it worth while to quote the passage in full:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various history, +the many races of man, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual +alienation, their conflicts; and then their ways, habits, governments, +forms of worship; their enterprises, their aimless courses, their +random achievements and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of +long-standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken of a +superintending design, the blind evolution of what turn out to be +great powers and truths, the progress of things as if from unreasoning +elements, not towards final causes, the greatness and littleness of +man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over +his futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the +success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and +intensity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> the +dreary hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race so +fearfully yet exactly described by the Apostle, “having no hope and +without God in the world,” all this is a vision to dizzy and appal; +and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery which is +absolutely beyond human solution.</p></div> + +<p>Lord Tennyson takes in a wider range of considerations than the Cardinal. +He paints graphically, not only the mystery of the lot of mankind, but the +further sense of bewilderment which arises when we contemplate the +aimlessness of this vast universe of which our earth is such an +inappreciable fragment. Logically the poem asks only the question: “Great +or small, grand or ignoble, what does anything matter if we are but +creatures of the day with no eternal destiny?” But its grandeur consists +in the manner in which it sweeps from end to end of human experience and +knowledge, from thoughts overwhelming in their vastness, from ideas +carrying the mind over the length and breadth of space and over visions of +all eternity, to pictures of this planet, with its microscopic details, +the hopes, anxieties, plans, pleasures, griefs which make up the immediate +life of man. The imagination vacillates between a keen sense of the +importance of all, even the smallest, and the worthlessness of all, even +the greatest. At one moment comes the thought that one life out of the +myriads of lives passed on this tiny planet, if it be lived and given up +for righteousness, is of infinite and eternal value, and the next moment +comes the sense that the whole universe is worthless and meaningless, if, +indeed, the only percipient beings who are affected by it are but +creatures who feel for a day and then pass to nothingness. Each picture of +the various aspects of human life rouses an instinctive sympathy, and a +feeling in the background, “it can’t be worthless and meaningless,” and +yet the poet relentlessly forces us to confess that it is only some far +wider view of human nature and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> destiny than this world alone can justify, +which can make the scenes he depicts of any value. What Mill called “the +disastrous feeling of ‘not worth while’” threatens the reader at every +turn; though the pictures of life in its innumerable aspects of happiness, +misery, sensuality, purity, selfishness, self-devotion, ambition, +aspiration, craft, cruelty, are so intensely real and rivet the +imagination so strongly, that he refuses to yield to the feeling. I +subjoin some of the couplets where good and bad, great and small, +alternate:</p> + +<p class="poem">Many a hearth upon our dark globe sighs after many a vanish’d face,<br /> +Many a planet by many a sun may roll with the dust of a vanish’d race.<br /> +<br /> +Raving politics, never at rest—as this poor earth’s pale history runs,—<br /> +What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million million of suns?<br /> +<strong><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span></strong><br /> +Faith at her zenith, or all but lost in the gloom of doubts that darken the schools;<br /> +Craft with a bunch of all-heal in her hand, follow’d up by her vassal legion of fools.<br /> +<strong><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span></strong><br /> +Wealth with his wines and his wedded harlots; honest Poverty, bare to the bone;<br /> +Opulent Avarice, lean as Poverty: Flattery gilding the rift in a throne.<br /> +<strong><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span></strong><br /> +Love for the maiden, crown’d with marriage, no regrets for aught that has been,<br /> +Household happiness, gracious children, debtless competence, golden mean;<br /> +<br /> +National hatreds of whole generations, and pigmy spites of the village spire;<br /> +Vows that will last to the last death-ruckle, and vows that are snapt in a moment of fire;<br /> +<br /> +He that has lived for the lust of the minute, and died in the doing it, flesh without mind;<br /> +He that has nail’d all flesh to the Cross, till Self died out in the love of his kind;<br /> +<br /> +Spring and Summer and Autumn and Winter, and all these old revolutions of earth;<br /> +All new-old revolutions of Empire—change of the tide—what is all of it worth?<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span><br /> +What the philosophies, all the sciences, poesy, varying voices of prayer?<br /> +All that is noblest, all that is basest, all that is filthy with all that is fair?<br /> +<br /> +What is it all, if we all of us end but in being our own corpse-coffins at last,<br /> +Swallowed in Vastness, lost in Silence, drown’d in the deeps of a meaningless Past?<br /> +<br /> +What but a murmur of gnats in the gloom, or a moment’s anger of bees in their hive?</p> + +<p>The thought which seems to oppress the seer is the insignificance of +everything when compared to a standard—ever conceivable and ever +actual—above it. The ruts of a ploughed field may seem to the diminutive +insect as vast and overcoming as the Alps seem to us. Then contrast the +thought of Mont Blanc with that of the whole globe; proceed from the globe +to the solar system, and from that to the myriads of systems lost in +space. All that is great to us is relatively great, and becomes small at +once when the mind rises higher. So, too, in the moral order, all those +aspects of human life which sway our deepest emotions are but “a murmur of +gnats in the gloom,” if regard be had to our comparative insignificance. +The ground yields at every step, and the mind looks for some <i>terra +firma</i>, some absolute basis of trust, and this is only to be found in the +conception of man as possessing an eternal destiny. The infinite value of +all that concerns an immortal being stands proof against the thoughts that +bewildered our vision. “He that has nailed all flesh to the cross till +self died out in the love of his kind” may be but a speck in the universe, +but faith measures him by a standard other than that of spacial vastness. +The idea of the <i>eternal worth of morality</i> steps in to calm the +imagination, and this idea in its measure justifies the conception of the +value and importance of all the phases of human existence which make up +the drama<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> of life. Human Love is the side of man’s nature which the poet +looks to as conveying the sense of his immortal destiny. The undying union +of spirit with spirit is a union which the grave cannot end. The +bewildering nightmare of the nothingness and vanity of all things is +abruptly cut short, as the sense of what is deepest in the human heart +promptly gives the lie to what it cannot solve in detail:</p> + +<p class="poem">Peace, let it be! for I loved him and love him for ever.<br /> +The dead are not dead but alive.</p> + + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<div class="bbox" style="width: 339px; height: 500px;"><img src="images/img12.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The South Side of Entrance from below the Terrace, Aldworth.</span><br />Drawn by W. Biscombe Gardner.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p> +<h2>TENNYSON AND ALDWORTH</h2> +<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">Sir James Knowles, K.C.V.O.</span></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Farringford he never forsook, though he added another home to it; and +assuredly no poet has ever before called two such residences his own. +Both of them were sweetened by the presence there, so graciously +prolonged, of her to whom the lovers of song owe so deep a debt of +gratitude. The second home was as well chosen as the first. It lifted +England’s great poet to a height from which he could gaze on a large +portion of that English land which he loved so well, see it basking in +its most affluent summer beauty, and only bounded by “the inviolate +sea.” Year after year he trod its two stately terraces with men the +most noted of their time; statesmen, warriors, men of letters, +science, and art, some of royal race, some famous in far lands, but +none more welcome to him than the friends of his youth. Nearly all of +those were taken from him by degrees; but many of them stand +successively recorded in his verse. The days which I passed there +yearly with him and his were the happiest days of each year. They will +retain a happy place in my memory during whatever short period my life +may last; and the sea-murmurs of Freshwater will blend with the +sighing of the woods around Aldworth, for me, as for many more worthy, +a music, if mournful, yet full of consolation.</p> + +<p class="right"><i>MS. Note, Aubrey de Vere.</i></p></div> + +<p>When I was “little more than a boy” I made, accidentally, my first +acquaintance with Tennyson as a poet, long before I knew him as a man. I +came by chance upon a copy of “In Memoriam,” then just published +anonymously. I was quite entirely ignorant and indifferent in those days +about all poetry, and did not in the least know or guess who had written +it, but, opening it haphazard at the Geological Stanzas, was so impressed +and riveted by them,—for I was a student of Geology at the time,—that I +could not put the book down until I had read it all through and from end +to end. I was caught up and enthralled by its spirit, and my eyes seemed +suddenly opened on a whole new world. It made an epoch in my life and an +ineffaceable impression.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> I soon came to know my Tennyson almost by heart, +and was taunted by my friends for my worship of the “divine Alfred,” as I +reverently called him. In this frame of mind it was that I made the bold +venture of asking his leave to dedicate to him my little book on King +Arthur and his Knights, his kind acceptance of which homage I have already +mentioned in my former article.<a name='fna_66' id='fna_66' href='#f_66'><small>[66]</small></a></p> + +<p>My first personal acquaintance with him was in the autumn of 1866, when I +was staying at Freshwater. I felt that I must call upon him and offer him +my respects and thanks before I left, but put it off through shyness until +the day before my holiday was to end. Then I took my courage in both hands +and went to Farringford. “Mr. Tennyson was out walking, but Mrs. Tennyson +was at home and would be happy to see me.” It was a disappointment, but +Mrs. Tennyson received me most kindly and graciously, and begged me to +return later in the evening if I could, and see her husband who would like +to meet me. When I did return I was shown upstairs to the top of the house +and into an attic which was the Poet’s own study, and presently, with my +heart in my mouth, I heard his great steps as he climbed up the little +wooden stairs. His bodily presence seemed as kingly as I felt it ought to +be, though a little grim and awful at first; but he made me very welcome, +and then groped about for and lighted a pipe, and sat down and began to +speak of King Arthur as being a subject of common interest and sympathy.</p> + +<p>This soon thawed the chill of my spirits and I began to feel more at home, +until I felt I could make the request I was longing to do—would he read +to me one of his Poems, as I desired earnestly to hear from his own lips +what I already knew and loved? Then came a great surprise and delight, for +it was not reading<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> as usually understood, but intoning on a note, almost +chanting, which I heard, and which brought the instant conviction that +this was the proper vehicle for poetry as distinguished from prose. I was +so enchanted that I begged for more and more; and then I suppose may have +begun a personal sympathy which grew and lasted always afterwards till his +death. For when I made to go he took me all about the house, showing me +the pictures and drawings with which his walls were lined, peering into +them so closely with a lighted candle that I thought he would set them or +himself on fire. This was, perhaps, another common ground,—I having been +all my life interested in art and in a small way a collector of drawings +and pictures.</p> + +<p>Before I left he told me to come and claim acquaintance if ever we met +before I came to Farringford again, for if not his short sight would +prevent his knowing me. On this friendly request I acted in the spring of +the following year, 1867, when my wife and I were going to pay a visit at +Haslemere. At Haslemere station, to my surprise, I saw him standing on the +platform, and went up and spoke to him, reminding him of his desire that I +should do so. I then introduced my wife to him, and he explained how he +came to be there—namely, because he was in search of a site where he +might build a cottage to take refuge in from the tourists who made his +life a burden to him in the Isle of Wight. He added, “You are an +architect, why should you not make the plans of it for me?” I said, “With +the greatest possible pleasure, upon one condition that I may act +professionally without making any professional charge; for I cannot be +paid twice over, and you, Mr. Tennyson, have over-paid me already long +ago—in the pleasure and delight your works have given me—for any little +work I could do for you.” He protested, but in the end accepted my terms.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>The cottage, as he first proposed it, was to be a small square, +four-roomed house, with a door in the middle, like one in which he was +then staying near Haslemere. I went there to see him and to describe plans +and the question of a site. After inspecting several with him, he took me +secretly to one which a friend had found out as being possibly procurable, +and on which Aldworth was finally built. It was a natural terrace, formed +just below the summit of Black Down, and was known as Green Hill. There +was a potato-patch where the house now stands,—a little flat clearance in +the midst of sloping coppices that covered all the southern side of the +hill; and it was a spot of ideal seclusion, just wide enough and no more +for a moderately sized house, quite perfect for his objects,—almost too +perfect in the way of inaccessibility, for it took years of negotiation +and trouble to obtain a practicable road to it. The view from it was +simply perfect, extending over the whole of woody Sussex to the South +Downs and the sea. “It wants nothing,” he said as he gazed at it, “but a +great river looping along through the midst of it.” “Gloriously crimson +flowers set along the edge of the terrace would burn like lamps against +the purple distance”—as presently was realized.</p> + +<p>The plans for a four-roomed cottage gave way somewhat as I talked the +matter over with Mr. and Mrs. Tennyson, the latter giving me certain rough +ideas which she could not quite express by drawing, but which I understood +enough to put into shape; and presently I went to Farringford with designs +for a less unimportant dwelling. It grew and grew as it was talked over +and considered, the details being all discussed with Mrs. Tennyson, while +he contented himself by pretending to protest against any addition and +improvement.</p> + +<p>At last, one day, when I brought sketches for an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> arcaded porch to +complete the design, he put his foot down and said he would have nothing +to do with it—that he would have no more additions—that it would ruin +him and could not be entertained for a moment. He walked to and fro, +coming back from time to time to the table where the drawing lay and +looking at it. He admitted that he liked it more and more the more he +looked at it, but presently cried out with simulated fury, “Get thee +behind me, Satan,” and ran out of the room. Then I knew that the porch was +won. When it was built he got to be very fond of it, and used to call +attention to the way in which the landscape was framed by the arches of +it. He even had a picture of it made by a friend to show this effect.</p> + +<p>He laid the foundation-stone of it on Shakespeare’s birthday, April 23, +1868, few being there besides his great friend, Sir John Simeon, myself, +and my wife, whom he dragged up the steep hillside in the blazing +sunshine. He interfered very little about the progress of the work, except +as to various little accidental things which moved his fancy. For +instance, a stone shield in the gable of one of the dormer windows had +remained blank when all the rest were carved—simply because of a +hesitation how best to fill it up. But when the time came at which it must +be finished, if done at all, he stood spying up at it through his eyeglass +for a long while, and then decided to leave it blank,—so that the last +touch to the work might be decided hereafter by Fate, accident having kept +it open so long.</p> + +<p>He was reminded by it of the blank shield in his own Idylls, of which +Merlin asks, “Who shall blazon it?—when and how?” and adds, “Perchance +when all our wars are done the brand Excalibur will be cast away.” In a +similar way he would not let the figure of a stone Falcon be removed which +had been set up as a model<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> for approval at one corner of the parapet, but +was never intended to stay there. He looked at it long and curiously, and +laughed and said it seemed to grow queerer, that it was a pity to take it +down; and there it remained ever after in its original solitariness, to +his great content and amusement, which had a touch of seriousness in it.</p> + +<p>He made a great point of his favourite motto, <i>Gwyr yn erbyn y byd</i> +(“Truth against the world”), being prominently emblazoned in tile mosaic +at the threshold of the front door and in the pavement of the Hall. The +text, “Gloria Deo in Excelsis,” in the carved band which surrounds the +house was the selection of Mrs. Tennyson. The formation of the terrace +lawn in front of the house, with its boundary balustrade, interested him +extremely; and when the vases were filled with splendid blossoms, standing +out against the blue landscape, the vision he had foreseen from the +potato-patch was realized to his full satisfaction. The invariable and +tormenting delays in finishing the house, however, annoyed him greatly; +for he longed to get into it away from the tourists, and used to say he +should never live to enjoy it long enough. When he did move in, he said he +wanted to have each room for his own, and at first adopted for sleeping +in, the central top attic on the south front, which opened on to the lead +flat of the large bay window on the first floor. He called it his +balcony-room, and loved to stand out on the flat and watch the changes in +the great prospect spread out before him. He ultimately gave this up for a +guest’s room, and took to the finer room below, which was always flooded +with light, and was filled with bright moonshine when he died in it. On +one occasion, when I was sleeping in the balcony-room, I was suddenly +waked up by a thundering at the door and his great voice calling out, “Get +up and look out of the window.” I jumped out of bed accordingly, and saw +the whole wide aspect<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> turned into a flat white billowy ocean, with no +trace of land at all, but with waves beginning to move and roll in it. The +sun was just rising, and I stood to watch the gradual creation of a world +as it were. From moment to moment the vast ocean broke up and rose away +into clouds, uncovering the landscape bit by bit—the hills first and the +valleys last, until the whole great prospect came together again into its +normal picture. It was delightful to see his enjoyment of everything in +the new house, from the hot-water bathroom downwards, for at first the hot +bath seemed to attract him out of measure. He would take it four or five +times a day, and told me he thought it the height of luxury “to sit in a +hot bath and read about little birds.”</p> + +<p>The following notes of a visit paid to him at Aldworth show the usual +manner of his daily life there.</p> + +<p>He usually dined rather early, at 7 or 7.30 o’clock, and Mrs. Tennyson +would generally carve (or in later times Hallam), according to the +old-fashioned custom. He talked freely, with an abundance of anecdote and +story, and full of humour, and “chaff” (no touch of pedantry or priggism +could live in his presence); and always when at home made a move for +dessert to another room—the morning room at Aldworth—where he would +begin his bottle (pint) of port, and with the exception of a glass or so, +would finish it, talking all the time with entire geniality and abandon, +and full of reminiscences of men and things. Sometimes he would recur to +his grievances at the hands of his publishers, and pour out his complaints +about them, until finally landed, to his entire satisfaction, with +Macmillan.</p> + +<p>After dessert he would retire to his study and his after-dinner pipe, +which he took quite by himself; and would then come into the drawing-room, +whither the others had repaired some time, and join in general talk again +and perhaps read, at some one’s request, some of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> his own poems, till the +ladies left for bed.<a name='fna_67' id='fna_67' href='#f_67'><small>[67]</small></a> Then he would invite some favoured guest or +guests to his study, and begin the confidential discussions and +soliloquies which it was a priceless privilege—the most valued and +treasured of privileges—to share and to listen to. At such times all his +inmost thoughts and feelings, recollections and speculations of his life +came out with the open simplicity of a child and the keen insight and far +sight of a prophet; and one had glimpses into the mystery of things beyond +one’s own power of seeing, and as if seen through a telescope.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>I have before stated how he more than once summed up his personal religion +in the words: “There’s a Something That watches over us, and our +Individuality endures.” On one occasion he added, “I do not say endures +for ever, but I say endures after this life at any rate.<a name='fna_68' id='fna_68' href='#f_68'><small>[68]</small></a>” When in +answer to the question, What was his deepest desire of all? he said, “A +clearer vision of God,” it exactly expressed the continued strivings of +his spirit for more light upon every possible question, which so +constantly appear in his poems, which led him to join in founding the +Metaphysical Society, and induced him to write the introductory sonnet in +the <i>Nineteenth Century</i>. Out of all such talks, at many times and places +repeated, I came to know his actual personal position, in those years at +any rate of the growth of old age, concerning the most vital problems of +this world and this life. Many scores of such times have fallen to my +happy lot, and my life has been all the richer for them.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE FUNERAL OF DICKENS</h2> + + +<p>I remember, when he went with me to Westminster Abbey to hear Dean Stanley +preach Dickens’s funeral sermon, we sat within the rails of the Sacrarium +so as to be near the pulpit, and when we came away he told me the story of +the Oriental traveller who mistook the organ for the Church’s God. He was +very fond of the story, and often repeated it. As he told it, the +traveller was made to say: “We went into one of their temples to see their +worship. The temple is only opened sometimes, and they keep their God shut +up in a great gold box at one end of it. When we passed inside the doors +we heard him grumbling and growling as if out of humour at being disturbed +in his solitude; and as the worshippers came in they knelt down and seemed +to supplicate him and try to propitiate him. He became quieter for a +while, only now and then grumbling for a few moments, but then he got +louder again and the whole body of the people stood up and cried to him +together, and after a while persuaded him to be still. Presently he began +once more and then, after praying all together several times, they deputed +one of their number to stand up alone and address him earnestly on their +behalf, deprecating his anger. He spoke so long without an interruption +that it seemed the God had either fallen asleep or been finally persuaded +into a better temper; but suddenly at last he broke out into a greater +passion than ever, and with such tremendous noise and roarings that all +the worshippers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> rose from their seats in fright and ran out of the +temple.”</p> + +<p>There was an immense congregation that day in the Abbey—and when the +service was over—we stood up waiting a long time to pass out through the +rails. But instead of dispersing by the outer door the people all turned +eastward and flocked towards the altar, pressing closer and closer up to +the Sacrarium. The chances of getting out became less and less, and I +turned to Tennyson and said, “I don’t know what all this means, but we +seem so hemmed in that it is useless to move as yet.” Then a man, standing +close by me whispered, “I don’t think they will go, sir, so long as your +friend stands there.” Of course I saw at once what was happening—it had +got to be known that Tennyson was present, and the solid throng was bent +on seeing him. Such a popularity had never occurred to me or to him, and +justified his nervous unwillingness to be seen in crowded places. I was +obliged to tell him what was going on, upon which he urgently insisted on +being let out some quiet way and putting an end to the dilemma.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p> +<h2>FRAGMENTARY NOTES OF TENNYSON’S TALK</h2> +<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">Arthur Coleridge</span></p> + + +<p>But for the suggestion of the present Lord Tennyson, I should shrink from +the presumption of posing as a friend of his illustrious father, who for +three Easters made of me a companion, sometimes for two, more often three +hours daily, for three weeks at a time together. I should be safe in +saying that the most gifted men I have ever known, Tennyson, Browning, and +Cory, were in the realms of thought, philosophy, and imagination foremost +in an age which in two instances acknowledged their supremacy whilst they +lived, and in the third has ungrudgingly admitted him as one taking high +rank amongst the English poets of the second order. I link his name with +that of the two great men, for I have abundant materials for forming my +opinion of him in the shape of three volumes of correspondence, begun in +my boyhood and continued for years during my friend’s lifetime.</p> + +<p>Mr. Fitzherbert was a welcome friend of Dr. Johnson’s. “Ursa Major” warmed +to him, though perfectly conscious that Fitz was anything but a star of +the first magnitude. He says: “There was no sparkle, no brilliancy in +Fitzherbert, but I never knew a man who was so generally acceptable. He +made everybody quite easy, overpowered nobody by the superiority of his +talents, made no man think worse of himself by being<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> his rival, seemed +always to listen, did not oblige you to hear much from him, and did not +oppose what you said.” “Such characters,” says Mr. Raleigh, “are the oil +of society, yet a society made wholly of such characters would have no +taste.”</p> + +<p>Tennyson’s fidelity and patience with me were very much of a mystery; +possibly I may have fitted his hand as a pet walking-stick; anyhow, I was +“Man Friday to his Crusoe” as the play-actors say, and “constitutionals” +with the Poet Laureate and his dogs, a wolf-hound or a deer-hound, +Karénina or Lufra, were matters of daily occurrence in my Freshwater days. +After 5 o’clock tea I left the Poet to “his sacred half-hour,” and his +pipe of tobacco. By the way, he smoked straight-stemmed Dublin clay-pipes, +and hated new pipes, which he would soak in coffee.</p> + +<p>I believe that in the early days of our acquaintance the Poet, seeing me +with what appeared to be a notebook under my arm, suspected me of +Boswellizing, but I was duly warned and reassured him of my innocence. I +simply recorded very briefly in my diary a few of his “dicta” which I +wished to have for the benefit of my children, one of whom was a frequent +and delighted listener to the Laureate’s reading of his own poems. Mary +Coleridge, at that time a shy, timid girl, was more than once asked to +dictate the particular poems she wanted him to recite. I can hear him +saying, “Give me my seven-and-sixpenny” (meaning the single volume +edition), and then we listened to the “high Orphic chant,” rather than the +conventional reading of many of our favourite poems. I often asked for the +“Ode on the Duke of Wellington,” and on one occasion, in the presence of +Sir Charles Stanford—then organist of Trinity College, Cambridge—the +Poet, lowering his voice at the words, “God accept him, Christ receive +him,” added: “It’s a mighty anthem, that’s what it is.” Stanford’s music +to “The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> Voyage of Mældune” was written at Freshwater, and four of us +visitors sang a lovely quartet in that work for the first time in the +Poet’s presence. It was rather nervous work, for the composer and +ourselves were anxious to satisfy the Poet in a work intended as a novelty +for the Leeds Festival. The verdict was rather enigmatical: “I like the +ripple of your music.” It met with a good reception at Leeds, and Madame +Albani expressed a confident hope in my hearing that the work would become +popular. I wish the prophecy had been adequately fulfilled, but English +audiences, though, like the Athenians of old, clamouring for a new thing, +are very cautious in giving more than one or two trials to musical +novelties. It is lamentable to see works which have cost long years, +perhaps a lifetime, of skilled experience, shelved in musical libraries or +relegated to foreign audiences for adjudication of their real value.</p> + +<p>It was my daily habit during the Easter holidays for three years to call +at Farringford at 10.30, and present myself in the Poet’s sanctum, where I +found him at his desk in the very act of hatching a poem or amending an +old one. He would greet me with “Here comes my daily bread.” Then I read +the newspaper or a book until we started for our morning walk. The +dialogue would begin abruptly, starting from some impressions left by our +musical rehearsals on the previous day. “Why is Stanford unable to set to +music the word ‘cosmopolite’?” (See Appendix B.) The reasons seemed to me +quite intelligible, but not so to a poet as fastidious as Wordsworth when +discussing the Installation Ode with Professor Walmisley. I expect Purcell +had more than one bad half-hour with Dryden, for the laws and regulations +of musical accent may often conflict with the cadences and scansion +adopted by the poet. Sir Charles Stanford and Sir Hubert Parry (<i>lucida +sidera</i>) are rare instances of musical composers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> with an instinctive +appreciation of the fitness and adaptability of poetry offered for musical +treatment.</p> + +<p>Tennyson was loyal to the core on the subject of his old university, and +amongst his constant visitors were some of my old contemporaries, +Bradshaw, Lightfoot, and Montagu Butler. These, the <i>fleurs fines</i> of my +day, were constant topics, and I eagerly listened to his recollections of +the Cambridge men of his own generation. “Thompson” (afterwards Master of +Trinity), he said, “was the last man I saw at Cambridge. I saw him +standing at the door of the Bull Inn—his handsome face under a street +lamp. We have been friends ever since.” He enjoyed the master’s +witticisms, and especially “even the youngest among us is not infallible.”</p> + +<p>The Professorship of Greek carried with it a Canonry of Ely, and +Thompson’s times of residence were rather dreaded by the new holders of +the office. His health, never of the best, was tried by the atmosphere, +and finding the loneliness of his bachelor life insupportable, he begged +an old College contemporary to pay him a visit. The friend came and was +duly installed, but the sleeping accommodation was found wanting, and in +answer to his petition for another bedroom with a good fire in it his host +observed, “So sorry, my dear fellow, but I put five of my sermons into +that bedroom, and if they have failed to dry it, nothing else will.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p><i>T.</i> “My tailor at Cambridge was a man of the name of Law. When he made +his way into our rooms, and worried us about paying our bills, we used to +say, ‘This is Law’s Serious Call.’ I capped this story with a similar +Oxford tradition. The name of the Oxford tailor was Joy, and the +undergraduates, soaked with port wine, used to say, ‘Heaviness may endure +for a night, but Joy cometh in the morning.’”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span><i>T.</i> “You cannot wonder at my horror of all the libels and slanders; +people began to slander me in early days. For example, after my marriage +we spent the honeymoon on Coniston Lake in a cottage lent to me by James +Marshall. Shortly after this, a paragraph appeared in an American +newspaper to the following effect: ‘We hope, now that Mr. Tennyson is +married and has returned to his native lakes, that he will give up opium.’ +The penny-a-liners evidently confounded your uncle, S. T. Coleridge, with +myself—anyhow, if he wasn’t quite certain, he gave your relative the +benefit of the doubt.”</p> + +<p>“Again, I was once persuaded by an adventuress (who wrought upon me by her +tale of hopeless poverty) to hear her read in my own drawing-room. She was +in my house for exactly half an hour, and profited by her experience in +telling her audiences that she had seen me thrashing my wife, and carried +away drunk by two men-servants to my bedroom.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>One day we visited the grave of Lord Tennyson’s shepherd; he died at the +age of ninety-one. On his death-bed Hallam asked him if he would remember +in his will his two sons in Australia who had entirely ignored and +neglected him. “No,” he said firmly; and he left his 17s. 6d. a year to +the poorest man in the parish of Freshwater. On his tombstone are engraved +the Laureate’s own words from “In Memoriam”:</p> + +<p class="poem">God’s finger touched him and he slept.</p> + +<p>I showed Lord Tennyson some manuscript verses by my friend Bernard Drake, +who died at Madeira in 1853. He read them twice through, slowly and aloud. +I had told him of Drake’s history, and then showed him the verses; their +sadness impressed him greatly:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span></p> + +<p class="center">ON ILLNESS</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td align="center">I</td></tr> +<tr><td>Thou roaring, roaming Sea!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When first I came into this happy isle,</span><br /> +I loved to listen evermore to thee,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And meditate the while.</span></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">II</td></tr> +<tr><td>But now that I have grown<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Homesick, and weary of my loneliness,</span><br /> +It makes me sad to hear thy plaintive moan<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And fills me with distress.</span></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">III</td></tr> +<tr><td>It speaks of many a friend,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Whom I shall meet no more on Life’s dark road,</span><br /> +It warns that <i>here</i> I must await the end<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And cast no look abroad.</span></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">IV</td></tr> +<tr><td>Thou ever roaring Sea!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I love thee, for that o’er thy waters come</span><br /> +The stately ships, breasting them gloriously,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That bring me news of home.</span></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">V</td></tr> +<tr><td>I cannot pray for grace—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My soul is heavy, and my sickness sore—</span><br /> +Wilt Thou, O God, for ever hide Thy face?<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">O! turn to me once more.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Madeira</span>, <i>November 30, 1853</i>.</td></tr></table> + +<p>Drake’s career at Eton and Cambridge really interested him, for my old +friend was an ardent worshipper of the Poet in days before Tennyson’s fame +had become a national asset. I showed with some pride “Of old sat Freedom +on the heights,” translated into Latin Alcaics, a version very popular +with Etonians and King’s men. Scholarship has made gigantic strides since +it appeared; “those who know” can read and see if we overvalued it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td align="center">OF OLD SAT FREEDOM</td> + <td><span class="spacer"> </span></td> + <td align="center"><i>Idem—Latine redditum</i></td></tr> +<tr><td valign="top">Of old sat Freedom on the heights,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The thunders breaking at her feet:</span><br /> +Above her shook the starry lights:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">She heard the torrents meet.</span><br /> +<br /> +There in her place she did rejoice,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Self-gather’d in her prophet-mind,</span><br /> +And fragments of her mighty voice<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Came rolling on the wind.</span><br /> +<br /> +Then stept she down thro’ town and field<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To mingle with the human race,</span><br /> +And part by part to men reveal’d<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The fulness of her face—</span><br /> +<br /> +Grave mother of majestic works,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">From her isle-altar gazing down,</span><br /> +Who, God-like, grasps the triple forks,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And, King-like, wears the crown:</span><br /> +<br /> +Her open eyes desire the truth.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The wisdom of a thousand years</span><br /> +Is in them. May perpetual youth<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Keep dry their light from tears;</span><br /> +<br /> +That her fair form may stand and shine,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Make bright our days and light our dreams,</span><br /> +Turning to scorn with lips divine<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The falsehood of extremes!</span></td> + <td> </td> +<td valign="top">Olim insedebat montibus arduis<br /> +Disiecta cernens sub pede fulmina<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Divina Libertas; superque</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Astra faces agitare vidit;</span><br /> +<br /> +Et confluentes audiit undique<br /> +Amnes, opertis in penetralibus<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Exultat, et ritu Sibyllae</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mente sua latet involuta,</span><br /> +<br /> +Sed vocis altae fragmina praepetes<br /> +Venti ferebant.—Inde novalia<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Per culta discendens, per urbes</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Diva homines aditura venit,</span><br /> +<br /> +Ut vultus aegros ante oculos virûm<br /> +Sensim pateret—mox parit integram<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Virtutem et altari marino</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Suppositum speculatur orbem—</span><br /> +<br /> +Quae seu deorum more acies gerit<br /> +Dextra trifurcas, seu caput induit<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Regina regali corona.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Expetit, insequiturque verum.</span><br /> +<br /> +Quae mille victrix experientiam<br /> +Collegit annos: o Dea, sic tibi<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Aeterna si duret iuventus</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Neu lacrymis oculi madescant;</span><br /> +<br /> +Sic enitebis, sic dabis aureos<br /> +Dies alumnis, aurea somnia;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sic ore divino refelles</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Quae properat malesuadus error.</span></td></tr></table> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>When distinguished visitors came to the Island, who were on terms of +friendship with the Poet, I gave him warning that I should not appear on +the scene and spoil their pleasure; but to this condition he would not +assent, and I can recall frequent occasions when I must have been a fly in +the ointment, and the Jowetts, Bradleys, and distinguished Americans would +have wished me at Jericho. Once I felt entirely at my ease, for I +determined to start the subject of Dr. Johnson, worshipped by me from my +boyhood. I knew my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> Birkbeck Hill pretty well by heart, having quite +recently read the six volumes of his edition of Boswell, notes and all, to +a blind friend who rejoiced in hearing them. Further than that, I had made +a pilgrimage to Lichfield, and by the kindness of a Mr. Lomax, who owned +the relics, had examined and handled a varied assortment of goods and +chattels, once undoubtedly the property of the great Samuel. The pedigree +was thus accounted for by my courteous showman. After Dr. Johnson’s death, +Barber, his black servant, migrated from London to Lichfield, “bringing +his sheaves with him”; amongst the <i>spolia opima</i> were a huge teapot and a +manuscript copy of Devotions. Fortified with the recollections of this +pilgrimage, and some out-of-the-way facts told to me by the residentiary +Canon, my dear old friend Bishop Abraham, I started on a two hours’ walk +with the Poet and Professor Jowett. It was easy to lead up to the theme of +conversation—there was no difficulty whatever. I thought of Johnson’s own +plan of extinguishing subjects which he intended at all costs to avoid. +When Mrs. Neale asked his opinion of the conversational powers of Charles +James Fox, “he talked to me one day at the Club,” said he, “concerning +Catiline’s conspiracy, so I withdrew my attention and thought about Tom +Thumb.” Every moment of that afternoon walk, Dr. Johnson was our theme, +and we capped one another with long quotations from Boswell. Jowett +chirped, the Poet gave wonderful emphasis and point to the oracles, often +pausing suddenly in his walk, and cross-examining me on my remembered +version of the actual words. I noted the upshot of our talk. Lord Tennyson +agreed with the Master of Balliol “that Boswell was a man of real genius, +and resembled Goldsmith in many points of character.”</p> + +<p>Miss L——, Doctor Johnson’s godchild, used to tell a disagreeable story +about him. Tennyson said about this:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span><i>T.</i> “One should not lay stress on these oddities and angularities of +great men. They should never be hawked about.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p><i>T.</i> “‘Break, break’ was made one early summer morning, in a Lincolnshire +lane. ‘Crossing the Bar’ cost me five minutes one day last November.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p><i>T.</i> “At ten years of age I wrote an epic poem of great length—it was in +the ‘Marmion’ style. I used to rush about the fields, with a stick for a +sword, and fancied myself a conqueror advancing upon an enemy’s country.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p><i>T.</i> “My prize poem ‘Timbuctoo’ was an altered version of a work I had +written at home and called ‘The Battle of Armageddon.’ I fell out with my +father, for I had no wish to compete for the prize and he insisted on my +writing. To my amazement, the prize was awarded to me. I couldn’t face the +public recitation in the Senate House, feeling very much as Cowper felt; +Merivale declaimed my poem for me in the Senate House.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p><i>T.</i> “Arthur Hallam said to me in 1832: ‘To-day I have seen the last +English King going in State to the last English Parliament.’”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>I believe that one of Tennyson’s first idylls was addressed to Miss K. +Bradshaw, sister of my beloved friend Henry Bradshaw (fellow and librarian +of King’s College, Cambridge), whose relationship to the Judge who +condemned Charles I. was rather a tender point with H. B., both at Eton +and King’s.</p> + +<p class="poem">Because she bore the iron name<br /> +Of him who doomed his king to die,<br /> +I deemed her one of stately frame<br /> +And looks to awe her stander by.<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>But find a maiden, tender, shy,<br /> +With fair blue eyes and winning sweet,<br /> +And longed to kiss her hand, and lie<br /> +A thousand summers at her feet.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>I pressed the Poet more than once to put on record his own interpretation +of passages in “In Memoriam” and others which needed the authority of his +own explanation. “Surely you took ‘four square to all the winds that blow’ +from Dante’s</p> + +<p class="poem">Ben tetragono ai colpi della Ventura?”</p> + +<p>“No, it was not in my mind.” Again, I quoted his expression, “hollow +shapes enclosing hearts of flame,” thinking it had arisen from Beckford’s +<i>Vathek</i>. The answer was “No, merely spectral visions.”</p> + +<p><i>T.</i> “Some of my poems depend on single sayings, single lines which have +served me for a theme. My poem of ‘The Brigand’ is founded on a story told +in the Autobiography of that great and gallant gentleman, Walter Scott.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p><i>T.</i> “Edward FitzGerald and I used to weary of the hopelessly prosaic +lines in some books of ‘The Excursion,’ and we had a contest, the prize +for which was to be for the weakest line by mutual consent that we could +either of us invent. FitzGerald declared the line was his—it really was +mine—‘A Mr. Wilkinson, a clergyman.’” I wish I could have told him of Jem +Stephen’s commentary on “Heaven lies about us in our infancy,” “That is no +reason why we should lie about Heaven in our old age.” Among other +passages he quotes with admiration Wordsworth’s lines on the “Simplon +Pass.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p><i>T.</i> “I am sorry that I am turned into a school-book at Harrow; the boys +will say of me, ‘That horrible<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> Tennyson.’ The cheapness of English +classics makes the plan acceptable to schoolmasters and parents.”</p> + +<p>He quoted with approval Byron’s line—</p> + +<p class="poem">Then farewell, Horace, whom I hated so.</p> + +<p>“He was quite right. I, too, was so overdosed with Horace as a boy, that I +don’t do him justice now I am old. I suppose Horace was the most popular +poet that ever lived?”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>Rough dissonant words in great poets were a trial to him; he declared that +those horrid words, <i>Eingeweide</i> and <i>Beschützer</i>, are the ruin of +Goethe’s otherwise perfect lyrics.</p> + +<p><i>T.</i> “At Weimar the Grand Duchess sent an apology for not receiving me in +person. After visiting Goethe’s study, bedroom and sitting-room, I was +shocked by the meanness of the streets, and the horrid smells in the town +itself. I felt as tetchy and vexed as Macbeth with his ‘out, out, brief +candle,’ a passage so utterly misunderstood by Macready, who dropped his +voice and gave the words a pathos that I <i>am quite sure</i> was never +intended.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p><i>T.</i> “<i>The Tempest</i> has been dreadfully damaged by scenes intercalated by +some common stage-adapter. At one time of my life I thought the Sonnets +greater than the Plays. Some of the noblest things are in <i>Troilus and +Cressida</i>.”</p> + +<p class="poem">Perseverance, dear my Lord, keeps honour bright, etc.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p><i>T.</i> “Have you observed a solecism in Milton’s <i>Penseroso</i>?</p> + +<p class="poem">But let my due feet never fail<br /> +To walk the studious cloisters pale,<br /> +And <i>love</i> the high embowed roof<br /> +With antique pillars massy proof, etc.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span><i>T.</i> “I do not remember getting from your cousin Hartley Coleridge the +Sonnet you speak of, still less can I account for its being in the Library +in the South Kensington Museum.”</p> + +<p>This Sonnet is headed</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Sonnet to Alfred Tennyson</span></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>After meeting him for the first time</i></span><br /> +<br /> +Long have I known thee as thou art in song,<br /> +And long enjoyed the perfume that exhales<br /> +From thy pure soul, and odour sweet entails,<br /> +And permanence on thoughts that float along<br /> +The stream of life to join the passive throng<br /> +Of shades and echoes that are memory’s being,<br /> +Hearing we hear not, and we see not seeing<br /> +If Passion, Fancy, Faith, move not among<br /> +The never frequent moments of reflection.<br /> +Long have I view’d thee in the chrystal sphere<br /> +Of verse, that like the Beryl makes appear<br /> +Visions of hope, begot of recollection.<br /> +Knowing thee now, a real earth-treading man<br /> +Not less I love thee, and no more I can.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 14em;"><span class="smcap">Hartley Coleridge.</span></span></p> + +<p><i>T.</i> “I liked Hartley Coleridge, ‘Massa’ Hartley’ as the rustics called +him. He was a lovable little fellow. Once he said to me, ‘Had I been +Colonel Burns (the Poet’s eldest son) I would have kicked Wordsworth for +delivering that preachment.’ On one occasion Hartley, who was very +eccentric, was asked to dine with the family of a stiff Presbyterian +clergyman residing in the Lake district. The guests, Trappist fashion, sat +a long time in the drawing-room waiting for the announcement of dinner. +Not a word was uttered, and Hartley was bored to extinction. At last he +suddenly jumped up from the sofa, kissed the clergyman’s wife, and rushed +out of the house. He was wonderfully eloquent, and, I fancy, resembled his +father in that respect.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p><i>T.</i> “I doubt that fine poem ‘Kubla Khan’ having been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> written in sleep; I +have often imagined new poems in my sleep, but I couldn’t remember them in +the morning. Your uncle’s words: ‘Tennyson has no sense of rhythm and +scansion,’ have been constantly quoted against me. The truth is that in my +youth I used no hyphens in writing composite words, and a reader might +fancy that from this omission I had no knowledge of the length and measure +of words and expressions.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p><i>T.</i> “Burns was a great genius, but dreadfully coarse sometimes. When he +attempts to write in pure English, he breaks down utterly.” He quoted many +things of Burns’s: “O my Luv’s like a red, red rose,” and “Gae fetch to me +a pint o’ wine,” etc., with the greatest admiration, and “Mary Morison” +and “Ye Banks and Braes o’ Bonnie Doon,” etc. “They have utterly ruined +the lilt of the last,” he said, “when they added words for the musical +setting.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>He was fond of talking about great pictures and fine sculpture. Birket +Foster joined us one day, and Tennyson asked him to define the word +“picturesque,” and to say why tumble-down cottages in the Isle of Wight +were such favourite subjects with painters. B. F. answered that it was the +breaking of the straight line. We talked of Frederick Walker, and B. F. +told us many stories of his wit and conscientiousness. “I mean to paint a +picture,” said he, “the key-note of which is to be onion-seed.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>Primrose Day.—<i>T.</i> “All the floral displays for which we Isle of Wighters +suffer are based on a mistaken version of the Queen’s meaning, when she +sent a wreath of primroses for Lord Beaconsfield’s grave, inscribed with +‘His favourite flower.’ She meant Prince Albert’s,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> not Lord +Beaconsfield’s partiality for the flower in question.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p><i>T.</i> “I could imitate the hoot of an owl, and once practised successfully +enough to attract one which flew in through my window. The bird soon made +friends with me, would sit on my shoulder and kiss my face. My pet monkey +became jealous, and one day pushed the owl off a board that I had had +raised some feet from the ground. The owl was not hurt, but he died +afterwards a Narcissus death from vanity. He fell into a tub of water +contemplating his own beauty, and was drowned.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>The Poet admired Carlyle’s <i>French Revolution</i>, but he seemed surprised at +my having read Carlyle’s <i>Frederick the Great</i>; the length of it had been +too much for him. I was vexed by the author’s omission of an account of +Sebastian Bach’s famous interview with the king at Potsdam, and pressed on +my old friend Sir George Grove to inquire the reasons of so strange an +omission. He ascertained that Carlyle not only knew the fact, but the +actual day and date of the occurrence. The omission, therefore, was really +of malice aforethought. Quantz, the flute-player, has his appropriate +niche in the monumental work, but the great Sebastian is out of it +altogether; the tootler takes the cake and be hanged to him.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>Great sailors and soldiers were very favourite subjects. The Poet had +personally known well one naval officer who had served with Nelson.</p> + +<p><i>T.</i> “Among many odd letters I have received,<a name='fna_69' id='fna_69' href='#f_69'><small>[69]</small></a> an American curate wrote +to me that he made a sudden resolution one Sunday that he would read ‘The +Charge of the Light Brigade’ instead of his ordinary sermon.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> An old +Dorsetshire soldier who had fought at Balaclava, happened to be in the +congregation, though the preacher was unaware of the fact. The verses had +the happy result of the soldier giving up a bad, reckless life, and +completely reforming. My poem was never meant to convey any spiritual +lesson, but the very curious fact of the chance soldier and the parson’s +sudden resolution has often set me thinking.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p><i>T.</i> “Twice, I am glad to say, I have been taken into battle; once by Sir +Fenwick Williams of Kars; another officer wrote after a fight: ‘I escaped +with my life and my Tennyson.’ I admire General Hamley, a good writer and +accomplished soldier.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p><i>T.</i> “When the Prince Regent explored the field of Waterloo with the Duke +himself as guide, the Duke’s horse plunged and threw his rider. The Prince +remarked, ‘I can now say what nobody else in the world can, that I saw the +Duke of Wellington overthrown on the Field of Waterloo.’ His Grace was not +over pleased with the observation.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p><i>T.</i> “Keats would have become one of the very greatest of all poets, had +he lived. At the time of his death there was apparently no sign of +exhaustion or having written himself out; his keen poetical instinct was +in full process of development at the time. Each new effort was a steady +advance on that which had gone before. With all Shelley’s splendid imagery +and colour, I find a sort of <i>tenuity</i> in his poetry.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p><i>T.</i> “‘Locksley Hall’ is thought by many to be an autobiographical sketch; +it’s nothing of the sort—not a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> word of my history in it. Read +FitzGerald’s <i>Euphranor</i> and let me know what you think of it.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>One day we talked of Winchester and the rather meagre list of great men +educated there. I rejoiced in the college boasting of an <i>alumnus</i> in Lord +Seaton, the famous leader of the 52nd Regiment at Waterloo. “I remember,” +<i>T.</i> said, “addressing a coachman by whose side I was sitting as we drove +in a coach through that place, and I asked him, ‘What sort of a place is +Winchester?’ Answer: ‘Debauched, sir, debauched, like all other Cathedral +cities.’”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p><i>T.</i> “I am inclined to agree with Swinburne’s view of Mary Queen of Scots; +she was brought up in a Court that studied the works of Brantôme.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>We often talked of Farrar’s book and Maurice’s opinions on Eternal +Punishment. The Poet was fond of quoting Dante’s line:</p> + +<p class="poem">Fecemi somma Sapienza ed il sommo Amore,</p> + +<p>insisting on Dante’s intense belief in a God of Love. He more than once +repeated the famous lines of Moschus,<a name='fna_70' id='fna_70' href='#f_70'><small>[70]</small></a> adding, “I think those the +finest lines in all Greek antiquity.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p><i>T.</i> “My friend, Sir Henry Taylor, on being called a Christian Jupiter, +remarked, ‘I wish I was much more of a jovial Christian.’”</p> + +<p><i>T.</i> “I once asked Rogers, ‘Did you ever write a sonnet?’ He answered, +‘No, I never dance in fetters.’”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p><i>T.</i> “I am told that the best prose version of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> <i>Odyssey</i> is by +Professor Palmer of Cambridge University, America. Since Matthew Arnold’s +lectures on Homer, a new translation has appeared annually in that +country. It would take me ten years to translate the <i>Iliad</i> into Bible +English.” He liked Worsley’s translation of the <i>Odyssey</i>.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>“The purest English is talked in South Lincolnshire. The dialect begins at +Spilsby in Mid-Lincolnshire, and that is the dialect of my Lincolnshire +poems.”</p> + +<p>He was fond of telling Lincolnshire stories. <i>T.</i> “An old farmer, at the +time when railways were beginning, receiving a visit from the parson, +moved uneasily in his bed, crying out, ‘What with faäth, and what with +real bad harvests, and what with them graät, horrid steäm-kettles, and +what with the soön goin’ raound the earth, and the earth goin’ raound the +soön, as soom saäy she do, I am cleän maäzed an’ the sooner I gits out of +this ’ere world, the better;’ and he turned his face to the wall and +died.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>I close my chapter of fragments and echoes still abiding with me; men +privileged as I was can hear the voice and hate a gramophone. My aim has +been to show the everyday life, the plain unvarnished words which were the +daily change with the first man of his age and a rank-and-file +acquaintance just able, and no more, to appreciate such kindness.</p> + +<p class="poem"><i>Haec olim meminisse iuvabit.</i></p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></p> +<h2>MUSIC, TENNYSON, AND JOACHIM</h2> +<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">Sir Charles Stanford</span></p> + + +<p>My acquaintance, or rather my friendship, with Alfred Tennyson (for he had +an all-compelling power of making real friends of, and being a true friend +to, those far junior to himself) dated only from 1879, when he was in +years seventy, but in mental vigour the contemporary of the youngest man +he happened to be with. Previously, however, in 1875, I had had experience +of his thoughtful kindness. He had chosen me, an unknown and untried +composer, to write the incidental music to his tragedy of “Queen Mary” for +its production at the Lyceum Theatre, then under the management of Mrs. +Bateman. Many difficulties were put in the way of the performance of the +music, into the causes of which I had neither the wish nor the means to +penetrate. Finally, however, the management gave as an explanation that +the music could not be performed, as the number of orchestral players +required for its proper presentment would necessitate the sacrifice of two +rows of stalls. To my young and disappointed soul came the news of a +generous action which would have been a source of pride to many a composer +of assured position and fame. The Poet had offered, unknown to me, to bear +the expense of the sacrificed seats for many nights, in order to allow my +small share of the work to be heard. The offer was refused, but the +generous action remains—one amongst the thousands of such quiet and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> +stealthy kindnesses which came as second nature to him, and were probably +as speedily forgotten by himself as they were lastingly remembered by +their recipients.<a name='fna_71' id='fna_71' href='#f_71'><small>[71]</small></a></p> + +<p>He little knew that, when I was in my early ’teens and had the most +absurdly exaggerated notions of my song-writing powers, I had had the +presumption to ask my cousin, Mr. Stephen Spring Rice, if he would induce +his old friend to send me a MS. poem to set. Happily, I only got a kindly +but necessary rap over the knuckles for my impertinence; the request was +consigned to the waste-paper basket and mercifully never reached +Farringford. I tremble now to recall the incident, although I verily +believe that if Mr. Spring Rice had been cruel enough to send my letter +on, the smile which it must have provoked would in no wise have been a +contemptuous one. I can imagine his saying then, what I have often heard +him say in later days, “Maxima debetur pueris reverentia.” I had seen so +much of Aubrey de Vere all through my boyhood that I almost felt as if I +knew Tennyson too, so vivid were his accounts of him, and his descriptions +of his ways and surroundings.</p> + +<p>Joachim also, who all through the British part of his international career +was in close touch with the Tennyson circle, used often to speak of him +with the deep reverence and whole-hearted enthusiasm which he reserved for +a very few. On the staircase at Farringford hangs Mrs. Cameron’s early +(and still unsurpassed) photograph of the great violinist. My host pointed +at it one day as he passed upstairs: “That’s Joachim. He’s a fine fellow. +Why did he cover up that fine jowl with a beard?”—quite forgetful of the +possible retort that he had committed the same wickedness himself. On the +comparatively rare occasions when he came up to London, and was surrounded +by all the stars in the literary and political<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> firmament, Joachim and his +Stradivarius were as brilliant a centre of attraction as any of his +guests. Joachim’s setting of Merlin’s song in “The Coming of Arthur” was +an especial favourite of his, as both in atmosphere and in declamation it +exactly fulfilled the intention of his verse. Joachim once told me that he +always had great hankerings after setting “The Revenge,” but that he +repressed them because he felt that it could only be tackled in the true +English spirit by a Britisher.</p> + +<p>The clue to Tennyson’s great critical power in declamation was obvious to +any one who heard him recite his own work. His manner of reading poetry +has often been described. It was a chant rather than a declamation. A +voice of deep and penetrating power, varied only by alteration of note and +by intensity of quality. The notes were few, and he rarely read on more +than two, except at the cadence of a passage, when the voice would +slightly fall. He often accompanied his reading by gentle rippling +gestures with his fingers. As a rule he adhered more to the quantity of a +line than the ordinary reciter, for he had the rare gift of making the +accent felt, without perceptibly altering the prosody. Without being a +musician, he had a great appreciation of the fitness of music to its +subjects, and was an unfailing judge of musical declamation. As he +expressed it himself, he disliked music which went up when it ought to go +down, and went down when it ought to go up. I never knew him wrong in his +suggestions on this point. The most vivid instance I can recall was about +a line in “The Revenge”:</p> + +<p class="poem">Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught they knew.</p> + +<p>When I played him my setting, the word “devil” was set to a higher note in +the question than it was in the answer, and the penultimate word “they” +was unaccented. He at once corrected me, saying that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> second word +“devil” must be higher and stronger than the first, and the “they” must be +marked. He was perfectly right, and I altered it accordingly. It was +apparently a small point, but it was this insisting on perfection of +detail which made him the most valuable teacher of accurate declamation +that it was possible for a composer to learn from. Of all his poems which +I heard him read, those he made most impressive were “The Revenge” and the +“Ode on the Duke of Wellington.” It may be interesting to record a point +in the latter which, he said, was often misread. The line</p> + +<p class="poem">Let the bell be toll’d,</p> + +<p>he read with strong emphasis upon the first as well as the third and fifth +words:</p> + +<p class="poem">— ◡ — ◡ —</p> + +<p>not</p> + +<p class="poem">◡ ◡ — ◡ —</p> + +<p>He said it wanted three strokes of the bell, not two. “Maud” he also read +with a most extraordinary warmth and charm, particularly the climax of +“Come into the garden,” and still more the stanza about the shell (Part +II.), which he gave in a peculiarly thin and ghostly tone of voice, a +quality he also used with great mastery in the Choric Song of the “Lotus +Eaters.” Nor was he less impressive when reciting Greek or German. Greek +he vastly preferred as pronounced in the English fashion. He said it lost +all its sonority and grandeur if modernized; and, indeed, to hear his +illustration was in itself sufficient to convince. German he pronounced +with a strong English accent, and yet I feel sure that Goethe himself +would have acknowledged his reading of “Kennst du das Land” to be a +masterpiece. He was a great admirer of Goethe, and especially of this +poem. He only disliked one line—</p> + +<p class="poem">O mein Beschützer, ziehn,</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>of which he said, “How could Goethe break one’s teeth with those z’s, +while the rest is so musical?” Curiously enough, it is now known that +Goethe erased “Beschützer” and substituted “Geliebter.” He once read to me +from his works for nearly half an hour.</p> + +<p>He was extremely particular about clear diction in singing, the lack of +which in the majority of singers of his day was far more marked than it is +nowadays. He intuitively grasped the true basis of that most difficult of +tasks, the composing of a good song which is at once practical and +grateful to sing. He knew that the poem should be the key to the work, and +should be so clearly enunciated that every word can reach the listener; +and that the composer must never over-balance the voice with the +illustrative detail of the accompaniment. When I was setting “The Voyage +of the Mældune” I happened to be at Freshwater; and after finishing the +solo quartet, “The Under-sea Isle,” four amateurs sang it through for him. +His only (and I fear very just) comment on the performance was, “I did not +hear a word you said from beginning to end.” But he thought afterwards +that we might feel somewhat crushed, and as I was going away some little +time later, and was passing his door, he put his head out and said with a +humorous smile, “I’m afraid I was rather rude just now, but I liked the +way your music rippled away when they fall into the water.” This was a +most curious instance of his faculty for recognizing a subtle piece of +musical characterization as rapidly as, and often more rapidly than, a +listener who was fully equipped with musical technique.</p> + +<p>His ear was capable of such fine distinctions of vowel quality, that it +has always been a mystery to me why this gift, so highly developed in him, +did not bring a mastery of music in its train. By one of the odd +dispensations of nature, Robert Browning, who had none of this fineness +of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> ear, knew enough of music to be able even to read it from a score with +his eyes. Such words as “true” and “too,” which in most people’s mouths +have an identical vowel sound, were differentiated by him, the “oo” full +and round, the “ue” inclining imperceptibly to “u.” His “a” also had far +more varied colours than is usual even with singers. One modification in +especial, the quality of which can best be described as approaching that +of “<i>Eh</i>, mon,” in broad Scotch, gave a breadth and a dignity to such +words as “Nation,” “Lamentation,” “Pāgeant” (he never used the horrible +pronunciation “Padgent”), which added vastly to the musical values of his +verse. It is this perfection of vowel balance which makes his poetry so +difficult to set to music satisfactorily. So musical is it in itself that +very little is left for actual music to supply. It is often the very +incompleteness of some poetry which makes it suggestive to a composer, the +qualities lacking in the one calling out for the assistance of the other +to supply them, a condition of combination which Wagner deliberately +carried to a fine art in his double capacity of poet and composer. With +Tennyson there is no gap to fill, and all that music can do is to +illustrate the surrounding atmosphere, and to leave the poetry to tell its +own story with its declamation and inflections accurately preserved.</p> + +<p>The best reproduction of the peculiar quality of Tennyson’s reading which +I have heard was Irving’s rendering of the lines about the bird in the +last act of “Becket”:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 9em;">We came upon</span><br /> +A wild-fowl sitting on her nest, so still,<br /> +I reach’d my hand and touch’d; she did not stir;<br /> +The snow had frozen round her, and she sat<br /> +Stone-dead upon a heap of ice-cold eggs.</p> + +<p>The mastery of sound-painting in this line, the chilly “o’s” and “e’s” +which the Poet knew so well how to place, Irving declaimed with a quiet +reverence which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> made the sentence so pathetic that it will always live in +the memory of those who heard it. It is interesting to record that all the +actors I have met who witnessed the play invariably hit on those lines as +the high-water mark of Irving’s powers.</p> + +<p>The rehearsals of “Becket,” many of which I was privileged to witness, +soon made it clear that Irving’s Becket was going to be, as it eventually +proved to be, the finest both in conception and in accomplishment of all +his creations. The part fitted him like a glove. So completely did he live +in it, that a friend of his (who related his experience to me), who went +round to see him after a performance, was dismissed by him on leaving with +a fervent benediction delivered with up-raised hand, so sincerely and +impressively delivered that he positively seemed to be an actual Prince of +the Church.</p> + +<p>With Irving’s arrangement of the play I never wholly agreed. He made of it +as a whole a workable piece, but in doing so he sacrificed one scene +which, beyond all question, is one of the most vivid and most +characteristic in the play, the scene of the beggars’ feast. He lost sight +of the fact that its omission spoilt the balance of the middle section. +There was no foil to the brilliancy of the Council at Northampton. +Tennyson (like Shakespeare) knew better the value of contrast, and put in +at this point that touch of divine humour which only heightens pathos. The +drama needed it. He balanced the traitorous splendour of the nobles with +the homely loyalty of the halt, maimed, and blind. Irving also omitted the +poem which gave the true lyrical touch to the first Bower scene; a little +dialogue which, if it had been sung as was intended after the curtain rose +on an empty stage, would have given the same atmosphere to the act, which +the Rainbow song at its close drives home. These were, however, almost the +only blots upon an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> otherwise admirably reverent adaptation. Irving told +me that he always came down to listen behind the curtain to the last +<i>entr’acte</i> (the Martyrdom), in order to get into the right mood for the +final scene. Coming from an actor, who knew nothing of musical technique +beyond an extraordinarily acute sense of what was fitting or not fitting +for stage purposes, this was a great gratification and a still greater +encouragement to one of the many composers whom he so loyally befriended. +The production of “Becket” was a memorable red-letter day for the modern +English stage; the more so as the tragedy came and conquered a public +which was little prepared for the finest specimen of its type which had +been seen since the days of Shakespeare. It was fitting that the reign of +the greatest Queen since Elizabeth should have such a play inscribed in +its annals, an appropriate and worthy counterpart to those of her great +predecessor’s days.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE ATTITUDE OF TENNYSON TOWARDS SCIENCE</h2> +<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">Sir Oliver Lodge, F.R.S.</span></p> + + +<p>Henry Sidgwick wrote in 1860 concerning Tennyson that he “regarded him as +pre-eminently the Poet of Science”; and to explain his meaning he +contrasts the attitude of Wordsworth to Nature with that of Tennyson:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The Nature for which Wordsworth stirred our feelings was Nature as +known by simple observation and interpreted by religious and +sympathetic intuition.</p></div> + +<p>—an attitude which left Science unregarded. But, for Tennyson,</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>the physical world is always the world as known to us through physical +science; the scientific view of it dominates his thought about it, and +his general acceptance of this view is real and sincere, even when he +utters the intensest feeling of its inadequacy to satisfy our deepest +needs.</p></div> + +<p>It is probable that what was then written is now a commonplace of letters, +and requires no emphasizing, but as a professed Student of Science, whose +life has extended over the greater part of the time which has elapsed +since “In Memoriam” was published, I welcome the opportunity of adding my +testimony in continued support of the estimate made by Professor Sidgwick +half a century ago.</p> + +<p>It is generally admitted, and has been recently emphasized, that wherever +reference is made to facts of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> nature in the poems or the fringe of +Science touched on,—as it so often is,—the reference is satisfying and +the touch precise. Observers of Nature have often called attention to the +beautiful accuracy with which natural phenomena are described, with every +mark of first-hand personal experience, as distinct from merely remembered +conventional modes of expression; and the same sort of feeling is aroused +in the mind of a Student of Science as he comes across one after another +of the subjects which have kindled discussion during the Victorian +epoch,—he is inevitably struck with the clear comprehension of the +fundamental aspects of the themes treated which the poems display, he sees +that the Poet is never led into misrepresentation or sacrifice of +precision in the quest for beauty of form. The two are wedded together +“like noble music unto perfect words.”</p> + +<p>To quote examples might only be tedious, and would assuredly be +misleading. It is not that the bare facts of Science are recorded,—such +record could not constitute poetry—certainly not high poetry,—it is not +merely his acquaintance with contemporary scientific discovery, natural to +a man who numbered leading men of Science among his friends;—it is not +any of this that arouses our feeling of admiring fellowship, but it is +that with all his lordship of language and power of expression so +immensely superior to our own, he yet moves in the atmosphere of Science +not as an alien, but as an understanding and sympathetic friend.</p> + +<p>Look back upon the epoch in which he lived—what a materialistic welter it +seems! The mind of man was going through a period of storm; antiquated +beliefs were being jettisoned and everything spiritual seemed to be going +by the board; the point of view of man was rapidly changing and the whole +of existence appeared capable of reducing itself to refined and intricate +mechanism.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>Poets generally must have felt it as a terrible time. What refuge existed +for a poet save to isolate himself from the turmoil, shut himself into his +cabin, and think of other times and other surroundings, away from the +uproar and the gale. Those who did not thus shelter themselves were liable +to bewail the time because the days were evil; as Arnold did, and Clough. +But thus did not Tennyson. Out through the tempest he strode, open-eyed +and bare-headed, with figure erect, glorying in the conflict of the +elements, and summoning the men of his generation to reverence and +worship.</p> + +<p>Doubt, yes doubt he justified—doubt, so it were straightforward and +honest. Forms and accessories—these he was willing to let go—though +always with respect and care for the weaker brothers and sisters to whom +they stood for things of value; but Faith beyond those forms he clung to, +faith fearless and triumphant, uprising out of temporary moods of +despondency into ever securer conviction of righteous guidance throughout +creation and far-seeing divine Purpose at the heart of things.</p> + +<p>Other men retained their faith too, but many only attained security by +resolutely closing their eyes and bolting the doors of their water-tight +compartments. But the glory of Tennyson’s faith was that it never led him +to be unfaithful to the kinds of truth that were being revealed to his +age. That, too, was an age of revelation, and he knew it; the science of +his epoch was true knowledge, as far as it went; it was over-emphatic and +explosive, and to weaker or less inspired minds was full of danger, but it +was genuine cargo, nevertheless, which must be taken on board; there was a +real overload of superstition which had to be discarded; and it was his +mission, and that of a few other noble souls, to help us to accomplish +with calmness and something like wisdom the task of that revolutionary +age.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>In the conflict between Science and Faith our business was to accept the +one without rejecting the other: and that he achieved. Never did his +acceptance of the animal ancestry of man, for instance, upset his belief +in the essential divinity of the human soul, its immortality, its +supremacy, its eternal destiny. Never did his recognition of the +materialistic aspect of nature cloud his perception of its spiritual +aspect as supplementing and completing and dominating the mechanism. His +was a voice from other centuries, as it were, sounding through the +nineteenth; and by his strong majestic attitude he saved the faith of +thousands who else would have been overwhelmed; and his writings convey to +our own age a magnificent expression of that which we too have still not +fully accepted, but which we are on the way to believe.</p> + +<p>If asked to quote in support of this statement I will not quote more than +the titles of some of the chief poems to which I appeal. Not always the +greatest poems perhaps do I here refer to, but those which most clearly +uphold the contention of the Poet’s special service to humanity during the +period of revolution in thought through which mankind has been passing.</p> + +<p>Let me instance, therefore, first and most obviously, “In Memoriam”; and +thereafter poems such as “De Profundis,” “The Two Voices,” “The Ancient +Sage,” “Ulysses,” “Vastness,” “By an Evolutionist,” “Demeter and +Persephone,” “Akbar’s Dream,” “God and the Universe,” “Flower in the +Crannied Wall,” “The Higher Pantheism,” “The Voice and the Peak,” “Wages,” +and “Morte d’Arthur.”</p> + +<p>If I do not add to this list the great poem “To Virgil,” who in his day +likewise assimilated knowledge of diverse kinds and in the light of +spiritual vision glorified all he touched, it is only because the +atmosphere of the Ancient poet is so like that of the Modern one that it +is not by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> any single poem that their sympathy and kinship has to be +displayed, but rather by the similarity of their whole attitude to the +Universe.</p> + +<p>By the term “Poet of Science” I understand one who assimilates the known +truths of Science and Philosophy, through the pores, so to speak, without +effort and with intuitive accuracy, one who bears them lightly and raises +them above the region of bare fact into the realm of poetry. Such a poet +is one who transfuses fact with beauty, he is ready to accept the +discoveries of his age, no matter how prosaic and lamentable they seem, +and is able to perceive and display the essential beauty and divinity +which runs through them all and threads them all together. That is the +service which a great poet can perform for Science in his day and +generation. The qualities beyond this—exhibited for the most part perhaps +in other poems—which enable him to live for all time, are qualities above +any that I have the right or the power to estimate.</p> + +<p>To be overwhelmed and mastered by the material and the mechanical, even to +the extent of being blind to the existence of every other aspect, is +common and human enough. But to recognize to the full the reign of law in +Nature, the sequence of cause and effect, the strength of the chain-armour +of necessity which men of science weave, and yet to discern in it the +living garment of God—that is poetic and divine.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p> +<h2>TENNYSON AS A STUDENT AND POET OF NATURE<a name='fna_72' id='fna_72' href='#f_72'><small>[72]</small></a></h2> +<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">Sir Norman Lockyer, F.R.S.</span></p> + + +<p>When Tennyson passed from life, not only did England lose one of her +noblest sons, but the world a poet who, beyond all others who have ever +lived, combined the gift of expression with an unceasing interest in the +causes of things and in the working out of Nature’s laws.</p> + +<p>When from this point of view we compare him with his forerunners, Dante is +the only one it is needful to name; but although Dante’s knowledge was +well abreast of his time, he lacked the fullness of Tennyson, for the +reason that in his day science was restricted within narrow limits. In +Dante’s time, indeed—he was born some 300 years before Galileo and Tycho +Brahe—science apart from cosmogony had chiefly to do with the various +constellations and measurements of the passing of time and the daily and +yearly motions of the sun, for the observation of which long before his +epoch our ancient monuments were erected; the physical and biological +sciences were still unborn. Dante’s great work is full of references to +the science of his day; his science and song went hand in hand as +Tennyson’s did in later, fuller times. This in strong contrast with such +writers as Goethe who, although both poet and student<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> of science, rarely +commingled the two strands of thought.</p> + +<p>It is right and fitting that the highest poetry should be associated with +the highest knowledge. Tennyson’s great achievement has been to show us +that in the study of science we have one of the bases of the fullest +poetry, a poetry which appeals at the same time to the deepest emotions +and the highest and broadest intellects of mankind. Tennyson, in short, +has shown that science and poetry, so far from being antagonistic, must +for ever advance side by side.</p> + +<p>So far as my memory serves me I was introduced to the late Lord Tennyson +by Woolner about the year 1864. I was then living in Fairfax Road, West +Hampstead, and I had erected my 6-inch Cooke Equatorial in the garden. I +soon found that he was an enthusiastic astronomer, and that few points in +the descriptive part of the subject had escaped him. He was therefore +often in the observatory. Some of his remarks still linger fresh in my +memory. One night when the moon’s terminator swept across the broken +ground round Tycho he said, “What a splendid Hell that would make.” Again, +after showing him the clusters in Hercules and Perseus he remarked +musingly, “I cannot think much of the county families after that.” In 1866 +my wife was translating Guillemin’s <i>Le Ciel</i> and I was editing and +considerably expanding it; he read many of the proof sheets and indeed +suggested the title of the English edition, <i>The Heavens</i>.</p> + +<p>In the ’seventies, less so in the ’eighties, he rarely came to London +without discussing some points with me, and in these discussions he showed +himself to be full of knowledge of the discoveries then being made.</p> + +<p>Once I met him accidentally in Paris; he was most anxious to see Leverrier +and the Observatory. Leverrier<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> had the reputation of being <i>difficile</i>; I +never found him so, but I certainly never saw him so happy as when we +three were together, and he told me afterwards how delighted he had been +that Tennyson should have wished to pay him a visit. I visited Tennyson at +Aldworth in 1890 when he was in his 82nd year. I was then writing the +<i>Meteoritic Hypothesis</i>, and he had asked for proof sheets. When I arrived +there I was touched to find that he had had them bound together for +convenience in reading, and from the conversation we had I formed the +impression that he had read every line. It was a subject after his own +heart, as will be shown farther on. One of the nights during my stay was +very fine, and he said to me, “Now, Lockyer, let us look at the double +stars again,” and we did. There was a 2-inch telescope at Aldworth. His +interest in Astronomy was persistent until his death.</p> + +<p>The last time I met him (July 1892), he would talk of nothing but the +possible ages of the sun and earth, and was eager to know to which +estimates scientific opinion was then veering.</p> + +<p>So far I have referred, and in very condensed fashion, to Tennyson’s +knowledge of and interest in Astronomy as they came out in our +conversations. I have done this because I was naturally most struck with +it, but only a short acquaintance was necessary to show me that this +interest in my own special subject was only a part of a general interest +in and knowledge of scientific questions.</p> + +<p>This was borne home to me very forcibly in about the year 1866 or 1867. +The evenings of Mondays were then given up to friends who came in, <i>sans +cérémonie</i>, to talk and smoke. Clays from Broseley, including +“churchwardens” and some of larger size (Frank Buckland’s held an ounce of +tobacco), were provided, and the confirmed smokers (Tennyson, an +occasional<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> visitor, being one of them) kept their pipes, on which the +name was written, in a rack for future symposia. One night it chanced that +many travellers—Bates, Baines, and Winwoode Reade among them—were +present, and the question of a certain kind of dust-storms came on the +<i>tapis</i>. Tennyson, who had not started the subject, listened for some time +and then remarked how difficult it was for a student to gain certain +knowledge on such subjects, and he then astonished the company by giving +the names of eight authors, four of whom had declared they had seen such +dust-storms as had been described, the other four insisting that they +could not be produced under any known meteorological conditions and that +with the best opportunities they had never seen them.</p> + +<p>In many of our talks I came across similar evidences of minute knowledge +in various fields; nothing in the natural world was trivial to him or to +be neglected. This great grasp was associated with a minute accuracy, and +it was this double habit of mind which made Tennyson such a splendid +observer, and <i>therefore</i> such a poet, for the whole field of nature from +which to cull the most appropriate epithets was always present in his +mind.</p> + +<p>Hence those exquisite presentations of facts, in which true poetry differs +from prose, and which in Tennyson’s poetry appeal at once both to the +brain and heart.</p> + +<p>But even this is not all that must be said on this point. Much of +Tennyson’s finest is so fine that it wants a knowledge on a level with his +own to appreciate its truth and beauty; many of the most exquisite and +profound touches I am convinced are missed by thousands of his readers on +this account. The deep thought and knowledge are very frequently condensed +into a simple adjective instead of being expanded into something of a +longer breath to make them apparent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> enough to compel admiration. This it +strikes me he consistently avoided.</p> + +<p class="poem">All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word.</p> + +<p>Although many of the poems seem to me to be clothed with references to +natural phenomena as with a garment, it can on the whole, I think, be +gathered from them, as I gathered from our conversations, that the subject +deepest in his thoughts was the origin of things in its widest sense, a +<i>Systema Mundi</i>, which should explain the becoming of the visible universe +and <i>define its different parts</i> at different periods in its history. In +this respect we have:</p> + +<p class="poem">Three poets in three ages born.</p> + +<p>Dante, Milton, and Tennyson, with their minds saturated with the same +theme, and I can fancy nothing in the history of human thought more +interesting or encouraging than the studies of this theme as presented to +us in their works published we may say, speaking very roughly, three +centuries apart.</p> + +<p>This of course is another story, but a brief reference to it is essential +for my present purpose.</p> + +<p>All the old religions of the world were based upon Astronomy, that and +Medicine being the only sciences in existence. Sun, Moon, and Stars were +all worshipped as Gods, and thus it was that even down to Dante’s time +Astronomy and religion were inseparably intertwined in the prevalent +Cosmogonies. The Cosmogony we find in Dante, the peg on which he hangs his +<i>Divina Commedia</i>, with the seven heavens surrounding the earth and seven +hells inside it, had come down certainly from Arab and possibly prior +sources; the Empyrean, the <i>primum mobile</i>, the seven Purgatories, and the +Earthly Paradise (the antipodes of Jerusalem) were later additions, the +latter being added so soon as it was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> generally recognized that the earth +was round, though the time of the navigator was not yet.</p> + +<p>Dante constructed none of this machinery, he used it merely; it +represented the knowledge, that is, the belief, of his time.</p> + +<p>Between Dante and Milton there was a gap; but what a gap! It was filled by +Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Galileo, Columbus, Magellan, and Vasco da Gama, +to mention no more, and the astronomers and geographers between them +smashed the earth-centred heavens, the interior hells, and the earthly +paradise into fragments.</p> + +<p>It was while this smashing was working its way into men’s minds that +Milton wrote his poem, and he, like Dante, centred it on a cosmogony. Well +might Huxley call it “the Miltonic Hypothesis”! but how different from the +former one, from which it was practically a retreat, carefully concealed +in an important particular, but still a retreat from the old position.</p> + +<p>Milton in his poem uses, so far as heaven is concerned, the cosmogony of +Dante, but he carefully puts words into Raphael’s mouth to indicate that +after all the earth-centred scheme of the seven heavens must give way. But +the most remarkable part of “Paradise Lost” is the treatment of hell.</p> + +<p>Milton’s greatness as a poet, as a <i>maker</i>, to my mind is justly based +upon the new and vast conceptions which he there gave to the world and to +which the world still clings.</p> + +<p>To provide a new hell which had been “dismissed with costs” from the +earth’s centre, he boldly halves heaven and creates chaos and an external +hell out of the space he filches from it. “Hellgate” is now the orifice in +the <i>primum mobile</i> towards the empyrean.</p> + +<p>In Tennyson we find the complete separation of Science from Dogmatic +Theology, thus foreshadowed by Milton, finally achieved. In him we find, +as in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> Dante and Milton, one fully abreast with the science and thought of +the time, and after another gap, this one filled up by Newton, Kant, +Herschel, Laplace, and Darwin, we are brought face to face with the modern +Cosmogony based upon science and Evolution. The ideas of heaven and hell +in the mediaeval sense no longer form a necessary part of it, in Tennyson +they have absolutely disappeared. In those parts of his poems in which he +introduces cosmogonic ideas we have to deal with the facts presented by +the heavens and the earth which can throw light upon the ancient history +of our planet and its inhabitants.</p> + +<p>The modern <i>Systema Mundi</i> which Tennyson dwells on over and over again is +dominated by</p> + +<p class="poem">Astronomy and Geology, terrible Muses.</p> + +<p>To come back from this parenthesis I must finally point out that although +some of the most pregnant and beautiful passages in Tennyson’s poems have +reference to the modern views of the origin of things, almost all natural +phenomena are referred to, in one place or another, in language in which +both the truest poetry and most accurate science are blended.</p> + +<p>The breadth of the outlook upon Nature shown by the references in the +Poet’s works is only equalled by the minute accuracy of observation +displayed. Astronomy, geology, meteorology, biology, and, indeed, all +branches of science except chemistry, are thus made to bring their +tribute, so that finally we have a perfect poetic garland, which displays +for us the truths of Nature and Human Nature intertwined.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span></p> +<h2>MEMORIES</h2> +<p class="center">By E. V. B.</p> + + +<p>How kind to ask for some of my few small memories of your +father—treasured memories which no length of years can ever rub out. And +how much I like to recall them, though, alas! there is so little; it was +so seldom that we met in those unforgotten times. Once, I remember, I sent +him a rose from my garden, a black beauty, rather rare in those old +days—“L’Empereur de Maroque,” now quite cut out by “Prince Camille de +Rohan.” I keep the little word of thanks that came afterwards in return:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">My dear E. V. B.</span>—Many thanks for your more amiable than beautiful +Black Rose. I don’t mean to be personal, but am, yours always,</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Tennyson.</span></span></p></div> + +<p>Another of his notes is the one wherein he gave me leave to illustrate +“The May Queen.” His words in the note were: “I would rather you than any +one else should do it.” His poems were a joy to me, even in +childhood—from the days when, dull lesson hours, etc., being done, I +could steal away and no one know, and, sitting on the carpet by the home +book-shelves, read over and over on the sly from a bound volume (one of +<i>Blackwood’s Magazines</i>), where were long extracts from Tennyson’s poems, +especially the earlier ones, and amongst them one called “Adeline.” There +was certainly a magic in the poetry, scarce found elsewhere—magic even +for a child of ten.</p> + + +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img13.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Summer-house at Farringford, where “Enoch Arden” was written.</span><br />Carved and painted by Alfred Lord Tennyson.</p> +<p> </p> + +<p>Do you remember how you used to tell me that your<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> father had a great +love for the red rose? He sent me, for my <i>Ros Rosarum</i>, lines on a +Rosebud by himself:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">The Rosebud</span></span><br /> +The night with sudden odour reel’d,<br /> +The southern stars a music peal’d,<br /> +Warm beams across the meadow stole,<br /> +For Love flew over grove and field,<br /> +Said, “Open, Rosebud, open, yield<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Thy fragrant soul.”</span></p> + +<p>I know he loved the poet’s colour—lilac. A long-past scene in the garden +at Farringford still remains in the mind’s eye fresh and vivid—painted in +with memory’s fast colours among the pictures of remembrance.</p> + +<p>The sunshine of a morning at Farringford in early summer when we came up +the long middle walk, bordered on either side with lilac-flowered +aubretia, led up to the open summer-house where Tennyson, with two or +three friends, sat in the sun, enjoying the warmth and the lovely lines of +lilac. We turned towards the house after a time, going under the budding +trees of the grove. There he pointed out some young bushes of Alexandrian +laurel—the same, he told us, whose small narrow leaves were used to make +the crown for victors in the Olympian games....</p> + +<p>Then—can I ever forget?—that delightful evening at Aldworth, when, after +dinner, he invited me to his room upstairs. There he smoked his pipe in +his high-backed, cane arm-chair, while I sat near. On a little table by +the fire were arranged several more of these well-smoked Dublin pipes. +Such a large, comfortable “smoke-room”!—with books about everywhere, on +tables and chairs. Then he read to me aloud from “Locksley Hall.” I think +he read all the poem from the beginning to the end; and as Tennyson read +on—one seemed almost to feel the pungent, salt sea-breeze blowing from +over desolate seas—almost saw visions of the dreary sands<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> lengthening +far away. I remember I ventured to ask why the stanza which follows after +that line, “And all the wonder that should be,” was afterwards omitted:</p> + +<p class="poem">In the hall there hangs a picture—Amy’s arms about my neck,<br /> +Happy children in a sunbeam, sitting on the ribs of wreck.<br /> +In my life there was a picture—she that clasp’d my neck is flown,<br /> +I was left within the shadow, sitting on the wreck alone.</p> + +<p>I began saying the lines, but he knew them quite well and repeated them. I +can’t think how it is, the answer he returned about this is now, alas! +forgot.... Such troublous years have come and gone since that happy +Long-Ago. (The omitted stanza would have gone, too, had it not been +written down for me by a long-lost friend, Sir Robert Morier.)</p> + +<p>So the reading aloud went on, with talk between (and clouds of smoke!), +until, I think, past eleven o’clock, when you opened the door, and +that—for me—rare dream of poetry and charm abruptly broke.</p> + +<p>I saw Tennyson, for the last time, as I followed down the wooded path at +Aldworth, on his way to the garden door opening on the heath, his fine, +big, Russian hound pacing closely after.</p> + +<p>No—once more I saw him, his likeness with all the distinctness sometimes +known in the slow-moving white clouds of some glorious autumn day. It was +after the end had come, and not long before the grave in Westminster Abbey +had received him. I was travelling home on the Great-Western from +Somerset. Gazing up idly at the assembled multitude of sun-steeped silver +clouds above, suddenly, clear and distinct, my eyes beheld the image of +his noble profile as if lying back asleep; the eyes were closed, the head +at rest upon the pillow—a sculptured cloud in a snowy cloudland, outlined +upon an azure sky.... Not until after several minutes did the vision pass, +slowly fading into the infinite blue.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span></p> +<h2>TENNYSON AND HIS TALK ON SOME RELIGIOUS QUESTIONS</h2> +<p class="center">By the Right Rev. the <span class="smcap">Bishop of Ripon</span></p> + + +<p>Among the happy memories of my life, and they are many, the memory of the +kindly welcome accorded to me at Aldworth and at Farringford must always +possess a special charm. This will readily be understood by those of my +own age; for Tennyson was a name to conjure with in the days of my youth. +Slowly but surely his influence crept into our lives: we read in +text-books at school that the</p> + +<p class="poem">Poet in a golden age was born, with golden stars above,<br /> +Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, the love of love.</p> + +<p>The thought and the words appealed to me from the first. Then, how I know +not, we became familiar with part, at least, of “In Memoriam.” Its phrases +caught our fancy, and some of our early attempts at versification were +cast in the same metre. Then came the “Idylls of the King,” and I remember +how, when the rest of the party went out one holiday afternoon, I stayed +indoors and read the “Idylls” at one sitting. Thus in our youth Tennyson +became poet and hero to us. Any one who had seen him or known him became +for us invested with a kind of sacred and awful interest; my uncle who +lived at Cheltenham grew greater in our eyes when we learned that he had +corresponded with him.</p> + +<p>Thus our hero-worship grew. We knew indeed that there were those who did +not welcome the coming<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> Poet with ardour; we lived, in fact, through the +age of his disparagement to the time of his unchallenged supremacy. It +will be interesting, I think, to many to read the following letter written +by Rev. Frederick W. Robertson when he was experiencing the freer and +fresher intellectual atmosphere of Oxford after the stifling +oppressiveness of Cheltenham:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I had nearly forgotten to tell you that Tennyson is deeply admired +here by all the brilliant men. Stanley, our first genius, rates him +highly; Hannah, who has guided nearly all the first and double-first +class men for the last three years to honours, told me he considers +his poetical and psychological powers more varied than any poet he +knows. And the “Dread,” a choice selection of the most brilliant among +the rising men, have pronounced him to be the first poet of the day. +So you see I have some to keep me company in my judgment. And at all +events he is above ridicule.</p> + +<p>Pray inform Miss D—— of all this. One of our first professors raves +about him.</p></div> + +<p>When I went up to Cambridge in 1860, Tennyson was the oracle poet among +the younger men; but the feeling of doubt still remained among the older +men. I recall a friendly dispute between the Senior and a Junior Fellow of +my own College. The elder man charged Tennyson with being “misty”; the +younger man defended: the elder man cited a passage from “In Memoriam,” +and challenged the younger to say what it meant. The elder man was so far +successful that he drove the younger man to declare that though he could +not explain it then, he hoped to enter into its meaning later on. It was a +typical conflict; the older generation could not understand; the younger +was under the spell of the Poet, and though unable to interpret +everything, believed in Tennyson’s message to his own age.</p> + +<p>There were charges levelled against Tennyson more serious and more absurd +than that of obscurity. The words Scepticism, Pantheism, and even Atheism +were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> heard. One newspaper in a review of “In Memoriam” exclaimed: “Here +the poet barely escapes Atheism and plunges into the abyss of Pantheism.” +Another foolish writer, commenting on the lines:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">But what am I?</span><br /> +An infant crying in the night,<br /> +An infant crying for the light,<br /> +And with no language but a cry,</p> + +<p>remarked, with superb <i>naïveté</i>, “May we remind Mr. Tennyson that the +darkness is past and that the true light now shineth?” I remember, as late +as 1867 or 1868, an evening party at Blackheath when the question was +started—“Who is the greatest living poet?” To my amazement and amusement +a self-satisfied, but very good man, instantly and oracularly replied, +“Bonar—without doubt—Bonar.” He meant that excellent and devout-minded +man, the Rev. Horatius Bonar, the hymn-writer. These were, no doubt, +extreme cases, but stupidity is always extreme. I recall these incidents +because they are parts of the story which tells of the difficulties +through which Tennyson fought the way to his throne. They serve to recall +the prejudices which provoked the resentment and stimulated the attachment +of those who, like myself, were brought early under the spell of his +enchantment. His story repeated familiar features; he had at first a +select circle of studious admirers; by degrees the general public became +aware of the existence in their midst of a true poet. Then timid partisans +awoke and demanded credentials of orthodoxy. Persons of this type did not +like to be told that—</p> + +<p class="poem">There lives more faith in honest doubt,<br /> +Believe me, than in half the creeds.</p> + +<p>But meanwhile he had drawn the younger generation to his side: they +believed in him, and they were right. In spite of misunderstanding and +misinterpretation,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> Tennyson followed the gleam: he would not stoop to +make his judgment blind or prevaricate for popularity’s sake. He beat his +music out, and those who knew him, as I was privileged to do, during the +later years of his life, could realize how truly he had made a larger +faith his own.</p> + +<p>It fell out naturally when I met him that conversation turned on religion +or theological subjects. His mind, courageous, inquiring, honest, sought +truth beyond the forms of truth. On the occasion of my first visit to +Aldworth, in the smoking-room we talked of the problem of pain, of +determinism, of apparent contradictions of faith. That night, indeed, we +seemed to talk—</p> + +<p class="poem">Of faith, free will, foreknowledge absolute.</p> + +<p>But the impression left upon my mind was that we were engaged in no mere +scholastic discussion; it was no mere intellectually satisfactory creed +which was sought: it was something deeper and more abiding than anything +which may be modified in form from age to age; the soul needs an +anchorage, and to find it there must be no ignoring of facts and no +juggling with them once they are found. In illustration of this I may +relate how once, when walking with him among the heather-clad heights +round Aldworth, he spoke of the apparent dualism in Nature: the forces of +darkness and light seemed to meet in conflict. “If I were not a +Christian,” he said, “I should be perhaps a Parsee.”<a name='fna_73' id='fna_73' href='#f_73'><small>[73]</small></a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> He felt, +however, that if once we accepted the view that this life was a time of +education, then the dark things might be found to have a meaning and a +value. In the retrospect hereafter the pain and suffering would seem +trivial. I think that this idea must have taken hold of his thought as we +were conversing; for he suddenly stopped in his walk, and, standing amid +the purple landscape, he declaimed the lines, then unpublished:</p> + +<p class="poem">The Lord spake out of the skies<br /> +To a man good and a wise:<br /> +“The world and all within it<br /> +Will be nothing in a minute.”<br /> +Then a beggar began to cry:<br /> +“Give me food or else I die.”<br /> +Is it worth his while to eat,<br /> +Or mine to give him meat,<br /> +If the world and all within it<br /> +Were nothing the next minute?</p> + +<p>He once quoted to me Hinton’s view that we were not in a position to judge +the full meaning of life; that we were in fact looking at the wrong side +of things. We saw the work from the underside, and we could not judge of +the pattern which was perhaps clear enough on the upper side.</p> + +<p>Next day I was able to remind him that he had approved this view of life. +He was not well, and I think that the darker aspects loomed larger in his +mind; at any rate, he was speaking more gloomily than usual. When I +remarked that God did not take away men till their work was done, he said, +“He does; look at the promising young fellows cut off.” Then I brought up +Hinton’s theory and illustration, and asked whether we could judge when a +man had finished his appointed work. Immediately he acquiesced; the view +evidently satisfied him.</p> + +<p>He took a deep interest in those borderland questions which sometimes seem +so near an answer and yet never are answered. At the hour of death what +are the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> sights which rush upon the vision? Of these he would sometimes +speak; he told me how William Allingham, when dying, said to his wife, “I +see things beyond your imagination to conceive.” Some vision seemed to +come to such at death. One lady in the Isle of Wight exclaimed, as though +she saw “Cherubim and Seraphim.” But these incidents did not disturb the +steady thought and trust which found its strength far deeper down than in +any surface phenomena. He never shirked the hard and dismaying facts of +life. Once he made me take to my room Winwoode Reade’s <i>Martyrdom of Man</i>. +There never was such a passionate philippic against Nature as this book +contained. The universe was one vast scene of murder; the deep aspirations +and noble visions of men were the follies of flies buzzing for a brief +moment in the presence of inexorable destruction. Life was bottled +sunshine; death the silent-footed butler who withdrew the cork. The book, +with its fierce invective, had a strange rhapsodical charm. It put with +irate and verbose extravagance the fact that sometimes</p> + +<p class="poem">Nature, red in tooth and claw,<br /> +With ravin shrieked against his creed;</p> + +<p>but it failed to see any but one side of the question. The writer saw +clearly enough what Tennyson saw, but Tennyson saw much more. He could not +make his judgment blind against faith any more than he would make it blind +against facts. He saw more clearly because he saw more largely. He +distrusted narrow views from whatever side they were advanced. The same +spirit which led him to see the danger of the dogmatic temper in so-called +orthodox circles led him to distrust it when it came from other quarters. +There was a wholesome balance about his mind. Nothing is farther from the +truth than to suppose that men of great genius lack mental balance. Among +the lesser lights<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> there may be a brilliant but unbalanced energy, but +among the greater men it is not so; there is a large and wholesome sanity +among these. There is sufficient breadth of grasp to avoid extremes in +Dante, Milton, and Shakespeare; it was the same with Tennyson. We may be +right, for instance, in classing Tennyson among those</p> + +<p class="poem">Whose faith has centre everywhere<br /> +Nor cares to fix itself to form;</p> + +<p>but we should be wholly wrong if we supposed that he did not realize the +value of form. He knew that faith did not lie in the form, but he knew +also the protective value of form to faith; the shell was not the kernel, +but the kernel ripened all the better in the shelter of the shell. He +realized how sacred was the flesh and blood to which truth divine might be +linked, and he uttered the wise caution:</p> + +<p class="poem">Hold thou the good: defend it well<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">For fear divine philosophy</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Should push beyond her mark and be</span><br /> +Procuress to the lords of Hell.</p> + +<p>In his view, as it seemed to me, there were two attitudes of mind towards +dogmatic forms—the one impatient of form because form was never adequate +to express the whole truth, the other impatient of form<a name='fna_74' id='fna_74' href='#f_74'><small>[74]</small></a> because +impatient of the truth itself. These two attitudes of mind were poles +asunder; they must never be confused together.</p> + +<p>I may be allowed to illustrate this discriminating spirit by one or two +reminiscences. I once asked him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> whether they were right who interpreted +the three ladies who accompanied King Arthur on his last voyage as Faith, +Hope, and Charity. He replied with a touch of (shall I call it?) +intellectual impatience: “They do and they do not. They are those graces, +but they are much more than those. I hate to be tied down to say, ‘This +means that,’ because the thought in the image is much more than the +definition suggested or any specific interpretation advanced.” The truth +was wider than the form, yet the form was a shelter for the truth. It +meant this, but not this only; truth must be able to transcend any form in +which it may be presented.</p> + +<p>Hence he could see piety under varying forms: for example, he described +those who were “pious variers from the Church.” This phrase, it may here +be related, had a remarkable influence on one man’s life, as the following +letter, written by a clergyman who had formerly been a Nonconformist, will +show. The writer died some few years ago; two of his sons are now good and +promising clergymen of the Church of England:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Oxford Villas, Guiseley, Leeds</span>,<br /> +<span style="padding-right: 2em;"><i>January 16, 1901</i>.</span></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">My Lord Bishop</span>—In reference to your volume on the Poets, may I +intrude upon your attention one moment to say that it was Tennyson’s +phrase in reference to dissenters:</p> + +<p class="poem">variers from the Church,</p> + +<p>in his “Sea Dreams” that first kindled me to earnest thought (some +twenty years since) as to my own position in relationship to the +Church of the land. The force that moved me lay in the word “pious.” +Were dissenters more pious than Church people? I regret to say I +thought them much less so; and as this conviction deepened I was +compelled to make the change for which I am every day more +thankful.—I am, my Lord Bishop, your Lordship’s devoted servant,</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">W. Hayward Elliott.</span></span></p></div> + +<p>I have already spoken of his recognition of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> apparent dualism in +Nature. His outlook on the universe could not ignore the dark and +dismaying facts of existence, and his faith, which rose above the shriek +of Nature, was not based upon arguments derived from any survey of +external, physical Nature. When he confined his outlook to this, he could +see power and mechanism, but he could not from these derive faith. His +vision must go beyond the mere physical universe; he must see life and see +it whole; he must include that which is highest in Nature, even man, and +only then could he find the resting-place of faith. He thus summed up the +matter once when we had been walking up and down the “Ball-room” at +Farringford: “It is hard,” he said, “it is hard to believe in God; but it +is harder not to believe. I believe in God, not from what I see in Nature, +but from what I find in man.” I took him to mean that the witness of +Nature was only complete when it included all that was in Nature, and that +the effort to draw conclusions from Nature when man, the highest-known +factor in Nature, was excluded, could only lead to mistake. I do not think +he meant, however, that external Nature gave no hints of a superintending +wisdom or even love, for his own writings show, I think, that such hints +had been whispered to him by flower and star; I think he meant that faith +did not find her platform finally secure beneath her feet till she had +taken count of man. In short, he seemed to me to be near to the position +of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, who said that truth as soon as learned was +felt to be held on a much deeper and more unshakable ground than any +authority which appealed to mere intellect, namely, on its own discerned +truthfulness. The response to all that is highest in Nature is found in +the heart of man, and man cannot deny this highest, because it is latent +in himself already. But I must continue Tennyson’s own words: “It is hard +to believe in God, but it is harder<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> not to believe in Him. I don’t +believe in His goodness from what I see in Nature. In Nature I see the +mechanician; I believe in His goodness from what I find in my own breast.” +I said, “Then you believe that Man is the highest witness of God?” +“Certainly,” he replied. I said, “Is not that what Christ said and was? He +was in man the highest witness of God to Man,” and I quoted the recorded +words, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” He assented, but said +that there were, of course, difficulties in the idea of a Trinity—the +Three. “But mind,” he said, “Son of God is quite right—that He was.”<a name='fna_75' id='fna_75' href='#f_75'><small>[75]</small></a> +He said that, of course, we must have doctrine, and then he added, “After +all, the greatest thing is Faith.” Having said this, he paused, and then +recited with earnest emphasis the lines which sang of faith in the reality +of the Unseen and Spiritual, of a faith, therefore, which can wait the +great disclosure:</p> + +<p class="poem">Doubt no longer, that the Highest is the wisest and the best,<br /> +Let not all that saddens Nature blight thy hope, or break thy rest,<br /> +Quail not at the fiery mountain, at the shipwreck, or the rolling<br /> +Thunder, or the rending earthquake, or the famine, or the pest.<br /> +<br /> +Neither mourn if human creeds be lower than the heart’s desire;<br /> +Thro’ the gates that bar the distance comes a gleam of what is higher.<br /> +Wait till death has flung them open, when the man will make the Maker<br /> +Dark no more with human hatred in the glare of deathless fire.</p> + +<p>He was alive to the movements of modern thought. He saw in evolution, if +not a fully proved law, yet a magnificent working hypothesis; he could not +regard it as a theory hostile to ultimate faith; but far beyond the +natural wish to reconcile faith and thought, which he shared with all +right-thinking men, was the conviction of the changeless personal +relationship between God and man. He might find difficulties about faith +and about certain dogmas of faith, such as the Trinity. No doubt, however, +the Poet’s conception brought the divine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> into all human life; it showed +God in touch with us at all epochs of our existence—in our origin, in our +history, in our final self-realization, for He is</p> + +<p class="poem">Our Father and our Brother and our God.<a name='fna_76' id='fna_76' href='#f_76'><small>[76]</small></a></p> + +<p>Religion largely lies in the consciousness of our true relation to Him who +made us; and the yearning for the realization of this consciousness found +constant expression in Tennyson’s works and conversation.<a name='fna_77' id='fna_77' href='#f_77'><small>[77]</small></a> Perhaps its +clearest expression is to be found in his instructions to his son: +“Remember, I want ‘Crossing the Bar’ to be always at the end of all my +works.”</p> + +<p class="poem">I hope to see my Pilot face to face<br /> +When I have crossed the Bar.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span></p> +<h2>TENNYSON AND SIR JOHN SIMEON, AND TENNYSON’S LAST YEARS</h2> +<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">Louisa E. Ward</span><a name='fna_78' id='fna_78' href='#f_78'><small>[78]</small></a></p> + + +<p>From the misty dawn of early childhood rises the first image of one who +was to fill so large a place in my life and that of those dear to me. As +I, not yet four years old, lay in my father’s arms and he said to me the +“Morte d’Arthur,” there blended with the picture of the wild winter mere +and the mighty King carried, dying, to its shore, a vision of the man who, +my father told me, lived somewhere amongst us and who could write words +which seemed to me more beautiful than anything I had ever heard.</p> + +<p>It was several years before I again came upon the “Morte d’Arthur,” when I +was a girl of ten or eleven, and I remember how eagerly I seized upon it, +and how the fairy glamour of my infancy came back to me as I read it.</p> + +<p>It was in the autumn of 1852 that Lord and Lady (then Mr. and Mrs.) +Tennyson came to Farringford. They had been looking for a house, and they +found themselves one summer evening on the terrace walk, with the rosy +sunset lighting up the long line of coast to St. Catherine’s Point, and +the gold-blue sea with its faint surf line mingling with the rosiness: and +they said,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> “We will go no further, this must be our home.” An ideal +home it was, ideal in its loveliness, its repose, in its wild but +beautiful gardens, and more than all ideal in its calm serenity, the +hospitable simplicity, the high thought and utter nobleness of aim and +life which that pair brought with them, and which through the long years +of change, of sickness, and of sorrow, of which every home must be the +scene, made the atmosphere of Farringford impossible to be forgotten by +those who had the happiness of breathing it.</p> + +<p> </p> +<div class="bbox" style="width: 600px; height: 395px;"><img src="images/img14.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Corner of the Study at Farringford where Tennyson +wrote,<br />with his Deerhound “Lufra” and the Terrier “Winks” in the Foreground.</span><br />From a drawing by W. Biscombe Gardner.</p> +<p> </p> + +<p>Hallam was at that time a baby, and very soon after their arrival at +Farringford beautiful Lionel came to gladden the hearts of his parents. It +was on the day of Lionel’s christening that my father paid his first visit +to Farringford, and found the family party just returning from church. My +father had already been introduced to Tennyson at Lady Ashburton’s house +in London, on which occasion he had walked away with Carlyle and had +expressed to him his pleasure at meeting so great a man as Tennyson. +“Great man,” said Carlyle, “yes, he is nearly a great man, but not quite; +he stands on a dunghill with yelping dogs about him, and if he were quite +a great man, he would call down fire from Heaven, and burn them +up”—“but,” he went on, speaking of his poetry, “he has the grip on it.”</p> + +<p>My father had entertained the greatest admiration for Tennyson’s poetry +since the day when, both being undergraduates at Christchurch, his friend +Charles Wynne brought him the first published volume, saying to him, +“There is something new for you who love poetry.” And his delight may be +imagined in now having the Poet for a neighbour. The intimacy between +Farringford and Swainston grew apace. My mother and Lady Tennyson, though +poor health and numerous occupations interfered with their frequent +meetings, conceived a very real affection for each other, which was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> only +cut short by my mother’s early death, which left Lady Tennyson with a deep +feeling and pity for her children.</p> + +<p>During the early years of Farringford, it was one of my father’s great and +frequent pleasures to ride or drive over in the summer afternoons; he, in +turn with her husband, would draw Lady Tennyson in her garden chair, and +with the two boys skipping on before them, they would go long expeditions +through the lanes, and even up the downs; then back through the soft +evening air to dinner, and the long evening of talk and reading which +knitted that “fair companionship” and made of it “such a friendship as had +mastered time,” and which we may well believe has re-formed itself still +more perfectly now that both those beloved souls have “crossed the bar.” +The Tennysons sometimes came over to Swainston for a few days, and I +remember his being there on the wonderful July night in 1858 when the tail +of the great comet passed over Arcturus. His admiration and excitement +knew no bounds; he could not sit at the dinner-table, but rushed out +perpetually to look at the glorious sight, repeating: “It is a besom of +destruction sweeping the sky.”</p> + +<p>Little Lionel was that same night taken from his bed to the window, and, +opening his sleepy eyes on the unaccustomed splendour, he said, “Am I in +Heaven?”</p> + +<p>The writing and publication of “Maud” in 1855 was largely due to my +father.</p> + +<p>Looking through some papers one day at Farringford with his friend, he +came upon the exquisite lyric “O that ’twere possible,” and said, “Why do +you keep these beautiful lines unpublished?” Tennyson told him that the +poem had appeared years before in the <i>Tribute</i>, an ephemeral publication, +but that it was really intended to belong to a dramatic poem which he had +never been able to carry out. My father gave him no peace till he had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> +persuaded him to set about the poem, and not very long after, he put +“Maud” into his hand.</p> + +<p>It was about this time, but I do not remember what year, that Tennyson +gave my father the manuscript of “In Memoriam.”<a name='fna_79' id='fna_79' href='#f_79'><small>[79]</small></a> He had often asked him +to give him a manuscript poem, and he had put him off, but one day at +Swainston he asked my father to reach him a particular book from a shelf +in the library, and as he did so, down fell the MS. which Tennyson had put +there as a surprise. Never was gift more valued and appreciated by its +recipient. I have always felt grateful to him for the continual pleasure +which it gave my father during the whole of his life.</p> + +<p>Tennyson’s visits were eagerly looked forward to by us children. He would +talk to us a good deal, and was fond of puzzling and mystifying us in a +way that was very fascinating. He would take the younger ones on his knee, +and give them sips of his port after dinner, and I remember my father +saying to one of my sisters: “Never forget that the greatest of poets has +kissed you and made you drink from his glass.”</p> + +<p>As I got older I was sometimes allowed to drive over to Farringford with +my father, and, need I say, I looked forward to these as the red-letter +days of my life. Not only were the talk and intellectual atmosphere +intoxicating to me, but I became passionately attached to Lady Tennyson. +Praise of her would be unseemly; but I may quote what my father was fond +of saying of her, that she was “a piece of the finest china, the mould of +which had been broken as soon as she was made.” It was not, however, till +after my mother’s death in 1860 that my real grown-up intimacy with them +began, and that Farringford became the almost second home which for some +years it was to me. During my father’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> absences in London or elsewhere, I +was free to go and stay there as often and for as long as I liked, and was +almost on the footing of a daughter of the house. I used to go for long +walks, sometimes alone with Tennyson, sometimes in the company of other +guests, of whom Mr. Jowett was one of the most frequent. I wish I had +written down the talks with which he made the hours pass like minutes +during our walks. Forgetful of the youth and ignorance of his companion, +he would rise to the highest themes, thread his way through the deepest +speculations, till I caught the infection of his mind, and the questions +of matter and spirit, of space and the infinite, of time and of eternity, +and such kindred subjects, became to me the burning questions, the supreme +interests of life! But however absorbed he might be in earnest talk, his +eye and ear were always alive to the natural objects around him: I have +known him stop short in a sentence to listen to a blackbird’s song, to +watch the sunlight glint on a butterfly’s wing, or to examine a field +flower at his feet. The lines on “The Flower” were the result of an +investigation of the “love-in-idleness” growing on a wall in the +Farringford garden. He made them nearly on the spot, and said them to me +next day. Trees and plants had a special attraction for him, and he longed +to see the vegetation of the Tropics. Years ago he scolded my husband more +than half in earnest for not having told him in time that he was going to +winter in Madeira, that he might have gone with him.</p> + +<p>But to return to my girlish days at Farringford! The afternoon walks were +followed by the long talks in the firelight by the side of Lady Tennyson’s +sofa, talks less eager, less thrilling than those I have recalled; but so +helpful, so tender, full of the wisdom of one who had learnt to look upon +life and all it embraces from one standpoint only, and that the very +highest! Then<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> dinner with the two boys (their long fair hair hanging over +their shoulders and their picturesque dresses as they are seen in Mr. +Watts’s picture in the drawing-room at Aldworth) waiting as little pages +on the guests at table, followed by the delightful dessert, for which, +according to the old College fashion, we adjourned to the drawing-room. +The meal was seasoned with merry genial talk, unexpected guests arriving, +and always finding the same warm welcome, for none came who were not tried +and trusted friends. After dessert Tennyson went up to his study<a name='fna_80' id='fna_80' href='#f_80'><small>[80]</small></a> (the +little room at the top of the house, from the leads outside which such sky +pageants have been seen, shooting stars, eclipses, and Northern Lights) +with any men friends who were in the house. They smoked there for an hour +or two, and then came down to tea, unless, as sometimes happened, we all +joined them upstairs; and then there was more talk or reading aloud of +published or, still better, unpublished poems. He would sometimes read +from other poets; Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, and some lyrics of Campbell +being what he often chose; and he taught me to know and appreciate Crabbe, +whom he placed very high in the rank of English poets.</p> + +<p>One day Tennyson came behind me as I sat at breakfast, and dropped on my +plate the MS. of the “Higher Pantheism” which he had composed, or at any +rate perfected, during the night. Another day he took me into the garden +to see a smoking yew, and said the lines on it which he had just made and +afterwards interpolated in “In Memoriam.” My father was with him when they +came upon a bed of forget-me-not in the garden and he exclaimed “the +heavens upbreaking through the earth,” the lines which he afterwards +applied to the bluebells in the description of the spring<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> ride of +Guinevere and Lancelot to Arthur’s court. Once he pleased and touched me +inexpressibly: he was talking of the different way in which friends speak +before your face and behind your back, and he said, “Now I should not mind +being behind the curtain while L. S. was talking of me, and there are very +few of whom I could say that.”</p> + +<p>Years went on, and changes came; my father’s re-election to Parliament in +1865 made our seasons in London longer and more regular than they had +been, and though there was still constant and delightful intercourse with +Farringford during the autumn and winter, there was necessarily less +during the Session. Some glorious days there were, however, when at Easter +or at Whitsuntide my father went down to Swainston, and I sometimes +accompanied him. We always went over to Farringford either to spend a +night or two, or to drive back through the spring night with its scented +breath and its mad revelry of cuckoos and nightingales vying with each +other as to which could outshout the other, and my father, fresh from +communion with his friend, would open himself out as he rarely did at any +other time or place.</p> + +<p>It was about this time that Tennyson and his wife, worried beyond bearing +by the rudeness and vulgarity of the tourists, who considered that they +could best show admiration for the Poet by entirely refusing to respect +his privacy, determined to find another house for themselves during the +summer months, and turned their thoughts to Blackdown and its +neighbourhood. One summer they rented a farm on Blackdown called, I think, +Greyshott, and on a fine morning, April 23, 1868, we stood, a party of +some fifteen friends, to see the foundation-stone laid of Aldworth, the +new home which, to more recent, though not to the older friends, has +become almost as much associated with its owner as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> Farringford, and +received the sorrowful consecration of having been the scene of his +passing away.</p> + +<p>About this time Tennyson took to coming oftener to London. On one occasion +he took me with him to the British Museum, and we did not get beyond the +Elgin Marbles, such was their fascination for him. Another day he came to +our house at luncheon time; most of the family happened to be out, and he +proposed that we should go to the Zoological Gardens. London was at its +fullest, and I feared, though I did not say it, that he would not escape +recognition, which was of all things what he most hated. However, all went +well for some time until we went into the Aquarium, and he became greatly +absorbed in the sea monsters, when I heard a whisper in the crowd, “That’s +Tennyson,” and knew that in another minute he would be surrounded; so I +suddenly discovered that the heat of the Aquarium was unbearable and +carried him off unwillingly to a quieter part of the gardens—he never +found out my ruse.</p> + +<p>My mind lingers willingly on the last years of the sixties. As I look back +the two-and-twenty years seem, as did another “two and thirty years,” a +“mist that rolls away.” Of the circle of dear friends who were so much to +one another some still remain to gladden us with their presence, but how +many have gone where “beyond these voices there is peace”—Mr. George +Venables, Mr. John Ball, Mr. Browning, Sir F. Pollock, Mr. Brookfield, Mr. +Henry Cowper, Mr. Laurence Oliphant. The circle was complete as the Table +of Arthur before the fatal quest had made its gaps; here death was the +quest, and each one who sought, alas, has found it!</p> + +<p>The first to pass away was my father, and as his best friend walked in the +garden at Swainston on the day, May 31, 1870, on which he came to see him +laid to rest, he made those verses,<a name='fna_81' id='fna_81' href='#f_81'><small>[81]</small></a> than which few lovelier<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> tributes +were ever paid from friend to friend, and which will keep the name of the +“Prince of Courtesy” green even in the long years to come.</p> + +<p>The autumn and winter ’71-’72 my eldest brother and I spent together at +Freshwater. We rented Mrs. Cameron’s little house which opens by a door of +communication into the large hall of Dimbola, the house in which she +lived. The evening we arrived, she suddenly appeared in our drawing-room +saying, “When strangers take this house I keep the door between us locked, +with friends never”; and locked it never was. We lived almost as part of +the family, and it was a real enjoyment to be in such close intimacy with +one of the most original, and at the same time most tender-hearted and +generous women I have ever known. She was on very intimate terms at +Farringford, and would speak her mind to the Poet in a very amusing way. +On one occasion a party of Americans came to Freshwater, and Mrs. Cameron +sent them up to Farringford with a note of introduction. Tennyson was +tired or busy, and they were not admitted. They returned to Mrs. Cameron +full of their disappointment, and she put on her bonnet (I can see her now +as she walked through the lanes, her red or blue Chuddah shawl always +trailing behind her, and apparently not much the worse for the dust that +fringed it), and insisted upon their going back with her to Farringford. +Having made her way to Tennyson, she said to him solemnly, “Alfred, these +good people have come 3000 miles to see a lion and they have found a +bear.” He laughed, relented, and received the strangers most courteously.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cameron’s beautiful white-haired old husband in his royal purple +dressing-gown was a most interesting personality. In addition to the large +experience of men and things which his many years of official life in +India had given him, and which made his society<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> delightful, he was a very +fine classical scholar of the old school, and in his old age, when +blindness and infirmity debarred him in great measure from his books, it +was his solace to repeat by heart odes of Horace, pages of Virgil, and +long passages from the Greek poets.</p> + +<p>Easter 1872 brought a bright and merry gathering to Freshwater. One of +Mrs. Cameron’s charming relations (they had lived with her for years as +adopted daughters) was about to marry, and go out with her husband to +India, and the “Primrose wedding” brought a large influx of young people, +friends and relations of Mrs. Cameron and the bride, in addition to the +visitors who always made Easter a pleasant time. The weather was perfect, +the “April airs that fan the Isle of Wight” especially soft and balmy. +Parties of twenty or thirty met every evening in Mrs. Cameron’s hall or in +the Farringford drawing-room. Nearly every one there knew or got to know +Lord and Lady Tennyson. He was in particularly genial health and spirits; +he joined the young people in their midnight walks to the sea, in their +flower-seeking expeditions, in one of which some one was fortunate enough +to find a grape hyacinth in one of the Farringford fields. He read aloud +nearly as much as he was asked to, and danced as vigorously as the +youngest present at two dances that were given. It was during the first of +these dances that a young neighbour became engaged to the lady whom he +shortly afterwards married. Very soon after the decisive moment had +passed, and when the event was naturally supposed to be a profound secret, +Tennyson put the girl’s mother, with whom he happened to be sitting, +completely out of countenance by saying, without a suspicion of malice, +and without for the moment recognizing the young couple who passed him, “I +wot they be two lovyers dear.” When he was shortly afterwards told of the +engagement, he twinkled very much<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> over his rather premature but very +apposite announcement.</p> + +<p>My marriage took place in the autumn of 1872, and my husband, who already +knew the Tennysons, was at once received into their intimacy, and their +friendship was henceforth one of the greatest privileges of our joint +life. Tennyson and Hallam were present at our wedding, and the former held +our eldest boy in his arms when he was but a day or two old.</p> + +<p>The Easter of 1873 saw us again at Freshwater with another pleasant +meeting of friends. On that occasion Tennyson said to me, “Why do you not +ask me to dinner?” It need not be said that we at once gave the +invitation, though not a little nervous at the thought of the +lodging-house fare and arrangements to which we were bidding him; but our +dear old landlady did her very best. We asked a small party (Lady Florence +Herbert and Leslie Stephen were our guests) to meet him and Hallam; he was +himself in the best of spirits, and our little dinner-party proved a great +success.</p> + +<p>A few years later the Tennysons took a house in London three or four years +running (one spring they had my stepmother’s house in Eaton Place). +Tennyson appeared to have in great measure lost his dislike to mixing in +general society, and they collected about them a very interesting and +varied circle of friends. I cannot help recalling an incident which +occurred one evening at their house, which, though painful at the moment, +is pleasant to look back upon on account of the affectionate and generous +apology it elicited. A large party was at their house one evening, and +Tennyson was persuaded to read aloud, and chose the “Revenge.” Something +or other, I suppose the “Inquisition Dogs” and the “Devildoms of Spain,” +excited him as he read, and by the time he had finished he had worked +himself into a state, which I have occasionally, but seldom, seen at +other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> times, of fury against the Catholic Church, as exemplified by the +Inquisition, persecution of heretics, etc.; in fact, all the artillery of +prejudice at which Catholics can afford to laugh. It happened, however, +that my husband, one of my sisters, and myself were the only Catholics +there, and were sitting together in the same part of the room. As he +talked he turned towards us and addressed us personally in a violent +tirade which loyalty to our convictions made it impossible for us not to +answer, though our attempts at explanation and contradiction were drowned +in his fierce and eloquent denunciations. Every one in the room looked +very uncomfortable. I myself hardly knew whether to laugh or cry, and was +never more relieved than, when his flow of words had exhausted itself, he +began to read another poem. Before the end of the evening, however, he +felt that his outbreak had not been kind or courteous, and before we left +he took us all three into his study, and made so sweet and gracious an +<i>amende</i> that we loved him, if possible, more than ever.</p> + +<p>Any one who has read carefully the “Idylls of the King,” “Sir Galahad,” +“St. Agnes,” among many of his poems, still more any one who has spoken +with him intimately, cannot fail to realize the strong attraction which +many Catholic doctrines and practices had for Tennyson, and the reverence +with which he regarded the Catholic Church as standing alone among jarring +sects and creeds, majestic, venerable, and invulnerable. His mind was also +an essentially and intensely religious one, and I know that one of my +father’s attractions for him lay in the religious tone of <i>his</i> mind. On +these points, however, I will say no more. In jotting down these few +remembrances of a friendship which is amongst my most precious +possessions, I settled with myself to refrain entirely from any +presentation of what I believed to be Tennyson’s views on theology, +metaphysics, or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> politics, no less than from any discussion of his poetic +greatness. I want nothing but to sketch the <i>man</i> as he always seemed to +me, one of the noblest, truest, and most lovable of God’s creatures, and +one who, even without the genius that has crowned his brow with +never-fading laurel, must, by weight of character and beauty of soul +alone, stand a giant amid his fellow-men!</p> + +<p>We spent the Christmas holidays of 1890-91 at Freshwater with our five +children; not one of them will forget the delightful intercourse with +Farringford during those weeks, and the Christmas Tree arranged by Mrs. +Hallam Tennyson for her little Lionel in the large room known as the +ball-room.<a name='fna_82' id='fna_82' href='#f_82'><small>[82]</small></a> Kind words and presents were showered on every one, and I +think the beloved grandparents enjoyed it as much as their +fourteen-months-old grandson, as they sat in the midst of their servants +and cottagers (some of whom were amongst the oldest of their friends), and +the guests, little and great, whom they had asked to share their Christmas +festival. Our two eldest children have a more precious remembrance of that +time and the following Easter, which we also spent at Freshwater, for +Tennyson read aloud to them for the first and only time. To our girl he +read “Old Roä” and the “Bugle Song,” and to our boy the “Ode on the Death +of the Duke of Wellington.” He read this in April 1891; it was the last +time I heard him read, and I look upon it as a special act of kindness; he +said he did not like to read to children—they did not understand, were +bored—and he only yielded to my strong entreaties. If, however, he saw, +as I think he did, the flushed cheeks and big tearful eyes of our +fourteen-year-old schoolboy, he must have felt that he had a listener who +<i>did</i> understand and appreciate!</p> + +<p>Through the early part of the winter of 1890<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> Tennyson was remarkably +well, walking in the morning with my husband and other friends, and taking +long walks in the afternoon up and down the ball-room, when he liked to +have one or two companions who would amuse him, and whom he would amuse +with witty stories and <i>bons mots</i>. He had always a great pleasure in racy +anecdotes, and the humorous side of life, and during the last years this +increased, so that his friends treasured up every good story they heard to +repeat to him at their next meeting.</p> + +<p>Towards the end of the Christmas holidays Tennyson caught cold, and fears +of a return of gout and bronchitis confined him to his room. My husband +had already returned to London, and I was remaining only a few days longer +and thinking sadly enough that I should not be able to see Tennyson again +before I left, when on one of the last evenings I was spending at +Farringford, he sent for me to his room and then, to my delighted +surprise, proposed to read to me. I demurred, fearing it might be bad for +him, but he insisted, and for half an hour read me one unpublished poem +after another,<a name='fna_83' id='fna_83' href='#f_83'><small>[83]</small></a> his voice nearly as strong as I had ever known it, and +it seemed to me even more pathetic and beautiful.</p> + +<p>That Easter of 1891, among many pleasant recollections of Farringford and +of the group of friends who paid their daily visit there, has one which I +like to set against the stories of Tennyson’s unapproachableness and +gruffness to those who went to see him, which are so often circulated, and +which, in nine cases out of ten, meant that those who presented themselves +to him had chosen an unfortunate time, or were in some respect deficient +in tact or politeness. An American friend, professor of literature at +Harvard, was staying with us. His admiration and veneration for the great +master of verse were unbounded, and he would, I feel sure, have crossed +the Atlantic merely to see and speak with him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> The morning after his +arrival, my husband took him to Farringford, where they found Tennyson +somewhat annoyed by a communication from an unknown American admirer, +enclosing a photograph of the Poet, upon which he requested him to sign +his name; the coolness of the request being heightened by the fact that +the sender had posted his letter unstamped. My husband said to his friend, +“Now, M., here’s your opportunity; put down sixpence and pay the national +debt, and Tennyson will sign you the receipt on this photograph.” He +immediately took the joke, laughed, bade the professor take back his +sixpence, and signed the photograph for him.</p> + +<p>On one of the last days we were at Freshwater that Easter, Tennyson met +our youngest child of five in the road, and addressed her, to her great +amusement: “Madam! you’ve a damask rose on either cheek, and another on +your forehead; rosy lips, golden hair, and a straw bonnet.”</p> + +<p>I never again saw the household at Farringford after April 1891. Once more +we were at Aldworth in October of that year, when Tennyson signed for us a +photograph from Mr. Watts’s last picture. He was tired before we left and +had gone to rest in his room, but I begged Hallam to let me go in to wish +him good-bye. Had I known that it <i>was</i> good-bye, and that for the last +time I looked on his face and kissed his dear hands, what could I have +said? Never could I express the sorrowing love, the immense gratitude, +which overflow my heart as I think of my father’s friend and mine!</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>The following letter was written by Tennyson to Catherine Lady Simeon +after the death of his friend:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Aldworth</span>, <i>June 27th, 1870</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">My dear Lady Simeon</span>—Of course nothing could be more grateful to me +than some memorial of my much-loved <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>and ever-honoured friend, the +only man on earth, I verily believe, to whom I could, and have more +than once opened my whole heart; and he also has given me in many a +conversation at Farringford in my little attic his utter confidence. I +knew none like him for tenderness and generosity, not to mention his +other noble qualities, and he was the very Prince of Courtesy; but I +need not tell you this; anything, little book, or whatever you will +choose, send me or bring when you come; and do pray come on the 4th +July, and we will be all alone; and Louie can come, when she will, and +you can spare her.—Believe me, always affectionately yours,</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">A. Tennyson.</span></span></p></div> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<h2>SIR JOHN SIMEON</h2> +<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">Aubrey de Vere</span></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>The world external knew thee but in part:<br /> +It saw and honoured what was least in thee;<br /> +The loyal trust, the inborn courtesy;<br /> +The ways so winning, yet so pure from art;<br /> +The cordial reverence, keen to all desert,<br /> +All save thine own; the accost so frank and free;<br /> +The public zeal that toiled, but not for fee,<br /> +And shunned alike base praise, and hireling’s mart.<br /> +These things men saw; but deeper far than these<br /> +The under-current of thy soul worked on<br /> +Unvexed by surface-ripple, beam, or breeze,<br /> +And unbeheld its way to ocean won:<br /> +Life of thy life was still that Christian Faith<br /> +The sophist scorns. It failed thee not in death.</td></tr></table> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span></p> +<h2>TENNYSON</h2> +<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">Arthur Sidgwick</span>, Fellow of Corpus Christi, Oxford, and sometime Fellow +of Trinity College, Cambridge.</p> +<p class="center">(Read in the Chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge, October 30, 1909.<a name='fna_84' id='fna_84' href='#f_84'><small>[84]</small></a>)</p> + + +<p>We are met here to-day to do honour to the memory and the life’s work of +one of the greatest of Trinity’s sons, who has also won for himself—few +lovers of poetry here or anywhere can feel a doubt—a high and secure +place in the glorious roll of English Poets, that roll which records the +poetic achievements of over 500 years.</p> + +<p>In accepting (with whatever misgivings) the request of the College +authorities to speak some preliminary words in appreciation of the Poet, I +do not propose to deal in any detail with the history of his life and +work, on which the biography has thrown such interesting and welcome +light. The most that can here be attempted is to select a few aspects and +illustrations of Tennyson’s life-long devotion to his art, such as may +serve to bring out something of those gifts and qualities which, wherever +English poetry is read, are felt to give to his work its special charm and +value.</p> + +<p>Though I must pass the early years almost in silence, I cannot refrain +from quoting the delightful tale, first made known (I believe) by Miss +Thackeray,<a name='fna_85' id='fna_85' href='#f_85'><small>[85]</small></a> how at the age of five the Poet was seen with outspread<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> +arms in a high wind, sailing gaily along and shouting his first line of +poetry</p> + +<p class="poem">I hear a voice that’s speaking in the wind</p> + +<p>—he did indeed all his life hear that voice and all other Nature-voices; +and also the other tale of ten years later, how on the news of Byron’s +death (in 1824) the boy went out, desolate, and carved the sad tidings on +the sandstone, and (to use his own words) “thought everything over and +finished for every one, and that nothing else mattered.”</p> + +<p>Such despairing grief has seemed to some readers extravagant, to be +excused on the plea of youth—he was only fifteen: but it must not be +forgotten that Byron’s death was the final blow of a triple fatality such +as finds no parallel in the history of literature. Three men of striking +genius and rich poetic gifts—Byron, Shelley, and Keats—were all +prematurely lost to the world within four years (1821-4). The fervid +sorrow of the impulsive and gifted boy of fifteen, so far from being +extravagant, must have been shared by countless readers of all ages who +cared for poetry, not in England only.</p> + +<p>It is true that as the years went on the youthful sympathy of Tennyson +with what has been called the Revolutionary poetry was materially +modified—perhaps especially in the case of Shelley. Yet there is a +striking letter of the date 1834—when Shelley had been dead twelve years, +and Tennyson was twenty-five—which should not be forgotten. Henry Taylor +had attacked the Byron-Shelley school of poetry; and Tennyson, while not +disputing much of his general judgment, adds this penetrating comment: “It +may be that he (Taylor) does not sufficiently take into consideration the +peculiar strength evolved by such writers as Byron and Shelley, who, +however mistaken they may be, did yet give the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> world <i>another heart and +new pulses</i>, and so we are kept going.”</p> + +<p>Matthew Arnold was a fine critic and a poet of high distinction, but I +have always felt, if we compare his somewhat severe attitude towards the +earlier school with that of Tennyson, that it was the latter who showed +the truer insight, the wider sympathy, and the juster appreciation.</p> + +<p>Of his Cambridge life, 1828-30, two main points stand out: the grievous +want he felt of any real stimulus or inspiration in the instruction +provided by the authorities; and, secondly, the remarkable group of +distinguished men of his own age with whom his college life was passed. As +to the first, the scathing lines written at the time, and published with +his express consent in the biography, are more eloquent than any +description could be. After naming all the glories of the Colleges—their +portals, gardens, libraries, chapels, “doctors, proctors and deans”—“all +these,” he cries, “shall not avail you when the Daybeam sports, new-risen +over Albion ...” and the poem ends with the reason:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 6em;">Because your manner sorts</span><br /> +Not with this age wherefrom ye stand apart,<br /> +Because the lips of little children preach<br /> +Against you,—<i>you that do profess to teach<br /> +And teach us nothing, feeding not the heart</i>.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, this lack (of official wisdom) was more than supplied +by the friends with whom he lived—James Spedding, Monckton Milnes +(afterwards Lord Houghton), Trench, Alford, Brookfield, Blakesley, +Thompson (afterwards Master), Merivale, Stephen Spring-Rice, J. Kemble, +Heath, C. Buller, Monteith, Tennant, and above all Arthur Hallam. +Thirty-five years later Lord Houghton justly said of this group of friends +that “for the wealth of their promise they were a body of men such as this +University has seldom<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> contained.” To this should be added the special +influence of the “Apostles,” to which Society most of these friends +belonged, who had organized from the first regular weekly meetings for +essays and discussions, where no topic was barred, and speech was +absolutely free. The immense stimulus of such discussion to thought, to +study, to readiness and power of argument, to widening the range of +intellectual interests and literary judgment and appreciation, must be +obvious to all. And we must not forget that the years covered by young +Tennyson’s residence at Cambridge were precisely the period of the keenest +intellectual stir and the stormiest political warfare that preceded the +great Reform Bill.</p> + +<p>To return to the poetry. Passing over the purely juvenile <i>Poems by two +Brothers</i> printed in his eighteenth year, we have, in 1830, the first book +of poems which have partially survived the mature and fastidious taste +which suppressed so much of the early work. Even here, half the pieces +have been withdrawn, and much of the rest re-written: what remains is +rather slight—the Isabels and Claribels and Adelines and Lilians and +Eleanores, poems which in some critics’ views border on the trivial. +Really they should be regarded as experiments in lyric measures: and the +careful student will note the signs of the poet’s fine ear and keen eye +for nature: but the depths were not sounded.</p> + +<p>Two years later came the second volume (1832). Again much has been +withdrawn, much re-written: but when in this collection we find +“Œnone,” “The Palace of Art,” “A Dream of Fair Women,” and “The +Lotos-eaters,” we see that we have the real poet at last.</p> + +<p>“The Palace of Art” is an attempt to trace the Nemesis of selfish culture, +secluding itself from social human life and duty. After three years of +these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> exclusive delights, the man’s outraged nature—or conscience if you +will—reasserts itself in a kind of incipient madness: the soul of him +sees visions. Then a weird passage:</p> + +<p class="poem">But in dark corners of her palace stood<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Uncertain shapes; and unawares</span><br /> +On white-eyed phantasms weeping tears of blood,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And horrible nightmares,</span><br /> +<br /> +And hollow shades enclosing hearts of flame,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And, with dim fretted foreheads all,</span><br /> +On corpses three-months-old at noon she came,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That stood against the wall.</span></p> + +<p>The horrors, like Gorgons and Furies of ancient poets, are perhaps a +trifle too material; but in the description of the Nemesis there are +touches of real power, which at least are impressive and arresting.</p> + +<p>“Œnone” is perhaps the most absolutely beautiful of these early poems, +and for the triumph of melodious sound, and finished picturesqueness of +description, the opening lines are unsurpassed. We should also note that +it took more than one edition to bring it to its present perfection of +form. It is very well known, but no one will object to hear it again:</p> + +<p class="poem">There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier<br /> +Than all the valleys of Ionian hills.<br /> +The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen,<br /> +Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine,<br /> +And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand<br /> +The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down<br /> +Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars<br /> +The long brook falling thro’ the clov’n ravine<br /> +In cataract after cataract to the sea.<br /> +Behind the valley topmost Gargarus<br /> +Stands up and takes the morning: but in front<br /> +The gorges, opening wide apart, reveal<br /> +Troas and Ilion’s column’d citadel,<br /> +The crown of Troas.</p> + +<p>Before I pass on from “Œnone,” I may perhaps add a word or two on +Tennyson’s classical poetry generally, and his debt to the great ancient +masterpieces.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span>He was, perhaps, not exactly a scholar in what I may call the narrow +professional sense; but in the broadest and deepest and truest sense he +was a <i>great</i> scholar. Direct imitations of classical form, even when they +show such power and poetry as Swinburne’s “Atalanta” and “Erechtheus,” +have always something artificial about them. But in all Tennyson’s classic +pieces—“Œnone,” “Ulysses,” “Demeter,” “Tithonus,” the legendary +subjects—and in the two historic subjects, “Lucretius” and “Boädicea,” +the classical tradition is there with full detail, but by the poet’s art +it is transmuted. “Œnone” is epic in form, the rest are brief +monodramas; the material is all ancient, and in many subtle ways the +spirit; the handling is modern and original. In translations—too +few—Tennyson can only be called consummate: his version of one passage of +the <i>Iliad</i> (viii. 552) makes all other translations seem second-rate. Let +me quote a few lines:</p> + +<p class="poem">And these all night upon the bridge of war<br /> +Sat glorying; many a fire before them blazed:<br /> +As when in heaven the stars about the moon<br /> +Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,<br /> +And every height comes out, and jutting peak<br /> +And valley, and <i>the immeasurable heavens<br /> +Break open to their highest</i>,<a name='fna_86' id='fna_86' href='#f_86'><small>[86]</small></a> and all the stars<br /> +Shine, and the Shepherd gladdens in his heart:<br /> +So many a fire between the ships and stream<br /> +Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy,<br /> +A thousand on the plain; and close by each<br /> +Sat fifty in the blaze of burning fire;<br /> +And eating hoary grain and pulse the steeds,<br /> +Fixt by their cars, waited the golden dawn.</p> + +<p>The passage, let me add, is a crucial test of the power of a translator, +for this reason: it is a plain, simple description of the Trojan +camp-fires in the darkness, with a simile or comparison of the sight to a +clearance of the sky at night and the sudden shining of the multitude of +stars. With the infallible instinct of Greek<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> Poetry there is a rapid lift +in the style, a sudden glorious phrase ὑπερράγη +ἄσπετος αἰθήρ, +to suggest adequately the magnificent sight of the sudden clearance. It is +this effect that is difficult to give in the translation; and it is +exactly this splendid climax that Tennyson’s incomparable rendering, “And +the immeasurable heavens break open to their highest,” so perfectly +conveys.</p> + +<p>Again, in the metrical imitations—which are deliberately somewhat in the +vein of sport and artifice—Tennyson alone, it seems to me, has exactly +done what he intended, and shown what English effects can be produced by a +master’s hand, even in these unfamiliar measures.</p> + +<p>Of the serious classic pieces one of the most beautiful and moving is +“Tithonus.” The tale is familiar: the beautiful youth Tithonus was beloved +by the goddess of the Dawn, and her love bestowed immortality on him; <i>but +they both forgot to ask for immortal youth</i>. So he grew old: and the +pathos of the boon, granted by love at love’s request, thus turning out a +curse, is the motive of the tale. He speaks:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yet hold me not for ever in thine East:</span><br /> +How can my nature longer mix with thine?<br /> +Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold<br /> +Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet<br /> +Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when the steam<br /> +Floats up from those dim fields about the homes<br /> +Of happy men that have the power to die,<br /> +And grassy barrows of the happier dead.<br /> +Release me, and restore me to the ground;<br /> +Thou seëst all things, thou wilt see my grave:<br /> +Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn;<br /> +I earth in earth forget these empty courts,<br /> +And thee returning on thy silver wheels.</p> + +<p>A great scholar has said that it is one of the most incomparable powers of +poetry <i>to make sad things beautiful</i>, and so to go some way towards +healing the sorrow in the reader’s heart. He was speaking of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> Greek +Tragedy; but there is, I think, a deep truth in the saying, and it is not +confined to that particular form of poetry. And I know no better instance +of the truth than the singularly beautiful poem quoted above.</p> + +<p>But the classic influences are, of course, not limited to the avowed +borrowings from ancient legend. There are constantly lines in Tennyson +where the student of ancient poetry recognizes a phrase—a turn—an +echo—beautiful in themselves, and giving a special pleasure to the +instructed reader; such a line as “When the first matin-song hath wakened +loud,” which occurs in the “Address to Memory”—the striking early poem +containing the description of his Somersby home—and is itself an +exquisitely turned translation from Sophocles’ <i>Electra</i>. So again we have +an echo from Homer through Virgil, in the half-playful line, “This way and +that dividing the swift mind”; or, again, the vivid simile from Theocritus +in the bold description:</p> + +<p class="poem">And arms on which the standing muscles sloped,<br /> +As slopes a wild brook o’er a little stone,<br /> +Running too vehemently to break upon it.<a name='fna_87' id='fna_87' href='#f_87'><small>[87]</small></a></p> + +<p>—where the reader with an ear will note the bold metrical variation +adding so much to the effect. So again the Poet himself has told us how +the famous phrase for the kingfisher, “The sea-blue bird of March,” arose +one day when he was haunted by the lovely stanza of Alcman (Greek lyric +poet) about the “halcyon” whom he calls “the sea-blue bird of spring.” The +fact is that Tennyson had an inborn instinct for the subtle power of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> +language, and for musical sound—in a word, for that insight, finish, +feeling for beauty in phrase and thought and <i>thing</i>, and that perfection +of form, which, taken all together, we call poetry, and he is, like Virgil +and Milton, a true son of the Greeks: and if his open imitations are few, +the influence of the springs from which he drank is none the less powerful +and pervading.</p> + +<p>In 1842 came a carefully revised selection of the earlier books—he was +always revising and improving—along with a large number of new poems.</p> + +<p>I will pass over the English Idylls, which, in spite of beautiful touches, +have never as a whole appealed to me. But, setting these aside, there are +a few pieces which I cannot pass by without a word. They are “Love and +Duty,” the political poems, and songs. “Morte d’Arthur” I leave over till +we reach the Idylls.</p> + +<p>“Love and Duty” is a passionate tragedy, the parting of two lovers at the +call of duty. Perhaps the high-wrought pathos is a sign of youth; but +youth may be a strength as well as a weakness; and the lines are surely of +extraordinary beauty and force. I will quote the last passage, for a +reason which will appear:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">Should my Shadow cross thy thoughts</span><br /> +Too sadly for their peace, remand it thou<br /> +For calmer hours to Memory’s darkest hold,<br /> +If not to be forgotten—not at once—<br /> +Not all forgotten. Should it cross thy dreams,<br /> +O might it come like one that looks content,<br /> +With quiet eyes unfaithful to the truth,<br /> +And point thee forward to a distant light,<br /> +Or seem to lift a burthen from thy heart<br /> +And leave thee freër, till thou wake refresh’d<br /> +Then when the first low matin-chirp hath grown<br /> +Full quire, and morning driv’n her plow of pearl<br /> +Far furrowing into light the mounded rack,<br /> +Beyond the fair green field and eastern sea.</p> + +<p>Certain critics have found fault with the splendid description of Dawn, as +being untrue to nature; a lover in such a crisis, they think, would not be +concerned with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> such images. I regard this suggestion as wholly at fault. +The tragedy, the parting, has come to pass: the vision of dawn is a <i>hope</i> +for <i>her</i>, now that the new life, apart from each other, has to begin for +both of them. If the broken love was all, if they could not look beyond, +the parting would have been different—like Lancelot and +Guinevere—“Stammering and staring; a madness of farewells.” But here the +note is higher. The passion barred from its issue rushes into new +channels, and the exalted mood finds its only adequate vent in the +rapturous vision of a future dawn, the symbol of his hopes for her, those +hopes into which his sacrificed love is translated.</p> + +<p>In the political poems we have a new departure. It is easy to idealize +freedom, revolution, or war: and the ancients found it easy to compose +lyrics on kings, athletes, warriors, or other powerful persons. From the +days of Tyrtaeus and Pindar, to Byron, Shelley, and Swinburne, one or +other of these themes has been the seed of song. But the praise of ordered +liberty, of settled government, of political moderation, is far harder to +idealize in poetry. It has been the peculiar aim of Tennyson to be the +constitutional, and in this sense the national, poet: and it is his +peculiar merit and good fortune to have succeeded in giving eloquent and +forcible expression to the ideas suggested by these aims.</p> + +<p>I will not quote the poems about “the Falsehood of extremes,” or “the land +of just and old renown where freedom slowly broadens down from precedent +to precedent,” because these poems, terse and forcible summaries as they +are, have suffered, like other epigrammatic maxims in verse, from +vulgarizing quotation. It is not the Poet’s fault in the least; in fact it +is due to his very merits—to the memorable brevity, truth, and point of +the phrasing. I will quote another—perhaps the most remarkable—of these +political poems, “Love<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> thou thy land.” It is close packed with thought, +and must have been especially hard to write, since the Poet’s problem was +to express in terse and picturesque and imaginative language what at +bottom is philosophic and even prosaic detail. Nevertheless, where the +material lends itself at all to imaginative handling we get effects that +are impressive and even superb. Take a few lines—I cannot quote at +length:</p> + +<p class="poem">Oh yet, if Nature’s evil star<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Drive men in manhood, as in youth,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To follow flying steps of Truth</span><br /> +Across the brazen bridge of war—<br /> +<br /> +If New and Old, disastrous feud,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Must ever shock, like armed foes,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And this be true, till Time shall close,</span><br /> +That Principles are rain’d in blood;<br /> +<br /> +Not yet the wise of heart would cease<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To hold his hope thro’ shame and guilt,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But with his hand against the hilt,</span><br /> +Would pace the troubled land, like Peace;<br /> +<br /> +Not less, tho’ dogs of Faction bay,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Would serve his kind in deed and word,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Certain, if knowledge bring the sword,</span><br /> +That knowledge takes the sword away.</p> + +<p>The last couplet seems to me—where all is powerful and imaginative—to be +a master-stroke of terse and pointed expression. It would be hardly an +exaggeration to say that it sums up human history in regard to one +point—namely, the disturbing and even desolating effect of the new +Political Idea, until its triumph comes, bringing a higher and more stable +adjustment, and a peace more righteous and secure.</p> + +<p>Far more widely known than these didactic poems, rich as they are in +poetry and thought, are the patriotic odes—the three greatest being the +poems on the Duke of Wellington, the “Revenge,” and Lucknow.</p> + +<p>The ode on the Duke is a noble commemoration-poem, grave and stately and +solemn—a worthy expression<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> of “the mourning of a mighty nation” with a +musical and dignified sorrow—a terse and vivid reference to the Duke’s +exploits—a fine imaginative passage where he pictures the dead Nelson +asking who the newcomer is, and the stately answer—a striking tribute to +the simple and noble character of the dead hero—and then this:</p> + +<p class="poem">A people’s voice! we are a people yet.<br /> +Tho’ all men else their nobler dreams forget,<br /> +Confused by brainless mobs and lawless Powers;<br /> +Thank Him who isled us here, and roughly set<br /> +His Briton in blown seas and storming showers...<br /> +O Statesmen, guard us, guard the eye, the soul,<br /> +Of Europe, keep our noble England whole,<br /> +And save the one true seed of freedom sown<br /> +Betwixt a people and their ancient throne...<br /> +For, saving that, ye help to save mankind<br /> +Till public wrong be crumbled into dust,<br /> +And drill the raw world for the march of mind,<br /> +Till crowds at length be sane and crowns be just.</p> + +<p>Again, for the judgment of the poem, the <i>date</i> is important. It was +written only four years after the European earthquake of 1848, and only +one year after the Coup d’État. The allusions are not mere commonplaces: +they deal with live issues. It is not too much to say that in the great +ode Tennyson had a subject after his own heart, and that he has done it +magnificent justice.</p> + +<p>Of the “Revenge” I will quote one passage, because it contains what always +strikes me as <i>the</i> most wonderful effect of <i>sound</i> in poetry to be found +anywhere. The whole poem, I may observe, is full of novel and effective +handling of metre: but this is the most remarkable. It occurs in the +description of the rising storm in which the gallant little ship went +down:</p> + +<p class="poem">And they mann’d the Revenge with a swarthier alien crew,<br /> +And away she sail’d with her loss, and long’d for her own;<br /> +When a wind from the lands they had ruin’d awoke from sleep,<br /> +And the water began to heave, and the weather to moan,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span>And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew,<br /> +And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earthquake grew,<br /> +Till it smote on their hulls and their sails and their masts and their flags,<br /> +And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shatter’d navy of Spain,<br /> +And the little Revenge herself went down by the island crags<br /> +To be lost evermore in the main.</p> + +<p>Lastly, in the 1842 volume, there was a little song without a title, which +will certainly live as long as the English language.</p> + +<p>In 1833, nine years before the volume appeared, had died abroad suddenly +the rarely-gifted youth who was bound to Tennyson by the double tie of +being his best-loved friend and the betrothed of his sister. The body had +been brought home for burial by the sea at a little place called Clevedon.</p> + +<p>This is the song:</p> + +<p class="poem">Break, break, break,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!</span><br /> +And I would that my tongue could utter<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The thoughts that arise in me.</span><br /> +<br /> +O well for the fisherman’s boy,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That he shouts with his sister at play!</span><br /> +O well for the sailor lad,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That he sings in his boat on the bay!</span><br /> +<br /> +And the stately ships go on<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To their haven under the hill;</span><br /> +But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the sound of a voice that is still!</span><br /> +<br /> +Break, break, break,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!</span><br /> +But the tender grace of a day that is dead<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Will never come back to me.</span></p> + +<p>There is something in the magical expression of deep love and sorrow in +these lines—with the swift and vivid touches of scenery, sympathetic and +suggestive—which we can only compare to the few greatest outbursts of +passionate regret in poetry.</p> + +<p>Five years later came “The Princess” (1847). The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> idea—a bold design—was +to treat, by poetic and half-playful narrative, the comparative +intellectual and moral natures of men and women, and the right method of +education. The Poet’s views may perhaps to-day seem somewhat +old-fashioned, the truths that he suggests or enunciates, in very finished +and beautiful language, are controversial, and suffer from the inevitable +failing of such writing, viz., that the issues of the strife have changed: +experience has shown the forecasts, the fears, and the prophetic satire to +be misplaced: and what seemed important truths have turned out to be +prejudices or irrelevant platitudes.<a name='fna_88' id='fna_88' href='#f_88'><small>[88]</small></a></p> + +<p>The one thing that is consummate in “The Princess” is the handful of +little songs that come as interludes between the acts. They are so well +known that they need no quotation: their titles will suffice: “As through +the land at eve we went,” “Sweet and low,” “The splendour falls,” “Tears, +idle tears,” “Thy voice is heard thro’ rolling drums,” “Home they brought +her warrior dead,” “Ask me no more.”</p> + +<p>The extraordinary effect of these songs is not due only to their +marvellous poetic force and finish and variety, but perhaps even more to +the illuminating and pointed contrast between the true and deep and +permanent realities of human experience—life, death, love, joy, and +sorrow—each of which is touched in turn in these exquisite little +pictures, and on the other hand<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> the fantastic unreality (in the Poet’s +view) of the Princess’s ideals and experiment.</p> + +<p>If I must quote one passage, let it be abridged from the shepherd’s song +which the Princess reads:</p> + +<p class="poem">Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height:<br /> +<strong><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span></strong><br /> +For Love is of the valley, come thou down<br /> +And find him; by the happy threshold, he,<br /> +Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize,<br /> +Or red with <i>spirted purple of the vats</i>,<a name='fna_89' id='fna_89' href='#f_89'><small>[89]</small></a><br /> +Or <i>foxlike</i><a name='fna_90' id='fna_90' href='#f_90'><small>[90]</small></a> <i>in the vine</i>; nor cares to walk<br /> +With Death and Morning on the silver horns...<br /> +But follow; let the torrent dance thee down<br /> +To find him in the valley; let the wild<br /> +Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave<br /> +The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill<br /> +Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,<br /> +That like a broken purpose waste in air:<br /> +So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales<br /> +Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth<br /> +Arise to thee; the children call, and I<br /> +Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,<br /> +Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;<br /> +Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro’ the lawn,<br /> +The moan of doves in immemorial elms,<br /> +And murmuring of innumerable bees.</p> + +<p>This is the real idyll, with its central note of <i>love</i>, and wonderful +beauty of sound, and vivid vision of every detail of Nature’s sights and +life. It suggests a world where all is fresh and sweet, and beautiful and +interesting, and simple and wholesome and harmonious.</p> + +<p>The year 1850 was marked by three great events in the personal history of +Tennyson: his marriage, the publication of his greatest work, “In +Memoriam,” and his acceptance of the laureate crown of poetry in +succession to Wordsworth, who died in the spring.</p> + +<p>When I say that “In Memoriam” is Tennyson’s greatest work, I am of course +aware that it is only a personal opinion on a disputable point. But I +incline to think that most lovers of poetry would agree that “In<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> +Memoriam” is <i>the one</i> of all the Poet’s works the loss of which would be +the greatest and most irreparable to poetry.</p> + +<p>In the grave and solemn stanzas with which the poem opens, he calls the +songs that follow <i>wild and wandering cries, confusions of a wasted +youth</i>. But in truth they are the expression of the deepest and most +heartfelt sorrow: the most musical and imaginative outpouring of every +mood, and every trouble, of a noble love and regret: the cries of a soul +stricken with doubt born of anguish, and darkened with shadows of +disbelief and despair: the deeper brooding over the eternal problems of +life, thought, knowledge, religion: the gradual groping toward a faith +rather divined than proved, and slowly passing through storm into peace.</p> + +<p>The poem took seventeen years to write, and when it appeared the Poet was +at the summit of his great powers. His instinct chose a metre at once +strong, simple, fresh, flexible, and grave, and noble—equally adapted to +every mood, every form of thought or feeling—the passionate, the +meditative, the solemn, the imaginative—for description, argument, +aspiration, even for prayer. The tone varies: there are lighter and deeper +touches: but it is hardly too much to say, there is not an insignificant +stanza, nor a jarring note, from beginning to end.</p> + +<p>In a poem where all is so familiar—which has meant and means so much to +all who care for poetry—it is difficult to quote. I will take a few +stanzas, so chosen, if possible, as to show somewhat of the variety, the +range, the subtlety, the charm, and the power of this great work.</p> + +<p>He goes to the house in London where the dead friend lived: the gloom +without typifies and harmonizes with the darkness of his sorrowful +thoughts.</p> + +<p class="poem">Dark house, by which once more I stand<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Here in the long unlovely street:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Doors, where my heart was wont to beat</span><br /> +So quickly, waiting for a hand,—<br /> +<br /> +A hand that can be clasped no more—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Behold me—for I cannot sleep—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And like a guilty thing I creep</span><br /> +At earliest morning to the door.<br /> +<br /> +He is not here; but far away<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The noise of life begins again,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain</span><br /> +On the bald street breaks the blank day.</p> + +<p>One of the most important motives concerns the doubts raised by the new +truths which science was beginning to teach, almost seeming to make in a +sense a new heaven and a new earth. The old simple beliefs seemed to the +Poet threatened—these misgivings are evil dreams: <i>Nature</i> seems to say:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">... A thousand types are gone:</span><br /> +I care for nothing, all shall go.<br /> +<br /> +Thou makest thine appeal to me;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I bring to life, I bring to death;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The spirit does but mean the breath:</span><br /> +I know no more...</p> + +<p>Then the Poet breaks out:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 9em;">And he, shall he,</span><br /> +Man, her last work, who seem’d so fair,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Such splendid purpose in his eyes,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Who roll’d the psalm to wintry skies,</span><br /> +Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer—<br /> +<br /> +Who trusted God was love indeed,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And love Creation’s final law—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw</span><br /> +With ravine, shriek’d against his creed—<br /> +<br /> +Who loved, who suffer’d countless ills,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Who battled for the True, the Just,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Be blown about the desert dust,</span><br /> +Or seal’d within the iron hills?...<br /> +<br /> +O life as futile, then, as frail!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">O for thy voice to soothe and bless!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">What hope of answer, or redress?</span><br /> +Behind the veil, behind the veil.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span>He will not accept the suggestions which seem to empty human life of its +deepest meanings. There must be some other solution.</p> + +<p>One more quotation of a different kind—the common sad thought, never so +beautifully expressed, of the places we have loved when bereft of our +daily loving care—then passing into other hands and forgetting us, and +becoming at last to others what they have been to us.</p> + +<p>It is in these common universal <i>human</i> themes that Tennyson with his +exquisite musical touch, and sympathy, and unerring choice of significant +detail, reaches the heart of every reader.</p> + +<p class="poem">Unwatch’d, the garden bough shall sway,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The tender blossom flutter down,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Unloved, that beech will gather brown,</span><br /> +This maple burn itself away:<br /> +<br /> +Unloved, the sunflower, shining fair,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ray round with flames her disk of seed,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And many a rose-carnation feed</span><br /> +With summer spice the humming air:<br /> +<br /> +Unloved, by many a sandy bar,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The brook shall babble down the plain,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">At noon or when the lesser wain</span><br /> +Is twisting round the polar star.</p> + +<p>(Omitting a stanza.)</p> + +<p class="poem">Till from the garden and the wild<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A fresh association blow,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And year by year the landscape grow</span><br /> +Familiar to the stranger’s child.<br /> +<br /> +As year by year the labourer tills<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">His wonted glebe, or lops the glades,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And year by year our memory fades</span><br /> +From all the circle of the hills.</p> + +<p>I can quote no more.</p> + +<p>The poem seems gradually to rise from the depths of sorrow and doubt to a +new hope and faith—in short, to a new life. The marks of what it has +passed through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> are seen in the deeper thought, the larger nature, and +insight, and scope. The <i>soul</i> has grown and strengthened, we may almost +say.</p> + +<p>In short, the poem is the inner history of a soul: our deepest feelings, +our hopes, our fears, our longings, our weaknesses, our difficulties, all +find penetrating, sympathetic, enlightening expression—terse, melodious, +inspiring, deeply suggestive—in a word, we feel the magic of poetry.</p> + +<p>I have no time left to deal with the large work, which occupied many +years, “The Idylls of the King.” It is a series—in blank verse, always +melodious and often exquisite, giving the main incidents of the old +Arthurian legend, which as a boy he had read with delight in old Malory’s +prose epic.</p> + +<p>I must content myself with two brief references.</p> + +<p>The first idyll, “Gareth and Lynette,” is not in itself one of the most +interesting<a name='fna_91' id='fna_91' href='#f_91'><small>[91]</small></a>—dealing chiefly as it does with the picture of the eager +boy, anxious to be one of Arthur’s knights, who serves a year in menial +place as a test of his obedience: but there is one passage which ought +never to be omitted in speaking of Tennyson, viz. the answer of the seer +when the boys ask him if the castle is enchanted.</p> + +<p>The seer answers ironically, yet with a deep meaning, that it <i>is</i> +enchanted:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> +For there is nothing in it as it seems<br /> +Saving the King; tho’ some there be that hold<br /> +The King a shadow, and the city real.</p> + +<p>Then he tells them about the <i>vows</i>: which if they fear to take, he warns +them</p> + +<p class="poem">Pass not beneath this gateway, but abide<br /> +Without, among the cattle of the field,<br /> +For an ye hear a music, like enow<br /> +They are building still, seeing the city is built<br /> +To music, <i>therefore never built at all,<br /> +And therefore built for ever</i>.</p> + +<p>Beneath the strangely beautiful surface meaning of these lines there lies +the deep allegoric meaning that often what seems visionary is in truth a +spiritual and eternal reality. It brings to mind the wonderful lines of +Browning (in “Abt Vogler”):</p> + +<p class="poem">The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The passion that left the earth to lose itself in the sky,</span><br /> +Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Enough that he heard it once, we shall hear it by and by.</span></p> + +<p>The other point concerns the end of the poem. The last section is the +Passing of Arthur; the old fragment “Morte d’Arthur” enlarged. One notable +addition occurs at the very end.</p> + +<p>In the earlier version of the fragment, after Arthur had passed away on +the dark lake, with him the last hope also disappears.</p> + +<p>We are only told:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">Long stood Sir Bedivere,</span><br /> +Revolving many memories, till the hull<br /> +Look’d one black dot against the verge of dawn,<br /> +And on the mere the wailing died away.</p> + +<p>In the fragment the end was tragic: the noble attempt failed; the hero and +inspirer passed away, his aim defeated, his comrades slain or scattered, +his life and efforts vain.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span>But in the final shape comes a new and very significant end:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Then from the dawn it seem’d there came, but faint,</span><br /> +As from beyond the limit of the world,<br /> +Like the last echo born of a great cry,<br /> +Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice,<br /> +Around a king returning from his wars.<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thereat once more he<a name='fna_92' id='fna_92' href='#f_92'><small>[92]</small></a> moved about, and clomb</span><br /> +Ev’n to the highest he could climb—and saw,<br /> +Or thought he saw, the speck that bare the King<br /> +Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go<br /> +From less to less, and vanish <i>into light</i>.<br /> +And the new sun rose, bringing the new year.</p> + +<p>We feel, as we are meant to feel, that though the death of a noble soul, +after unequal war with ill, is deeply sad—fitly pictured with sorrowful +sounds and darkness of night—yet the great spirit cannot wholly die: the +night breaks into a new day; and the day will be brighter for those who +are left, because of the efforts and memories of the leader who is no +more.</p> + +<p>Tennyson is without doubt, from first to last, one of the great poetic +artists. He is not often an inspired singer like Shelley, but he has other +gifts which Shelley lacked—a self-restraint, an artistic finish, a fine +and mature taste, a deep reverence for the past, a pervading sympathy with +the broad currents of the best thought and feeling of the time. Sometimes +this is (as we have seen) a weakness, but it is also the source of his +greatest strength. He has not, like Wordsworth, given us a new insight, +what I may almost call a new religion: but he has a wider range than +Wordsworth, and a surer poetic touch. Wordsworth may be the greater +teacher; for many of us he has opened a new world: he has touched the +deepest springs of our nature. But Tennyson has left us gifts hardly less +rare and precious. He has refined, enriched, beautified, in some sense +almost<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> remade our poetic language; he has shown that the classic +eighteenth-century finish is not incompatible with the nineteenth-century +deeper and wider thought: and, in a word, he has inwoven the golden thread +of poetry with the main texture of the life, knowledge, feeling, +experience, and ideals of the years whereof we are all alike inheritors.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span></p> +<h2>TENNYSON: HIS LIFE AND WORK<a name='fna_93' id='fna_93' href='#f_93'><small>[93]</small></a></h2> +<p class="center">By the Right Hon. <span class="smcap">Sir Alfred Lyall</span>, G.C.B.</p> + + +<p>The biography of a great poet has seldom been so written as to enhance his +reputation with the world at large. It is almost always the highest artist +whose individuality, so to speak, is least discernible in his work, and +who, like some divinity, is at his best when his mind and moods, his lofty +purpose and his attitude toward the problems of life, are revealed only +through the medium which he has chosen for revealing them to mankind. To +lay bare the human side of a poet, to retail his domestic history, and to +dwell upon his private relations with friends or family, will always +interest the public enormously; but for himself it is often a perilous +ordeal. The man of restless erratic genius, cut off in his prime like +Byron or Shelley, leaves behind him a confession of faults and follies, +while one who has lived long takes the risk of intellectual decline; or +else, like Coleridge, Landor, and even Scott, he may in other ways suffer +loss of dignity by the posthumous record of failings or mistakes. It is a +rare coincidence that in this nineteenth century two poets of the first +rank—Wordsworth and Tennyson—should each have passed the natural limit +of fourscore years, steadily extending their reputation without material +loss of their power, and completely fulfilling the ideal of a life devoted + +to their beautiful art,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span> free alike from adventures and eccentricities, +tranquil, blameless, and nobly dignified.</p> + +<p>Such is the life which has been described to us in the <i>Memoir</i> of Alfred, +Lord Tennyson, by his son. In preparing it he had the singular advantage +of very close and uninterrupted association for many years with his +father, and of thorough acquaintance with his wishes and feelings in +regard to the inevitable biography. In a brief preface, he touches, not +without emotion, upon the aims and limitations of the task which it had +become his duty to undertake.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“For my part,” he says, “I feel strongly that no biographer could so +truly give him as he gives himself in his own works; but this may be +because, having lived my life with him, I see him in every word which +he has written; and it is difficult for me so far to detach myself +from the home circle as to pourtray him for others. He himself +disliked the notion of a long, formal biography.... However, he wished +that, if I deemed it better, the incidents of his life should be given +as shortly as might be without comment; but that my notes should be +final and full enough to preclude the chance of further and +unauthentic biographies.”</p></div> + +<p>Lord Tennyson has given us a remarkable chronicle of his father’s life +from youth to age, illustrated by correspondence that is always +interesting and occasionally of supreme value, by anecdotes and +reminiscences, by characteristic thoughts and pithy observations—the +outcome of the Poet’s reflection, consummate literary judgment, and +constant intercourse with the best contemporary intellects. He has, +moreover, so arranged the narrative as to show the rapid expansion of +Tennyson’s strong, inborn poetic instinct, with the impressions and +influences which moulded its development, maturing and perfecting his +marvellous powers of artistic execution.</p> + +<p>Alfred Tennyson was born in the pastoral village of Somersby, amid the +Lincolnshire wolds; and he spent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> many holidays on the coast at +Mablethorpe, where he acquired that passion for the sea which has +possessed so many poets. The atmosphere of a public school favours active +emulation and discipline for the outer world; but to a boy of sensitive +and imaginative temperament it is apt to be uncongenial, so we need not be +sorry that Tennyson was spared the experience. At first, like most men of +his temperament who go straight from private tuition to a University, he +felt solitary and depressed—“the country is so disgustingly level, the +revelry of the place so monotonous, the studies of the University so +uninteresting, so matter-of-fact.” But there was about him a distinction +in mind and body that soon marked him out among his fellows (“a kind of +Hyperion,” writes FitzGerald), uniting strength with refinement, showing +much insight into character, with the faculty of brief and pointed +sallies: “We were looking one day at the portrait of an elderly politician +in bland family aspect. A. T. (with his eyeglass): It looks rather like a +retired panther. So true.”<a name='fna_94' id='fna_94' href='#f_94'><small>[94]</small></a></p> + +<p>He was an early member of the Society yclept the Apostles, which included +many eager and brilliant spirits, whose debates were upon political +reform, the bettering of the people’s condition, upon morals, religion, +and those wider and more liberal views of social needs that were foremost +at a period when the new forces were just mustering for attack upon the +old entrenchment of Church and State. Edward FitzGerald’s notes and +Tennyson’s own later recollections are drawn upon in this book for lively +illustrations of the sayings and doings of this notable group of friends, +and for glimpses of their manner of life at Cambridge. Here he lived in +the choice society of that day, and formed, among other friendships, an +affectionate attachment to Arthur Hallam, who afterwards became engaged to +his sister, and in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> whose memory the famous poem was written. Hallam seems +to have been one of those men whose extraordinary promise and early death +invest their brief and brilliant career with a kind of romance, explaining +and almost justifying the pagan notions of Fate and divine envy.</p> + +<p>In June 1829 Tennyson scored his first triumph by the prize poem on +Timbuctoo, which, as he said many years afterwards, won the medal to his +utter astonishment, for it was an old poem on Armageddon, adapted to +Central Africa “by a little alteration of the beginning and the end.” +Arthur Hallam wrote of it on September 2, 1829: “The splendid imaginative +power which pervades it will be seen through all hindrances. I consider +Tennyson as promising fair to be the greatest poet of our generation, +perhaps of our century”—a remarkably far-reaching prophecy to have been +built upon so slender a foundation. Out of his “horror of publicity,” as +he said, he committed it to Merivale for declamation in the Senate House. +In 1830 appeared Tennyson’s first volume of poems, upon which Arthur +Hallam again wrote, in a review, that “the features of original genius are +strongly and clearly marked”; while on the other hand, Coleridge passed +upon it the well-known criticism that “he has begun to write verses +without very well knowing what metre is”; and Christopher North handled it +with a touch of good-natured ridicule. Then followed, in 1832, a fresh +issue, including that magnificent allegory, the “Palace of Art”; with +other poems whose very blemishes signified exuberant strength. James +Montgomery’s observation of him at this stage is in the main true as a +standing test of latent potency in beginners. “He has very wealthy and +luxurious thought and great beauty of expression, and is <i>a poet</i>. But +there is plenty of room for improvement, and I would have it so. Your +trim, correct <i>young</i> writers rarely turn out well; a young poet should +have a great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> deal which he can afford to throw away as he gets older.” +The judgment was sound, for after a silent interval of ten years, during +which the Poet was sedulously husbanding and cultivating his powers, the +full-orbed splendour of his genius shone out in the two volumes of 1842.</p> + +<p>“This decade,” writes his biographer, “wrought a marvellous abatement of +my father’s real fault,” which was undoubtedly “the tendency, arising from +the fulness of mind which had not yet learned to master its resources +freely, to overcrowd his composition with imagery, to which may be added +over-indulgence in the luxuries of the senses.” By this and by other +extracts from contemporary criticism given in the <i>Memoir</i> its readers may +survey and measure the Poet’s rapid development of mind and methods, the +expansion of his range of thoughts, his increasing command over the +musical instrument, and the admirable vigour and beauty which his +composition was now disclosing. He had the singular advantage, rarely +enjoyed so early in a poetic career, of being surrounded by enthusiastic +friends who were also very competent art-critics, and whose unanimous +verdict must have given him heart and confidence; so that the few spurts +of cold water from professional reviewers troubled him very little. The +darts thrown by such enemies might hardly reach or wound him—πρὶν γὰρ +περιβῆσαν ἄριστοι—the two Hallams, James Spedding, Edward +FitzGerald, the two Lushingtons, Blakesley, and Julius Hare rallied round +him enthusiastically. Hartley Coleridge met Tennyson in 1835, and, “after +the fourth bottom of gin,” deliberately thanked Heaven for having brought +them acquainted. Wordsworth, who had at first been slow to appreciate, +having afterwards listened to two poems recited by Aubrey de Vere, did +“acknowledge that they were very noble in thought, with a diction +singularly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> stately.” Even Carlyle, who had implored the Poet to stick to +prose, was vanquished, and wrote (1842) a letter so vividly characteristic +as to justify a long quotation:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Dear Tennyson</span>—Wherever this find you, may it find you well, may it +come as a friendly greeting to you. I have just been reading your +Poems; I have read certain of them over again, and mean to read them +over and over till they become my poems; this fact, with the +inferences that lie in it, is of such emphasis in me, I cannot keep it +to myself, but must needs acquaint you too with it. If you knew what +my relation has been to the thing call’d English “Poetry” for many +years back, you would think such a fact almost surprising! Truly it is +long since in any English Book, Poetry or Prose, I have felt the pulse +of a real man’s heart as I do in this same.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>I know you cannot read German: the more interesting is it to trace in +your “Summer Oak” a beautiful kindred to something that is best in +Goethe; I mean his “Müllerin” (Miller’s daughter) chiefly, with whom +the very Mill-dam gets in love; though she proves a flirt after all, +and the thing ends in satirical lines! Very strangely, too, in the +“Vision of Sin” I am reminded of my friend Jean Paul. This is not +babble, this is speech; true deposition of a volunteer witness. And so +I say let us all rejoice somewhat. And so let us all smite +rhythmically, all in concert, “the sounding furrows,” and sail forward +with new cheer “beyond the sunset” whither we are bound.</p></div> + +<p>The <i>Memoir</i> contains some valuable reminiscences of this period, +contributed after Tennyson’s death by his personal friends, which +incidentally throw backward a light upon the literary society of that day. +Mr. Aubrey de Vere describes a meeting between Tennyson and Wordsworth; +and relates also, subsequently and separately, a conversation with +Tennyson, who was enthusiastic over the songs of Burns: “You forget, for +their sake, those stupid things, his serious pieces.” The same day Mr. de +Vere met Wordsworth, who “praised<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> Burns even more vehemently than +Tennyson had done ...” but ended, “of course I refer to his serious +efforts, those foolish little amatory songs of his one has to forget.”</p> + +<p>But in addition to contemporary criticism, written or spoken, and to the +reminiscences, the biography gives us also several unpublished poems and +fragmentary verses belonging to this period, with the original readings of +other pieces that were altered before publication. It is in these +materials, beyond others, that we can observe the forming and maturing of +his style, the fastidious taste which dictated his rejection of work that +either did not satisfy the highest standard as a whole, or else marred a +poem’s symmetrical proportion by superfluity, over-weight, or the undue +predominance of some note in the general harmony. One may regret that some +fine stanzas or exquisite lines should have been thus expunged, as, for +example, those beginning:</p> + +<p class="poem">Thou may’st remember what I said.</p> + +<p>Yet we believe the impartial critic will confirm in every instance the +decision. “Anacaona,” written at Cambridge, was never published, because +“the natural history and the rhymes did not satisfy” Tennyson; it is full +of tropical warmth and ardour, with a fine rhythmic beat, but it is +certainly below high-water mark. And the same must be said of the “Song of +the Three Sisters,” published and afterwards suppressed, though the blank +verse of its prelude has undoubted quality. He acted, as we can see, +inexorably upon his own rule that “the artist is known by his +self-limitation”; feeling certain, as he once said, that “if I meant to +make any mark in the world it must be by shortness, for the men before me +had been so diffuse.” Only the concise and perfect work, he thought, would +last; and “hundreds of lines were blown up the chimney with his pipe +smoke, or were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> written down and thrown into the fire as not being perfect +enough.” Yet all his austere resolution must have been needed for +condemning some of the fine verses that were struck out of the “Palace of +Art,” merely to give the poem even balance, and trim it like a boat. Very +few poems could have spared or borne the excisions from the “Dream of Fair +Women”; though here and there the didactic or scientific note is slightly +prominent, as in the following stanza:</p> + +<p class="poem">All nature widens upward. Evermore<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The simpler essence lower lies,</span><br /> +More complex is more perfect, owning more<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Discourse, more widely wise.</span></p> + +<p>At any rate the preservation of these unpublished verses adds much to the +value of the biography; and we may rank Tennyson among the very few poets +whose reputation has rather gained than suffered by the posthumous +appearance of pieces that the writer had deliberately withdrawn or +withheld.</p> + +<p>Of Tennyson’s own literary opinions one or two specimens, belonging to +this time, may be given.</p> + +<p>“Byron and Shelley, however mistaken they were, did yet give the world +another heart and new pulses; and so we are kept going”—a just tribute to +their fiery lyrical energy, which did much to clear insular prejudice from +the souls of a masculine generation. “Lycidas” he held to be the test of +any reader’s poetic instinct; and “Keats, with his high spiritual vision, +would have been, if he had lived, the greatest of us all, though his blank +verse lacked originality of movement.” It is true that Keats, whose full +metrical skill was never developed, may have imitated the Miltonic +construction; yet after Milton he was the finest composer up to Tennyson’s +day. And the first hundred lines of “Hyperion” have no slight affinity, in +colouring and cadence, to the Tennysonian blank verse. For indeed it was +Keats who, as Tennyson’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> forerunner, passed on to him the gift of intense +romantic susceptibility to the influences of Nature, the “dim mystic +sympathies with tree and hill reaching back into childhood.” But +Tennyson’s art inclined more toward the picturesque, toward using words, +as a painter uses his brush, for producing the impression of a scene’s +true outline and colour; his work shows the realistic feeling of a later +day, which delights in precision of details. In one of his letters he +mentions that there was a time when he was in the habit of chronicling, in +four or five words or more, whatever might strike him as a picture, just +as an artist would take rough sketches. The subjoined fragment, written on +revisiting Mablethorpe on the Lincolnshire coast, contains the +quintessence of his descriptive style; the last three lines are sheer +landscape painting.</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Mablethorpe</span></span><br /> +Here often when a child I lay reclined,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I took delight in this fair land and free;</span><br /> +Here stood the infant Ilion of the mind,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And here the Grecian ships all seemed to be.</span><br /> +And here again I come, and only find<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>The drain-cut level of the marshy lea,</i></span><br /> +<i>Gray sand-banks, and pale sunsets, dreary winds,</i><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Dim shores, dense rains, and heavy-clouded sea</i>.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>More frequently, however, he employed his wonderful image-making power to +illustrate symbolically some mental state or emotion, availing himself of +the mysterious relation between man and his environment, whereby the outer +inanimate world is felt to be the resemblance and reflection of human +moods. So in the “Palace of Art” the desolate soul is likened to</p> + +<p class="poem">A still salt pool, lock’d in with bars of sand,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Left on the shore; that hears all night</span><br /> +The plunging seas draw backward from the land<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Their moon-led waters white.</span></p> + +<p>And there are passages in the extracts given from his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> letters written to +Miss Emily Sellwood, during the long engagement that preceded their +marriage, which indicate the bent of his mind toward philosophic quietism, +with frequent signs of that half-veiled fellow-feeling with natural +things, that sense of life in all sound and motion, whereby poetry is +drawn upward, by degrees and almost unconsciously, into the region of the +“Higher Pantheism.” Nor has any English poet availed himself more +skilfully of a language that is peculiarly rich in metaphors, consisting +of words which still so far retain their original meaning as to suggest a +picture while they convey a thought.</p> + +<p>It is partly due to these qualities of mind and style that no chapter in +this book, which mingles grave with gay very attractively, contains matter +of higher biographical interest than that which is headed “In Memoriam.” +For it is in this noble poem, on the whole Tennyson’s masterpiece, that he +is stirred by his own passionate grief to dwell on the contrast between +irremediable human suffering and the calm aspect of Nature, between the +short and sorrowful days of man and the long procession of ages. From the +doubts and perplexities, the tendency to lose heart, engendered by a sense +of forces that are unceasing and relentless, he finds his ultimate escape +in the spirit of trust in the Powers invisible, and in the persuasion that +God and Nature cannot be at strife. In a letter contributed to this +<i>Memoir</i> Professor Henry Sidgwick has described the impression produced on +him and others of his time by this poem, showing how it struck in, so to +speak, upon their religious debates at a moment of conflicting tendencies +and great uncertainty of direction, giving intensity of expression to the +dominant feeling, and wider range to the prevailing thought:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The most important influence of “In Memoriam” on my thought, apart +from its poetic charm as an expression of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> personal emotion, opened in +a region, if I may so say, deeper down than the difference between +Theism and Christianity: it lay in the unparalleled combination of +intensity of feeling with comprehensiveness of view and balance of +judgment, shown in presenting the deepest needs and perplexities of +humanity. And this influence, I find, has increased rather than +diminished as years have gone on, and as the great issues between +Agnostic Science and Faith have become continually more prominent. In +the sixties I should say that these deeper issues were somewhat +obscured by the discussions on Christian dogma and Inspiration of +Scripture, etc. ... During these years we were absorbed in struggling +for freedom of thought in the trammels of a historical religion; and +perhaps what we sympathized with most in “In Memoriam” at this time, +apart from the personal feeling, was the defence of “honest doubt,” +the reconciliation of knowledge and faith in the introductory poem, +and the hopeful trumpet-ring of the lines on the New Year.... Well, +the years pass, the struggle with what Carlyle used to call “Hebrew +old clothes” is over, Freedom is won, and what does Freedom bring us +to? It brings us face to face with atheistic science; the faith in God +and Immortality, which we had been struggling to clear from +superstition, suddenly seems to be in the air; and in seeking for a +firm basis for this faith we find ourselves in the midst of the “fight +with death” which “In Memoriam” so powerfully presents.</p></div> + +<p>To many readers the whole letter will seem to render fitly their feeling +of the pathetic intensity with which the everlasting problems of love and +death, of human doubts and destinies, are set forth in “In Memoriam.” It +will also remind them of the limitations, the inevitable inconclusiveness, +of a poem which deals emotionally with questions that foil the deepest +philosophers. The profound impression that was immediately produced by +these exquisitely musical meditations may be ascribed, we think, to their +sympathetic association with the peculiar spiritual needs and intellectual +dilemmas of the time. It may be affirmed, as a general proposition, that +up to about 1840, and for some years later, the majority among Englishmen +of thought and culture were content<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> to take morality as the chief test of +religious truth, were disposed to hold that the essential principles of +religion were best stated in the language of ethics. With this rational +theology the pretensions of Science, which undertook to preserve and even +to strengthen the moral basis, were not incompatible. But about this time +came a spiritual awakening; and just then Tennyson came forward to insist, +with poetic force and fervour, that the triumphant advance of Science was +placing in jeopardy not merely the formal outworks but the central dogma +of Christianity, which is the belief in a future life, in the soul’s +conscious immortality.<a name='fna_95' id='fna_95' href='#f_95'><small>[95]</small></a> Is man subject to the general law of unending +mutability? and is he after all but the highest and latest type, to be +made and broken like a thousand others, mere clay under the moulding hands +that are darkly visible in the processes of Nature? The Poet transfigured +these obstinate questionings into the vision of an ever-breaking shore</p> + +<p class="poem">That tumbled in a godless sea.</p> + +<p>He turned our ears to hear the sound of streams that, swift or slow,</p> + +<p class="poem">Draw down Æonian hills, and sow<br /> +The dust of continents to be—</p> + +<p>and he was haunted by the misgiving that man also might be a mere atom in +an ever-changing universe. Yet after long striving with doubts and fears, +after having “fought with death,” he resolves that we cannot be “wholly +brain, magnetic mockeries,” not only cunning casts in clays:</p> + +<p class="poem">Let Science prove we are, and then<br /> +What matters Science unto men,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">At least to me? I would not stay.</span></p> + +<p>We think that such passages as these gave emphasis to the gathering alarm, +and that many a startled inquirer,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> daunted by dim uncertainties, recoiled +from the abyss that seemed to open at his feet, and made his peace, on +such terms as consoled him, with Theology. Not that Tennyson himself +retreated, or took refuge behind dogmatic entrenchments. On the contrary, +he stood his ground and trod under foot the terrors of Acheron; relying on +“the God who ever lives and loves.” But since not every one can be +satisfied with subjective faith or lofty intuitions, we believe that the +note of distress and warning sounded by “In Memoriam” startled more minds +than were soothed by its comforting conclusions. If this be so, this +utterance of the poet, standing prophet-like at the parting of the ways, +moved men diversely. It strengthened the impulse to go onward trustfully; +but it may also be counted among the indirect influences which combined to +promote that notable reaction toward the sacramental and mysterious side +of religion, toward positive faith as the safeguard of morals, which has +been the outcome of the great Anglican revival set on foot by the Oxford +Movement seventy years ago.</p> + +<p>In June 1850, the month which saw “In Memoriam” published, Tennyson +married Miss Sellwood. “The wedding was of the quietest, even the cake and +the dresses arriving too late.” From this union came unbroken happiness +during forty-two years; for his wife brought into the partnership a rich +and rare treasure of aid, sympathy, and intellectual appreciation. Her son +pays his tribute to her memory in an admirable passage, of which the +greater part is here extracted:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>And let me say here—although, as a son, I cannot allow myself full +utterance about her whom I loved as perfect mother and “very woman of +very woman,” “such a wife” and true helpmate she proved herself. It +was she who became my father’s adviser in literary matters. “I am +proud of her intellect,” he wrote. With her he always discussed what +he was working at; she transcribed his poems: to her, and to no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span> one +else, he referred for a final criticism before publishing. She, with +her “tender spiritual nature” and instinctive nobility of thought, was +always by his side, a ready, cheerful, courageous, wise, and +sympathetic counsellor.... By her quiet sense of humour, by her +selfless devotion, by “her faith as clear as the heights of the +June-blue heaven,” she helped him also to the utmost in the hours of +his depression and of his sorrow; and to her he wrote two of the most +beautiful of his shorter lyrics—“Dear, near and true,” and the +dedicatory lines which prefaced his last volume, “The Death of +Œnone.”</p></div> + +<p>In November 1850, after Wordsworth’s death, the Laureateship was offered +to Tennyson. We have good authority for stating, though not from this +<i>Memoir</i>, that Lord John Russell submitted to the Queen the four names of +Professor Wilson, Henry Taylor, Sheridan Knowles, and, last on the list, +Tennyson. The Prince Consort’s admiration of “In Memoriam” determined Her +Majesty’s choice, which might seem easy enough to those who measure the +four candidates by the standard of to-day. His accession to office brought +down upon Tennyson, among other honoraria, “such shoals of poems that I am +almost crazed with them; the two hundred million poets of Great Britain +deluge me daily. Truly the Laureateship is no sinecure.” For the +inevitable levee he accepted, not without disquietude over the nether +garment, the loan of a Court suit from his ancient brother in song, +Rogers, who had declined the laurels on the plea of age. Soon afterward he +departed with his wife for Italy. Under the title of “The Daisy” he has +commemorated this journey in stanzas of consummate metrical form, with +their beautiful anapæstic ripple in each fourth line, to be studied by all +who would understand the quantitative value (not merely accentual) and +rhythmic effects of English syllables. On returning, they met the +Brownings at Paris. Then, in 1852, he bought Farringford in the Isle of +Wight, the Poet’s favourite habitation ever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> afterward, within sight of +the sea and within sound of its rough weather, with its lawns, spreading +trees, and meadows under the lee of the chalk downs, that have been +frequently sketched into his verse, and will long be identified with his +presence. There he worked at “Maud,” morning and evening, sitting in his +hard, high-backed wooden chair in his little room at the top of the house, +smoking the “sacred pipes” during certain half-hours of strict seclusion, +when his best thoughts came to him.</p> + +<p>From the final edition in 1851 of “In Memoriam” to “Maud” in 1853, which +Lowell rather affectedly called the antiphonal voice of the earlier poem, +the change of theme, tone, and manner was certainly great; and the public +seems to have been taken by surprise. The transition was from lamentation +to love-making; from stanzas swaying slow, like a dirge, within their +uniform compass, to an abundant variety of metrical movement, quickened by +frequent use of the anapæstic measure. The general reader was puzzled and +inclined to ridicule what he failed at once to understand; the ordinary +reviewer was either loftily contemptuous or indulged in puns and parodies; +the higher criticism was divided; but Henry Taylor, Ruskin, Jowett, and +the Brownings spoke without hesitation of the work’s great merits. Mr. +Gladstone, whose judgment had been at first adverse, recanted, twenty +years later, in a letter that was published in his <i>Gleanings</i>, and that +now reappears in this <i>Memoir</i>:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Whether it is to be desired,” he wrote, “that a poem should require +from common men a good deal of effort in order to comprehend it; +whether all that is put in the mouth of the Soliloquist in ‘Maud’ is +within the lines of poetical verisimilitude; whether this poem has the +full moral equilibrium which is so marked a characteristic of the +sister-works, are questions open, perhaps, to discussion. But I have +neither done justice in the text to its rich and copious beauties of +detail, nor to its great lyrical and metrical power. And, what <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span>is +worse, I have failed to comprehend rightly the relation between +particular passages in the poem and its general scope.”</p></div> + +<p>Jowett wrote:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>No poem since Shakespeare seems to show equal power of the same kind, +or equal knowledge of human nature. No modern poem contains more lines +that ring in the ears of men. I do not know any verse of Shakespeare +in which the ecstasy of love soars to such a height.</p></div> + +<p>On the other hand, an anonymous letter, which Tennyson enjoyed repeating, +ran thus:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>—I used to worship you, but now I hate you. I loathe and detest +you. You beast! So you’ve taken to imitating Longfellow.</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Yours in aversion,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 4em;">“——”</span></p></div> + +<p>“I shall never forget,” his son writes,</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Tennyson’s last reading of “Maud,” on August 24, 1892. He was sitting +in his high-backed chair, fronting a southern window which looks over +the groves and yellow cornfields of Sussex toward the long line of +South Downs that stretches from Arundel to Hastings (his high-domed +Rembrandt-like head outlined against the sunset-clouds seen through +the western window). His voice, low and calm in everyday life, capable +of delicate and manifold inflection, but with “organ tones” of great +power and range, thoroughly brought out the drama of the poem.</p></div> + +<p>“The peculiarity of this poem,” Tennyson said, “is that different phases +of passion in one person take the place of different characters”; and the +effect of his own recitation was to set this conception in clear relief by +showing the connexion and significance of the linked monodies, combined +with a vivid musical rendering of a pathetic love-story. The emotional +intensity rises by degrees to the rapture of meeting with Maud in the +garden, falls suddenly to the depth of blank despair, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> revives in an +atmosphere of energetic, warlike activity—the precursor of world-wide +peace.</p> + +<p>The poem, in fact, strikes all the highest lyrical chords, and we are +disposed to think that all of them are by no means touched with equal +skill. Possibly, the sustained and perfect execution of such a varied +composition would be too arduous a task for any artist. It is difficult +for the reader to adjust his mind to the changes of mood and motive which +succeed each other rapidly, and often abruptly, within the compass of so +short a piece; ranging from the almost melodramatic horror of the opening +stanzas to the passionate and joyous melodies of the middle part; sinking +into a wild wailing, and closing with the trumpet sounds of war. Yet every +one will now acknowledge that some passages in “Maud” are immortal, and +that the English language contains none more beautiful than the very best +of them.</p> + +<p>The letters in the <i>Memoir</i> are selected from upwards of forty thousand, +and at this period we have many of singular interest. One from Mrs. Vyner, +a stranger, touched the Poet deeply. Ruskin writes with reserve, as well +he might, about the edition of the poems illustrated by Rossetti, Millais, +and others:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I believe, in fact, that good pictures never can be; they are always +another poem, subordinate, but wholly different from the poet’s +conception, and serve chiefly to show the reader how variously the +same verses may affect various minds. But these woodcuts will be of +much use in making people think and puzzle a little; art was getting +quite a matter of form in book illustrations, and it does not so much +matter whether any given vignette is right or not, as whether it +contains thought or not, still more whether it contains any kind of +plain facts. If people have no sympathy with St. Agnes, or if people, +as soon as they get a distinct idea of a living girl who probably got +scolded for dropping her candle-wax about the convent-stairs, and +caught cold by looking too<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> long out of the window in her bedgown, +feel no true sympathy with her, they can have no sympathy in them.</p></div> + +<p>Elizabeth Barrett Browning sends a warm-hearted letter; and Jowett, who +enjoyed giving advice, evidently sat him down readily to reply when Mrs. +Tennyson asked whether he could suggest any subjects for poetry:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I often fancy that the critical form of modern literature is like the +rhetorical one which overlaid ancient literature, and will be regarded +as that is, at its true worth in after times. 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.</p></div> + +<p>Four “Idylls” came out in 1859, to be rapidly and largely taken up by the +English public, with many congratulations from personal friends. Thackeray +sends, after reading them, a letter full of his characteristic humour and +cordiality:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“The landlord”—at Folkestone—“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; and what could I do but be grateful to that surprising genius +which has made me so happy?”</p></div> + +<p>The Duke of Argyll wrote that Macaulay had been <i>delighted with it</i>, +whereupon the Poet responds to his Grace somewhat caustically:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">My dear Duke</span>—Doubtless Macaulay’s good opinion is worth having, and I +am grateful to you for letting me know it, but this time I intend to +be thick-skinned; nay, I scarcely believe that I should ever feel very +deeply the pen-punctures of those parasitic animalcules of the press, +if they kept themselves to what I write, and did not glance spitefully +and personally at myself. I hate spite.</p></div> + +<p>Ruskin, on the other hand, is but half pleased; could not quite make up +his mind about that “increased quietness of style”; feels “the art and +finish in these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span> poems a little more than I like”; wishes that the book’s +nobleness and tenderness had been independent of a romantic condition of +externals; and suggests that “so great power ought not to be spent on +visions of things past, but on the living present.”</p> + +<p>These latter sentences touch upon, or at least indicate, a line of +criticism upon the general conception of the “Idylls,” as seen in their +treatment of the Arthurian legend, with which, although it may appear +inadequate, some of us are not indisposed to agree. Romanticism has been +defined, half seriously, as the art of presenting to a people the literary +works which can give the greatest imaginative pleasure in the actual state +of their habits and beliefs. The “Idylls” adapted the mythical tales of +the Round Table to the very highest standard of æsthetic taste, +intellectual refinement, and moral delicacy prevailing in cultivated +English society. And by that society they were very cordially appreciated. +Undoubtedly the figure of Arthur—representing a stainless mirror of +chivalry, a warrior king endowed with the qualities of patriotic +self-devotion, clemency, generosity, and noble trustfulness, yet betrayed +by his wife and his familiar friend, and dying in a lost fight against +treacherous rebels—did present a lofty ideal that might well affect a +gravely emotional people. Moreover, the poem is a splendidly illuminated +Morality, unfolding scenes and figures that illustrate heroic virtues and +human frailties, gallantry, chivalric enterprise, domestic perfidy, chaste +virginal loves, and subtle amorous enchantments. It abounds also in +descriptive passages which attest the close attention of the Poet’s eye +and ear to natural sights and sounds, and his supreme art of fashioning +his verse to their colours and echoes. In short, to quote from the +biography,</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>he has made the old legends his own, restored the idealism, and +infused into them a spirit of modern thought and of ethical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> +significance; setting his characters in a rich and varied landscape; +as indeed otherwise these archaic stories would not have appealed to +the world at large.</p></div> + +<p>This indeed he has done well. And yet it is not possible to put away +altogether the modern prejudice against unreality, the sense of having +here a vision not merely of things that are past, but of things that could +never have been, of a world that is neither ancient nor modern, but a +fairy land peopled with knights and dames whose habits and conversation +are adjusted to the decorous taste of our nineteenth century. The time has +long passed when men could look back on distant ages much as they looked +forward to futurity, through a haze of unbounded credulity. Not every one +has been able to overcome the effect of incongruity produced by a poem +which invests the legendary personages of mediæval romance with morals and +manners of a fastidious delicacy, and promotes them to be the embodiment +of our own ethical ideals. If, indeed, we regard the “Idylls” as beautiful +allegories, we may be content, as their author was, with the suggestion +that King Arthur represents Conscience, and that the poem is “a picture of +the different ways in which men looked on conscience, some reverencing it +as a heaven-born king, others ascribing to it an earthly origin.” We may +then be satisfied with learning, from the Poet himself, that “Camelot, for +instance, a city of shadowy palaces, is everywhere symbolic of the gradual +growth of human beliefs and institutions, and of the spiritual development +of man.” In the light of these interpretations the poem is a beautifully +woven tissue of poetic mysticism, clothing the old legend of chivalry with +esoteric meaning. We can accept and admire it freely, remarking only that +the deeper thoughts of the present generation do not run in an allegorical +vein, and that such a vesture, though of the finest texture and +embroidery, waxes old speedily.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> “The ‘Holy Grail,’” said Tennyson, “is +one of the most imaginative of my poems. I have expressed there my strong +feeling as to the reality of the Unseen”; and truly it is a marvellous +excursion into the field of mystical romance. But Tennyson also said that +“there is no single fact or incident in the ‘Idylls,’ however seemingly +mystical, which cannot be explained as without any mystery or allegory +whatever”; and herein lies our difficulty. For, unless they can be read as +wholly allegorical, there is an air of unreality about those enchanting +pictures, as of scenes and persons that could never have existed anywhere. +That Tennyson is a master of the art of veiling the lessons of real life +under a fairy story, we know from the subtle symbolism with which he +tells, in the “Lady of Shalott,” the tale of sudden absorbing love, +hopeless and unregarded, sinking into despair—a true parable, understood +of all men and women in all times. But those who have no great skill at +deciphering the Hyponoia, the underlying significance, of the “Idylls” may +be pardoned for confessing to an occasional feeling of something abstract, +shadowy, and spectacular in the company of these knights and dames.<a name='fna_96' id='fna_96' href='#f_96'><small>[96]</small></a></p> + +<p>FitzGerald, after reading the “Holy Grail,” writes (1870) to Tennyson:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The whole myth of Arthur’s Round Table Dynasty in Britain presents +itself before me with a sort of cloudy Stonehenge grandeur. I am not +sure if the old knights’ adventures do not tell upon me better touched +in some lyrical way (like your “Lady of Shalott”) than when elaborated +into epic form. I never could care for Spenser, Tasso, or even +Ariosto, whose epic has a ballad ring about it.... Anyhow, Alfred, +while I feel how pure, noble, and holy your work is—and whole +phrases, lines, and sentences of it will abide with me, and, I am +sure, with men after me—I read on till the “Lincolnshire Farmer” drew +tears from my eyes. I was got back to the substantial rough-spun +Nature I knew; and the old<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> brute, invested by you with the solemn +humour of Humanity, like Shakespeare’s Shallow, became a more pathetic +phenomenon than the knights who revisit the world in your other verse. +There! I cannot help it, and have made a clean breast.</p></div> + +<p>If the extreme realism of some modern writers has been rightly condemned +as truth divorced from beauty, we may say that it has been by his skill in +maintaining their indissoluble union that Tennyson’s best work shows its +peculiar strength and has earned its enduring vitality. He excels in the +verisimilitude of his portraiture, in the authentic delineation of +character, preserving the type and developing the main lines of thought +and action by imaginative insight, with high artistic fidelity in details. +I venture to anticipate that his short monodramatic pieces in blank +verse—his studies from the antique, like “Ulysses” and “Tithonus,” and +his poems of English life, breathing the true idyllic spirit, like the +“Gardener’s Daughter” and “Aylmer’s Field”—will sustain their popularity +longer than the Arthurian Idylls. Nor can some of us honestly agree with +the unqualified praise bestowed by high authority (as the <i>Memoir</i> +testifies) on “Guinevere,” where the scene between the king and the queen +at Almesbury, with all its elevation of tone and purity of sentiment, is +not very far from a splendid anachronism. But the epilogue “To the Queen,” +which closes the Arthurian epic, brings us back to modern thought and +circumstance by its ringing protest against faint-heartedness in English +politics.</p> + +<p>The “Northern Farmer,” written in 1861, was at that time a novelty in form +and subject. It gave a strong lead, at any rate, to that school of rough +humorous versification, largely relying on quaint turns of ideas and +phrases, on racy provincial dialect and local colouring generally, which +has since had an immense success in the hands of minor artists. We may +take it to have begun, for the last century, with the <i>Biglow Papers</i>.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> +This form of metrical composition has latterly spread, as a species of +modern ballad, to the Indian frontier and the Australian bush, but has +little or no place in any language except the English. Such character +sketches, taken direct from studies of rude life, have been always common +in popular comic song, yet I believe that no first-class poet, after Burns +and before Tennyson, had turned his hand to this kind of work; nor has +anything been since produced upon the artistic level of the first +“Northern Farmer.” “Roden Noel,” writes Tennyson, “calls the two ‘Northern +Farmers’ photographs; but I call them imaginative”—as of course they are, +being far above mere exact copies of some individual person.</p> + +<p>There are some very readable <i>impressions de voyage</i> gathered out of +journals of tours made about this time (1860) in France and England, and +the letters maintain their high level of interest. Upon the death of +Macaulay, Tennyson writes to the Duke of Argyll:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I hardly knew him: met him once, I remember, when Hallam and Guizot +were in his company. Hallam was showing Guizot the Houses of +Parliament, then building, and Macaulay went on like a cataract for an +hour or so to those two great men, and, when they had gone, turned to +me and said, “Good morning; I am happy to have had the pleasure of +making your acquaintance,” and strode away. Had I been a piquable man +I should have been piqued: but I don’t think I was, for the movement +after all was amicable.</p></div> + +<p>Then follows an account, by Mrs. Bradley, of a visit to Farringford, with +“its careless ordered garden close to the ridge of a noble down”; and at +the end of the <i>Memoir</i> is an appendix containing, among other things, +Arthur Hallam’s striking critical appreciation of “Mariana in the South,” +a poem which must be ranked as a masterpiece by all exiled Englishmen who +have dreamt of their native breezes and verdure, under the blinding glare +and intolerable heat of a tropical summer. Mr. Aubrey de<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span> Vere has +contributed a reminiscence describing the effect produced upon himself and +others by the poems of 1832-45, with a dissertation upon their style and +philosophic significance. And in this manner the course and circumstances +of the Poet’s life are set out, with much taste and regard for +proportionate value of the materials for those singularly untroubled years +through which he rose steadily from straitened means in youth to +comparative affluence in middle age, and from distinction among a group of +choice spirits to enduring fame as the greatest of poets born in the +nineteenth century.</p> + +<p>When, in 1864, Tennyson returned with “Enoch Arden” to the romance of real +life among his own people, the poem was heartily welcomed, and sixty +thousand copies were speedily sold. Spedding declared it to be the finest +story he had ever heard, and added (in our opinion quite rightly) that it +was “more especially adapted for Alfred than for any other poet.” Yet the +plot, so to speak, of this pathetic narrative is as ancient as the +<i>Odyssey</i>, for it rests upon a situation that must have been common in all +times of long and distant voyaging, when men disappeared across the seas, +were not heard of for years, and their wives were counted as widows. A +well-known sailor’s ditty tells in rude popular rhymes the same story of +the wandering mariner’s return home, to find himself forsaken and +forgotten; and it frequently occurs in the folklore of the crusades. The +first title in the proof-sheets of the “Enoch Arden” volume was “Idylls of +the Hearth,” and here, says his biographer,</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>he writes with as intimate a knowledge, but with greater power (than +in 1842), on subjects from English life, the sailor, the farmer, the +parson, the city lawyer, the squire, the country maiden, and the old +woman who dreams of her past life in a restful old age.</p></div> + +<p>No great poet, in fact, has travelled for his subjects so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> little beyond +his native land; and so his best descriptive work shows the painter’s eye +on the object, with the impressions drawn fresh and at first hand from +Nature, as in the poetry of primitive bards who saw things for themselves. +His letters and notes teem with observations of wild flowers and wild +creatures, of wide prospects over sea and land; and even when he followed +Enoch Arden into the world that was to himself untravelled, he could +surprise those who knew it by his rendering of tropical scenery.</p> + +<p>A very good account, by the late Mr. Locker-Lampson, of his tour through +France and Switzerland with Tennyson in 1869, has preserved for us the +flavour of his table and travelling talk upon literature, and occasionally +upon religious problems. Into the philosophical or metaphysical abyss he +did not let down his plummet very far; he recognized the limits of human +knowledge, and for the dim regions beyond he accepted Faith as his guide +and comforter. In regard to the poets—“As a boy,” he said, “I was a great +admirer of Byron, so much so that I got a surfeit of him, and now I cannot +read him as I should like to do.” Probably this habit of premature and +excessive indulgence in Byron has blunted many an eager admirer’s +appetite, and has had something to do with the prevailing distaste for +him, wherein we think that he has fallen into unmerited neglect. Of +Shelley Tennyson said that there was “a great wind of words in a good deal +of him, but that as a writer of blank verse he was perhaps the most +skilful of the moderns. Nobody admires Shelley more than I once did, and I +still admire him.” For Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” he had a profound +admiration; yet even in that poem he thought “the old poet had shown a +want of literary instinct,” and he touched upon some defects of +composition; but he ended by saying emphatically that Wordsworth’s very<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span> +best is the best in its way that has been sent out by moderns. He told an +anecdote of Samuel Rogers. “One day we were walking arm and arm, and I +spoke of what is called Immortality, and remarked how few writers could be +sure of it. Upon this Rogers squeezed my arm and said, ‘I am sure of it.’”</p> + +<p>His wife’s journal of this time is full of interest, recording various +sayings and doings, conversations, correspondence, anecdotes, and glimpses +of notable visits and visitors, Tourguéneff, Longfellow, Jenny Lind, +Huxley, and Gladstone, to the last of whom Tennyson read aloud his “Holy +Grail.” At the house of G. H. Lewes he read “Guinevere,” “which made +George Eliot weep.” The diary is a faithful and valuable memorial of +English country life at its best in the middle of the last century. Living +quietly with his family, he was in constant intercourse with the most +distinguished men of his day, and was himself honoured of them all.</p> + +<p>In 1873 Tennyson had declined, for himself, Mr. Gladstone’s offer of a +baronetcy. In 1874 this offer was repeated by Mr. Disraeli, who does not +seem to have known that it had been once before made, in a high-flying +sententious letter, evidently attuned to the deeper harmonies of the +mysterious relation between genius and government.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>A government should recognize intellect. It elevates and sustains the +spirit. It elevates and sustains the spirit of a nation. But it is an +office not easy to fulfil, for if it falls into favouritism and the +patronage of mediocrity, instead of raising the national sentiment, it +might degrade and debase it. Her Majesty, by the advice of her +Ministers, has testified in the Arctic expedition, and will in other +forms, her sympathy with science. But it is desirable that the claims +of high letters should be equally acknowledged. That is not so easy a +matter, because it is in the nature of things that the test of merit +cannot be so precise in literature as in science. Nevertheless, etc. +etc.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span>The honour, even thus offered, was again respectfully declined, with a +suggestion that it might be renewed for his son after his own death; but +this was pronounced impracticable.</p> + +<p>The Metaphysical Society was founded by Tennyson and two others in 1869, +and a list of the members is given in the <i>Memoir</i>, which touches on the +style and topics of the debates, and on the umbrage taken by agnostic +friends at the profound deference shown by Tennyson to Cardinal Manning. A +letter from Dr. James Martineau describes the Poet’s general attitude +toward the Society’s discussions; he sent his poem on the “Higher +Pantheism” to be read at the first meeting; and he was “usually a silent +listener, interposing some short question or pregnant hint.” The letter +discourses, in expansive and perhaps faintly nebulous language, upon the +influence of his poetry on the religious tendencies of the day.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>That in a certain sense our great Laureate’s poetry has nevertheless +had a dissolving influence upon the over-definite dogmatic creeds +within hearing, or upon the modes of religious thought amid which it +was born, can hardly be doubted. In laying bare, as it does, the +history of his own spirit, its conflicts and aspirations, its +alternate eclipse of doubt and glow of faith, it has reported more +than a personal experience; he has told the story of an age which he +has thus brought into Self-knowledge.... Among thousands of readers +previously irresponsive to anything Divine he has created, or +immeasurably intensified, the susceptibility of religious reverence.</p></div> + +<p>After taking into due account the circumstances in which Dr. Martineau’s +letter was written, to many readers this high-flying panegyric will seem +to have in some degree overshot its mark.</p> + +<p>It has been my duty, in reviewing this <i>Memoir</i>, to pass under some kind +of critical survey the more important writings of Lord Tennyson, in +particular<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> relation to the narrative of his life, and to the formation of +his views and opinions. I am, however, placed in some embarrassment by the +fact that this work is for the most part done already in the volumes +themselves. They contain ample quotations from letters and articles by +very eminent hands, written with all the vigour of immediate impressions +when the poems first appeared. And some of the reminiscences that have +since been contributed to the biography by personal friends deal so +thoroughly with its literary side as to fall little short of elaborate +essays; so that on the whole not much is left to be said by the +retrospective reviewer. We are met with this difficulty in taking up the +chapters on the Historical Plays, which set before us, with an analysis of +the plays by the biographer himself, a catena of judgments upon them, +unanimously favourable, by the highest authorities. Robert Browning writes +with generous enthusiasm of “Queen Mary.” Froude, the most dramatic of +historians, expresses unbounded admiration: “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.” +Gladstone, Mr. Aubrey de Vere, Longfellow, G. H. Lewes and his wife, the +statesmen, the poets, and the men of letters, each from his own standpoint +attests the merits of one or another play, in letters of indisputable +strength and sincerity. Nor can it be doubted that these pieces contain +splendid passages, and fine engravings, so to speak, of historical +personages, with a noble appreciation of the spacious Elizabethan period, +and of the earlier romantic episodes. The dramatic art provides such a +powerful instrument for striking deep into the national mind, and success +in this form of high poetic execution is so lasting—while it is so +rare—that almost every great English poet has written plays. On the other +hand, few of them have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> ventured, like Tennyson, to face the capricious +ordeal of the public theatre, where the <i>vox populi</i> is at least so far +divine that it pronounces absolutely and often incomprehensibly.</p> + +<p>“For Tennyson to begin publishing plays after he was sixty-five years of +age was thought to be a hazardous experiment”; though I may remark that he +started with the advantage of a first-class poetic reputation, which +stimulated public curiosity. But he knew well the immense influence, for +good or for ill, that the stage can bring to bear on the people; and for +the stage all his plays were directly intended, not for literature, in the +expectation that the necessary technical adaptations might be supplied by +the actors or the professional playwright. Their historical truth, their +vigorous conceptions of motive and circumstance, and their poetic force +received ample acknowledgment. W. G. Ward, who was “grotesquely truthful,” +though ultramontane, broke out into unqualified praise after listening to +the reading of “Becket.” On the stage, where first impressions are +all-important, the pieces had their share of success. Browning writes of +the “tumult of acclaim” which greeted the appearance of “Queen Mary”; and +of “Becket” Irving has told us that “it is one of the three most +successful plays produced by him at the Lyceum.”</p> + +<p>It is a question, often debated, whether in these latter days the theatre +can be made a vehicle for the artistic representation of history. +Literature, a jealous rival of all her sister arts, has so vastly extended +her dominion over the people, she speaks so directly to the mind, without +need of plastic or vocal interpretation, she is so independent of +accessories and intermediaries, that her competitive influence weighs down +all other departments of imaginative and pictorial idealization, religious +or romantic. Against this stream of tendency even<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span> Tennyson’s genius could +hardly make sufficient headway to conquer for his plays a lasting hold +upon English audiences; and moreover his primal vigour had been spent upon +other victories. Yet to have held the stage at all, for a brief space, is +to have done more than has been achieved by any other poet of this (last) +century. In 1880 his drama, “The Cup,” was produced with signal success at +the Lyceum; and Tennyson summed up his theatrical experience by observing +that “the success of a piece does not depend on its literary merit or even +on its stage effect, but on its <i>hitting</i> somehow,” wherein Miss Ellen +Terry agreed with him.</p> + +<p>The annals of his daily life, throughout all this later part of it, +consist of extracts from letters, journals, and memorials of intercourse, +which abound with appropriate, amusing, and valuable matter, connected by +the biographer’s personal recollections. We have thus a many-coloured +mosaic, in which many figures and characters are reproduced by a kind of +literary tessellation; while, as to the Poet himself, his habits, wise or +whimsical, his thoughts from year to year on the subjects of the day, his +manner of working, are all preserved. The correspondence of his friends +maintains its high level of quality. Mr. W. H. Lecky gives us, in one of +the best among all the reminiscences, a fine sample of his own faculty for +delineation of character, bringing out the Poet’s simplicity of soul, his +love of seclusion, the scope of his religious meditations, the keen +sensibility (acquired by long culture) of his rhythmic ear, and also his +susceptibility to the hum and pricking of critics.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Many persons spoke of your father as too much occupied with his +poetry. It did, no doubt, fill a very large place in his thoughts, and +it is also true that he was accustomed to express his opinions about +it with a curiously childlike simplicity and frankness. But at bottom +his nature seemed to be singularly modest. No poet ever corrected so +many lines in deference to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span> adverse criticism. His sensitiveness +seemed to me curiously out of harmony with his large powerful frame, +with his manly dark colouring, with his great massive hands and strong +square-tipped fingers.</p></div> + +<p>His son records how in lonely walks together Tennyson would chant a poem +that he was composing, would search for strange birds or flowers, and +would himself take flight on discovering that he was being stalked by a +tourist. Among the letters is one from Victor Hugo, in the grand +cosmopolitan style, beginning “Mon Éminent et Cher Confrère,” professing +love for all mankind and admiration for noble verse everywhere; another +from Cardinal Newman, smooth and adroit; there is also a note by Dr. Dabbs +of his colloquy with Tennyson, showing how he began with the somewhat +musty question about the incompatibility of Science with Religion, and +found the Poet, as we infer, tolerably dexterous with the foils. Renan +called, and put the essence of his philosophy into one phrase, “La vérité +est une nuance”; there are jottings of talks with Carlyle, and a long +extract from the journal of a yachting voyage with Mr. Gladstone, who +said, “No man since Aeschylus could have written the <i>Bride of +Lammermoor</i>.” It would be doing less than justice to the biography if I +did not choose a few samples from an ample storehouse, and it would be +unfair to make too many quotations, even from a book which surpasses all +recent memoirs as a repertory of characteristic observations and short +views of life and literature, interchanged by speech or writing, with many +notable friends and visitors.</p> + +<p>In 1883 the Queen, on the recommendation of Mr. Gladstone, offered +Tennyson a peerage, which, after some rumination, he accepted, saying, “By +Gladstone’s advice I have consented, but for my own part I shall regret my +own simple name all my life.” We are to suppose that the Prime Minister’s +only misgiving “lest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span> my father might insist on wearing his wideawake in +the House of Lords” had been duly overcome; and so next year the Poet, +having taken his seat, voted, not without some questioning and doubts of +the time’s ripeness, for extension of franchise. No more worthy +representative of literature has ever added lustre to that august assembly +than he who now took his seat on the cross benches, holding no form of +party creed, but contemplating all. From a man of his traditions and +tastes, his dislike of extravagance, his feeling for the stateliness of +well-ordered movement, at his age, moderation in politics was to be +expected; and indeed we observe that he commended to his friends Maine’s +work on <i>Popular Government</i>, which carries political caution to the verge +of timidity. But Tennyson, like Burke, had great confidence in the common +sense and inbred good nature of the English people. “Stagnation,” he once +said, “is more dangerous than revolution.” As he was throughout +consistently the poet of the <i>via media</i> in politics, the dignified +constitutional Laureate, so he was spared the changes that passed over the +opinions of Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, who were Radicals in +youth, and declined into elderly Tories. Undoubtedly the temper of his +time affected his politics as well as his poetry, for his manhood began in +the calm period which followed the long stormy years when all Europe was +one great war-field, and when the ardent spirits of Byron and Shelley had +been fired by the fierce uprising of the nations.</p> + +<p>In 1885, being then in his seventy-sixth year, Lord Tennyson published +“Tiresias,” preluding with the verses to E. FitzGerald, so vigorous in +tone and so finely wrought, with their rhymes ringing true to the +expectant ear like the chime of a clear bell. Some years before, he had +paid a passing visit at Woodbridge to “the lonely philosopher, a man of +humorous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> melancholy mark, with his gray floating locks, sitting among his +doves.... We fell at once into the old humour, as if we had been parted +twenty days instead of so many years.” It is a rarity in modern life that +two such men as Tennyson and FitzGerald, whose mutual friendship was never +shaken, should have met but once in some twenty-five years, although +divided by no more space than could be traversed by a three hours’ railway +journey. “Tiresias” was soon followed by “Locksley Hall: Sixty Years +After”; then, in 1889, came “Demeter” and other poems; until, in 1892, the +volume containing the “Death of Œnone” and “Akbar’s Dream” closed the +long series of poems which had held two generations under their charm. One +line in the second “Locksley Hall” its author held to be the best of the +kind he had ever written:</p> + +<p class="poem">Universal ocean softly washing all her warless isles;</p> + +<p>though in my poor judgment the harmony seems marred by the frequent +sibilants, which vex all English composers<a name='fna_97' id='fna_97' href='#f_97'><small>[97]</small></a>; and the suggestion that +the sea would become stormless when the land should be at peace may be +thought overbold.</p> + +<p>It was but seasonable that his later poetry should have been tinged with +autumnal colouring. The philosophic bent of his mind had necessarily grown +with increasing years; its range had been widened by constant assimilation +with the scientific ideas of the day, with social and political changes; +but as far horizons breed sadness and wistful uncertainty, so his later +verse leans more toward the moral lessons of experience, toward<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span> +reflective and retrospective views of life and character. In poetry, as in +prose, the sequel to a fine original piece has very rarely, if ever, been +successful; though the second part, when it follows the first after a long +interval, often exhibits the special value that comes from alteration of +style and the natural changes of mood. Tennyson himself thought that “the +two ‘Locksley Halls’ were likely to be in the future two of the most +historically interesting of his poems, as descriptive of the tone of the +age at two distant periods of his life.” In my opinion, the interest is +less historical than biographical, in the sense that the second poem takes +its deeper shade from the darkening that seems to have overspread his +later meditations. For the interval of sixty years had, in fact, brought +increased activity and enterprising eagerness to the English people; and +the gray thoughts of the sequel, the heavier feeling of errors and perils +encompassing the onward path toward the remote ideal, are the Poet’s own. +He employed them, it is true, for the dramatic presentation of old age, +and disclaimed any identity with the imaginary personage.</p> + +<p>However this may be, the poems that appeared toward the close of his long +literary career show a change of manner. We miss, to some degree, the +delicate handling, the self-restraint, the serene air of his best +compositions; there is a certain gloominess of atmosphere,<a name='fna_98' id='fna_98' href='#f_98'><small>[98]</small></a> breaking +out occasionally into vehement expression, in the rolling dithyrambic +stanzas of “Vastness,” “The Dawn,” or “The Dreamer.” In the “Death of +Œnone,” the beautiful antique nymph of Tennyson’s youth, deserted and +passionately lamenting on many-fountained Ida, has become soured and +vindictive.<a name='fna_99' id='fna_99' href='#f_99'><small>[99]</small></a> She is now a jealous wife, to whose feet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span> Paris, dying +from the poisoned arrow, crawls “lame, crooked, reeling,” to be spurned as +an adulterer, who may “go back to his adulteress and die.” Here the Poet +abandons the style and feeling of Hellenic tradition;<a name='fna_100' id='fna_100' href='#f_100'><small>[100]</small></a> the echo of the +old-world story has died away; it is rather the voice of some tragedy +queen posing as the injured wife of modern society; and one remembers that +the Homeric adulteress, Helen of Troy, went back to live happily and +respected with her husband in Sparta. It was not to be expected that +Tennyson’s later inspirations should reach the supreme level of the poems +which he wrote in his prime, or that there should be no ebb from the +high-water mark that he touched, in my opinion, fifty years earlier in +1842.<a name='fna_101' id='fna_101' href='#f_101'><small>[101]</small></a> Yet hardly any poet has so long retained consummate mastery of +his instrument, or has published so little that might have been omitted +with advantage or without detriment to his permanent reputation. And it +will never be forgotten that he wrote “Crossing the Bar” in his +eighty-first year.</p> + +<p>It is clear from the <i>Memoir</i>, at any rate, that the burden of nigh +fourscore years weakened none of his interest in literature and art, in +political and philosophical speculation, or diminished his resources of +humorous observation and anecdote. Among many recollections he told of +Hallam (the historian) saying to him, “I have lived to read Carlyle’s +<i>French Revolution</i>, but I cannot get on, the style is so abominable;” and +of Carlyle groaning about Hallam’s <i>Constitutional History</i>: “Eh, it’s a +miserable skeleton of a book”—bringing out into short and sharp contrast +two opposite schools, the picturesque and the precise, of +history-writing.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span> Robert Browning’s death in December 1889 distressed him +greatly; it was, moreover, a forewarning to the elder of two brothers, if +not equals, in renown. In 1890 Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was Tennyson’s +junior by only twenty-three days, wrote to him:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I am proud of my birth-year, and humbled when I think of who were and +who are my coevals. Darwin, the destroyer and creator; Lord Houghton, +the pleasant and kind-hearted lover of men of letters; Gladstone, whom +I leave it to you to characterise, but whose vast range of +intellectual powers few will question; Mendelssohn, whose music still +rings in our ears; and the Laureate, whose “jewels five words +long”—many of them a good deal longer—sparkle in our memories.</p></div> + +<p>He wrote kindly to William Watson and Rudyard Kipling, whose patriotic +verse pleased him; and twelve months later Watson paid a grateful tribute +to his memory in one of the best among many threnodies. He spoke of +Carlyle’s having come to smoke a pipe with him one evening in London, +“when the talk turned upon the immortality of the soul, upon which Carlyle +said, ‘Eh, old Jewish rags, you must clear your mind of all that. Why +should we expect a hereafter?’” and likened man’s sojourn on earth to a +traveller’s rest at an inn, whereupon Tennyson turned the simile against +him. His son describes how the old man’s “dignity and repose of manner, +his low musical voice, and the power of his magnetic eye kept the +attention riveted.” In August 1892 Lord Selborne and the Master of Balliol +visited him; but</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>... he did not feel strong enough for religious discussions with +Jowett, and begged Jowett not to consult with him or argue with him, +as was his wont, on points of philosophy and religious doubt. The +Master answered him with a remarkable utterance: “Your poetry has an +element of philosophy more to be considered <i>than any regular +philosophy in England</i>”;</p></div> + +<p>which is certainly an ambiguous and possibly not an extravagant eulogy.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span>The final chapter of the <i>Memoir</i> gives, briefly, some sentences from his +last talks, and describes a peaceful and noble ending. He found his +Christianity undisturbed by jarring of sects and creeds; but he said, “I +dread the losing hold of forms. I have expressed this in my ‘Akbar.’” The +welfare of the British Empire, its expansion and its destiny, had been +from the beginning and were to the end of his poetic career matters of +intense pride and concern to him. When, in September 1892, he fell +seriously ill, and Sir Andrew Clark arrived, the physician and the patient +fell to discussing Gray’s “Elegy”; and a few days later, being much worse, +he sent for his Shakespeare, tried to read but had to let his son read for +him. Next day he said: “‘I want the blinds up, I want to see the sky and +the light.’ He repeated ‘The sky and the light.’ It was a glorious +morning, and the warm sunshine was flooding the weald of Sussex and the +line of South Downs, which were seen from his window.” On the second day +after this he passed away very quietly. The funeral service in Westminster +Abbey, with its two anthems—“Crossing the Bar” and “The Silent +Voices”—filling the long-drawn aisle and, rising to the fretted vault +above the heads of a great congregation, will long be remembered by those +who were present. “The tributes of sympathy,” his son writes, “which we +received from many countries and from all classes and creeds, were not +only remarkable for their universality, but for their depth of feeling.”</p> + +<p>To those who had so long lived with him, the loss of one whom they had +tended for many years with devoted affection and reverence was indeed +irreparable. Yet they had the consolation of knowing that his life had +been on the whole happy and fortunate, marked by singularly few griefs or +troubles; that he had proved himself a master of the high calling which he +set before<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span> himself, and departed, full of honours, at the coming of the +time when no man can work.</p> + +<p>A collection of letters that passed between the Queen and Tennyson, +including two from Her Majesty to his son on receiving the news of +Tennyson’s death, is added to the <i>Memoir</i>; and the volume closes with +“Recollections of the Poet,” written at some length, by Lord Selborne, +Jowett, John Tyndall, F. Myers, F. T. Palgrave, and the Duke of Argyll. +These papers will be read, as they deserve to be, with attentive interest +for their descriptions of the personal characteristics, recorded by those +who knew him best, of a very remarkable man; they show also how his poems +were conceived and elaborated, they trace his thoughts on high subjects, +and they contain very ample dissertations on his poetry. They inevitably +anticipate the work of the public reviewer, who cannot pretend to write +with equal authority, while it is not his business to criticize the +carefully composed opinions of others.</p> + +<p>One can see, looking backward, that Tennyson’s genius flowered in due +season; there had been a plentiful harvest of verse in the preceding +generation, but it had been garnered, and the field was clear. The hour +had come for a new writer to take up the succession to that brilliant and +illustrious group who, in the first quarter of the last century, raised +English poetry to a height far above the classic level of the age before +them. Three leaders of that band—Byron, Keats, and Shelley—died young; +the sum total of their years added together exceeds by no more than a +decade the space of Tennyson’s single life. And if the creative period of +a poet’s life may be reckoned as beginning at twenty-one (which is full +early), it sums up to no more than thirty-one years for all the three +poets whom we have named, and to sixty years for Tennyson alone. When his +first volume appeared (1832), Byron, Shelley, and Keats were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span> dead; Scott +and Coleridge had long ceased to write poetry, and were dying; Wordsworth, +who had done all his best work long before, alone survived, for Southey +cannot be counted in the same rank. Moreover, England may be said to have +been just then passing through one of those periods of artistic depression +that precede a revival; the popular taste was artificial and decadent, it +was running down to the pseudo-romantic and false Gothic, to the +conventional Keepsake note in sentiment, to extravagant admiration of such +poems as Moore’s <i>Lalla Rookh</i>. The purchase by the State of the Elgin +Marbles, and the opening of the National Gallery, had prepared the way for +better things in art; but I may affirm, speaking broadly, that it was a +flat interval, when the new generation was just looking for some one to +give form to an upward movement of ideas.</p> + +<p>It was upon the rising wave after this calm that Tennyson was lifted +forward by the quick recognition of his talent among his ardent and +open-minded contemporaries; although his general popularity came +gradually, since even in 1850, as may be seen from the list already given +of his competitors for the Laureateship, his pre-eminence had not been +indisputably established in high political society. Yet all genuine judges +might perceive at once that here was the man to raise again from the lower +plane the imaginative power of verse, who knew the magical charm that +endows with beauty and dramatic force the incidents and impressions which +the ordinary artist can only reproduce in a commonplace or unreal way, +while the master-hand suddenly illumines the whole scene, foreground and +background. He struck a note that touched the feelings and satisfied the +spiritual needs of his contemporaries, and herein lay the promise of his +poetry; for to the departing generation the coming man can say little or +nothing. We have to bear in mind, also, that during Tennyson’s youth the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span> +whole complexion and “moving circumstance” of the age had undergone a +great alteration. It was the uproar and martial clang, the drums and +trampling of long and fierce wars, the mortal strife between revolutionary +and reactionary forces, that kindled the fiery indignation of Shelley and +Byron, inspiring such lines as</p> + +<p class="poem">Still, Freedom, still thy banner, torn yet flying,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Streams like a meteor flag <i>against</i> the wind,</span></p> + +<p>and affected Coleridge and even Southey “in their hot youth, when George +the Third was king.” Tennyson’s opportunity came when these thunderous +echoes had died away, when the Reform Bill had become law, when the era of +general peace and comfortable prosperity that marks for England the middle +of this century was just setting in. The change may be noticed in +Tennyson’s treatment of landscape, of the aspects of earth, sea, and sky. +With Byron and Coleridge the prevailing effects were grand, stormy, wildly +magnificent; with Tennyson the impressions are mainly peaceful, +melancholy, mysterious: he is looking on the happy autumn fields, or +listening in fancy to the long wash of Australasian seas. There are of +course exceptions on both sides; yet in Byron the best-known descriptive +passages are all of the former, and in Tennyson of the latter, character. +The difference in style corresponds, manifestly, not only with the +contrast in the temper of their times, warlike for the earlier poets and +peaceful for the later, but also with the disorder and unrest which vexed +the private lives of Byron, Shelley, and Coleridge, as compared with the +happy domestic fortunes of Tennyson.</p> + +<p>It is almost superfluous to lay stress on the well-known metrical variety +of Tennyson’s poems, or upon the musical range of his language. He +followed the best models, and perhaps improved upon them, in using the +primitive onomatopœia as the base for a higher order<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span> of composition, +in which the words have a subtle connotation, blending sound and colour +into harmonies that accord with the sense and spirit of a passage, convey +the thought, and create the image. His skill in wielding the long flowing +line was remarkable, nor had any poet before him employed it so +frequently; its flexibility lent freedom and scope to his impersonations +of character, and in other pieces he could give it the rolling melody of a +chant or a chorus. On the instrumental power of blank verse we know that +he set the highest value; he had his own secret methods of scansion, and +his long practice enabled him to extend the capabilities of this +peculiarly English metre. But for an excellent critical analysis of +Tennyson’s blank verse, in comparison with the rhythm of other masters, I +must refer my readers to Mr. J. B. Mayor’s <i>Chapters on English Metre</i>, +with especial reference to the final chapter, where the styles of Tennyson +and Browning, as representative of modern English verse, are +scientifically examined.</p> + +<p>I make no apology for having included some criticisms of Tennyson’s work +in this review of his life, because not the least valuable feature of the +<i>Memoir</i> is that it has been so arranged as to form a running commentary +upon and interpretation of his poems, as reflecting his mind and his +manner of life. Throughout the second half of the last century Tennyson +has been foremost among English men of letters, and it is his proud +distinction to have maintained the apostolic succession of our national +poets in a manner not unworthy of those famous men who went immediately +before him.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span></p> +<h2>TENNYSON: THE POET AND THE MAN</h2> +<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">Professor Henry Butcher</span><a name='fna_102' id='fna_102' href='#f_102'><small>[102]</small></a></p> + + +<p>A hundred years have passed since Tennyson’s birth, seventeen years since +his death. It is too soon to attempt to fix his permanent place among +English poets, but it is not too soon to feel assured that much that he +has written is of imperishable worth. Will you bear with me if I offer +some brief remarks, not by way of critical estimate, but in loving +appreciation of the poet and the man? And let me say at once how deeply +all who care for Tennyson are indebted to the illuminating <i>Memoir</i> and +Annotated Edition published by his son.</p> + +<p>Tennyson’s poetic career is in some respects unique in English literature. +He fell upon a time when fiction, science, and sociology were displacing +poetry. He succeeded in conquering the poetic indifference of his age. For +nearly sixty years he held a listening and eager audience, including not +only fastidious hearers but also the larger public. Probably no English +poet except Shakespeare has exercised such a commanding sway over both +learned and unlearned. He unsealed the eyes of his contemporaries and +revealed to them again the significance of beauty. To the English people, +and indeed the English-speaking race, he was not merely the gracious and +entrancing singer, but also the seer who divined their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span> inmost thoughts +and interpreted them in melodious forms of verse.</p> + +<p>At the outset of his poetic life, Arthur Hallam notes the “strange +earnestness of his worship of beauty.” Like Milton, he was studious of +perfection. Like Milton, too, he had in a supreme degree the poet’s double +endowment of an exquisite ear for the music of verse and an unerring eye +for the images of nature. Like Milton, he acquired a mastery of phrase +which has enriched the capacities of our English speech; and not Milton +himself drew from the purely English elements in the language more finely +modulated tones. No poet since Milton has been more deeply imbued with +classical literature, and the perfection of form which he sought fell at +once into a classic and mainly a Hellenic mould. We find in him +reminiscences or close reproductions not only of Homer and Theocritus, of +Virgil and Horace, of Lucretius and Catullus, of Ovid and Persius, but +also of Sappho and Alcman, of Pindar and Aeschylus, of Moschus, +Callimachus, and Quintus Smyrnaeus, more doubtfully of Simonides and +Sophocles. We can follow the tracks of his reading also in Herodotus, +Plato, Plutarch, and Livy. His early volumes contain varied strains of +classical and romantic legend. In some of the poems we are aware at once +of the pervasive atmosphere and enchantment of romance, as in “The Lady of +Shalott,” “Mariana,” “Sir Galahad,” and many more. Others—such as +“Œnone,” “The Lotos-Eaters,” “Ulysses,” “Tithonus”—what are we to call +them, classical or romantic? The thought and the form are chiefly +classical, but the poems are shot through with romantic gleams and tinged +with modern sentiment. Yet so skilful is the handling that there is no +sense of incongruity between the things of the past and the feelings of a +later day. The harmony of tone and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span> colour is almost faultless, more so +than in the treatment of the longer themes taken from Celtic sources. But +while some poems are dominantly classical, others dominantly romantic, +Tennyson’s genius as a whole is the spirit of romance expressing itself in +forms of classical perfection. To the romanticist he may seem classical; +to the classicist he is romantic: romantic in his choice of subjects, in +his attitude towards Nature, in his profusion of detail, in an ornateness +sometimes running to excess; in his moods, too, of reverie or languor and +in the slumberous charm that broods over many of his landscapes. Yet he is +free from the disordered individualism of the extreme romantic school. +Disquietude and unrest are not wanting, but there is no unruly +self-assertion; the cry of social revolt is faintly heard, and, when +heard, its tones are among the least Tennysonian. Those who demand subtle +or curious psychology find him disappointing; his characters are in the +Greek manner <i>broadly human</i>, types rather than deviations from the type. +That he was capable of expressing intense and poignant feeling is shown by +such impassioned utterances as those of “Fatima” and “Maud”; but passion +with him is usually restrained. There are critics for whom passion is +genuine only if turbid, just as thought is profound only if obscure; and +for them Tennyson’s reserve—again a Greek quality—seems an almost +inhuman calm. His own most deeply felt experiences find their truest +expression when passed through the medium of art; they come out +tranquillized and transfigured. The sorrow and love of “In +Memoriam”—which poem I take to be the supreme effort of his genius—are +merged in large impersonal emotions. The poem, as he himself says, “is +rather the cry of the whole human race than mine.” Tennyson’s intense +humanity gives rise to a peculiar vein of pathos, and even of melancholy.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span> +Side by side there are his “mighty hopes” for the future and the power and +“passion of the past”—“the voice of days of old and days to be”: on the +one hand the forward straining intellect, on the other the backward +glance, the lingering regret, and “some divine farewell.” Those haunting +and recurrent words, “the days that are no more,” “for ever and for ever,” +and the “vague world whisper” of the “far-far-away,” are charged with a +sadness which recalls the pathetic but stoical refrain of “Nequiquam” in +Lucretius.</p> + +<p>Throughout Tennyson’s long career we can trace the essential oneness of +his mind and art, beginning with his early experiments in language and +metrical form. By degrees his range of subjects was enlarged; we are +amazed at the ever-growing variety of theme and treatment and his manifold +modes of utterance. In some, as in his lyrics and dramatic monologues, he +displays a flawless excellence, in almost all consummate art. But diverse +as are the chords he has struck, the voice, the touch, the melody are all +his own. In his latest poems we may miss something of the early rapture of +his lyric song, but he is still himself and unmistakable; and had he +written nothing but the lines “To Virgil” and “Crossing the Bar” he would +surely take rank among the highest. We think of him primarily as the +artist, but the artist and the man in him were never far apart; and as +years went on his human sympathies, always strong, were strengthened and +broadened, and drew him closer to the common life of humble people. We +overhear more of “the still sad music of humanity.” Towards the close of +his life the moral and religious content of the poems becomes fuller with +his deepening sense of the grandeur and the pathos of man’s existence. +Some see in this a weakening of his art, the intrusion into poetry of an +alien substance. Yet eliminate this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span> element from art, and how much of the +greatest poetry of the world is gone! Now and then, it must be confessed, +the ethical aim in Tennyson seems to some of us unduly prominent, but +<i>very rarely</i> does the artist lose himself in the teacher or the preacher. +He has a message to deliver, but it is not a mere moral lesson: its true +appeal is to the imagination; put it into prose and it is no longer his. +It lives only in its proper form of imaginative beauty.</p> + +<p>Aristotle noted two types of poet, the εὐφυής, the finely gifted +artist, plastic to the Muse’s touch, who can assume many characters in +turn; and the μανικός, the inspired poet, with a strain of +frenzy, who is lifted out of himself in a divine transport. Were we asked +to select three examples of the former type, one from Greece, one from +Rome, and one from England, our choice from the ancient world would +probably fall on Sophocles and Virgil, and might we not, as a fitting +third, add Tennyson to the list? I do not attempt to determine their +relative rank, but I do suggest that they all belong to the same family, +and that already in this centenary year of our Poet we can recognize the +poetic kinship. Each of the three had in him the inmost heart of poetry, +beating with a full humanity and instinct with human tenderness; each +remained true to his calling as an artist and pursued throughout life the +vision of beauty; and each achieved, in his own individual way, a noble +and harmonious beauty of thought and form, of soul and sense.</p> + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span></p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span></p> +<p class="title">JAMES SPEDDING</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span></p> + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span></p> +<h2>JAMES SPEDDING</h2> +<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">W. Aldis Wright</span>, Vice-Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Spedding was the Pope among us young men—the wisest man I +know.”—<i>Tennyson: a Memoir, by his Son</i>, p. 32.</p></div> + + +<p>James Spedding, of whom FitzGerald wrote, “He was the wisest man I have +known,” was born June 20, 1808, at Mirehouse, Keswick, and was the third +son of John Spedding. He was educated at the Grammar School, Bury St. +Edmunds, where his father, leaving his Cumberland home, went to live for +the purpose of putting his sons under the care of Dr. Malkin. Among his +school-fellows were W. B. Donne, J. M. Kemble (the Anglo-Saxon scholar), +the three brothers FitzGerald, and his own brother Edward, who with +himself was at the head of the school when they left. From Bury he went to +Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1827, where he was contemporary with +Frederick, Charles, and Alfred Tennyson, Arthur Hallam, Monckton Milnes +(afterwards Lord Houghton), and W. H. Thompson (afterwards Master of +Trinity), and was very early admitted into the fellowship of the Apostles. +On Commemoration Day, 1830, he was called upon to deliver an oration in +the College Chapel, the subject being “An Apology for the Moral and +Literary Character of the Nineteenth Century,” which was afterwards +printed. Another of his early productions was a speech against Political +Unions, written for a debating society in the University of Cambridge, +which, although anonymous, attracted the notice of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span> author of <i>Philip +van Artevelde</i>, afterwards his colleague in the Colonial Office, who +quoted some passages from it in the notes to his poem, with the remark: +“It is a singular trait of the times that a speech containing so much of +sagacity and mature reflection as is to be found in this exercitation, +should have been delivered in an academical debating club, and should have +passed away in a pamphlet, which, as far as I am aware, attracted no +notice. Time and place consenting, a brilliant Parliamentary reputation +might be built upon a tithe of the merit.” In 1831 he won the Members’ +Prize with a Latin essay on “Utrum boni plus an mali hominibus et +civitatibus attulerit dicendi copia,” and in 1832 he was again a +candidate, and wrote to Thompson on the 4th of May about it:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Tennant and I both got in our Essays, both in a very imperfect state, +and both the last minute but one.... I find that Alford also wrote. So +the Apostles have three chances. What Alford’s may be I do not know. +But Tennant’s and mine are neither of them worth much: Tennant’s from +dryness, mine from impertinence: for of all the impertinent things I +ever wrote (and this is a bold word) my “Dissertatio Latina” was the +most impertinent. It was in the form of a letter from Son Marcus to +Father Cicero; cutting up the Offices in the most reverential way +possible. The merit of it is, that if no prize is given at all I may +fairly put it down to the novelty of the experiment and the nature of +the Judges, whom to my horror I found out the day after to be the +Heads of Colleges! Marry, God forbid! I rather calculated on +Graham’s<a name='fna_103' id='fna_103' href='#f_103'><small>[103]</small></a> being one of the chief voters, who is fond of fun in +general, and of my Latin in particular. However, it is no matter. I +spent an amusing fortnight and improved my composition: and my mind is +easy anyhow, which you will not easily believe.</p></div> + +<p>On June 21 he writes again:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>You will be glad to know that scoffing and utilizing march (like +humanity according to the St. Simonians), and that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span> Cicero the son has +justified his parentage by getting the first prize for Latin +composition. You will be sorry to hear that not Alford nor Tennant, +but Hildyard Pet. hath obtained the second. Whether their labour has +been lost I know not, but mine has been fairly paid, being at the rate +of a guinea a day, and therefore 365 guineas a year, a very tolerable +income, and I shall increase my establishment accordingly.... I wish +you would decide, with your character, to come to Cambridge in the +vacation and not stay by that dismal sea. There will be George Farish, +and Edm. Lushington, and God knows whether Tennant, and do but add +yourself to myself, and ourselves to the aforesaid: and lo you a +select company as ever smoked under the shadow of a horse chesnut. If +you do not come, you will simply be behind the world of the wise +(which you know is as much like a goad as like a nail fastened by the +master of an assembly) in the understanding of things spoken. For we +talk out of the “Palace of Art” and the “Legend of Fair Women.” The +great Alfred is here, <i>i.e.</i> in Southampton Row, smoking all the day, +and we went from this house [14 Queen Square, Westminster] on a +pilgrimage to see him; to wit, Two Heaths, my brother and myself, and, +meeting Allen on the way, we took him along with us, and when we +arrived at the place appointed we found A. T. and A. H. H. and J. M. +K. So we made a goodly company, and did as we do at Cambridge, and, +but that you were not among us, we should have been happy.</p></div> + +<p>Again, on the 18th of July:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>A new volume by A. T. is in preparation and will, I suppose, be out in +Autumn. In the meantime I have no copy of the “Palace of Art,” but +shall be happy to repeat it to you when you come,—no copy of the +“Legend of Fair Women,” but can repeat about a dozen stanzas which are +of the finest,—no copy of the conclusion of “Œnone” but one in +pencil which no one but myself can read. The two concluding stanzas of +“The Miller’s Daughter,” I can give you in this letter.... A broad +smiling letter from John Heath commissions me this morning to engage +Mrs. Perry’s lodgings for Dunbar, whereat I rejoice: also informs me +that he himself keeps a Parroquet, and that Douglas has become a great +Berkeleian, and would leave his body, like Jeremy Bentham’s, to be +dissected, if he thought he had one.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span>His brother Edward, who had been for some time in delicate health, died on +the 24th of August 1832, and a few days later Spedding writes to Thompson:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>If you have seen Tennant you will be prepared to hear that my brother +Edward died early on Friday morning, after above a month of severe +suffering, leaving a ghastly vacancy in my prospects, not to be filled +up. However, what is past—the profit and the pleasure which I have +gathered out of long and pleasant years of brotherly society—this at +least is safe, and is so much to be thankful for. Why should I be the +sorrier because I have so long been graced with a source of comfort +and of pride, which, if I had never known, I should now be as cheerful +as when I last wrote to you? You knew him but little, but you knew him +enough to form some notion of how much I have to regret—or, in other +words, how much I have had to bless God for. He made a good and a +Christian end, and it is ascertained by a <i>post-mortem</i> inspection +that he could not possibly have had health for any length of time +together. His disease was the formation of internal abscesses, in +consequence of a failure of some of the membranes, and quite beyond +the reach of surgery, so that, had one been at liberty to decide by a +wish whether he should live or die, it would have been an act of +unpardonable selfishness to wish him a moment more of captivity. This +too is something to take off the bitterness of regret, which, however, +in any way has no business to be bitter. But whether it is that I +value high human friendship more highly than I ought to do, or +whatever be the cause, a strange fatality seems to hang over the +objects of my more especial esteem, and I would have you, Thompson, +beware in time. But I shall lose my character with you if I do not +take care. I hope you will communicate the news to Tennant and Farish, +and to all our common friends, for explanations face to face are +formidable things.</p></div> + +<p>It was the death of this brother that gave occasion to the verses “To J. +S.” which Tennyson published in the volume then in course of preparation.</p> + +<p>In October 1832, after unsuccessfully sitting for a Fellowship, he decided +upon another trial. Writing from Mirehouse to Thompson, he says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span>I find it impossible to read here, the valleys look so independent of +circumstances. There stand the mountains, there lie the valleys, and +there is that brook which thou hast made to take its pastime therein, +a jolly old beck that has lately taken to worshipping its maker; for +it overflowed and went into the church, turning us Christians out, or +rather preventing us from going in—a better thing, inasmuch as +prevention is better than cure.</p></div> + +<p>He was again unsuccessful, and Whiston was elected before him.</p> + +<p>In the spring of this year (1833) he had written to Thompson: “Hallam +announces himself this morning as not otherwise than unwell.” He had long +been delicate, and his early and sudden death at Vienna on the 15th of +September came as a shock but not a surprise to his friends. There was a +suggestion that his memory should be perpetuated by an inscription in the +College Chapel, but it came to nothing. Spedding wrote to Thompson on +November 18:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Phillips has been consulting me and others as to the propriety and +possibility of getting a tablet to Arthur Hallam’s memory erected in +Trinity Chapel. Everybody approves cordially to whom he has +communicated the proposal, and he now wishes it to be known among +Hallam’s friends that such a plan is in contemplation, but privately +and quietly. He will then get Christopher Wordsworth to get the +Master’s permission, and then it will be time to think about the rest. +It is just possible that there may be some College etiquette or other +in the way, and it would be a pity in that case that the intention +should have been talked about publicly. Will you communicate this to +friends in Cambridge who may communicate with friends out of +Cambridge, and so there will be little difficulty in letting every one +know who is interested in the matter? Kemble can tell Trench, etc.; +Merivale, Alford, etc. Who will write to Monteith, or send me his +address? I will write to Donne myself. I think you must know every +friend of Hallam’s whom I know. I have communicated with no one yet, +except those in town. You will be able to do what is fitting better +than I can tell you.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span>The scheme came to nothing, for what reason we do not know; possibly +“college etiquette,” as Spedding anticipated, might stand in the way, for +Hallam was neither Fellow nor Scholar of the College.</p> + +<p>In the spring of 1834 Spedding was still at Mirehouse, and gives Thompson +an account of a day and night he spent with Hartley Coleridge:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The said Hartley is indeed a spirit of no common rate—his mind is +brimful of rare and precious fancies, which leap out of him as fresh +as a fountain in the sunshine. His biographical engagement with +Bingley is for the present suspended, by his own fault, as he says. I +suppose he could not stand it any longer. But the three first numbers +are completed, and bound up in a goodly fat volume of 720 closely +printed pages. It contains twelve or fifteen lives, and more good +things of all sorts and sizes than any other book of 720 pages. It is +published by Bingley in Leeds and Whitaker in London, called +<i>Biographia Borealis</i>, costs sixteen shillings, and the notes alone +are worth the money. Wherefore, I pray you not only to get it +yourself, but likewise to make everybody else get it. No apostolic +bookcase should be without it. It should become a <i>household</i> book; +therefore, let no one think of borrowing it, but whosoever is wise and +good let him buy or steal it. If any man should ask what are the +<i>politics</i> of the work (a question which no Apostle, who is indeed an +Apostle, ever thought of asking but in the way of mere curiosity), +then say thou, the same politics which were held in common by Plato, +Demosthenes, Shakespeare, Bacon, Burke, and God Almighty, and let him +make what he can of the information.</p> + +<p>Wordsworth’s eyes are better, but not well, nor ever likely to be. +Reading inflames them and so does composing. I believe it was a series +of Highland Sonnets that brought on the last attack, so much worse +than any he had had before. He read me several that I had not seen nor +heard before, many of them admirably good; also a long, romantic +wizard and fairy poem, in the time of Merlin and King Arthur, very +pretty, but not of the first order. But I should not have expected +anything so good from him, which was so much out of his beat. He has +not advanced much in his knowledge of Alfred; but he is very modest in +his refusal to praise<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span> attributing his want of admiration to a +deficiency in himself, whether from the stiffness of old age, which +cannot accommodate itself to a new style of beauty, or that the +compass of his sympathies has been narrowed by flowing too long and +strongly in one direction. (<i>N.B.</i> He is not answerable for the +English that I am writing.) But he doubts not that Alfred’s style has +its own beauty, though he wants the faculty to enter fully into it, +alleging as a parallel case the choruses in “Samson Agonistes” the +measure of which he has never been able to enjoy, which comes to +perhaps as high a compliment as a negative compliment can be. He spoke +so wisely and graciously that I had half a mind to try him with a poem +or two, but that would have been more perhaps than he meant. And +indeed it is always so pleasant to hear a distinguished man +unaffectedly disclaiming the office of censor, that I never think it +fair to take him at his word. I have given a copy of Alfred’s second +volume to Hartley Coleridge, who, I trust, will make more of it. He +had only seen it for a few minutes, and was greatly behind the age, +though he admitted that A. T. was undoubtedly a man of genius; and was +going to say something about the <i>Quarterly</i> in a Review of <i>The +Doctor</i>, which he was, or is, writing for Blackwood. I also sent him +yesterday a copy of Charles Tennyson, accompanied with one of my most +gentlemanly letters.</p></div> + +<p>Spedding was now nearly six-and-twenty, and had no settled plan of life +before him. “For myself,” he says, “I am unsettled in all my prospects and +plans. I am, in fact, doing nothing, but I flatter myself I am pausing on +the brink to take a good look at the different ways of life which are open +to me before I take the fatal plunge.”</p> + +<p>At the end of 1834 he invited Thompson, who was then at York, to visit him +at Mirehouse.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Excuses shall not be admitted, at least not such as yours. Is there +not a stage-coach which fears God, and do you <i>for that reason</i> refuse +to employ it? You ought rather to encourage it. What is a little bile +or rheumatism, compared with the advancement of Truth, and the +conservation of the Faith that is on the earth? Moreover, every +Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span> coach leaves Kendal at 8 o’clock in +the morning, and arrives in Keswick about one, having traversed in the +short space of five hours many miles of the finest scenery in the +country, containing both other things and five lakes, and the +dwelling-places of Wordsworth, Hartley Coleridge, and Hamilton<a name='fna_104' id='fna_104' href='#f_104'><small>[104]</small></a> +(more commonly known as Cyril Thornton). As for your time lost last +term, that I know, from my experience of your character, to be a +fiction of modesty: and as for your hopes of making up for it at home, +that I know, from my experience of my own character, to be humbug. +Besides, you write as one balancing his own desires according to a +principle of enlightened self-interest. You forget that it is not for +your own pleasure, but for my profit, that I ask you to come. Am I not +sliding daily from bad to worse? Am I not losing the race I do not +run? Am I not learning to look on all knowledge as vanity, all labour +as sorrow? for not the knowledge for which men labour is profitable, +but the labour only, and yet who can labour for that which profiteth +not? Have I not already parted with the hope, and am I not now parting +with the wish, to advance? Am I performing any duty? Am I making any +money? Am I not falling away from the Apostolic mind, notwithstanding? +Am I not taking pleasure in the shooting of snipes? Am I not in danger +of having a bad German pronunciation for evermore? Roll these things +in your mind, and then roll yourself into the coach. I will meet you +at Ambleside, if you like.</p> + +<p>I had read the review of Wordsworth several times over: and thought +the criticism (except. excipiend.) good, and the moral philosophy +superb. The passage about the moon looking round her, etc., I of +course felt to be a blunder, though I was less surprised than sorry to +see it. It seems to me to chime in too well with what I marked as the +defect of his preface to <i>P. v. A.</i>,<a name='fna_105' id='fna_105' href='#f_105'><small>[105]</small></a> so that I fear it is not a +negligent criticism, as one might have hoped: but an opinion well +weighed and carefully adopted. I wonder what he would say to Ebenezer +Elliott, with his flowers and mountains, for a taste?</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 9em;">Welcome then again</span><br /> +Love-listening Primrose! tho’ not parted long<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span>We meet like lovers after years of pain.<br /> +Oh thou bringst blissful childhood back to me,<br /> +Thou still art loveliest in the lowest place,<br /> +Still as of old Day glows with love for thee,<br /> +And reads our heavenly Father in thy face.<br /> +Surely thy thoughts are humble and devout,<br /> +Flower of the pensive gold! for why should heaven<br /> +Deny to thee his noblest boon of thought,<br /> +If to Earth’s demigods ’tis vainly given?<br /> +Answer me, Sunless Sister, Thou hast speech<br /> +Though silent Fragrance is thy eloquence,<br /> +Beauty thy language, and thy smile might teach<br /> +Ungrateful man to pardon providence.</p> + +<p>He would call it a very bold figure of speech: figure of <i>speech</i>, +quotha! However, Philip is a noble fellow, and the apology for this +piece of criticism is so wise and so good that one can hardly regret +that an apology was needed. I have sent for the citation of Will. +Shakespeare, though rather with the desire than the expectation of +great delight. I read a few extracts in the <i>Atlas</i>, with which I was +not at all struck, or, if at all, not favourably; but that does not go +for much, as I did not know who it was by, or anything about it, and +the extracts were most probably ill-chosen. But to tell you the truth +I never took much to Landor. To be sure I never read much of him, but +I have often had the book in my hand. Perhaps I might have liked him +better if the speakers had been named Philander and Strephon, and +Philalethes and the like, instead of Bacon, and Hooker, and Raleigh, +and so following. I shall have every chance this time: for besides the +prejudice derived from your praise, I am by no means easy in feeling +no great respect for a writer of whom <i>P. v. A.</i> speaks so very +highly. There is something in Philip’s intellect which commands more +than my usual reverence. More <i>genial</i> minds I have met with, but for +strength, and integrity, and <i>discretion</i> of understanding, I do not +know his equal. He puts me in mind of F. Malkin. We must have him +change his mind, though, about the moon and the streams. I read the +review of Coleridge in the <i>Quarterly</i> the other day. The parts which +are not Coleridge’s own might have been better, but they are well +enough.</p></div> + +<p>The spring of 1835 was memorable at Mirehouse for a visit of Tennyson and +FitzGerald. That this made a vivid impression on FitzGerald is evident +from a letter<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span> which he wrote after Spedding’s death to his niece, when +there was some idea of gathering together his miscellaneous essays:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“I rejoice,” he says, “to hear of a Collection, or Reprint, of his +stray works.... I used to say he wrote ‘Virgilian Prose.’ One only of +his I did not care for; but that, I doubt not, was because of the +subject, not of the treatment: his own printed Report of a Speech he +made in what was called the ‘Quinquaginta Club’ Debating Society (not +the Union) at Cambridge about the year 1831. This speech his Father +got him to recall and recompose in Print; wishing always that his Son +should turn his faculties to such public Topics rather than to the +Poets, of whom he had seen enough in Cumberland not to have much +regard for: Shelley for one, at one time stalking about the mountains +with Pistols, and other such Vagaries. I do not think he was much an +admirer of Wordsworth (I don’t know about Southey), and I well +remember that when I was at M<i>e</i>rehouse (as Miss Bristowe would have +us call it), with A. Tennyson in 1835, Mr. Spedding grudged his Son’s +giving up much time and thought to consultations about Morte +d’Arthur’s, Lords of Burleigh, etc., which were then in MS. He more +than once questioned me, who was sometimes present at the meetings, +‘Well, Mr. F., and what is it? Mr. Tennyson reads, and Jem +criticizes:—is that it?’ etc. This, while I might be playing Chess +with dear Mrs. Spedding, in May, while the Daffodils were dancing +outside the Hall door.”</p> + +<p>“At the end of May,” he writes to Mrs. Kemble, “we went to lodge for a +week at Windermere—where Wordsworth’s new volume of <i>Yarrow +Revisited</i> reached us. W. was then at his home, but Tennyson would not +go to visit him: and of course I did not: nor even saw him.”</p></div> + +<p>In the summer of 1835 Thompson spent the Long Vacation at the Lakes, and +Spedding was engaged in securing lodgings for him and his pupils, while +Tennyson was still at Mirehouse.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“I am going,” he writes, “with Alfred, I believe, to Buttermere, and +so have not time to tell you how much I am rejoiced that your destiny +should have dragged you hither—nor to discuss the London Review—nor +to tell you about Fitz<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span> and Alfred Tennyson, and Hartley Coleridge, +and W. W., etc., only that Alfred is very gruff and unmanageable, and +the weather very cold. He desires to be remembered. Fitz is gone.”</p></div> + +<p>A few days later he says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Alfred left us about a week since, homeward bound, but meaning to +touch at Brookfield’s on his way. The weather has been much finer +since he went; certainly, while he was here, our northern sun did not +display himself to advantage. Nevertheless, I think he took in more +pleasure and inspiration than any one would have supposed who did not +know his almost personal dislike of the Present, whatever it may be. +Hartley Coleridge is mightily taken with him; and, after the fourth +bottom of gin, deliberately thanked Heaven (under me, I believe, or me +under Heaven, I forget which) for having brought them acquainted. Said +Hartley was busy with an article on “Macbeth,” to appear (the +vegetable spirits permitting) in the next <i>Blackwood</i>. He confessed to +a creed touching Destiny which was new to me: denying Free Will (if I +understood him right) <i>in toto</i>; but at the same time maintaining that +man is solely and entirely answerable for whatever evil he does: not +merely that he is to suffer for it, which I could understand, but that +he is <i>answerable</i> for it which I do not. Now this, I think, is not +fair. I could not get Alfred to Rydal Mount, he would and would +not—sulky one, although Wordsworth was hospitably minded towards him; +and would have been more so had the state of his household permitted, +which I am sorry to say is full of sickness.... By a letter from D. D. +H[eath] received to-day I infer that <i>Subscription no Bondage</i> is +out; which I shall accordingly send for. I am sorry it is not to be +understood in the sense of “Killing no Murder,” which seems to me, +till I be further enlightened, the only sort of construction which +will make sense of it. D. D. H. looketh on this pamphlet as the final +cause of the system of subscription at Oxford, and, now that the +effect hath been accomplished doth heartily wish that custom may be +discontinued. Euge, D. D. H.! For myself, since Alfred went, my time +has been chiefly employed (that is, all my time which was not occupied +in exercising the puppies) upon three several books: to wit, <i>Ralph +Esher</i>, a sort of novel by Leigh Hunt, containing a most graceful and +lively portraiture of Charles<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span> II.’s times, a good deal of rot about +Truth and Love, and a good deal of metaphysics, hard to understand in +parts, but in parts (to me, at least) very deep and touching. Item, +<i>Isaac Comnenus</i>, a Play (Murray, 1827): by Henry Taylor, as Southey +who lent me the book informs me; a work much in the tone and [style +of] <i>P. v. A.</i>, and though far behind in design and execution by [no +means] an unworthy precursor. It has some passages as fine as anything +in <i>Philip</i>. Item, thirdly and lastly, Basil Montagu’s <i>Life of +Bacon</i>, a work of much labour both on the writer’s part and the +reader’s, but well meant, and if not itself a good one containing all +the materials necessary for a good one, which is saying a great deal. +I have not read all the notes. In fact I believe they are all +contained in the text. I should think that on a moderate computation, +half the two volumes is a reprint of the other half, for if there are +a few pages which are printed twice over, there are many half and +quarter pages which are repeated four or five times. I should half +like to review it.</p></div> + +<p>If he had acted on his own suggestion we might not have had Macaulay’s +<i>Essay</i>, and certainly should not have had the <i>Evenings with a Reviewer</i>. +This is the first intimation of his interest in what was to be the work of +his life. It was at this time that he made the acquaintance of Henry +(afterwards Sir Henry) Taylor, the author of <i>Philip van Artevelde</i>, which +influenced his occupation for the next six years.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“At this time,” says Sir Henry in his Autobiography, “I obtained +another relief, and in obtaining it obtained a friend for life. James +Spedding was the younger son of a Cumberland squire who had been a +friend of my father’s in former, though I think they had not met in +latter days. In the notes to <i>Van Artevelde</i> I had quoted a passage +from an admirable speech of his spoken in a debating club at Cambridge +when he was an undergraduate. This led to my making his acquaintance; +and when some very laborious business of detail had to be executed, I +obtained authority to offer him the employment with the remuneration +of £150 a year. He was in a difficulty at the time as to the choice of +a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span> profession, and feeling that life without business and occupation +of some kind was dangerous, was glad to accept this employment as one +which might answer the purpose well enough, if he proved suited to it, +and if not might be relinquished without difficulty and exchanged for +some other. I wrote to Mr. Southey, 24th January 1836:</p> + +<p>“‘Spedding has been and will be invaluable, and they owe me much for +him. He is regarded on all hands, not only as a man of first-rate +capacity, but as having quite a genius for business. I, for my part, +have never seen anything like him in business on this side Stephen.... +When I contemplate the easy labours of Stephen and one or two others I +am disposed to think that there are giants in <i>these</i> days.’</p> + +<p>“For six years Spedding worked away with universal approbation, and +all this time he would have been willing to accept a post of précis +writer with £300 a year, or any other such recognised position, and +attach himself permanently to the office. But none such was placed at +his disposal ... and he took the opportunity of the Whig government +going out in 1841 to give up his employment. He then applied himself +to edit the works and vindicate the fame of Lord Bacon. In 1847, on +Sir James Stephen’s retirement, the office of Under Secretary of State +with £2000 a year was offered to him by Lord Grey, before it was +offered to me, and he could not be induced to accept it. He could not +be brought to believe, what no one else doubted, that he was equal to +the duties.</p> + +<p>“Be this as it may, the fact that the man being well known and close +at hand for six years, who could have been had for £300 a year in +1841, should have been let slip, though he was thought worth £2000 a +year in 1847, if not a rare, is a clear example of the little heed +given by the Government of this country to the choice and use of +instruments.”</p></div> + +<p>The exact date of Spedding’s beginning work at the Colonial Office is not +known, but it must have been between the middle of June 1835 and the end +of August,<a name='fna_106' id='fna_106' href='#f_106'><small>[106]</small></a> for by that time he found that Downing Street was “no +place for the indulgence of the individual genius.” In a letter to +Thompson he writes:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span>I did take the liberty of insinuating a scoff at a Spanish Governor in +one of my Despatches, but H. T. said it was clever and would not do. +Said H. T. rises day by day in my esteem. He is not the least stiff or +awful, but very gentle and majestic. He has a great deal of P. v. A. +in him. But we do not talk much except on matters of business, which, +however, rises in his hands to the dignity of statesmanship. I have +not yet ascertained the contingencies on which my stay here depends, +but I should think it probable that I may in the end have the offer of +a permanent appointment in the office. If I have, I mean to take it, +purely from a sense of duty; that I may have a nominal employment to +satisfy impertinent enquiries withal, and perhaps also (as I dream in +my more romantic moments) that I may have a real employment to +discipline my own soul withal. The prospect of its leading to wealth +or dignity is so small under present circumstances as not to be worth +taking into account, yet not exactly so neither, for any prospect of +any thing to come, however faint and distant, dignifies an employment +with a relationship to the future and the indefinite.</p> + +<p>I meant to have gone to Kitlands to-day, but the coach was full. +Recollect that <i>you</i> are not a man of many cares new taken up, and +therefore may find time to shower your wiser meditations upon a sheet +of paper, which addressed to me under cover to “R. W. Hay, Esq., Under +Secretary of State, Colonial Office, Downing Street,” will not be lost +upon one who sometimes did but observe and wonder, but has now to +enquire and dispatch.</p></div> + +<p>Thompson had been with a reading party at Keswick during the summer, but +had proved a bad correspondent.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“I have heard,” Spedding writes in November, “occasionally from +Mirehouse dim intimations of your supposed existence; and latterly I +have seen Martineau, to whom I have carefully pointed out the weak +points in your character, which he had not observed. I have reason to +believe that I am rising rapidly in public estimation, and I have only +to pray that I may not become too sufficient for my place. My sense of +Duty has already been appealed to in the most flattering manner, to +draw me to the undertaking of nobler business,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span> which, being capable +of, I have no right (it is said) to decline. My capacity, it would +seem, is beyond doubt; and, as it has been evinced without any effort +or observation of mine, perhaps the best way after all will be to let +it have its own way and trouble my soul no more about it. Turn it +adrift in the world, leave it to find its own market and provide its +own goods, and if my soul (which would be a stranger in such +pilgrimage) should return in after years to enquire after it, who +knows how great she may find it grown? P. v. A. is away for his +holidays. If you can suggest a good subject for a dramatic romance out +of English or Scotch history between the Conquest and the time of +Elizabeth, you shall thereby do him a good turn, and perhaps get +praised in a note. Helps has just been here asking for information +about Cambridge in general, more particularly about you and Blakesley. +I could only tell him what I knew of you, which you must confess is +not much to your credit. Sterling has established himself and his +family in Bayswater, and gives tea parties to the wiser minds. I am +going thither to-night. Garden (I understand from himself, writing +from Carstairs) is to curatise in Cornwall. D. D. H. thinks there is +humour in an equity draft.... My own career is as far from being +marked out as ever. There is no present prospect of a vacancy here, +and I cannot get any body to advise me to accept it if there were.”</p></div> + +<p>In the following year Thompson was appointed to the Head Mastership of the +recently founded Leicester and Leicestershire Collegiate School, and at +the opening ceremony on August 9, 1836, he delivered an address, of which +Spedding says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I have read your speech, not with the distant and respectful +admiration, the wonder broken off, which I am apt to call <i>faith</i>, but +with the deliberate admiration of a man who understands and strongly +assents. I see your audience had sense enough to utter loud cheers, +but I want to know whether they had sense enough to see that such a +speech ought not to be let pass away in a newspaper, but to be +provided with some permanent, portable, and self-subsisting existence. +If the proceedings of the day are to be published in a pamphlet, I +should like to invest money in a few copies. If not, I shall think +about printing your part of them in a legible shape on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span> my own +account.... G. Farish is going to Madeira, with Sterling, I believe. +James F. speaks hopefully of the latter, but is more alarmed about his +brother.</p></div> + +<p>In a letter to Allen we get a glimpse of Tennyson:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Alfred Tennyson has reappeared, and is going to-day or to-morrow to +Florence, or to Killarney, or to Madeira, or to some place where some +ship is going—he does not know where. He has been on a visit to a +madhouse for the last fortnight (not as a patient), and has been +delighted with the mad people, whom he reports the most agreeable and +the most reasonable persons he has met with. The keeper is Dr. Allen +(any relation of yours?), with whom he had been greatly taken!</p></div> + +<p>Again writing to Thompson in October 1840 he says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I have been studying Alfred Tennyson’s MSS., and I send you a copy of +a poem which I think he once repeated to you and me, and which we +neither of us much entered into. Reading it again the other day, I was +surprised with the power and beauty of it, and I now think it wants +nothing but a better name, or, I should rather say, a historical +foundation. I would have it put into the mouth of some noted man +(among the many such that must have been) involved in a marriage which +he does not like, in violation of a pre-existing attachment. The +imagining of such situations for the mere purpose of entering into the +feelings which belong to them has something unwholesome in it, to my +fancy; but the situation being given (whether in fact or fiction), +there is no harm in turning it into poetry.</p></div> + +<p>In 1840 Lord Lyndhurst was a candidate for the office of High Steward of +the University of Cambridge in opposition to Lord Lyttelton. Spedding +voted for the latter.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“I went down to Cambridge,” he writes to Thompson, “to support Lord +Lyttelton in his late distinguished defeat, of which you have, of +course, heard all particulars with apostolic embellishments and +illustrations both from other apostolic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span> souls and from Merivale. I +have been happy in being able in these trying circumstances to +preserve my natural tranquillity. My view of the nature of the contest +is this: The University would select Lord Lyndhurst as the sort of man +whom a University should delight to honour. A dissentient minority say +not content. The majority reply to the dissentients, ‘Why divide? You +see you cannot win.’ The minority rejoins, ‘Never mind; divide we +will, win or not win. If Lord Lyndhurst is to be selected for such an +honour as this, it shall be deliberately and not by accident. The +objections shall be formally brought forward and formally overruled.’ +The bringing of the question to the poll I consider as an appeal to +the constituency to consider what they were about; and, in spite of +the result, I am glad it has been brought to this issue. For the +credit of the University it was fit it should be known that there were +500 dissentients, and for the instruction of mankind it was fit it +should be known that there was a majority of two masters of arts to +one who thought Lord Lyndhurst the proper man to receive the honours +and dignities of the University. Had I been an enemy I should have +voted in the majority; but being a dutiful, though not perhaps a very +respectful son, I was glad of an opportunity of making the 586 into +587.”</p></div> + +<p>The friends of Lord Lyndhurst made every effort to secure his election, +and we learn from his Life by Sir Theodore Martin that he was only induced +to be a candidate on condition that his return would be certain. The +majority was 480.</p> + +<p>Thompson, who had returned to Cambridge, was at this time in feeble +health, and, as it was not known where a letter would find him, FitzGerald +wrote under cover to Spedding, who was still at the Colonial Office. The +letter does not appear to have been preserved, but it suggested to +Spedding some criticism of the theatres and actors of the time which is +not without interest at the present day.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Fitz,” he writes on November 25, 1840, “has forwarded this to me that +I may direct it properly, and as it is not sealed I have made free +with the contents. The meaning of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span> writing on the wall had +hitherto escaped me, I confess, but the effect of my head in the Pit +has often occurred to me as something unseemly, like Scriptures out of +Church; inasmuch as when I am by myself I always choose a place where +I can wear my hat. I have sometimes thought of getting a wig to wear +in such places of vain resort. But to say the truth, a bad play will +often afford more rational entertainment for two or three hours than +an average dinner party, provided a man goes to it with an +understanding that such a thing can be neither better nor worse than a +shadow, and with an imagination to amend it. It is strange enough, for +your best modern plays and your modern acting of the best plays +(except in a very few instances) are so wretched that one should think +they could only bore and disgust one—meagre, vapid, false and vulgar +in the highest degree. One only wonders that so many human heads and +hearts can consent to sit it out, and be amused and refreshed by it. I +believe it is this very problem which gives the theory an interest to +me, for certainly the spectators are to me an integral part of the +spectacle (do I use ‘integral’ right? I could never properly +understand the calculus), and the most entertaining part of the action +is the action of the play upon the audience. You not only see the +mirror held up to Nature, but you see Nature looking at her image in +it, which presents her in still another aspect. Of the nature of the +multitude, their ways of thinking and feeling certainly, and partly +too of their ways of acting, much may be learned in the pit of a +theatre. From the effect of Bulwer’s plays upon the play-going public +one might have inferred the effect of his novels upon the reading +public, almost as surely as you might have inferred the effect of his +plays from observing the style of acting which is most popular. But +besides my pleasure in contemplating the nature of the fool multitude, +I am curious about the laws of art, and I observe, in that as in other +things, that specimens of the want of the thing are as instructive as +the specimen of the thing itself. I never understood Shakespeare’s +idea of Julius Caesar till I once saw George Bennett enact him; and I +think I gained more light as to the meaning of many parts of Falstaff +in the <i>Merry Wives</i> from the grossest and, I think, worst piece of +acting I ever saw (by Bartley) than I have gained as to <i>Benedick</i> +from C. Kemble, or <i>Hamlet</i> from Macready. Altogether, I find that the +clumsy, tawdry, motley pageant, with its little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span> good and much bad, +its touches of nature here and there, and its scene after scene of +vulgarity, insipidity, cant, and monstrous unnaturalness, has the +effect of provoking my understanding and imagination into agreeable +exercise.”</p></div> + +<p>The time had come when, after six years of service, Spedding resolved to +shake himself free from the uncongenial business of the Colonial Office, +and devote himself to what was to be the work of his life. On the 19th of +August 1841 he writes from Wycliffe Rectory to Thompson who was then in +Germany:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>You told me to write on speculation and not put off too long, but I +suppose I am not the less qualified to perform the former part of your +injunction for having neglected to perform the latter. But I suppose +the worst consequence will be that my letter will not reach you, by +which you will save something in postage and lose nothing in any other +way. The fact is that your letter reached me during the last hours of +my official life, when between the duty of clearing my table, and +preparing for another and a better life (packing up, to wit), I had no +time to write anything that was to go as far as Dresden. From the +business of Downing St. I relapsed suddenly to the not less absorbing +recreations of the 12th August and the moors; and since we left the +grouse in quiet I have been on constant duty in looking at rocks and +rivers and whatever there is to be looked at in a country not barren +of natural attractions and the scene of one of Walter Scott’s poems. +To-day I have been I do not know how many miles to see a handsome +modern house and fine estate on the banks of the Tees, and to enjoy +the most formidable of all mortal entertainments, a lunch of about 16 +persons at a house you were never in before; all low voices and only +one of the family known to you by name. However the beef was good, and +silence is richer than speech. I am now returned, my skin is full of +tea and bread and butter, and the room is full of young women talking +about ghosts and singing Irish melodies. I have borrowed this sheet of +thin paper that you may have the less to pay, and I have set off in +this minute hand that I may have the more room to utter whatsoever +shall be given to me to utter in this house: what that may be I shall +not stay to conjecture, but proceed at once to the proof.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span>I need not describe to you the appearance of London or the manners of +the inhabitants in the galleries and institutions with which it +abounds, as you have had opportunities of learning better by the use +of your own eyes and ears as much about these as you wish to know. +Something I might say about the manners and morals of Downing Street +which would be new to you, that section of London society having been +rarely penetrated by travellers, and if penetrated still more rarely +escaped from without the loss of that peculiar faculty by virtue of +which man tells truth. But this also I shall at present spare you. +Downing Street already lies behind me, and I think it is St. Paul who +tells us that we should fix our eyes on what is before, and what, I +wonder, is before <i>me</i>? I see a fair array of years abounding in +capabilities and in leisure to cultivate them, and if I could follow +that precept of St. Paul’s faithfully, and abstain from looking +backwards at an equally fair array of opportunities unimproved and +leisure run to waste, I should think the prospect a splendid one.... +For these six years past I have been working for other men’s purposes, +and cultivating my life for their use. Now I set up for myself; and +the question is this, of all things which most need to be done what am +I best able to do?... But I had forgotten that all this will be a +mystery to you who do not know what I have done to myself since I saw +you. You must know this that as soon as it was clear which way the +elections were going, I wrote to Stephen to say that I meant to leave +the C.O., not because the change of parties need make any difference +to me, but because my position had already yielded all the good I +could expect from it, and a change of administration formed a natural +period which it would not be desirable to let pass, the gain of the +salary being, in fact, to a person who could live without it, no +adequate compensation for the loss of time to a person who could use +it in other ways, etc. etc. Stephen thought me quite right, and +recommends me to persevere in my present intention of making +literature my business: so far at least as to make a fair experiment +of it: not doubting that, for a man who has enough to live upon, and +who has resolution enough to employ five or six hours every day in +reading or writing with some definite practical object, there is no +kind of life so eligible: and there is plenty of work to do. So on the +10th of August 1841 (which day I will trouble you, in the memoir of my +life which you will prefix to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span> your edition of the fragments of my +great work which you will find among my papers at my untimely death, +to make for ever memorable) I took my leave of the Colonial Office and +recovered possession of my time and my hours at the moderate cost of +£150 per annum, and here I am with the responsibility: a German, I +suppose, would spell it with a capital R. And now what have you to +say? One thing I really think is promising. I set out with a definite +project, not too big or too remote: and if I had not involved myself +in a desire to make something of these Baconian letters, which I could +not so well do without more leisure and liberty to hunt down my game, +I should not have trusted myself to my own guidance with quite so free +a conscience. I have already made an entrance into the Lambeth Library +and satisfied myself that former editors are not to be trusted; and +that a great deal may probably be done by a man who unites two +important requisites which have not yet met in any of them, industry +and brains. Would you believe, for instance, that there is more than +one letter from Francis Bacon to his Mother, and vice versa, which +have never been included in any collection of his letters? And that +there are many letters between Antony Bacon and his mother relating to +the prospects and goings on of the two brothers between the ages of +twenty and thirty-five which no biographer of Francis appears to have +studied, probably none has ever seen? Mr. Maitland showed me a MS. +commonplace book containing a good many anecdotes about Bacon and the +people of that time (most of them published I believe in the +Apophthegms, etc.) interspersed with memoranda of all kinds, of which +he says he can find no account. I suspect it to be Dr. Rawley’s +private memorandum book; a point which may easily be verified: and if +so it will no doubt contain many things which being laid alongside of +many other things will throw light upon various obscurities. That such +a MS. should be known to exist in the Lambeth Library, and that, after +some half-dozen editors have been over the ground in pursuit of +Baconiana, it should remain there without anything being known about +it, is it not a proof that in fact the ground has yet to be explored? +And if so who can say but that among the volumes upon volumes of +letters relating to these times which are still preserved in print or +in MS., matter may not be found out of which to construct an edition +of Bacon’s letters that will read as easily and as clearly as a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span> +novel. I am sure if it were done properly, it would be one of the most +valuable historical and probably the most valuable biographical works +that has been produced about these times. For there is hardly any +contemporary political question of interest which is not indirectly or +directly touched upon at one time or another, and which would not +therefore require elucidation.</p></div> + +<p>The subject is pursued in the next letter written from Mirehouse ten days +later to Thompson, who was still abroad.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I am quite sure that much remains to be done with regard to those +Baconian letters which I told you of, and I am sure too that without +leisure and liberty I at least could not fairly set about it. I have +been among the MSS. in the Lambeth Library and found that, though +there are probably not many letters of Bacon’s which have not been +published, there is a wilderness of papers closely connected with them +which has never been properly explored. It is a field in which nobody +has been at work that had both industry and brains. For the present, +therefore, I look forward to this as my main business, in which if I +prosper, I shall know what to do when (Peel having lost that no +confidence in his opponents in which consists all the confidence he +has to rest upon himself) Lord John shall come in again and fortune +shall be again in a condition to be wooed; if I prosper not, I shall +still know what to do; though it will be different. But I am filling a +second letter with myself.</p> + +<p>I am afraid you are not likely to see any people of the right sort, +such as you describe, at Munich; though I duly advertised them of your +street and lodging. Pollock has been circuiting as simple barrister, +and will shortly have to circuit again as Barrister revising. In the +between he comes here, and indeed I expect him this evening.... +Douglas Heath had meant to join John, who has been tumbling up and +down the Alps under the guidance of some Geologist; an unsafe guide, I +should fancy, for what death so sweet to a Geologist as to knock out +his brains against a stone; or to be embedded in some liquid, +liquefying, or indurescent substance (such as snow or mud or lava) in +which a million of years hence some other Geologist may find him +embedded and so satisfy himself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span> that a man was once there? He seems +to have had some fine rides on the backs of avalanches down fissures. +But Douglas was kept in London by business partly, and partly by the +illness of his mother and the uncertain health of his father, and does +not expect to get out of England this year. I hope he will contrive to +get hither in about a month. I am afraid there is no chance of your +finding a chink of time between your return to England and your +October term business in which you might pay us another visit. Your +first object ought to be to put yourself into the most convenient +place for being thoroughly cured, which implies the neighbourhood of a +thoroughly good Doctor: a luxury which we cannot offer you here. But I +hope that, now the year is mine all round to dispose of as I think +best, we shall be able some day to make our several times suit and our +several lines meet at Mirehouse, and run on together for a while. You +are very much approved of by everybody here.</p></div> + +<p>Early in the year 1842, Spedding accompanied the first Lord Ashburton to +the United States as Secretary to a commission, the object of which was to +determine a boundary question which was successfully settled by the treaty +of Washington. He writes to Thompson from Gosport on February 9, 1842:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Having heard that you think I might have written to you upon the +occasion by my breaking out in this new light, and partly concurring +in that sentiment, and finding myself as much at leisure for the rest +of the evening as if the destinies of no country, much less the +destinies of two, depended upon me, I sit down to shake mental hands +with you, and to wish you prosperity during my eclipse and setting +behind the Atlantic.</p> + +<p>I will not trouble you with explanations concerning my inducement for +taking so considerable a step as this. You will easily understand that +I had to listen to more inward voices than one, and to wait the result +of much confused inward debate before I decided to take it. +Fortunately there was no question as to the comparative worth of the +said two voices, nor any doubt as to the side on which they +respectively appeared. It was the Fiend, <i>i.e.</i> the baser nature, the +human instinct, that said, “Budge not.” The better voice said, “Go, +why not?” The decision was soon taken, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span> being taken, the thing +itself seemed much easier than it looked at first. It is now above +three weeks since I have looked at it only as a thing that is to be, +and I almost feel as if it would be strange if it were otherwise. What +the effect of it may be on my character and fortunes I do not trouble +myself to prophesy. It will at least make me think many things easy +which seemed unapproachably difficult a month ago. It will teach me to +keep accounts. And it will give me some insight into the nature of a +state-conscience, a state-reason, a state-understanding, and a +state-character. Many things besides. It may very likely ruin my +reputation, but I am not sure that that would be an evil. I should be +much happier, I think, without any reputation, not to add that if it +were gone, I should be thrown upon my resources, which might after all +turn out to be a better thing. But let these things pass. One thing is +quite clear, that I could not spend the next six months in any way by +which I should gain so much either in knowledge or in power. My +immortal work must, of course, be suspended, but what is six months in +an immortality? By the way, touching my Falstaff Platonizing, I agree +with you, as reported by Merivale, that the insertion of such a joke +would be unbecoming in a Museum Academicum, the more’s the pity, for +with the joke itself I was a good deal pleased. But then, on the other +hand, you will not let me prefix a serious introduction, explaining +the thing which it is meant to illustrate. I can only suggest that you +should yourself write an introduction <i>refuting</i> the said theory, if +you really believe that the thing is worth putting in at all. But let +this also pass, for I see the bottom of my paper (by the way I suppose +I must not say such a thing in the U.S.), and the chambermaid would +fain be dismissed to her bed. At present you may truly say that I am +going ahead, for I alone of the suite have arrived, and my master, by +being unpunctual, has lost a day of fair wind.</p></div> + +<p>At this time FitzGerald wrote to Laurence, the artist:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>You have, of course, read the account of Spedding’s forehead landing +in America. English sailors hail it in the Channel, mistaking it for +Beachy Head. There is a Shakespeare cliff, and a Spedding cliff. Good +old fellow! I hope he’ll come back safe and sound, forehead and all. +Not swords,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span> nor cannon, nor all the bulls of Bashan butting at it, +could, I feel sure, discompose that venerable forehead. No wonder that +no hair can grow at such an altitude; no wonder his view of Bacon’s +virtue is so rarefied, that the common consciences of men cannot +endure it. Thackeray and I occasionally amuse ourselves with the idea +of Spedding’s forehead; we find it somehow or other in all things, +just peering out of all things; you see it in a milestone, Thackeray +says. He also draws the forehead rising with a sober light over Mont +Blanc, and reflected in the Lake of Geneva. We have great laughing +over this.</p></div> + +<p>Tennyson’s 1842 volume came out while Spedding was at Washington, and +FitzGerald, writing to Pollock, regretted that it contained some pieces +which he thought better omitted.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I agree with you quite about the skipping-rope, etc. But the bald men +of the Embassy would tell you otherwise. I should not wonder if the +whole theory of the Embassy, perhaps the discovery of America itself, +was involved in that very Poem. Lord Bacon’s honesty may, I am sure, +be found there.</p> + +<p>“The Yankees,” Donne writes to Bernard Barton, “seem to think baldness +a rarity appertaining to the old country, for their papers could not +sufficiently express their wonder, when Ld. Ashburton went over about +the Boundary question, at the lack of hair among his attachés. +Spedding’s crown imperial of a cranium struck them like a view of +Teneriffe or Atlas.”</p> + +<p>“Nothing has been heard of Spedding,” says FitzGerald, “but we all +conclude, from the nature of the case, that he has not been scalped.”</p></div> + +<p>The mission ended happily in the treaty of Washington, and Spedding +returned to his friends, in spite of the forebodings of FitzGerald, who +says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>A man on the coach the other day told me that all was being settled +very easily in America, but stage-coach politicians are not always to +be trusted.</p></div> + +<p>By the end of the year (1842), Spedding was again at Mirehouse.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span>“I am at +present,” he writes to Thompson, “absorbed in teaching the +young idea of a water spaniel how to shoot. He promises to be an +accomplished dog. He can already catch a wounded hare and bring it, +rescue a snipe out of a rapid stream, hunt (though in vain) for a +water-hen among the roots of an alder-bush, and wait with intense +breathless anxiety to hear the sound of a duck’s wing in the gloaming. +In time I hope to teach him to do as I bid him. We are all well here. +How is all at Cambridge? What shall you do at Christmas? If I am still +here, can you come so far north? You shall see the dog.”</p></div> + +<p>But although these country delights had their attractions for him, he had +for some years established himself in London, where his rooms at 60 +Lincoln’s Inn Fields were the meeting-place of Tennyson, Thackeray, +FitzGerald, and any of his friends who happened to be in London at the +time.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Spedding is just now furnishing chambers in Lincoln’s Inn Fields,” +FitzGerald writes in 1836, “so that we may look on him as a fixture in +London. He and I went to dine with Tennant at Blackheath last +Thursday: there we met Edgeworth, who has got a large house at Eltham, +and is lying in wait for pupils. I am afraid he will not find many. We +passed a very delightful evening.”</p></div> + +<p>His return from America after four months at Washington, led to his being +selected by the editor of the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> to write an article on +Dickens’s <i>American Notes</i>, which gave the novelist strange and +unreasonable offence. Spedding had originally written, “He is understood +to have gone out as a kind of missionary in the cause of international +copyright,” and this had been changed by the editor to “He went out, if we +are rightly informed, as a kind of missionary,” etc. To this Dickens +writes in a towering passion, “I deny it wholly. He is wrongly informed, +and reports without enquiry, a piece of information which I could only +characterise by using one of the shortest and strongest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span> words in the +language.” And yet his letters show that, whether the subject of +international copyright were the real object of his visit or not, his +speeches on it are referred to with a kind of satisfaction as if they were +of the utmost importance. Apparently he was dissatisfied with the +impartial way in which Spedding distributed his praise and blame, praising +only where praise was due and blaming where it was not, and not +attributing too much value to the hasty results of a four months’ +experience of the country.</p> + +<p>But for several years Spedding had been a contributor to the <i>Edinburgh +Review</i>, and the articles which he selected for republication are full of +that calm wisdom which distinguished all that he wrote. In 1836 he +reviewed his friend Henry Taylor’s <i>Statesman</i>; in 1838 he wrote on “Negro +Apprenticeship”; in 1839 on the “Suspension of the Jamaica Constitution”; +in 1840 on the “Wakefield Theory of Colonization”; in 1841 on the +“Civilization of Africa and the Niger Expedition,” in which his friend +John Allen lost a brother; and in 1842 on “South Australia in 1841,” a +sequel to the article on the “Wakefield Theory of Colonization.” And now +for the next thirty years of his life he devoted himself to the task of +what FitzGerald called washing his blackamoor, “a Tragedy pathetic as +Antigone or Iphigenia.” His own special work was the arrangement of +Bacon’s letters and minor writings, which had hitherto been very +carelessly edited, and for this purpose he spent his days among the +originals in the Lambeth Library and the British Museum. “Spedding devotes +his days to Lord Bacon in the British Museum,” writes FitzGerald in 1844; +and again in 1846, “I saw very little of Spedding in London, for he was +out all day at State paper offices and Museums.”</p> + +<p>But he was not so absorbed in his special pursuits as not to take interest +in public affairs, and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span> Maynooth Grant in 1845 and the opposition +which it excited caused him to take part in an address to the Chancellor +of the Exchequer in its favour.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“You will see in the <i>Morning Herald</i> of to-day,” he writes to +Thompson, “that the great event has already taken place, and though +the world continues to move as it did, there does appear to be a +change of weather.</p> + +<p>“We had only 300 names. But that was quite enough, considering all +things, especially the respectability of the people, and the +imperfection of the agitation, to make the address well worth +presenting. Having gone so far, to hold back altogether would have +been to confess that the attempt was a mere failure, which nobody can +say it was. To hold it back past the time specified in the circulars +and originally designed, for the chance of obtaining more signatures, +would have been useless: people would have only said that though we +boasted of the shortness of the time in which the signatures were +collected, yet in fact we waited as long as there was any chance of +gathering any more. And in point of fact they had begun to come in +very slowly by Monday morning. At best, it could not have been +improved into an effectual canvass, and as it is, it shows very well. +Let any one put the two lists side by side, and then say, if the +weight of opinion in Cambridge inclines one way, which way is it? I +was doubtful of the expediency of stirring it at first, but I am now +very glad that it has been done. I wish the <i>Herald</i> had printed the +names. But it was an unlucky day, there being a great debate in both +Houses.</p> + +<p>“Hare declined presenting; upon which H. Lushington, Venables, +Micklethwaite, and myself (who had, in fact, been the chief actors), +distributed ourselves into two cabs: and drove slap up to the +Chancellor of Exchequer’s. Harry Lushington was the chief speaker, and +did it very well and gracefully. Goulburn was, of course, gracious, +but I should hardly have inferred that he was glad. However, he said +he was; glad that this had been done, and glad that no more had been +done; and (upon the whole) easy about the matter. The fever (he said) +appeared to be gradually subsiding, and indeed the opposition was less +formidable than might be supposed. ‘From what the gentleman said who +presented the address on the other side, he gathered that it was for +the most part<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span> a <i>conscientious</i> opposition, not arising from any +political animosity.’ Certainly <i>Punch</i> cannot be said to beat +Nature.”</p></div> + +<p>Nothing, however, diverted him from his great object. FitzGerald writes to +Frederick Tennyson:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Spedding, you know, does not change: he is now the same that he was +fourteen years old when I first knew him at school, more than twenty +years ago; wise, calm, bald, combining the best qualities of Youth and +Age.</p></div> + +<p>But his calmness was not proof against the enthusiasm created by the +advent of Jenny Lind in 1847. Again FitzGerald writes:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>All the world has been, as I suppose you have read, crazy about Jenny +Lind.... Spedding’s cool blood was moved to hire stalls several times +at an advanced rate.... I have never yet heard the famous Jenny Lind, +whom all the world raves about. Spedding is especially mad about her, +I understand: and, after that, is it not best for weaker vessels to +keep out of her way? Night after night is that bald head seen in one +particular position in the Opera house, in a stall; the miserable man +has forgot Bacon and philosophy, and goes after strange women.</p></div> + +<p>His health, however, had been giving some cause for anxiety at this time +to his old friend, who writes to Carlyle:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Thank you for your account of Spedding: I had written however to +himself, and from himself ascertained that he was out of the worst. +But Spedding’s life is a very ticklish one.</p></div> + +<p>Hitherto Spedding had been working in his own way at Bacon’s life and +letters without any idea of contributing to a complete edition of his +works, but rather with the object of defending him against what he +believed to be the injustice done him by Macaulay in his famous <i>Essay</i>. +But in 1847 Mr. Leslie Ellis had been preparing an edition of Bacon’s +philosophical works which was offered for publication to Messrs. Longman, +and Spedding acted as intermediary.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span>“Better, I +think,” he writes to Thompson, “to be with the publishers +than against them so long as one keeps the reins. Therefore I have +written to Longman, reporting Ellis’s proposition, and recommending +them to treat immediately with him upon those terms; for that if they +get the philosophical works alone so edited, their edition will +command the market, even if they do nothing but reprint the rest as +they are. Whereas, if any other publisher should engage Ellis’s +services for that portion, their trade edition would be worthless for +ever. All which I believe to be true, and I hope will be conclusive. +When that point is fixed there will be time enough to consider what +else may be done. If they refuse the opportunity, I think I shall +decline further connexion with the enterprise. My own project, as I +never counted upon anything but expense from it, will not be much +affected either way.”</p></div> + +<p>The result, as is well known, was a complete edition of Bacon’s works, in +which Mr. Leslie Ellis undertook the philosophical, Mr. Douglas Heath the +legal and professional, and Spedding the literary and miscellaneous, to +which he afterwards added the life and letters. In the meantime he wrote, +but never published, for his own satisfaction and that he might gather the +opinions of his friends, <i>Evenings with a Reviewer</i>, the reviewer being +Macaulay and the review his Essay on Bacon. In sending a copy to Dr. +Whewell he says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>It may seem absurd in a man to print a book, and yet to wish not only +to keep it private, but also to prevent it from <i>circulating</i> +privately. But after considering the matter carefully, with reference +to what I may call the interest of the subject—I mean to the chance +of making a successful and durable impression upon the popular +opinion—I am satisfied that it would not be judicious to present the +question to the public <i>first</i> in this form. It would probably provoke +controversy. The result of the controversy would depend upon +reviewers. Reviewers, until they have heard the evidence as well as +the argument, are not in a condition to judge; yet unless the evidence +be made easily accessible and bound up with the argument, they cannot +be expected either to seek it out or to suspend their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span> opinions, but +will simply proceed to judgment <i>without</i> hearing it. In such a case, +considering the strength of popular prepossessions and the tendency of +the first blow at them to raise a dust of popular objections, the +verdict would in the first instance go against me; and though I might +appeal with a better chance to the second thoughts and the next +generation, yet the appeal would be conducted at great disadvantage, +because I should then stand in the position of an advocate with a +personal interest in the cause. As it is, I hope in my division of +Bacon’s works to set forth <i>all</i> the evidence clearly and impartially, +so that everybody who has the book will have the means of judging for +himself, and if I can get that credit for justice and impartiality +which I mean to deserve, I do not much doubt the issue. But the first +reception of the work, upon which in these times so much depends, will +itself depend very much upon my coming before the public with a clear +and unsuspected character: and this, if I should previously acquire +the reputation (justly or not) of an advocate engaged to make good his +own cause, I could not expect.</p></div> + +<p>FitzGerald, writing to Donne at the end of 1848, says of <i>Evenings with a +Reviewer</i>:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I saw many of my friends in London, Carlyle and Tennyson among them; +but most and best of all, Spedding. I have stolen his noble book away +from him; noble, in spite (I believe, but am not sure) of some +<i>adikology</i> in the second volume: some special pleadings for his idol: +amica Veritas, sed magis, etc.</p></div> + +<p>And Donne in reply:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I, too, have Spedding’s “glorious book,” which I prefer to any modern +reading. Reading one of his “Evenings” is next to spending an evening +with the author.</p></div> + +<p>Thompson, whose health had completely broken down in 1849, was undergoing +the water-cure at Great Malvern, and early in 1850 Spedding writes to him:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>They tell me that a letter will find you at Great Malvern. Indeed, I +had reason to think so before, for I had heard of you twice since you +went thither; once from Spring Rice<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span> and once from Blakesley.... I +have been stationary here since August, seeing nobody and hearing +nothing, so you must not expect any news.... You want to know, +perhaps, what I am about myself. I am at this moment sitting in an +easy-chair with the ink on a table beside me, and the papers on a +blotting-board on my knee. On the little table beside me is first a +leaden jar, bought long since to keep tobacco in, now holding +snipe-shot. Next to it a pocket Virgil lying on its belly. On my left +a ledge made for a lamp, on which are three different translations of +Bacon’s <i>Sapientia Veterum</i>, and some loose pieces of paper destined +in due time to be enriched with a fourth translation, of which I need +say no more. Next to my little table stands a large round table, now +quite uninhabitable by reason of the litter of books that has taken +possession of it, as, for instance, another Virgil with English +translation and notes, open, upon its back; a Dryden’s translation +shut, and standing upright on its edge. A letter-clip holding a packet +in brown-paper cover, inscribed “De sapientia veterum: translation.” A +volume of Bacon standing shut on its edge. A Cruden’s <i>Concordance</i>; +and near it, lying on its side and shut, Alford’s Greek Testament (an +excellent book of immense industry, and very neat execution; good in +all ways so far as I have looked, and so far as I can judge of what I +see in such a matter; it seems as if one might find in it everything +one can want to know about the four gospels, that an editor can tell +one). Another volume of Bacon open, on its back; beneath it a folio +Aristotle (!) also open, and beneath that again a huge old folio +Demosthenes and Æschines (but this was brought down from the garret +two days ago, and has not yet been put away). Many other things of the +same kind; which, however, I cannot describe particularly without +getting up, which I do not feel disposed to do. But I must not forget +a striped box which belongs to my portmanteau, but serves here as a +receptacle for loose papers, and stands on the table. Another table in +the corner sustaining two vols. of Facciolati evidently out for use, +reposing on a huge Hogarth which lies there because no bookcase is big +enough to hold it, and itself reposes upon all the Naval Victories, +flanked by a ball of string, an unopened packet of Bernard Barton’s +remains, a Speed’s <i>History of England</i>, a ream of scribbling paper, +and an Ainsworth. Under my chair lies my own dog Tip, who once went +with you and me to the top of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span> Ullock. Opposite stands a long narrow +box containing bows, and hung about with quivers, belts, and other +archery equipments. The chimney-piece is littered with disabled +arrows. It is now half-past 3 <span class="smcaplc">P.M.</span>, I have a slight headache, due (I +really believe) to a sour orange. The lake was yesterday frozen over +with ice as smooth and transparent as glass. I had no skates, and +to-day it is going either to thaw or to snow. I intended to buy a pair +of skates last midsummer, but forgot. I have a great mind to go and +buy a pair now. I leave you to gather the condition of my mind from +the condition of my room. I am in truth doing very little. These +family establishments are not favourable for work. I do not know how +it is; the day seems as long, and one seems to have it all to oneself, +but there are no <i>hours</i> in it. What becomes of half of them I cannot +guess. Time leaks in a gentleman’s house.</p> + +<p>My father has had a bad cold this winter, which hung about him longer +than usual, and made him both look and feel ill. But he has thrown it +quite off and seems now to be as well [as] usual, which is very well. +His sight grows worse as of course it must do; but as fast as it +leaves him he learns to make less do, so that he does not appear to be +much distressed by the gradual privation. His old bitch is dead, and +his old mare retires upon a pension, a paddock, a horse-pond, and a +house, all to herself, with a daily feed of corn. He is now very well +mounted on a fast walking pony, borrowed from a neighbour, and has a +boy to walk with him and two puppies. He looks after his farming +affairs as usual, and does not at all believe that land can be ruined +by plenty. In truth we hear little in these latitudes of the +agricultural distress of which we see so much in the newspapers.</p> + +<p>I have not heard from Ellis since he left England, and I do not know +exactly where he is. He talked of staying some time at Avignon. But I +am so doubtful whether a letter would find him there that I do not +care to write upon the chance. Our publishers seem to be quite easy in +mind, and made no enquiries as to the rate of progress. If Ellis can +be ready within two years, I shall have to stir myself in order to be +ready with my contribution. But I expect a good year’s respite. I have +finished the <i>Henry VII.</i>, however, which is my principal labour; and +I like very well what I have done.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span>But all his plans were disarranged by Mr. Ellis’s illness. In the latter +part of 1849, while travelling on the Riviera, Ellis had a severe attack +of rheumatic fever, from which he never recovered, and which entirely +disabled him for the work he had undertaken and in which he had made some +progress. Spedding, therefore, had to take his place and edit as best he +could Bacon’s Philosophical Works. He has explained very fully in the +Preface to them the method he adopted, and the careful manner in which he +kept Mr. Ellis’s work distinct. “Early in 1853,” he says, “I took the work +in hand.” In the meanwhile he was to be found at his rooms in Lincoln’s +Inn Fields, and there FitzGerald visited him in April 1850.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Spedding is my sheet-anchor,” he says, “the truly wise and fine +fellow: I am going to his rooms this very evening, and there I believe +Thackeray, Venables, etc. are to be. I hope not a large assembly, for +I get shyer and shyer even of those I know.”</p> + +<p>“I was in London only for ten days this spring,” FitzGerald writes to +Frederick Tennyson, “and those ten days not in the thick of the +season.... The most pleasurable remembrance I had of my stay in town +was the last day I spent there; having a long ramble in the streets +with Spedding, looking at books and pictures; then a walk with him and +Carlyle across the Park to Chelsea, where we dropped that Latter-Day +Prophet at his house; then, getting upon a steamer, smoked down to +Westminster; dined at a chop-house by the Bridge, and then went to +Astley’s; old Spedding being quite as wise about the horsemanship as +about Bacon and Shakespeare. We parted at midnight in Covent Garden, +and this whole pleasant day has left a taste on my palate like one of +Plato’s lighter, easier, and more picturesque dialogues.”</p></div> + +<p>In August he went into Suffolk to stay with FitzGerald and the Cowells at +their home in Bramford, near Ipswich. FitzGerald again writes to Frederick +Tennyson:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span>I have not seen any one you know since I last wrote; nor heard from +any one: except dear old Spedding, who really came down and spent two +days with us, me and that Scholar and his Wife in their Village, in +their delightful little house, in their pleasant fields by the River +side. Old Spedding was delicious there; always leaving a mark, I say, +in all places one has been at with him, a sort of Platonic perfume. +For has he not all the beauty of the Platonic Socrates, with some +personal beauty to boot? He explained to us one day about the laws of +reflection in water; and I said then one never could look at the +willow whose branches furnished the text without thinking of him. How +beastly this reads! As if he gave us a lecture! But you know the man, +how quietly it all came out; only because I petulantly denied his +plain assertion. For I really often cross him only to draw him out; +and vain as I may be, he is one of those that I am well content to +make shine at my own expense.</p></div> + +<p>In August 1851 he writes again to Frederick Tennyson:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Almost the only man I hear from is dear old Spedding, who has lost his +Father, and is now, I suppose, a rich man. This makes no apparent +change in his way of life; he has only hired an additional Attic in +Lincoln’s Inn Fields, so as to be able to bed a friend upon occasion. +I may have to fill it ere long.</p></div> + +<p>And a few months later:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Spedding is immutably wise, good, and delightful; not as immutably +well in Body, I think, though he does not complain.</p></div> + +<p>The great work went slowly on, but nothing as yet was published. Spedding +had just taken over Ellis’s portion and was devoting himself to this. We +get a glimpse of him again in FitzGerald’s letters:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I saw old Spedding in London; only doubly calm after the death of a +Niece he dearly loved, and whose death-bed at Hastings he had just +been waiting upon.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span>It was 1857 before the first three volumes appeared, followed by three +others in 1858, and by the final volume in 1859. Ellis did not live to see +the completion of the work, for he died in May of that year.</p> + +<p>FitzGerald, writing in 1857 to Cowell, who was now in Calcutta, from +Portland Terrace, where he lived during his early married life, says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Spedding has been once here in near three months. His <i>Bacon</i> keeps +coming out: his part, the Letters, etc., of Bacon, is not come yet; so +it remains to be seen what he will do then, but I can’t help thinking +he has let the Pot boil too long.</p></div> + +<p>It was 1861, however, before the first volume of the <i>Life and Letters</i> +appeared, and Spedding found that he had already been forestalled by +Hepworth Dixon in <i>The Story of Lord Bacon’s Life</i>. In a note to the +earliest letter printed, probably the earliest specimen remaining of +Bacon’s handwriting, he says, with quiet contempt:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The copies of some of these letters lately published by Mr. Hepworth +Dixon ... differ, I observe, very much from mine; most of them in the +words and sense, more or less, and some in the name of the person +writing, or the person written to, or both. But as mine are more +intelligible, and were made with care and at leisure, and when my eyes +were better than they are now, I do not suspect any material error in +them, and have not thought it worth while to apply for leave to +compare them again with the originals.</p> + +<p>“I am very glad,” FitzGerald writes to Thompson, “to hear old Spedding +is really getting <i>his</i> share of Bacon into Print: I doubt if it will +be half as good as the “Evenings,” where Spedding was in the <i>Passion</i> +which is wanted to fill his Sail for any longer Voyage.”</p></div> + +<p>Some three years later, he says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Spedding’s <i>Bacon</i> seems to hang fire; they say he is disheartened at +the little Interest, and less Conviction, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span> his two first volumes +carried; Thompson told me they had convinced <i>him</i> the other way; and +that <i>Ellis</i> had long given up Bacon’s Defence before he died.</p></div> + +<p>And so it continued to the end. When the sixth volume appeared in 1872 +FitzGerald wrote:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>And here is Spedding’s vol. vi. which leaves me much where it found me +about Bacon: but though I scarce care for him, I can read old +Spedding’s pleading for him for ever; that is old Spedding’s simple +statement of the case, as he sees it. The Ralegh business is quite +delightful, better than Old Kensington.</p></div> + +<p>Carlyle alone of all the critics was unstinted, though rather patronizing, +in his praise. Writing to FitzGerald, he says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Like yourself I have gone through <i>Spedding</i>, seven long long volumes, +not skipping except when I had got the sense with me, and generally +reading all of Bacon’s own that was there: I confess to you I found it +a most creditable and even surprising Book, offering the most perfect +and complete image both of Bacon and of Spedding, and distinguished as +the hugest and faithfullest bit of literary navvy-work I have ever met +with in this generation. Bacon is washed down to the natural skin; and +truly he is not, nor ever was, unlovely to me; a man of no culpability +to speak of; of an opulent and even magnificent intellect, but all in +the magnificent prose vein. Nothing or almost nothing of the “melodies +eternal” to be traced in him. There is a grim strength in Spedding, +quietly, very quietly invincible, which I did not quite know of till +this Book; and in all ways I could congratulate this indefatigably +patient, placidly invincible and victorious Spedding.</p></div> + +<p>But for the last eight years he had given up his rooms in Lincoln’s Inn +Fields and gone to live with his nieces at 80 Westbourne Terrace, where he +remained till his death. Thompson, in succession to Dr. Whewell, had been +appointed Master of Trinity, and in writing to congratulate him Spedding +says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span>I was not unprepared for your news, having just returned from +Kitlands, where the Pollocks were, and the rumour was under discussion +and generally thought to be well-founded, and the thing if true very +much rejoiced over. I have great pleasure in adding my own +congratulations, as well to yourself as to Trinity. It was all that +was wanted to make one of the last acts of Lord Russell a complete +success. I should be very glad to think that I had as much to do with +it as you suppose: but I was only one of many, and not by any means +the most influential, and as the thing is done, no matter how it was +brought about.</p> + +<p>I am myself preparing for a shift of position, though the adventure is +of a milder kind. My nephew (J. J. S.) is going to be married within a +month or so: and it has been settled that he is to live at Greta Bank, +and that the rest of the party now living there are to take a house in +London: where I am invited to join them, with due securities for +liberties and privileges. Though the exertion incident to dislodgment +from quarters overgrown with so many superfetations of confusion and +disorder, is formidable to contemplate, the proposed arrangement is so +obviously convenient and desirable, that I am going to encounter it. +And though the place is not yet settled, it seems probable that before +the end of the year I shall be transferred or transferring myself and +my goods to the western part of London, and preparing to remodel my +manners and customs (in some respects) according to the usages of +civilized society. Though I shall live among women, they will be women +of my own house, and therefore not worshippers, which is a great +advantage, and though there may be some danger for an obedient uncle +in being where he can always be caught, I hope to be able to preserve +as much independence as is good for a man.</p> + +<p>I have four proof sheets to settle, and have just been interrupted by +an engraver with a proof [of] the D. of Buccleugh’s miniature of +Bacon, which will be the best portrait that has yet been done of him +in black and white.</p></div> + +<p>This was the miniature which was reproduced at the beginning of the third +volume of the <i>Life and Letters</i>, and which Spedding regarded as the +original of Van Somer’s portrait.</p> + +<p>The following letter to Tennyson, written in 1870, is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span> necessary to the +full understanding of Tennyson’s reply (see <i>Memoir by his Son</i>)<a name='fna_107' id='fna_107' href='#f_107'><small>[107]</small></a>:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">My dear Alfred</span>—I do not know where you are, and I want to know for +three reasons: 1st, that I may thank you for your book; 2nd, that I +may send you mine; 3rd, that I may let you know, if you do not know it +already, that there has been a box here these many weeks, which is +meant for you and comes from FitzGerald.</p> + +<p>A copy of your new volume<a name='fna_108' id='fna_108' href='#f_108'><small>[108]</small></a> came early from the publisher, yet not +so early but that it found me already half way through. I was happy to +observe that neither years nor domestic happiness have had any +demoralizing effect upon you as yet. Your touch is as delicate and +vigorous and your invention as rich as ever: and I am still in hope +that your greatest poem of all has not yet been written. Some years +ago, when you were in want of a subject, I recommended Job. The +argument of Job, to be treated as you treat the legends of Arthur, as +freely and with as much light of modern thought as you find fit. As we +know it now, it is only half intelligible, and must be full of +blunders and passages misunderstood. Probably also the peculiar +character of the oriental style would at any rate stand in the way and +prevent it from producing its proper effect upon the modern and +western mind. Yet we can see through all the confusion what a great +argument it is, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span> I think it was never more wanted than now. If you +would take it in hand, and tell it in verse in your own way, without +any scruples about improving on Scripture, I believe it would be the +greatest poem in the language. The controversy is as much alive to-day +in London as it could ever have been in the place where and the time +when it was composed, of which, as the author, I am altogether +ignorant. And the voice out of the whirlwind may speak without fear of +anachronisms.</p> + +<p>My own book,<a name='fna_109' id='fna_109' href='#f_109'><small>[109]</small></a> though there is only one volume this time, is much +bigger than yours. It is wrapped up ready to go by the book-post, and +only wants to know to which of your many mansions it is to be +directed.</p> + +<p>Fitz’s box, which is about as large as a tailor’s box for a single +suit, contains a drawing of Thackeray’s, an illustration of the “Lord +of Burghley,” a pretty sketch of the landskip-painter and the village +maiden. He sent it here under the vain delusion that whenever you +happened to come to London I should be sure to know. And I presume he +sent word to you of what he had done, for he did not ask me to +communicate the fact. I was only to write to <i>him</i> in case the box did +<i>not</i> arrive, and as the box did arrive I did not write. If you will +let me know what you wish to be done with it, I will do with it +accordingly.</p> + +<p>There is a line in your last volume which I can’t read: the last line +but one of the “flower in the crannied wall.”</p></div> + +<p>In the course of the same year he edited the <i>Conference of Pleasure</i>, +written by Bacon for some masque or festive occasion, and printed from a +MS. belonging to the Duke of Northumberland which had been slightly +injured by fire. FitzGerald, in a letter to me, says of it:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Spedding’s Introduction to his grilled Bacon, I call it really a +beautiful little <i>Idyll</i>, the mechanical Job done so perfectly and so +elegantly.</p></div> + +<p>But while he was engaged in the great labour of his life he found time to +write beautiful pieces of criticism on Shakespeare to which FitzGerald +would willingly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span> have had him devote his whole attention. “I never heard +him read a page,” he writes to Sir Frederick Pollock, “but he threw some +new light upon it.” In the <i>Gentleman’s Magazine</i> for August 1850 he +contributed a paper on “Who wrote Shakespeare’s <i>Henry VIII.</i>?” which he +discussed with characteristic thoroughness. His conclusion was that it was +the work of two authors, one of whom was Fletcher, and this was confirmed +by the investigations of another enquirer, who independently arrived at +substantially the same result. The division of the Acts in <i>Much Ado</i>, +<i>Twelfth Night</i>, <i>Richard II.</i>, and <i>King Lear</i> formed the subject of +other discussions, and these he considered his most valuable contribution +to the restoration of Shakespeare. A criticism of Miss Kate Terry’s acting +in Viola gave him the opportunity of pointing out the corruptions by which +the fine comedy, <i>Twelfth Night</i>, has been degraded into farce.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Spedding says,” FitzGerald writes in 1875 to Fanny Kemble, “that +Irving’s Hamlet is simply—<i>hideous</i>—a strong expression for Spedding +to use. But—(lest I should think his condemnation was only the Old +Man’s fault of depreciating all that is new) he extols Miss Ellen +Terry’s Portia as simply <i>a perfect Performance</i>: remembering (he +says) all the while how fine was Fanny Kemble’s.”</p></div> + +<p>Again to the same correspondent early in 1880 he says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>By far the chief incident in my life for the last month has been the +reading of dear old Spedding’s Paper on the <i>Merchant of Venice</i>, +there, at any rate, is one Question settled, and in such a beautiful +way as only he commands. I could not help writing a few lines to tell +him what I thought, but even very sincere praise is not the way to +conciliate him. About Christmas I wrote him, relying on it that I +should be most likely to secure an answer if I expressed dissent from +some other work of his, and my expectation was justified by one of the +fullest answers he had written to me for many a day and year.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</a></span>The paper referred to was “The Story of the <i>Merchant of Venice</i>” in the +<i>Cornhill Magazine</i> for March 1880. In sending a copy to Frederick +Tennyson he says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I now post you a paper by old Spedding—a very beautiful one, I think; +<i>settling</i> one point, however unimportant, and in a graceful, as well +as logical, way such as he is Master of.</p> + +<p>A case has been got up—whether by Irving, the Stage Representative of +Shylock, or by his Admirers—to prove the Jew to be a very amiable and +ill-used man: insomuch that one is to come away from the theatre +loving him and hating all the rest. He dresses himself up to look like +the Saviour, Mrs. Kemble says. So old Jem disposes of <i>that</i>, besides +unravelling Shakespeare’s mechanism of the Novel he draws from, in a +manner (as Jem says) more distinct to us than in his treatment of any +other of his Plays “not professedly historical.” And this latter point +is, of course, far more interesting than the question of Irving and +Co.,—which is a simple attempt, both of Actor and Writer, to strike +out an original idea in the teeth of common-sense and Tradition.</p></div> + +<p>And now came the end, unexpected and the result of an accident, which he +maintained was entirely his own fault. In writing to tell me of the fatal +result, one of his dearest friends said:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I grieve to tell you that all is over with our dear old friend.... He +intended to cross before two carriages—crossed before one—found +there was not time to pass before the other, and instead of pausing +stepped back under the hansom which he had not seen, and which had not +time to alter its course. He spent more strength in exculpating the +poor driver than on any personal matter during his illness as soon as +he regained memory of the circumstances.</p> + +<p>“Mowbray Donne,” says FitzGerald, when all was over, “wrote me that +Laurence had been there four or five days ago, when Spedding said, +that had the Cab done but a little more, it would have been a good +Quietus. Socrates to the last.”</p></div> + +<p>And in another letter:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[Pg 435]</a></span>Tennyson called at the Hospital, but was not allowed to see him, +though Hallam did, I think. Some one calling afterwards, Spedding took +the doctor’s arm, and asked, “Was it Mr. Tennyson?” Doctors and nurses +all devoted to the patient man.</p></div> + +<p>To Fanny Kemble he writes:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>It was very, very good and kind of you to write to me about Spedding. +Yes: Aldis Wright had apprised me of the matter just after it +happened—he happening to be in London at the time; and but two days +after the accident heard that Spedding was quite calm, and even +cheerful; only anxious that Wright himself should not be kept waiting +for some communication which S. had promised him! Whether to live, or +to die, he will be Socrates still.</p> + +<p>Directly that I heard from Wright I wrote to Mowbray Donne to send me +just a Post Card—daily, if he or his wife could, with but one or two +words on it—“Better,” “Less well,” or whatever it might be. This +morning I hear that all is going on even better than could be +expected, according to Miss Spedding. But I suppose the Crisis, which +you tell me of, is not yet come; and I have always a terror of that +French Adage—“<i>Monsieur se porte mal—Monsieur se porte +mieux—Monsieur est—</i>” Ah, you know, or you guess, the rest.</p> + +<p>My dear old Spedding, though I have not seen him these twenty years +and more—and probably should never see him again—but he lives—his +old Self—in my heart of hearts; and all I hear of him does but +embellish the recollection of him—if it could be embellished—for he +is but the same that he was from a Boy—all that is best in Heart and +Head—a man that would be incredible had one not known him.</p></div> + +<p>Again he writes of him to Professor Norton:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>He was the wisest man I have known; a great sense of Humour, a +Socrates in Life and in Death, which he faced with all Serenity so +long as Consciousness lasted. I suppose something of him will reach +America, I mean, of his Death; run over by a Cab and dying in St. +George’s Hospital to which he was taken, and from which he could not +be removed home alive.</p> + +<p>“I did not know,” he says in another letter, “that I should feel +Spedding’s Loss as I do, after an interval of more than twenty years +[since] meeting him. But I knew that I could always get the Word I +wanted of him by Letter, and also that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[Pg 436]</a></span> from time to time I should +meet with some of his wise and delightful Papers in some Quarter or +other. He talked of Shakespeare, I am told, when his Mind wandered. I +wake almost every morning feeling as if I had lost something, as one +does in a Dream; and truly enough, I have lost <i>him</i>. ‘Matthew is in +his Grave, etc.’”</p></div> + +<p>In apologizing to Fanny Kemble for not writing to her as usual, he says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I have let the Full Moon pass because you had written to me so lately, +and so kindly, about our lost Spedding, that I could not call on you +too soon again. Of him I will say nothing except that his Death has +made me recall very many passages in his Life in which I was partly +concerned. In particular, staying at his Cumberland Home along with +Tennyson in the May of 1835.... His Father and Mother were both +alive—he a wise man, who mounted his Cob after Breakfast, and was at +his Farm till Dinner at two—then away again till Tea: after which he +sat reading by a shaded lamp: saying very little, but always courteous +and quite content with any company his Son might bring to the house, +so long as they let him go his way: which indeed he would have gone +whether they let him or no. But he had seen enough of Poets not to +like them or their Trade: Shelley for a time living among the Lakes: +Coleridge at Southey’s (whom perhaps he had a respect for—Southey, I +mean); and Wordsworth, whom I do not think he valued. He was rather +jealous of “Jem,” who might have done available service in the world, +he thought, giving himself up to such Dreamers; and sitting up with +Tennyson conning over the “Morte d’Arthur,” “Lord of Burleigh,” and +other things which helped to make up the two Volumes of 1842. So I +always associate that Arthur Idyll with Basanthwaite Lake, under +Skiddaw. Mrs. Spedding was a sensible, motherly Lady, with whom I used +to play Chess of a Night. And there was an old Friend of hers, Miss +Bristowe, who always reminded me of Miss La Creevy, if you know of +such a Person in <i>Nickleby</i>.</p></div> + +<p>We will conclude with what his old friend, Sir Henry Taylor, wrote of him +after his death:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>As he will not read what I write I may allow myself to say something +more. He was always master of himself and of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[Pg 437]</a></span> his emotions; but +underlying a somewhat melancholy composure and aspect there were +depths of tenderness known only to those who knew his whole nature and +his inward life, and it is well for those by whom he is mourned if +they can find what he has described in a letter to be his great +consolation in all his experiences of the death of those he loved +(experiences which had begun early and had not been few), “that the +past is sacred and sanctified; nothing can happen hereafter to disturb +or obliterate it; nor need the recollection have any bitterness if a +man does not, out of a false and morbid sentiment, make it so for +himself.”</p></div> + +<p>And he adds:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>To me there are no companions more welcome, cordial, consolatory or +cheerful than my dead friends.</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[Pg 438]</a></span></p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[Pg 439]</a></span></p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p class="title">ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[Pg 440]</a></span></p> +<div class="bbox" style="width: 600px; height: 363px;"><img src="images/img15.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Arthur Hallam reading “Walter Scott” aloud on board the +“Leeds,”<br />bound from Bordeaux to Dublin, Sept. 9, 1830.</span></p> + +<p class="center">After Tennyson’s and Hallam’s memorable journey to the Pyrenees in aid of +the revolutionary movement<br />against King Ferdinand of Spain, vividly described by Carlyle in his <i>Life of John Sterling</i>.</p> + +<p class="center">Alfred Tennyson (in profile), John Harden and Mrs. Harden (on the left), and the Miss Hardens.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[Pg 441]</a></span></p> +<h2>ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM</h2> +<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">Dr. John Brown</span></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>[The following article, containing the Memoir of Arthur Hallam by his +father, Henry Hallam, is reprinted from <i>Horae Subsecivae</i>.—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Praesens</span> imperfectum,—perfectum, plusquam perfectum +<span class="smcap">Futurum</span>.—<span class="smcap">Grotius.</span></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>The idea of thy life shall sweetly creep<br /> +Into my study of imagination;<br /> +And every lovely organ of thy life<br /> +Shall come apparelled in more precious habit—<br /> +More moving delicate, and full of life,<br /> +Into the eye and prospect of my soul,<br /> +Than when thou livedst indeed.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;"><i>Much Ado about Nothing.</i></span></td></tr></table> +</div> + + +<p>In the chancel of Clevedon Church, Somersetshire, rest the mortal remains +of Arthur Henry Hallam, eldest son of our great philosophic historian and +critic,—and the friend to whom “In Memoriam” is sacred. This place was +selected by his father, not only from the connection of kindred, being the +burial-place of his maternal grandfather, Sir Abraham Elton, but likewise +“on account of its still and sequestered situation, on a lone hill that +overhangs the Bristol Channel.” That lone hill, with its humble old +church, its outlook over the waste of waters, where “the stately ships go +on,” was, we doubt not, in Tennyson’s mind when the poem, “Break, break, +break,” which contains the burden of that volume in which are enshrined so +much of the deepest affection, poetry, philosophy, and godliness, rose +into his “study of imagination”—“into the eye and prospect of his +soul.”<a name='fna_110' id='fna_110' href='#f_110'><small>[110]</small></a></p> + +<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[Pg 442]</a></span> +Break, break, break,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!</span><br /> +And I would that my tongue could utter<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The thoughts that arise in me.</span><br /> +<br /> +O well for the fisherman’s boy,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That he shouts with his sister at play!</span><br /> +O well for the sailor lad,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That he sings in his boat on the bay!</span><br /> +<br /> +And the stately ships go on<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To their haven under the hill;</span><br /> +But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the sound of a voice that is still!</span><br /> +<br /> +Break, break, break,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!</span><br /> +But the tender grace of a day that is dead<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Will never come back to me.</span></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[Pg 443]</a></span>Out of these few simple words, deep and melancholy, and sounding as the +sea, as out of a well of the living waters of love, flows forth all “In +Memoriam,” as a stream flows out of its spring-all is here. “I would that +my tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me,”—“the touch of the +vanished hand—the sound of the voice that is still,”—the body and soul +of his friend. Rising as it were out of the midst of the gloom of the +valley of the shadow of death:</p> + +<p class="poem">The mountain infant to the sun comes forth<br /> +Like human life from darkness;</p> + +<p>and how its waters flow on! carrying life, beauty, magnificence,—shadows +and happy lights, depths of blackness, depths clear as the very body of +heaven. How it deepens as it goes, involving larger interests, wider +views, “thoughts that wander through eternity,” greater affections, but +still retaining its pure living waters, its unforgotten burden of love and +sorrow. How it visits every region! “The long unlovely street,” pleasant +villages and farms, “the placid ocean-plains,” waste howling wildernesses, +grim woods, <i>nemorumque noctem</i>, informed with spiritual fears, where may +be seen, if shapes they may be called:</p> + +<p class="poem">Fear and trembling Hope,<br /> +Silence and Foresight; Death the Skeleton,<br /> +And Time the Shadow;</p> + +<p>now within hearing of the Minster clock, now of the College bells, and the +vague hum of the mighty city. And overhead through all its course the +heaven with its clouds, its sun, moon, and stars; but always, and in all +places, declaring its source; and even when laying its burden of manifold +and faithful affection at the feet of the Almighty Father, still +remembering whence it came:</p> + +<p class="poem">That friend of mine who lives in God,<br /> +That God, which ever lives and loves,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">One God, one law, one element,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And one far-off divine event,</span><br /> +To which the whole creation moves.</p> + +<p>It is to that chancel, and to the day, 3rd January 1834, that he refers in +Poem XVIII. of “In Memoriam”:</p> + +<p class="poem">’Tis well; ’tis something; we may stand<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Where he in English earth is laid,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And from his ashes may be made</span><br /> +The violet of his native land.<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[Pg 444]</a></span><br /> +’Tis little; but it looks in truth<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">As if the quiet bones were blest</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Among familiar names to rest</span><br /> +And in the places of his youth.</p> + +<p>And again in XIX.:</p> + +<p class="poem">The Danube to the Severn gave<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The darken’d heart that beat no more;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">They laid him by the pleasant shore,</span><br /> +And in the hearing of the wave.<br /> +<br /> +There twice a day the Severn fills;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The salt sea-water passes by,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And hushes half the babbling Wye,</span><br /> +And makes a silence in the hills.</p> + +<p>Here, too, it is, LXVII.:</p> + +<p class="poem">When on my bed the moonlight falls,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I know that in thy place of rest</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">By that broad water of the west,</span><br /> +There comes a glory on the walls:<br /> +<br /> +Thy marble bright in dark appears,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">As slowly steals a silver flame</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Along the letters of thy name,</span><br /> +And o’er the number of thy years.</p> + +<p>This young man, whose memory his friend has consecrated in the hearts of +all who can be touched by such love and beauty, was in nowise unworthy of +all this. It is not for us to say, for it was not given to us the sad +privilege to know, all that a father’s heart buried with his son in that +grave, all “the hopes of unaccomplished years”; nor can we feel in its +fulness all that is meant by</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 10em;">such</span><br /> +A friendship as had master’d Time;<br /> +Which masters Time indeed, and is<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Eternal, separate from fears:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The all-assuming months and years</span><br /> +Can take no part away from this.</p> + +<p>But this we may say, we know nothing of in all literature to compare with +the volume from which these lines are taken, since David lamented with +this lamentation: “The beauty of Israel is slain. Ye mountains of Gilboa, +let there be no dew, neither rain upon you. I am distressed for thee, my +brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me, thy love for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[Pg 445]</a></span> me +was wonderful.” We cannot, as some have done, compare it with +Shakespeare’s sonnets, or with “Lycidas.” In spite of the amazing genius +and tenderness, the never-wearying, all-involving reiteration of +passionate attachment, the idolatry of admiring love, the rapturous +devotedness, displayed in these sonnets, we cannot but agree with Mr. +Hallam in thinking “that there is a tendency now, especially among young +men of poetical tempers, to exaggerate the beauties of these remarkable +productions”; and though we would hardly say with him, “that it is +impossible not to wish that Shakespeare had never written them,” giving +us, as they do, and as perhaps nothing else could do, such proof of a +power of loving, of an amount of <i>attendrissement</i>, which is not less +wonderful than the bodying forth of that myriad-mind which gave us Hamlet, +and Lear, Cordelia, and Puck, and all the rest, and indeed explaining to +us how he could give us all these;—while we hardly go so far, we agree +with his other wise words:—“There is a weakness and folly in all +misplaced and excessive affection”; which in Shakespeare’s case is the +more distressing, when we consider that “Mr. W. H., the only begetter of +these ensuing sonnets,” was, in all likelihood, William Herbert, Earl of +Pembroke, a man of noble and gallant character, but always of licentious +life.</p> + +<p>As for “Lycidas,” we must confess that the poetry—and we all know how +consummate it is—and not the affection, seems uppermost in Milton’s mind, +as it is in ours. The other element, though quick and true, has no glory +through reason of the excellency of that which invests it. But there is no +such drawback in “In Memoriam.” The purity, the temperate but fervent +goodness, the firmness and depth of nature, the impassioned logic, the +large, sensitive, and liberal heart, the reverence and godly fear, of</p> + +<p class="poem">That friend of mine who lives in God,</p> + +<p>which from these Remains we know to have dwelt in that young soul, give to +“In Memoriam” the character of exactest portraiture. There is no excessive +or misplaced affection here; it is all founded in fact: while everywhere +and throughout it all, affection—a love that is wonderful—meets us first +and leaves us last, giving form and substance and grace, and the breath of +life and love, to everything that the poet’s thick-coming fancies so +exquisitely frame. We can recall<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[Pg 446]</a></span> few poems approaching to it in this +quality of sustained affection. The only English poems we can think of as +of the same order, are Cowper’s lines on seeing his mother’s portrait:</p> + +<p class="poem">O that these lips had language!</p> + +<p>Burns’ “To Mary in Heaven”; and two pieces of Vaughan—one beginning</p> + +<p class="poem">O thou who know’st for whom I mourn;</p> + +<p>and the other:</p> + +<p class="poem">They are all gone into the world of light.</p> + +<p>But our object now is, not so much to illustrate Mr. Tennyson’s verses, as +to introduce to our readers, what we ourselves have got so much delight, +and, we trust, profit from—<i>The Remains in Verse and Prose, of Arthur +Henry Hallam</i>, 1834; privately printed. We had for many years been +searching for this volume, but in vain; a sentence quoted by Henry Taylor +struck us, and our desire was quickened by reading “In Memoriam.” We do +not remember when we have been more impressed than by these Remains of +this young man, especially when taken along with his friend’s Memorial; +and instead of trying to tell our readers what this impression is, we have +preferred giving them as copious extracts as our space allows, that they +may judge and enjoy for themselves. The italics are our own. We can +promise them few finer, deeper, and better pleasures than reading, and +detaining their minds over these two books together, filling their hearts +with the fulness of their truth and tenderness. They will see how accurate +as well as how affectionate and “of imagination all compact” Tennyson is, +and how worthy of all that he has said of him, that friend was. The +likeness is drawn <i>ad vivum</i>:</p> + +<p class="poem">When to the sessions of sweet silent thought<br /> +He summons up remembrance of things past.</p> + +<p>“The idea of his Life” has been sown a natural body, and has been raised a +spiritual body, but the identity is unhurt; the countenance shines and the +raiment is white and glistering, but it is the same face and form.</p> + +<p>The Memoir is by Mr. Hallam. We give it entire, not knowing anywhere a +nobler or more touching record of a father’s love and sorrow.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[Pg 447]</a></span>Arthur Henry Hallam was born in Bedford Place,<a name='fna_111' id='fna_111' href='#f_111'><small>[111]</small></a> London, on the 1st +of February 1811. Very few years had elapsed before his parents +observed strong indications of his future character, in a peculiar +clearness of perception, a facility of acquiring knowledge, and, above +all, in an undeviating sweetness of disposition, and adherence to his +sense of what was right and becoming. As he advanced to another stage +of childhood, it was rendered still more manifest that he would be +distinguished from ordinary persons, by an increasing thoughtfulness, +and a fondness for a class of books, which in general are so little +intelligible to boys of his age, that they excite in them no kind of +interest.</p> + +<p>In the summer of 1818 he spent some months with his parents in Germany +and Switzerland, and became familiar with the French language, which +he had already learned to read with facility. He had gone through the +elements of Latin before this time; but that language having been laid +aside during his tour, it was found upon his return that, a variety of +new scenes having effaced it from his memory, it was necessary to +begin again with the first rudiments. He was nearly eight years old at +this time; and in little more than twelve months he could read Latin +with tolerable facility. In this period his mind was developing itself +more rapidly than before; he now felt a keen relish for dramatic +poetry, and wrote several tragedies, if we may so call them, either in +prose or verse, with a more precocious display of talents than the +Editor remembers to have met with in any other individual. The natural +pride, however, of his parents, did not blind them to the uncertainty +that belongs to all premature efforts of the mind; and they so +carefully avoided everything like a boastful display of blossoms +which, in many cases, have withered away in barren luxuriance, that +the circumstances of these compositions was hardly ever mentioned out +of their own family.</p> + +<p>In the spring of 1820, Arthur was placed under the Rev. W. Carmalt, at +Putney, where he remained nearly two years. After leaving this school, +he went abroad again for some months; and, in October 1822, became the +pupil of the Rev. E. C. Hawtrey, an Assistant Master of Eton College. +At Eton he continued till the summer of 1827. He was now become a good +though not perhaps a first-rate scholar in the Latin and Greek +languages. The loss of time, relatively to this object, in travelling, +but far more his increasing avidity for a different kind of knowledge, +and the strong bent of his mind to subjects which exercise other +faculties than such as the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[Pg 448]</a></span> acquirement of languages calls into play, +will sufficiently account for what might seem a comparative deficiency +in classical learning. It can only, however, be reckoned one, +comparatively to his other attainments, and to his remarkable facility +in mastering the modern languages. The Editor has thought it not +improper to print in the following pages an Eton exercise, which, as +written before the age of fourteen, though not free from metrical and +other errors, appears, perhaps to a partial judgment, far above the +level of such compositions. It is remarkable that he should have +selected the story of Ugolino, from a poet with whom, and with whose +language, he was then but very slightly acquainted, but who was +afterwards to become, more perhaps than any other, the master-mover of +his spirit. It may be added, that great judgment and taste are +perceptible in this translation, which is by no means a literal one; +and in which the phraseology of Sophocles is not ill substituted, in +some passages, for that of Dante.</p> + +<p>The Latin poetry of an Etonian is generally reckoned at that School +the chief test of his literary talent. That of Arthur was good without +being excellent; he never wanted depth of thought, or truth of +feeling; but it is only in a few rare instances, if altogether in any, +that an original mind has been known to utter itself freely and +vigorously, without sacrifice of purity, in a language the capacities +of which are so imperfectly understood; and in his productions there +was not the thorough conformity to an ancient model which is required +for perfect elegance in Latin verse. He took no great pleasure in this +sort of composition; and perhaps never returned to it of his own +accord.</p> + +<p>In the latter part of his residence at Eton, he was led away more and +more by the predominant bias of his mind, from the exclusive study of +ancient literature. The poets of England, especially the older +dramatists, came with greater attraction over his spirit. He loved +Fletcher, and some of Fletcher’s contemporaries, for their energy of +language and intenseness of feeling; but it was in Shakespeare alone +that he found the fulness of soul which seemed to slake the thirst of +his own rapidly expanding genius for an inexhaustible fountain of +thought and emotion. He knew Shakespeare thoroughly; and indeed his +acquaintance with the earlier poetry of this country was very +extensive. Among the modern poets, Byron was at this time, far above +the rest, and almost exclusively, his favourite; a preference which, +in later years, he transferred altogether to Wordsworth and Shelley.</p> + +<p>He became, when about fifteen years old, a member of the debating +society established among the elder boys, in which he took great +interest; and this served to confirm the bias of his intellect towards +the moral and political philosophy of modern times. It was probably, +however, of important utility in giving him that command of his own +language which he possessed, as the following Essays will show, in a +very superior degree, and in exercising those powers of argumentative +discussion, which now displayed themselves as eminently characteristic +of his mind. It was a necessary consequence that he <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[Pg 449]</a></span>declined still +more from the usual paths of study, and abated perhaps somewhat of his +regard for the writers of antiquity. It must not be understood, +nevertheless, as most of those who read these pages will be aware, +that he ever lost his sensibility to those ever-living effusions of +genius which the ancient languages preserve. He loved Aeschylus and +Sophocles (to Euripides he hardly did justice), Lucretius and Virgil; +if he did not seem so much drawn towards Homer as might at first be +expected, this may probably be accounted for by his increasing taste +for philosophical poetry.</p> + +<p>In the early part of 1827, Arthur took a part in the Eton Miscellany, +a periodical publication, in which some of his friends in the debating +society were concerned. He wrote in this, besides a few papers in +prose, a little poem on a story connected with the Lake of Killarney. +It has not been thought by the Editor advisable, upon the whole, to +reprint these lines; though, in his opinion, they bear very striking +marks of superior powers. This was almost the first poetry that Arthur +had written, except the childish tragedies above mentioned. No one was +ever less inclined to the trick of versifying. Poetry with him was not +an amusement, but the natural and almost necessary language of genuine +emotion; and it was not till the discipline of serious reflection, and +the approach of manhood, gave a reality and intenseness to such +emotions, that he learned the capacities of his own genius. That he +was a poet by nature, these Remains will sufficiently prove; but +certainly he was far removed from being a versifier by nature; nor was +he probably able to perform, what he scarce ever attempted, to write +easily and elegantly on an ordinary subject. The lines on the story of +Pygmalion are so far an exception, that they arose out of a momentary +amusement of society; but he could not avoid, even in these, his own +grave tone of poetry.</p> + +<p>Upon leaving Eton in the summer of 1827, he accompanied his parents to +the Continent, and passed eight months in Italy. This introduction to +new scenes of nature and art, and to new sources of intellectual +delight, at the very period of transition from boyhood to youth, +sealed no doubt the peculiar character of his mind, and taught him, +too soon for his peace, to sound those depths of thought and feeling +from which, after this time, all that he wrote was derived. He had, +when he passed the Alps, only a moderate acquaintance with the Italian +language; but during his residence in the country he came to speak it +with perfect fluency, and with a pure Sienese pronunciation. In its +study he was much assisted by his friend and instructor, the Abbate +Pifferi, who encouraged him to his first attempts at versification. +The few sonnets, which are now printed, were, it is to be remembered, +written by a foreigner, hardly seventeen years old, and after a very +short stay in Italy. The Editor might not, probably, have suffered +them to appear even in this private manner, upon his own judgment. But +he knew that the greatest living writer of Italy, to whom they were +shown some time since at Milan, by the author’s excellent friend, Mr. +Richard Milnes, has expressed himself in terms of high approbation.</p> + +<p>The growing intimacy of Arthur with Italian poetry led him <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[Pg 450]</a></span>naturally +to that of Dante. No poet was so congenial to the character of his own +reflective mind; in none other could he so abundantly find that +disdain of flowery redundance, that perpetual preference of the +sensible to the ideal, that aspiration for somewhat better and less +fleeting than earthly things, to which his inmost soul responded. Like +all genuine worshippers of the great Florentine poet, he rated the +<i>Inferno</i> below the two latter portions of the <i>Divina Commedia</i>; +there was nothing even to revolt his taste, but rather much to attract +it, in the scholastic theology and mystic visions of the <i>Paradiso</i>. +Petrarch he greatly admired, though with less idolatry than Dante; and +the sonnets here printed will show to all competent judges how fully +he had imbibed the spirit, without servile centonism, of the best +writers in that style of composition who flourished in the sixteenth +century.</p> + +<p>But poetry was not an absorbing passion at this time in his mind. His +eyes were fixed on the best pictures with silent intense delight. He +had a deep and just perception of what was beautiful in this art, at +least in its higher schools; for he did not pay much regard, or +perhaps quite do justice, to the masters of the seventeenth century. +To technical criticism he made no sort of pretension; painting was to +him but the visible language of emotion; and where it did not aim at +exciting it, or employed inadequate means, his admiration would be +withheld. Hence he highly prized the ancient paintings, both Italian +and German, of the age which preceded the full development of art. But +he was almost as enthusiastic an admirer of the Venetian, as of the +Tuscan and Roman schools; considering these masters as reaching the +same end by the different agencies of form and colour. This +predilection for the sensitive beauties of painting is somewhat +analogous to his fondness for harmony of verse, on which he laid more +stress than poets so thoughtful are apt to do. In one of the last days +of his life, he lingered long among the fine Venetian pictures of the +Imperial Gallery at Vienna.</p> + +<p>He returned to England in June 1828; and, in the following October, +went down to reside at Cambridge; having been entered on the boards of +Trinity College before his departure to the Continent. He was the +pupil of the Rev. William Whewell. In some respects, as soon became +manifest, he was not formed to obtain great academical reputation. An +acquaintance with the learned languages, considerable at the school +where he was educated, but not improved, to say the least, by the +intermission of a year, during which his mind had been so occupied by +other pursuits, that he had thought little of antiquity even in Rome +itself, though abundantly sufficient for the gratification of taste +and the acquisition of knowledge, was sure to prove inadequate to the +searching scrutiny of modern examinations. He soon, therefore, saw +reason to renounce all competition of this kind; nor did he ever so +much as attempt any Greek or Latin composition during his stay at +Cambridge. In truth he was very indifferent to success of this kind; +and conscious as he must have been of a high reputation among his +contemporaries, he could not think that he stood in need of any +University distinctions. The Editor became by degrees almost<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[Pg 451]</a></span> equally +indifferent to what he perceived to be so uncongenial to Arthur’s +mind. It was, however, to be regretted that he never paid the least +attention to mathematical studies. That he should not prosecute them +with the diligence usual at Cambridge, was of course to be expected; +yet his clearness and acumen would certainly have enabled him to +master the principles of geometrical reasoning; nor, in fact, did he +so much find a difficulty in apprehending demonstrations, as a want of +interest, and a consequent inability to retain them in his memory. A +little more practice in the strict logic of geometry, a little more +familiarity with the physical laws of the universe, and the phenomena +to which they relate, would possibly have repressed the tendency to +vague and mystical speculations which he was too fond of indulging. In +the philosophy of the human mind, he was in no danger of the +materializing theories of some ancient and modern schools; but in +shunning this extreme, he might sometimes forget that, in the honest +pursuit of truth, we can shut our eyes to no real phenomena, and that +the physiology of man must always enter into any valid scheme of his +psychology.</p> + +<p>The comparative inferiority which he might show in the usual trials of +knowledge, sprung in a great measure from the want of a prompt and +accurate memory. It was the faculty wherein he shone the least, +according to ordinary observation; though his very extensive reach of +literature, and his rapidity in acquiring languages, sufficed to prove +that it was capable of being largely exercised. He could remember +anything, as a friend observed to the Editor, that was associated with +an idea. But he seemed, at least after he reached manhood, to want +almost wholly the power, so common with inferior understandings, of +retaining, with regularity and exactness, a number of unimportant +uninteresting particulars. It would have been nearly impossible to +make him recollect for three days the date of the battle of Marathon, +or the names in order of the Athenian months. Nor could he repeat +poetry, much as he loved it, with the correctness often found in young +men. It is not improbable, that a more steady discipline in early life +would have strengthened this faculty, or that he might have supplied +its deficiency by some technical devices; but where the higher powers +of intellect were so extraordinarily manifested, it would have been +preposterous to complain of what may perhaps have been a necessary +consequence of their amplitude, or at least a natural result of their +exercise.</p> + +<p>But another reason may be given for his deficiency in those +unremitting labours which the course of academical education, in the +present times, is supposed to exact from those who aspire to its +distinctions. In the first year of his residence at Cambridge, +symptoms of disordered health, especially in the circulatory system, +began to show themselves; and it is by no means improbable, that these +were indications of a tendency to derangement of the vital functions, +which became ultimately fatal. A too rapid determination of blood +towards the brain, with its concomitant uneasy sensations, rendered +him frequently incapable of mental fatigue. He had indeed once before, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[Pg 452]</a></span>at Florence, been affected by symptoms not unlike these. His +intensity of reflection and feeling also brought on occasionally a +considerable depression of spirits, which had been painfully observed +at times by those who watched him most, from the time of his leaving +Eton, and even before. It was not till after several months that he +regained a less morbid condition of mind and body. This same +irregularity of circulation returned in the next spring, but was of +less duration. During the third year of his Cambridge life, he +appeared in much better health.</p> + +<p>In this year (1831) he obtained the first college prize for an English +declamation. The subject chosen by him was the conduct of the +Independent party during the civil war. This exercise was greatly +admired at the time, but was never printed. In consequence of this +success, it became incumbent on him, according to the custom of the +college, to deliver an oration in the chapel immediately before the +Christmas vacation of the same year. On this occasion he selected a +subject very congenial to his own turn of thought and favourite study, +the influence of Italian upon English literature. He had previously +gained another prize for an English essay on the philosophical +writings of Cicero. This essay is perhaps too excursive from the +prescribed subject; but his mind was so deeply imbued with the higher +philosophy, especially that of Plato, with which he was very +conversant, that he could not be expected to dwell much on the praises +of Cicero in that respect.</p> + +<p>Though the bent of Arthur’s mind by no means inclined him to strict +research into facts, he was full as much conversant with the great +features of ancient and modern history, as from the course of his +other studies and the habits of his life it was possible to expect. He +reckoned them, as great minds always do, the groundworks of moral and +political philosophy, and took no pains to acquire any knowledge of +this sort from which a principle could not be derived or illustrated. +To some parts of English history, and to that of the French +Revolution, he had paid considerable attention. He had not read nearly +so much of the Greek and Latin historians as of the philosophers and +poets. In the history of literary, and especially of philosophical and +religious opinions, he was deeply versed, as much so as it is possible +to apply that term at his age. The following pages exhibit proofs of +an acquaintance, not crude or superficial, with that important branch +of literature.</p> + +<p>His political judgments were invariably prompted by his strong sense +of right and justice. These, in so young a person, were naturally +rather fluctuating, and subject to the correction of advancing +knowledge and experience. Ardent in the cause of those he deemed to be +oppressed, of which, in one instance, he was led to give a proof with +more of energy and enthusiasm than discretion, he was deeply attached +to the ancient institutions of his country.</p> + +<p>He spoke French readily, though with less elegance than Italian, till +from disuse he lost much of his fluency in the latter. In his last +fatal tour in Germany, he was rapidly acquiring a readiness in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[Pg 453]</a></span> +language of that country. The whole range of French literature was +almost as familiar to him as that of England.</p> + +<p>The society in which Arthur lived most intimately, at Eton and at the +University, was formed of young men, eminent for natural ability, and +for delight in what he sought above all things, the knowledge of +truth, and the perception of beauty. They who loved and admired him +living, and who now revere his sacred memory, as of one to whom, in +the fondness of regret, they admit of no rival, know best what he was +in the daily commerce of life; and his eulogy should, on every +account, better come from hearts which, if partial, have been rendered +so by the experience of friendship, not by the affection of nature.</p> + +<p>Arthur left Cambridge on taking his degree in January 1832. He resided +from that time with the Editor in London, having been entered on the +boards of the Inner Temple. It was greatly the desire of the Editor +that he should engage himself in the study of the law; not merely with +professional views, but as a useful discipline for a mind too much +occupied with habits of thought, which, ennobling and important as +they were, could not but separate him from the everyday business of +life, and might, by their excess, in his susceptible temperament, be +productive of considerable mischief. He had, during the previous long +vacation, read with the Editor the <i>Institutes</i> of Justinian, and the +two works of Heineccius which illustrate them; and he now went through +Blackstone’s <i>Commentaries</i>, with as much of other law-books as, in +the Editor’s judgment, was required for a similar purpose. It was +satisfactory at that time to perceive that, far from showing any of +that distaste to legal studies which might have been anticipated from +some parts of his intellectual character, he entered upon them not +only with great acuteness, but considerable interest. In the month of +October 1832, he began to see the practical application of legal +knowledge in the office of an eminent conveyancer, Mr. Walters of +Lincoln’s Inn Fields, with whom he continued till his departure from +England in the following summer.</p> + +<p>It was not, however, to be expected, or even desired by any one who +knew how to value him, that he should at once abandon those habits of +study which had fertilized and invigorated his mind. But he now, from +some change or other in his course of thinking, ceased in a great +measure to write poetry, and expressed to more than one friend an +intention to give it up. The instances after his leaving Cambridge +were few. The dramatic scene between Raffaelle and Fiammetta was +written in 1832; and about the same time he had a design to translate +the <i>Vita Nuova</i> of his favourite Dante; a work which he justly +prized, as the development of that immense genius, in a kind of +autobiography, which best prepares us for a real insight into the +<i>Divine Comedy</i>. He rendered accordingly into verse most of the +sonnets which the <i>Vita Nuova</i> contains; but the Editor does not +believe that he made any progress in the prose translation. These +sonnets appearing rather too literal, and consequently harsh, it has +not been thought worth while to print.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[Pg 454]</a></span>In the summer of 1832, the appearance of Professor Rosetti’s +<i>Disquisizioni sullo spirito Antipapale</i>, in which the writings of +Arthur’s beloved masters, Dante and Petrarch, as well as most of the +mediæval literature of Italy, were treated as a series of enigmas, to +be understood only by a key that discloses a latent Carbonarism, a +secret conspiracy against the religion of their age, excited him to +publish his own Remarks in reply. It seemed to him the worst of +poetical heresies to desert the Absolute, the Universal, the Eternal, +the Beautiful and True, which the Platonic spirit of his literary +creed taught him to seek in all the higher works of genius, in quest +of some temporary historical allusion, which could be of no interest +with posterity. Nothing, however, could be more alien from his +courteous disposition than to abuse the licence of controversy, or to +treat with intentional disrespect a very ingenious person, who had +been led on too far in pursuing a course of interpretation, which, +within certain much narrower limits, it is impossible for any one +conversant with history not to admit.</p> + +<p>A very few other anonymous writings occupied his leisure about this +time. Among these were slight memoirs of Petrarch, Voltaire, and +Burke, for the Gallery of Portraits, published by the Society for the +Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.<a name='fna_112' id='fna_112' href='#f_112'><small>[112]</small></a> His time was, however, principally +devoted, when not engaged at his office, to metaphysical researches, +and to the history of philosophical opinions.</p> + +<p>From the latter part of his residence at Cambridge, a gradual but very +perceptible improvement in the cheerfulness of his spirits gladdened +his family and his friends; intervals there doubtless were when the +continual seriousness of his habits of thought, or the force of +circumstances, threw something more of gravity into his demeanour; but +in general he was animated and even gay, renewing or preserving his +intercourse with some of those he had most valued at Eton and +Cambridge. The symptoms of deranged circulation which had manifested +themselves before, ceased to appear, or at least so as to excite his +own attention; and though it struck those who were most anxious in +watching him, that his power of enduring fatigue was not quite so +great as from his frame of body and apparent robustness might have +been anticipated, nothing gave the least indication of danger either +to their eyes, or to those of the medical practitioners who were in +the habit of observing him. An attack of intermittent <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[Pg 455]</a></span>fever, during +the prevalent influenza of the spring of 1833, may perhaps have +disposed his constitution to the last fatal blow.</p></div> + +<p>To any one who has watched the history of the disease by which “so quick +this bright thing came to confusion,” and who knows how near its subject +must often, perhaps all his life, have been to that eternity which +occupied so much of his thoughts and desires, and the secrets of which +were so soon to open on his young eyes, there is something very touching +in this account. Such a state of health would enhance, and tend to +produce, by the sensations proper to such a condition, that habitual +seriousness of thought, that sober judgment, and that tendency to look at +the true life of things—that deep but gentle and calm sadness, and that +occasional sinking of the heart, which make his noble and strong inner +nature, his resolved mind, so much more impressive and endearing.</p> + +<p>This feeling of personal insecurity—of life being ready to slip away—the +sensation that this world and its on-goings, its mighty interests, and +delicate joys, is ready to be shut up in a moment—this instinctive +apprehension of the peril of vehement bodily enjoyment—all this would +tend to make him “walk softly,” and to keep him from much of the evil that +is in the world, and would help him to live soberly, righteously, and +godly, even in the bright and rich years of his youth. His power of giving +himself up to the search after absolute truth, and the contemplation of +Supreme goodness, must have been increased by this same organization. But +all this delicate feeling, this fineness of sense, did rather quicken the +energy and fervour of the indwelling soul—the τὶ θερμὸν πρᾶγμα +that burned within. In the quaint words of Vaughan, it was “manhood with a +female eye.” These two conditions must, as we have said, have made him +dear indeed. And by a beautiful law of life, having that organ out of +which are the issues of life, under a sort of perpetual nearness to +suffering, and so liable to pain, he would be more easily moved for +others—more alive to their pain—more filled with fellow-feeling.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The Editor cannot dwell on anything later. Arthur accompanied him to +Germany in the beginning of August. In returning to Vienna from Pesth, +a wet day probably gave rise to an intermittent fever, with very +slight symptoms, and apparently subsiding, when a sudden rush of blood +to the head put an instantaneous end to his life on the 15th of +September 1833. The mysteriousness of such a dreadful termination to a +disorder generally of so little importance, and in this instance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[Pg 456]</a></span> of +the slightest kind, has been diminished by an examination which showed +a weakness of the cerebral vessels, and a want of sufficient energy in +the heart. Those whose eyes must long be dim with tears, and whose +hopes on this side the tomb are broken down for ever, may cling, as +well as they can, to the poor consolation of believing that a few more +years would, in the usual chances of humanity, have severed the frail +union of his graceful and manly form with the pure spirit that it +enshrined.</p> + +<p>The remains of Arthur were brought to England, and interred on the 3rd +of January 1834, in the chancel of Clevedon Church, in Somersetshire, +belonging to his maternal grandfather, Sir Abraham Elton, a place +selected by the Editor, not only from the connection of kindred, but +on account of its still and sequestered situation, on a lone hill that +overhangs the Bristol Channel.</p> + +<p>More ought perhaps to be said—but it is very difficult to proceed. +From the earliest years of this extraordinary young man, his premature +abilities were not more conspicuous than an almost faultless +disposition, sustained by a more calm self-command than has often been +witnessed in that season of life. The sweetness of temper which +distinguished his childhood, became with the advance of manhood a +habitual benevolence, and ultimately ripened into that exalted +principle of love towards God and man, which animated and almost +absorbed his soul during the latter period of his life, and to which +most of the following compositions bear such emphatic testimony. He +seemed to tread the earth as a spirit from some better world; and in +bowing to the mysterious will which has in mercy removed him, +perfected by so short a trial, and passing over the bridge which +separates the seen from the unseen life, in a moment, and, as we may +believe, without a moment’s pang, we must feel not only the +bereavement of those to whom he was dear, but the loss which mankind +have sustained by the withdrawing of such a light.</p> + +<p>A considerable portion of the poetry contained in this volume was +printed in the year 1830, and was intended by the author to be +published together with the poems of his intimate friend, Mr. Alfred +Tennyson. They were, however, withheld from publication at the request +of the Editor. The poem of Timbuctoo was written for the University +prize in 1829, which it did not obtain. Notwithstanding its too great +obscurity, the subject itself being hardly indicated, and the +extremely hyperbolical importance which the author’s brilliant fancy +has attached to a nest of barbarians, no one can avoid admiring the +grandeur of his conceptions, and the deep philosophy upon which he has +built the scheme of his poem. This is, however, by no means the most +pleasing of his compositions. It is in the profound reflection, the +melancholy tenderness, and the religious sanctity of other effusions +that a lasting charm will be found. A commonplace subject, such as +those announced for academical prizes generally are, was incapable of +exciting a mind which, beyond almost every other, went straight to the +farthest depths that the human intellect can fathom, or from which +human feelings can be drawn. Many short poems, of equal beauty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">[Pg 457]</a></span> with +those here printed, have been deemed unfit even for the limited +circulation they might obtain, on account of their unveiling more of +emotion than, consistently with what is due to him and to others, +could be exposed to view.</p> + +<p>The two succeeding essays have never been printed; but were read, it +is believed, in a literary society at Trinity College, or in one to +which he afterwards belonged in London. That entitled <i>Theodicaea +Novissima</i> is printed at the desire of some of his intimate friends. A +few expressions in it want his usual precision; and there are ideas +which he might have seen cause, in the lapse of time, to modify, +independently of what his very acute mind would probably have +perceived, that his hypothesis, like that of Leibnitz, on the origin +of evil, resolves itself at last into an unproved assumption of its +necessity. It has, however, some advantages, which need not be +mentioned, over that of Leibnitz; and it is here printed, not as a +solution of the greatest mystery of the universe, but as most +characteristic of the author’s mind, original and sublime, uniting, +what is very rare except in early youth, a fearless and unblenching +spirit of inquiry into the highest objects of speculation, with the +most humble and reverential piety. It is probable that in many of his +views on such topics he was influenced by the writings of Jonathan +Edwards, with whose opinions on metaphysical and moral subjects he +seems generally to have concurred.</p> + +<p>The extract from a review of Tennyson’s poems in a publication now +extinct, the <i>Englishman’s Magazine</i>, is also printed at the +suggestion of a friend. The pieces that follow are reprints, and have +been already mentioned in this Memoir.</p></div> + +<p>We have given this Memoir almost entire, for the sake both of its subject +and its manner—for what in it is the father’s as well as for what is the +son’s. There is something very touching in the paternal composure, the +judiciousness, the truthfulness, where truth is so difficult to reach +through tears, the calm estimate and the subdued tenderness, the +ever-rising but ever-restrained emotion; the father’s heart-throbs +throughout.</p> + +<p>We wish we could have given in full the letters from Arthur’s friends +which his father has incorporated in the Memoir. They all bring out, in +different but harmonious ways, his extraordinary moral and intellectual +worth, his rare beauty of character, and their deep affection.</p> + +<p>The following extract from one seems to us very interesting:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Outwardly I do not think there was anything remarkable in his habits, +except <i>an irregularity with regard to times and places of study</i>, +which may seem surprising in one whose progress in so many<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">[Pg 458]</a></span> directions +was so eminently great and rapid. <i>He was commonly to be found in some +friend’s room, reading or canvassing.</i> I daresay he lost something by +this irregularity, <i>but less than perhaps one would at first imagine</i>. +I never saw him idle. He might seem to be lounging, or only amusing +himself, but his mind was always active, and active for good. In fact, +his energy and quickness of apprehension did not stand in need of +outward aid.</p></div> + +<p>There is much in this worthy of more extended notice. Such minds as his +probably grow best in this way, are best left to themselves, to glide on +at their own sweet wills; the stream was too deep and clear, and perhaps +too entirely bent on its own errand, to be dealt with or regulated by any +art or device. The same friend sums up his character thus:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I have met with no man his superior in metaphysical subtlety; no man +his equal as a philosophical critic on works of taste; no man whose +views on all subjects connected with the duties and dignities of +humanity were more large and generous, and enlightened.</p></div> + +<p>And all this said of a youth of twenty—<i>heu nimium brevis aevi decus et +desiderium</i>!</p> + +<p>We have given little of his verse; and what we do give is taken at random. +We agree entirely in his father’s estimate of his poetical gift and art, +but his mind was too serious, too thoughtful, too intensely dedicated to +truth and the God of truth, to linger long in the pursuit of beauty; he +was on his way to God, and could rest in nothing short of Him, otherwise +he might have been a poet of genuine excellence.</p> + +<p class="poem">Dark, dark, yea, “irrecoverably dark,”<br /> +Is the soul’s eye; yet how it strives and battles<br /> +Through th’ impenetrable gloom to fix<br /> +That master light, the secret truth of things,<br /> +Which is the body of the infinite God!<br /> +<strong><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span></strong><br /> +Sure, we are leaves of one harmonious bower,<br /> +Fed by a sap that never will be scant,<br /> +All-permeating, all-producing mind;<br /> +And in our several parcellings of doom<br /> +We but fulfil the beauty of the whole.<br /> +Oh, madness! if a leaf should dare complain<br /> +Of its dark verdure, and aspire to be<br /> +The gayer, brighter thing that wantons near.<br /> +<strong><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span></strong><br /> +Oh, blessing and delight of my young heart,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Maiden, who wast so lovely, and so pure,</span><br /> +I know not in what region now thou art,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">[Pg 459]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or whom thy gentle eyes in joy assure.</span><br /> +Not the old hills on which we gazed together,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Not the old faces which we both did love,</span><br /> +Not the old books, whence knowledge we did gather,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Not these, but others now thy fancies move.</span><br /> +<br /> +I would I knew thy present hopes and fears,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">All thy companions with their pleasant talk,</span><br /> +And the clear aspect which thy dwelling wears:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">So, though in body absent, I might walk</span><br /> +With thee in thought and feeling, till thy mood<br /> +Did sanctify mine own to peerless good.<br /> +<strong><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span></strong><br /> +Alfred, I would that you beheld me now,<br /> +Sitting beneath a mossy ivied wall<br /> +On a quaint bench, which to that structure old<br /> +Winds an accordant curve. Above my head<br /> +<i>Dilates immeasurable a wild of leaves</i>,<br /> +Seeming received into the blue expanse<br /> +That vaults this summer noon.<br /> +<strong><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span></strong><br /> +Still here—thou hast not faded from my sight,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Nor all the music round thee from mine ear:</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Still grace flows from thee to the brightening year,</i></span><br /> +<i>And all the birds laugh out in wealthier light</i>.<br /> +Still am I free to close my happy eyes,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And paint upon the gloom thy mimic form,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That soft white neck, that cheek in beauty warm,</span><br /> +And brow half hidden where yon ringlet lies:<br /> +With, oh! the blissful knowledge all the while<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That I can lift at will each curvèd lid,</span><br /> +And my fair dream most highly realize.<br /> +The time will come, ’tis ushered by my sighs,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When I may shape the dark, but vainly bid</span><br /> +True light restore that form, those looks, that smile.<br /> +<strong><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span></strong><br /> +The garden trees <i>are busy with the shower</i><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That fell ere sunset: now methinks they talk,</span><br /> +Lowly and sweetly as befits the hour,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">One to another down the grassy walk.</span><br /> +Hark the laburnum from his opening flower,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">This cheery creeper greets in whisper light,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">While the grim fir, rejoicing in the night,</span><br /> +Hoarse mutters to the murmuring sycamore.<a name='fna_113' id='fna_113' href='#f_113'><small>[113]</small></a><br /> +What shall I deem their converse? would they hail<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The wild grey light that fronts yon massive cloud,</span><br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">[Pg 460]</a></span>Or the half bow, rising like pillar’d fire?<br /> +Or are they fighting faintly for desire<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That with May dawn their leaves may be o’erflowed,</span><br /> +And dews about their feet may never fail?</p> + +<p>In the Essay, entitled <i>Theodicaea Novissima</i>, from which the following +passages are taken, to the great injury in its general effect, he sets +himself to the task of doing his utmost to clear up the mystery of the +existence of such things as sin and suffering, in the universe of a being +like God. He does it fearlessly, but like a child. It is in the spirit of +his friend’s words:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">An infant crying in the night,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">An infant crying for the light,</span><br /> +And with no language but a cry.<br /> +<br /> +Then was I as a child that cries,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But, crying, knows his father near.</span></p> + +<p>It is not a mere exercitation of the intellect, it is an endeavour to get +nearer God—to assert His eternal Providence, and vindicate His ways to +men. We know no performance more wonderful for such a boy. Pascal might +have written it. As was to be expected, the tremendous subject remains +where he found it—his glowing love and genius cast a gleam here and there +across its gloom; but it is brief as the lightning in the collied +night—the jaws of darkness do devour it up—this secret belongs to God. +Across its deep and dazzling darkness, and from out its abyss of thick +cloud, “all dark, dark, irrecoverably dark,” no steady ray has ever, or +will ever, come—over its face its own darkness must brood, till He to +whom alone the darkness and the light are both alike, to whom the night +shineth as the day, says, “Let there be light!” There is, we all know, a +certain awful attraction, a nameless charm for all thoughtful spirits, in +this mystery, “the greatest in the universe,” as Mr. Hallam truly says; +and it is well for us at times, so that we have pure eyes and a clean +heart, to turn aside and look into its gloom; but it is not good to busy +ourselves in clever speculations about it, or briskly to criticize the +speculations of others—it is a wise and pious saying of Augustine, +<i>Verius cogitatur Deus quam dicitur; et verius est quam cogitatur</i>.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I wish to be understood as considering Christianity in the present +Essay rather in its relation to the intellect, as constituting the +higher philosophy, than in its far more important bearing upon the +hearts and destinies of us all. I shall propose the question in this +form, “Is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">[Pg 461]</a></span> there ground for believing that the existence of moral evil +is absolutely necessary to the fulfilment of God’s essential love for +Christ?” (<i>i.e.</i> of the Father for Christ, or of ὁ πατήρ for +ὁ λόγος).</p> + +<p>“Can man by searching find out God?” I believe not. I believe that the +unassisted efforts of man’s reason have not established the existence +and attributes of Deity on so sure a basis as the Deist imagines. +However sublime may be the notion of a supreme original mind, and +however naturally human feelings adhered to it, the reasons by which +it was justified were not, in my opinion, sufficient to clear it from +considerable doubt and confusion.... I hesitate not to say that I +derive from Revelation a conviction of Theism, which, without that +assistance, would have been but a dark and ambiguous hope. <i>I see that +the Bible fits into every fold of the human heart. I am a man and I +believe it to be God’s book because it is man’s book.</i> It is true that +the Bible affords me no additional means of demonstrating the falsity +of Atheism; <i>if mind had nothing to do with the formation of the +Universe, doubtless whatever had was competent also to make the +Bible</i>; but I have gained this advantage, that my feelings and +thoughts can no longer refuse their assent to <i>what is evidently +framed to engage that assent; and what is it to me that I cannot +disprove the bare logical possibility of my whole nature being +fallacious? To seek for a certainty above certainty, an evidence +beyond necessary belief, is the very lunacy of scepticism</i>: we must +trust our own faculties, or we can put no trust in anything, save that +moment we call the present, which escapes us while we articulate its +name. <i>I am determined therefore to receive the Bible as Divinely +authorized, and the scheme of human and Divine things which it +contains, as essentially true.</i></p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>In the Supreme Nature those two capacities of Perfect Love and Perfect +Joy are indivisible. Holiness and Happiness, says an old divine, are +two several notions of one thing. Equally inseparable are the notions +of Opposition to Love and Opposition to Bliss. <i>Unless, therefore, the +heart of a created being is at one with the heart of God, it cannot +but be miserable.</i> Moreover, there is no possibility of continuing for +ever partly with God and partly against Him: we must either be capable +by our nature of entire accordance with His will, or we must be +incapable of anything but misery, further than He may for a while “not +impute our trespasses to us,” that is, He may interpose some temporary +barrier between sin and its attendant pain. <i>For in the Eternal Idea +of God a created spirit is perhaps not seen, as a series of successive +states</i>, of which some that are evil might be compensated by others +that are good, <i>but as one indivisible object of these almost +divisible modes</i>, and that either in accordance with His own nature, +or in opposition to it....</p> + +<p>Before the Gospel was preached to man, how could a human soul have +this love, and this consequent life? I see no way; but now that Christ +has excited our love for Him by showing unutterable love for us; now +that we know Him as an Elder Brother, a being of like thoughts,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">[Pg 462]</a></span> +feelings, sensations, sufferings, with ourselves, it has become +possible to love as God loves, that is, to love Christ, and thus to +become united in heart to God. Besides, Christ is the express image of +God’s person: in loving Him we are sure we are in a state of readiness +to love the Father, whom we see, He tells us, when we see Him. Nor is +this all: the tendency of love is towards a union so intimate as +virtually to amount to identification; when then by affection towards +Christ we have become blended with His being, the beams of eternal +love, falling, as ever, on the one beloved object, will include us in +Him, and their returning flashes of love out of His personality will +carry along with them some from our own, since ours has become +confused with His, and so shall we be one with Christ, and through +Christ with God. Thus, then, we see the great effect of the +Incarnation, as far as our nature is concerned, <i>was to render human +love for the Most High a possible thing</i>. The law had said, “Thou +shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, +and with all thy strength”; and could men have lived by law, “which is +the strength of sin,” verily righteousness and life would have been by +that law. But it was not possible, and all were concluded under sin, +that in Christ might be the deliverance of all. I believe that +Redemption (<i>i.e.</i>, what Christ has done and suffered for mankind) is +universal, in so far as it left no obstacle between man and God, but +man’s own will; that indeed is in the power of God’s election, with +whom alone rest the abysmal secrets of personality; but as far as +Christ is concerned, His death was for all, since His intentions and +affections were equally directed to all, and “none who come to Him +will He in any wise cast out.”</p> + +<p>I deprecate any hasty rejection of these thoughts as novelties. +Christianity is indeed, as St. Augustine says, “pulchritudo tam +antiqua”; but he adds, “tam nova,” for it is capable of presenting to +every mind a new face of truth. The great doctrine which in my +judgment these observations tend to strengthen and illumine, <i>the +doctrine of personal love for a personal God</i>, is assuredly no +novelty, but has in all times been the vital principle of the Church. +Many are the forms of anti-christian heresy, which for a season have +depressed and obscured that principle of life, but its nature is +conflictive and resurgent; and neither the Papal Hierarchy with its +pomp of systematized errors, nor the worst apostasy of latitudinarian +Protestantism, have ever so far prevailed, but that many from age to +age have proclaimed and vindicated the eternal gospel of love, +believing, as I also firmly believe, that any opinion which tends to +keep out of sight the living and loving God, whether it substitute for +Him an idol, an occult agency, or a formal creed, can be nothing +better than a vain and portentous shadow projected from the selfish +darkness of unregenerate man.</p></div> + +<p>The following is from the Review of Tennyson’s Poems; we do not know that +during the lapse of years anything better has been said:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">[Pg 463]</a></span>Undoubtedly the true poet addresses himself, in all his conceptions, +to the common nature of us all. Art is a lofty tree, and may shoot up +far beyond our grasp, but its roots are in daily life and experience. +Every bosom contains the elements of those complex emotions which the +artist feels, and every head can, to a certain extent, go over in +itself the process of their combination, so as to understand his +expressions and sympathize with his state. <i>But this requires +exertion</i>; more or less, indeed, according to the difference of +occasion, but always some degree of exertion. For since the emotions +of the poet during composition follow a regular law of association, it +follows that to accompany their progress up to the harmonious prospect +of the whole, and to perceive the proper dependence of every step on +that which preceded, it is absolutely necessary <i>to start from the +same point</i>, <i>i.e.</i>, clearly to apprehend that leading sentiment of +the poet’s mind, by their conformity to which the host of suggestions +are arranged. <i>Now this requisite exertion is not willingly made by +the large majority of readers. It is so easy to judge capriciously, +and according to indolent impulse!</i></p> + +<p>Those different powers of poetic disposition, the energies of +Sensitive, of Reflective, or Passionate emotion, which in former times +were intermingled, and derived from mutual support an extensive empire +over the feelings of men, were now restrained within separate spheres +of agency. The whole system no longer worked harmoniously, and by +intrinsic harmony acquired external freedom; but there arose a violent +and unusual action in the several component functions, each for +itself, all striving to reproduce the regular power which the whole +had once enjoyed. <i>Hence the melancholy which so evidently +characterizes the spirit of modern poetry</i>; hence that return of the +mind upon itself, and the habit of seeking relief in idiosyncrasies +rather than community of interest. <i>In the old times the poetic +impulse went along with the general impulse of the nation.</i></p> + +<p>One of the faithful Islâm, a poet in the truest and highest sense, we +are anxious to present to our readers.... He sees all the forms of +Nature with the <i>eruditus oculus</i>, and his ear has a fairy fineness. +There is <i>a strange earnestness in his worship of beauty</i>, which +throws a charm over his impassioned song more easily felt than +described, and not to be escaped by those who have once felt it. We +think that he has <i>more definiteness and roundness of general +conception</i> than the late Mr. Keats, and is much more free from +blemishes of diction and hasty capriccios of fancy.... The author +imitates nobody; <i>we recognize the spirit of his age, but not the +individual form of this or that writer</i>. His thoughts bear no more +resemblance to Byron or Scott, Shelley or Coleridge, than to Homer or +Calderon, Ferdusi or Calidasa. We have remarked five distinctive +excellences of his own manner. First, his luxuriance of imagination, +and at the same time his control over it. Secondly, his power of +embodying himself in ideal characters, or rather modes of character, +with such extreme accuracy of adjustment, that the circumstances of +the narration seem to have a natural correspondence with the +predominant feeling, and, as it were, to be evolved from it by +assimilative force. Thirdly, his vivid, picturesque delineation of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">[Pg 464]</a></span> +objects, and the peculiar skill with which he holds all of them +<i>fused</i>, to borrow a metaphor from science, in a medium of strong +emotion. Fourthly, the variety of his lyrical measures, and exquisite +modulation of harmonious words and cadences to the swell and fall of +the feelings expressed. Fifthly, the elevated habits of thought, +implied in these compositions, and imparting a mellow soberness of +tone, more impressive, to our minds, than if the author had drawn up a +set of opinions in verse, and sought to instruct the understanding, +<i>rather than to communicate the love of beauty to the heart</i>.</p></div> + +<p>What follows is justly thought and well said:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>And is it not a noble thing that the English tongue is, as it were, +the common focus and point of union to which opposite beauties +converge? Is it a trifle that we temper energy with softness, strength +with flexibility, capaciousness of sound with pliancy of idiom? Some, +I know, insensible to these virtues, and ambitious of I know not what +unattainable decomposition, prefer to utter funereal praises over the +grave of departed Anglo-Saxon, or, starting with convulsive shudder, +are ready to leap from surrounding Latinisms into the kindred, +sympathetic arms of modern German. For myself, I neither share their +regret, nor their terror. Willing at all times to pay filial homage to +the shades of Hengist and Horsa, and to admit they have laid the base +of our compound language; or, if you will, have prepared the soil from +which the chief nutriment of the goodly tree, our British oak, must be +derived, I am yet proud to confess that I look with sentiments more +exulting and more reverential to the bonds by which the law of the +universe has fastened me to my distant brethren of the same Caucasian +race; to the privileges which I, an inhabitant of the gloomy North, +share in common with climates imparadized in perpetual summer, to the +universality and efficacy resulting from blended intelligence, which, +while it endears in our eyes the land of our fathers as a seat of +peculiar blessing, tends to elevate and expand our thoughts into +communion with humanity at large; and, in the “sublimer spirit” of the +Poet, to make us feel</p> + +<p class="poem">That God is everywhere—the God who framed<br /> +Mankind to be one mighty family,<br /> +Himself our Father, and the world our home.</p></div> + +<p>What nice shading of thought do his remarks on Petrarch discover!</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>But it is not so much to his direct adoptions that I refer, <i>as to the +general modulation of thought, that clear softness of his images, that +energetic self-possession of his conceptions, and that melodious +repose in which are held together all the emotions he delineates</i>.</p></div> + +<p>Every one who knows anything of himself, and of his fellow-men, will +acknowledge the wisdom of what follows. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">[Pg 465]</a></span> displays an intimate knowledge +both of the constitution and history of man, and there is much in it +suited to our present need:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>I do not hesitate to express my conviction, that the spirit of the +critical philosophy, as seen by its fruits in all the ramifications of +art, literature, and morality, is as much more dangerous than the +spirit of mechanical philosophy</i>, as it is fairer in appearance, and +more capable of alliance with our natural feelings of enthusiasm and +delight. Its dangerous tendency is this, that it perverts those very +minds, whose office it was to resist the perverse impulses of society, +and to proclaim truth under the dominion of falsehood. However +precipitate may be at any time the current of public opinion, bearing +along the mass of men to the grosser agitations of life, and to such +schemes of belief as make these the prominent objects, <i>there will +always be in reserve a force of antagonistic opinion, strengthened by +opposition, and attesting the sanctity of those higher principles +which are despised or forgotten by the majority</i>. These men <i>are +secured by natural temperament</i> and peculiar circumstances from +participating in the common delusion: but if some other and deeper +fallacy be invented; if some more subtle beast of the field should +speak to them in wicked flattery; if a digest of intellectual +aphorisms can be substituted in their minds for a code of living +truths, and the lovely semblances of beauty, truth, affection, can be +made first to obscure the presence, and then to conceal the loss, of +that religious humility, without which, as their central life, all +these are but dreadful shadows; if so fatal a stratagem can be +successfully practised; I see not what hope remains for a people +against whom the gates of hell have so prevailed.</p> + +<p>But the number of pure artists is small: few souls are so finely +tempered as to preserve the delicacy of meditative feeling, untainted +by the allurements of accidental suggestion. The voice of the critical +conscience is still and small, like that of the moral: it cannot +entirely be stifled where it has been heard, but it may be disobeyed. +Temptations are never wanting: some immediate and temporary effect can +be produced at less expense of inward exertion than the high and more +ideal effect which art demands: it is much easier to pander to the +ordinary and often recurring wish for excitement, than to promote the +rare and difficult intuition of beauty. <i>To raise the many to his own +real point of view, the artist must employ his energies, and create +energy in others: to descend to their position is less noble, but +practicable with ease.</i> If I may be allowed the metaphor, one partakes +of the nature of redemptive power; the other of that self-abased and +degenerate will, which “flung from his splendours” the fairest star in +heaven.</p> + +<p><i>Revelation is a voluntary approximation of the Infinite Being to the +ways and thoughts of finite humanity.</i> But until this step has been +taken by Almighty Grace, how should man have a warrant for loving with +all his heart and mind and strength?... Without the gospel, nature +exhibits a want of harmony between our intrinsic constitution and the +system in which it is placed. But Christianity has made up<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">[Pg 466]</a></span> the +difference. It is possible and natural to love the Father, who has +made us His children by the spirit of adoption: it is possible and +natural to love the Elder Brother, who was, in all things, like as we +are, except sin, and can succour those in temptation, having been +himself tempted. <i>Thus the Christian faith is the necessary complement +of a sound ethical system.</i></p></div> + +<p>There is something to us very striking in the words “Revelation is a +<i>voluntary</i> approximation of the Infinite Being.” This states the case +with an accuracy and a distinctness not at all common among either the +opponents or the apologists of <i>revealed religion</i> in the ordinary sense +of the expression. In one sense God is for ever revealing Himself. His +heavens are for ever telling His glory, and the firmament showing His +handiwork; day unto day is uttering speech, and night unto night is +showing knowledge concerning Him. But in the word of the truth of the +gospel, God draws near to His creatures; He bows His heavens, and comes +down:</p> + +<p class="poem">That glorious form, that light unsufferable,<br /> +And that far-beaming blaze of majesty,</p> + +<p>he lays aside. The Word dwelt with men. “Come then, let <i>us</i> reason +together”;—“Waiting to be gracious”;—“Behold, I stand at the door, and +knock; if any man open to Me, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and +he with Me.” It is the father seeing his son while yet a great way off, +and having compassion, and running to him and falling on his neck and +kissing him; for “it was meet for us to rejoice, for this my son was dead +and is alive again, he was lost and is found.” Let no man confound the +voice of God in His Works with the voice of God in His Word; they are +utterances of the same infinite heart and will; they are in absolute +harmony; together they make up “that undisturbèd song of pure concent”; +one “perfect diapason”; but they are distinct; they are meant to be so. A +poor traveller, “weary and waysore,” is stumbling in unknown places +through the darkness of a night of fear, with no light near him, the +everlasting stars twinkling far off in their depths, and yet unrisen sun, +or the waning moon, sending up their pale beams into the upper heavens, +but all this is distant and bewildering for his feet, doubtless better +much than outer darkness, beautiful and full of God, if he could have the +heart to look up, and the eyes to make use of its vague light; but he is +miserable, and afraid, his next step is what he is thinking<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">[Pg 467]</a></span> of; a lamp +secured against all winds of doctrine is put into his hands, it may in +some respects widen the circle of darkness, but it will cheer his feet, it +will tell them what to do next. What a silly fool he would be to throw +away that lantern, or draw down the shutters, and make it dark to him, +while it sits “i’ the centre and enjoys bright day,” and all upon the +philosophical ground that its light was of the same kind as the stars’, +and that it was beneath the dignity of human nature to do anything but +struggle on and be lost in the attempt to get through the wilderness and +the night by the guidance of those “natural” lights, which, though they +are from heaven, have so often led the wanderer astray. The dignity of +human nature indeed! Let him keep his lantern till the glad sun is up, +with healing under his wings. Let him take good heed to the “sure” λόγον +while in this αὐχμηρῷ τοπῷ—this dark, damp, unwholesome +place, “till the day dawn and φωσφόρος—the day-star—arise.” +Nature and the Bible, the Works and the Word of God, are two distinct +things. In the mind of their Supreme Author they dwell in perfect peace, +in that unspeakable unity which is of His essence; and to us His children, +every day their harmony, their mutual relations, are discovering +themselves; but let us beware of saying all nature is a revelation as the +Bible is, and all the Bible is natural as nature is: there is a perilous +juggle here.</p> + +<p>The following passage develops Arthur Hallam’s views on religious feeling; +this was the master idea of his mind, and it would not be easy to overrate +its importance.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“My son, give me thine heart”;—“Thou shalt <i>love</i> the Lord thy +God”;—“The fool hath said in his <i>heart</i>, There is no God.”</p></div> + +<p>He expresses the same general idea in these words, remarkable in +themselves, still more so as being the thought of one so young.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The work of intellect is posterior to the work of feeling. <i>The latter +lies at the foundation of the man</i>; it is his proper self—the +peculiar thing that characterizes him as an individual. No two men are +alike in feeling; but conceptions of the understanding, when distinct +are precisely similar in all—the ascertained relations of truths are +the common property of the race.</p></div> + +<p>Tennyson, we have no doubt, had this thought of his friend in his mind, in +the following lines; it is an answer to the question, Can man by searching +find out God?—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">[Pg 468]</a></span> +I found Him not in world or sun,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Or eagle’s wing, or insect’s eye;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Nor thro’ the questions men may try,</span><br /> +The petty cobwebs we have spun:<br /> +<br /> +If e’er when faith had fallen asleep,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I heard a voice “believe no more,”</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And heard an ever-breaking shore</span><br /> +That tumbled in the godless deep;<br /> +<br /> +<i>A warmth within the breast would melt</i><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The freezing reason’s colder part,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>And like a man in wrath, the heart</i></span><br /> +<i>Stood up and answered, “I have felt.”</i><br /> +<br /> +No, like a child in doubt and fear:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">But that blind clamour made me wise;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Then was I as a child that cries,</span><br /> +But, crying, knows his father near;<br /> +<br /> +And what I seem beheld again<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">What is, and no man understands:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And out of darkness came the hands</span><br /> +That reach thro’ nature, moulding men.</p> + +<p>This is a subject of the deepest personal as well as speculative interest. +In the works of Augustine, of Baxter, Howe, and Jonathan Edwards, and of +Alexander Knox, our readers will find how large a place the religious +affections held in their view of Divine truth as well as of human duty. +The last-mentioned writer expresses himself thus:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Our sentimental faculties are far stronger than our cogitative; and +the best impressions on the latter will be but the moonshine of the +mind, if they are alone. Feeling will be best excited by sympathy; +rather, it cannot be excited in any other way. Heart must act upon +heart—the idea of a living person being essential to all intercourse +of heart. You cannot by any possibility <i>cordialize</i> with a mere <i>ens +rationis</i>. “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,” otherwise we +could not have “beheld His glory,” much less “received of His +fulness.”<a name='fna_114' id='fna_114' href='#f_114'><small>[114]</small></a></p></div> + +<p>Our young author thus goes on:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>This opens upon us an ampler view in which the subject deserves to be +considered, and a relation still more direct and close between the +Christian religion and the passion of love. What is the distinguishing +character of Hebrew literature, which separates it by so broad a line +of demarcation from that of every ancient people? Undoubtedly the +sentiment of <i>erotic devotion</i> which pervades it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">[Pg 469]</a></span> Their poets never +represent the Deity as an impassive principle, a mere organizing +intellect, removed at infinite distance from human hopes and fears. He +is for them a being of like passions with themselves, <i>requiring heart +for heart, and capable of inspiring affection, because capable of +feeling and returning it</i>. Awful indeed are the thunders of His +utterance and the clouds that surround His dwelling-place; very +terrible is the vengeance He executes on the nations that forget Him: +but to His chosen people, and especially to the men “after His own +heart,” whom He anoints from the midst of them, His “still, small +voice” speaks in sympathy and loving-kindness. Every Hebrew, while his +breast glowed with patriotic enthusiasm at those promises, which he +shared as one of the favoured race, had a yet deeper source of +emotion, from which gushed perpetually the aspirations of prayer and +thanksgiving. He might consider himself alone in the presence of his +God; the single being to whom a great revelation had been made, and +over whose head an “exceeding weight of glory” was suspended. For him +the rocks of Horeb had trembled, and the waters of the Red Sea were +parted in their course. The word given on Sinai with such solemn pomp +of ministration was given to his own individual soul, and brought him +into immediate communion with his Creator. That awful Being could +never be put away from him. He was about his path, and about his bed, +and knew all his thoughts long before. <i>Yet this tremendous, enclosing +presence was a presence of love. It was a manifold, everlasting +manifestation of one deep feeling—a desire for human affection.</i> Such +a belief, while it enlisted even pride and self-interest on the side +of piety, had a direct tendency to excite the best passions of our +nature. Love is not long asked in vain from generous dispositions. A +Being, never absent, but standing beside the life of each man with +ever-watchful tenderness, and recognized, though invisible, in every +blessing that befel them from youth to age, became naturally the +object of their warmest affections. Their belief in Him could not +exist without producing, as a necessary effect, that profound +impression <i>of passionate individual attachment</i> which in the Hebrew +authors always mingles with and vivifies their faith in the Invisible. +All the books of the Old Testament are breathed upon by this breath of +life. Especially is it to be found in that beautiful collection, +entitled the Psalms of David, which remains, after some thousand +years, perhaps the most perfect form in which the religious sentiment +of man has been embodied.</p> + +<p>But what is true of Judaism is yet more true of Christianity: “<i>matre +pulchrâ filia pulchrior</i>.” In addition to all the characters of Hebrew +Monotheism, <i>there exists in the doctrine of the Cross a peculiar and +inexhaustible treasure for the affectionate feelings</i>. The idea of the +Θεανθρωπος, the God whose goings forth have been from +everlasting, yet visible to men for their redemption as an earthly, +temporal creature, living, acting, and suffering among themselves, +then (which is yet more important) transferring to the unseen place of +His spiritual agency the same humanity He wore on earth, so that the +lapse of generations can in no way affect the conception of His +identity; this is the most<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_470" id="Page_470">[Pg 470]</a></span> powerful thought that ever addressed +itself to a human imagination. It is the που στῶ, which alone +was wanted to move the world. Here was solved at once the great +problem which so long had distressed the teachers of mankind, how to +make <i>virtue the object of passion</i>, and to secure at once the warmest +enthusiasm in the heart with the clearest perception of right and +wrong in the understanding. The character of the blessed Founder of +our faith became an abstract of morality to determine the judgment, +<i>while at the same time it remained personal, and liable to love</i>. The +written word and established church prevented a degeneration into +ungoverned mysticism, but the predominant principle of vital religion +always remained that of self-sacrifice to the Saviour. Not only the +higher divisions of moral duties, but the simple, primary impulses of +benevolence, were subordinated to this new absorbing passion. The +world was loved “in Christ alone.” The brethren were members of His +mystical body. All the other bonds that had fastened down the spirit +of the universe to our narrow round of earth were as nothing in +comparison to this golden chain of suffering and self-sacrifice, which +at once riveted the heart of man to one who, like himself, was +acquainted with grief. <i>Pain is the deepest thing we have</i> in our +nature, and union through pain has always seemed more real and more +holy than any other.<a name='fna_115' id='fna_115' href='#f_115'><small>[115]</small></a></p></div> + +<p>There is a sad pleasure—<i>non ingrata amaritudo</i>—and a sort of meditative +tenderness in contemplating the little life of this “dear youth,” and in +letting the mind rest upon these his earnest thoughts; to watch his keen +and fearless, but childlike spirit, moving itself aright—going straight +onward along “the lines of limitless desires”—throwing himself into the +very deepest of the ways of God, and striking out as a strong swimmer +striketh out his hands to swim; to see him “mewing his mighty youth, and +kindling his undazzled eye at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance”:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471">[Pg 471]</a></span> +Light intellectual, and full of love,<br /> +Love of true beauty, therefore full of joy,<br /> +Joy, every other sweetness far above.</p> + +<p>It is good for every one to look upon such a sight, and as we look, to +love. We should all be the better for it; and should desire to be thankful +for, and to use aright a gift so good and perfect, coming down as it does +from above, from the Father of lights, in whom alone there is no +variableness, neither shadow of turning.</p> + +<p>Thus it is, that to each one of us the death of Arthur Hallam—his +thoughts and affections—his views of God, of our relations to Him, of +duty, of the meaning and worth of this world and the next—where he now +is—have an individual significance. He is bound up in our bundle of life; +we must be the better or the worse of having known what manner of man he +was; and in a sense less peculiar, but not less true, each of us may say:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="poem">——The tender grace of a day that is dead<br /> +Will never come back to me.<br /> +<br /> +——O for the touch of a vanished hand,<br /> +And the sound of a voice that is still!<br /> +<br /> +God gives us love! Something to love<br /> +He lends us; but when love is grown<br /> +To ripeness, that on which it throve<br /> +Falls off, and love is left alone:<br /> +<br /> +This is the curse of time. Alas!<br /> +In grief we are not all unlearned;<br /> +Once, through our own doors Death did pass;<br /> +One went who never hath returned.<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">This star</span><br /> +Rose with us, through a little arc<br /> +Of heaven, nor having wandered far,<br /> +Shot on the sudden into dark.<br /> +<br /> +Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace;<br /> +Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul,<br /> +While the stars burn, the moons increase,<br /> +And the great ages onward roll.<br /> +<br /> +Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet,<br /> +Nothing comes to thee new or strange,<br /> +Sleep, full of rest from head to feet;<br /> +Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.</p> + +<p><i>Vattene in pace, alma beata e bella.</i>—Go in peace, soul beautiful +and blessed.</p> + +<p>“O man greatly beloved, go thou thy way till the end, for thou shalt +rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.”—<span class="smcap">Daniel.</span></p></div> + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472">[Pg 472]</a></span></p> + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473">[Pg 473]</a></span></p> +<p class="title">APPENDICES</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_474" id="Page_474">[Pg 474]</a></span></p> + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_475" id="Page_475">[Pg 475]</a></span></p> +<h2>APPENDIX A</h2> +<p class="center">THE COMMENTS OF TENNYSON ON ONE OF HIS LATER ETHICAL POEMS<a name='fna_116' id='fna_116' href='#f_116'><small>[116]</small></a></p> +<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">Wilfrid Ward</span></p> + + +<p>He had often said he would go through the “De Profundis” with me line by +line, and he did so late in January or early in February 1889, when I was +staying at Farringford. He was still very ill, having had rheumatic fever +in the previous year; and neither he nor his friends expected that he +would recover after his many relapses. He could scarcely move his limbs, +and his fingers were tied with bandages. We moved him from bed to sofa, +but he could not sit up. His mind, however, was quite clear. He read +through the “De Profundis,” and gave the substance of the explanation I +have written down. He began languidly, but soon got deeply interested. +When he reached the prayer at the end, he said: “A B” (naming a well-known +Positivist thinker) “exclaimed, when I read it to him, ‘Do leave that +prayer out; I like all the rest of it.’”</p> + +<p>I proceed to set down the account of the poem written (in substance) +immediately after his explanation of it. The mystery of life as a whole +which so constantly exercised him is here most fully dealt with. He +supposes a child just born, and considers the problems of human existence +as presented by the thought of the child’s birth, and the child’s future +life with all its possibilities. The poem takes the form of two greetings +to the new-born child. In the first greeting life is viewed as we see it +in the world, and as we know it by physical science, as a phenomenon; as +the materialist might view it; not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_476" id="Page_476">[Pg 476]</a></span> indeed coarsely, but as an outcome of +all the physical forces of the universe, which have ever contained in +themselves the potentiality of all that was to come—“all that was to be +in all that was.” These vast and wondrous forces have now issued in this +newly given life—this child born into the world. There is the sense of +mystery in our greeting to it; but it is of the mysteries of the physical +Universe and nothing beyond; the sense of awe fitting to finite man at the +thought of infinite Time, of the countless years before human life was at +all, during which the fixed laws of Nature were ruling and framing the +earth as we know it, of the countless years earlier still, during which, +on the nebular hypothesis, Nature’s laws were working before our planet +was separated off from the mass of the sun’s light, and before the similar +differentiation took place in the rest of the “vast waste dawn of +multitudinous eddying light.” Again, there is awe in contemplating the +vastness of space; in the thoughts which in ascending scale rise from the +new-born infant to the great globe of which he is so small a part, from +that to the whole solar system, from that again to the myriad similar +systems “glimmering up the heights beyond” us which we partly see in the +Milky Way; from that to those others which human sight can never descry. +Forces in Time and Space as nearly infinite as our imagination can +conceive, have been leading up to this one birth, with the short life of a +single man before it. May that life be happy and noble! Viewing it still +as the course determined by Nature’s laws—a course unknown to us and yet +unalterably fixed—we sigh forth the hope that our child may pass +unscathed through youth, may have a full and prosperous time on earth, +blessed by man for good done to man, and may pass peacefully at last to +rest. Such is the first greeting—full of the poetry of life, of its +wondrous causes, of the overwhelming greatness of the Universe of which +this new-given baby is the child, cared for, preserved hitherto unscathed +amid these awful powers, all in all to its parents, inspiring the hope +which new-given joy makes sanguine, that fortune may be kind to it, that +happiness may be as great, sorrow and pain as little, as the chances of +the world allow.</p> + +<p>After his explanation, he read the first greeting to the child:</p> + +<p class="poem">Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_477" id="Page_477">[Pg 477]</a></span>Where all that was to be, in all that was,<br /> +Whirl’d for a million æons through the vast<br /> +Waste dawn of multitudinous eddying light—<br /> +Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,<br /> +Thro’ all this changing world of changeless law,<br /> +And every phase of ever-heightening life,<br /> +And nine long months of antenatal gloom,<br /> +With this last moon, this crescent—her dark orb<br /> +Touch’d with earth’s light—thou comest, darling boy;<br /> +Our own; a babe in lineament and limb<br /> +Perfect, and prophet of the perfect man;<br /> +Whose face and form are hers and mine in one,<br /> +Indissolubly married like our love;<br /> +Live and be happy in thyself, and serve<br /> +This mortal race thy kin so well, that men<br /> +May bless thee as we bless thee, O young life,<br /> +Breaking with laughter from the dark; and may<br /> +The fated channel where thy motion lives<br /> +Be prosperously shaped, and sway thy course<br /> +Along the years of haste and random youth<br /> +Unshatter’d; then full-current thro’ full man;<br /> +And last, in kindly curves, with gentlest fall,<br /> +By quiet fields, a slowly-dying power<br /> +To that last deep where we and thou art still.</p> + +<p>And then comes the second greeting. A deeper chord is struck. The +listener, who has, perhaps, felt as if the first greeting contained +all—all the mystery of birth, of life, of death—hears a sound unknown, +unimagined before. A new range of ideas is opened to us. The starry +firmament disappears for the moment. The “deep” of infinite time and space +is forgotten. A fresh sense is awakened, a deeper depth disclosed. We +leave this wondrous world of appearances. We gaze into that other +deep—the world of spirit, the world of realities; we see the new-born +babe coming to us from that <i>true</i> world, with all the “abysmal depths of +personality,” no longer a mere link in the chain of causes, with a fated +course through the events of life, but a moral being, with the awful power +of making or marring its own destiny and that of others. The proportions +are abruptly reversed. The child is no longer the minute outcome of +natural forces so much greater than itself. It is the “spirit,” the moral +being, a reality which impinges on the world of appearances. Never can I +forget the change of voice, the change of manner, as Lord Tennyson passed +from the first greeting, with its purely human thoughts, to the second, so +full of awe at the conception of the world behind the veil and the moral +nature of man; an awe which seemed to culminate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_478" id="Page_478">[Pg 478]</a></span> when he paused before the +word “Spirit” in the seventh line and then gave it in deeper and more +piercing tones: “Out of the deep—<i>Spirit</i>,—out of the deep.” This second +greeting is in two parts:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 8em;">I</span><br /> +Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,<br /> +From that great deep, before our world begins,<br /> +Whereon the Spirit of God moves as He will—<br /> +Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,<br /> +From that true world within the world we see,<br /> +Whereof our world is but the bounding shore—<br /> +Out of the deep, Spirit, out of the deep,<br /> +With this ninth moon, that sends the hidden sun,<br /> +Down yon dark sea, thou comest, darling boy.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">II</span><br /> +For in the world, which is not ours, they said,<br /> +“Let us make man,” and that which should be man,<br /> +From that one light no man can look upon,<br /> +Drew to this shore, lit by the suns and moons<br /> +And all the shadows. O dear Spirit, half-lost<br /> +In thine own shadow and this fleshly sign<br /> +That thou art thou—who wailest being born<br /> +And banish’d into mystery, and the pain<br /> +Of this divisible-indivisible world<br /> +Among the numerable-innumerable<br /> +Sun, sun, and sun, thro’ finite-infinite space,<br /> +In finite-infinite Time—our mortal veil<br /> +And shatter’d phantom of that infinite One,<br /> +Who made thee unconceivably Thyself<br /> +Out of His whole World-self, and all in all—<br /> +Live thou, and of the grain and husk, the grape<br /> +And ivyberry, choose; and still depart<br /> +From death to death thro’ life and life, and find<br /> +Nearer and ever nearer Him, who wrought<br /> +Not matter, not the finite-infinite,<br /> +But this main-miracle, that thou art thou,<br /> +With power on thine own act and on the world.</p> + +<p>Note that the second greeting considers the reality of the child’s life +and its meaning, the first only its appearance. The great deep of the +spiritual world is “that true world within the world we see, Whereof our +world is but the bounding shore.” And this indication that the second +greeting gives the deeper and truer view, is preserved in some of the side +touches of description. In the first greeting, for example, the moon is +spoken of as “touch’d with earth’s light”; in the second the truer and +less obvious fact is suggested. It “sends<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_479" id="Page_479">[Pg 479]</a></span> the hidden sun down yon dark +sea.” The material view again looks at bright and hopeful appearances in +life, and it notes the new-born babe “breaking with laughter from the +dark.” The spiritual view foresees the woes which, if Byron is right in +calling melancholy the “telescope of truth,” are truer than the joys. It +notes no longer the child’s laughter, but rather its tears, “Thou wailest +being born and banished into mystery.” Life, in the spiritual view, is in +part a veiling and obscuring of the true self as it is, in a world of +appearances. The soul is “half lost” in the body which is part of the +phenomenal world, “in thine own shadow and in this fleshly sign that thou +art thou.” The suns and moons, too, are but shadows, as the body of the +child itself is but a shadow—shadows of the spirit-world and of God +Himself. The physical life is before the child; but not as a fatally +determined course. Choice of the good is to lead the spirit ever nearer +God. The wonders of the material Universe are still recognized: “Sun, sun, +and sun, thro’ finite-infinite space, in finite-infinite Time”; but they +vanish into insignificance when compared to the two great facts of the +spirit-world which consciousness tells us unmistakably—the facts of +personality and of a responsible will. The great mystery is “Not Matter, +nor the finite-infinite,” but “<i>this main-miracle, that thou art thou, +with power on thine own act and on the world</i>.”</p> + +<p>“Out of the deep”—in this conception of the true “deep” of the world +behind the veil we have the thought which recurs so often, as in the +“Passing of Arthur” and in “Crossing the Bar”<a name='fna_117' id='fna_117' href='#f_117'><small>[117]</small></a>—of birth and death as +the coming from and returning to the spirit-world and God Himself. +Birth<a name='fna_118' id='fna_118' href='#f_118'><small>[118]</small></a> is the coming to land from that deep; “of which our world is +but the bounding shore;” death the re-embarking on the same infinite sea, +for the home of truth and light.</p> + +<p>He seemed so much better when he had finished his explanation that I asked +him to read the poem through again. This he did, more beautifully than I +ever heard him read. I felt as though his long illness and his expectation +of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_480" id="Page_480">[Pg 480]</a></span> death gave more intensity and force to his rendering of this wonderful +poem on the mystery of life. He began quietly, and read the concluding +lines of the first “greeting,” the brief description of a peaceful old age +and death, from the human standpoint, with a very tender pathos:</p> + +<p class="poem">And last, in kindly curves, with gentlest fall<br /> +By quiet fields, a slowly-dying power,<br /> +To that last deep where we and thou are still.</p> + +<p>Then he gathered force, and his voice deepened as the greeting to the +immortal soul of the man was read. He raised his eyes from the book at the +seventh line and looked for a moment at his hearer with an indescribable +expression of awe before he uttered the word “spirit”; “Out of the +deep—Spirit,—out of the deep.” When he had finished the second greeting +he was trembling much. Then he read the prayer—a prayer he had told me of +self-prostration before the Infinite. I think he intended it as a contrast +to the analytical and reflective character of the rest. It is an +outpouring of the simplest and most intense self-abandonment to the +Creator, an acknowledgment, when all has been thought and said with such +insight and beauty, that our best thoughts and words are as nothing in the +Great Presence—in a sense parallel to the breaking off in the “Ode to the +Duke of Wellington”:</p> + +<p class="poem">Speak no more of his renown,<br /> +Lay your earthly fancies down.</p> + +<p>He began to chaunt in a loud clear voice:</p> + +<p class="poem">Hallowed be Thy Name—Halleluiah.</p> + +<p>His voice was growing tremulous as he reached the second part:</p> + +<p class="poem">We feel we are nothing—for all is Thou and in Thee;<br /> +We feel we are something—<i>that</i> also has come from Thee.</p> + +<p>And he broke down as he finished the prayer:</p> + +<p class="poem">We know we are nothing—but Thou wilt help us to be.<br /> +Hallowed be Thy Name—Halleluiah!</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_481" id="Page_481">[Pg 481]</a></span></p> +<h2>APPENDIX B</h2> + + +<p>It will be seen below that the lines to which reference is made—</p> + +<p class="poem">That man’s the true cosmopolite<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who loves his native country best,</span></p> + +<p>have been altered to suit my mother’s setting, arranged by Sir Charles +Stanford, to</p> + +<p class="poem">He best will serve the race of men<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who loves his native country best.</span></p> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">HANDS ALL ROUND</p> +<p class="center">A NATIONAL SONG</p> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Melody by EMILY, LADY TENNYSON and arranged by C. VILLIERS STANFORD</span></p> + + +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/music1_tmb.jpg" alt="" /><br /> +<a href="images/music1.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_482" id="Page_482">[Pg 482]</a></span></p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/music2_tmb.jpg" alt="" /><br /> +<a href="images/music2.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_483" id="Page_483">[Pg 483]</a></span></p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/music3_tmb.jpg" alt="" /><br /> +<a href="images/music3.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></div> +<p> </p> + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 1em;">To all the loyal hearts who long</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">To keep our English Empire whole!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To all our noble sons, the strong</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">New England of the Southern Pole!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To England under Indian skies,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">To those dark millions of her realm!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To Canada whom we love and prize,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Whatever statesman hold the helm.</span><br /> +Hands all round! God the traitor’s hope confound!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To the great cause of Freedom drink, my friends,</span><br /> +And the great name of England round and round.<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_484" id="Page_484">[Pg 484]</a></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To all our statesmen so they be</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">True leaders of the land’s desire!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To both our Houses, may they see</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Beyond the borough and the shire!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">We sail’d wherever ship could sail,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">We founded many a mighty state;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pray God our greatness may not fail</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Thro’ craven fears of being great.</span><br /> +Hands all round! God the traitor’s hope confound!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To the great cause of Freedom drink, my friends,</span><br /> +And the great name of England round and round.</td></tr></table> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_485" id="Page_485">[Pg 485]</a></span></p> +<h2>APPENDIX C</h2> +<p class="center">MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS FROM UNKNOWN FRIENDS</p> + + +<p>[During the last twenty-five years of his life my father was probably, +throughout the whole English-speaking race, the Englishman who was most +widely known. Hence the letters addressed to him by strangers competed in +number with those which, it is well known, add a needless weariness to the +heavy task of governing a civilized state. This became a correspondence +mainly of request or of reverence, although the voice of disappointment or +of envy of what is ranked above oneself which lurks in common human nature +may have occasionally been audible. My father’s experience here was that +of Dr. Johnson and, doubtless, of many more men of commanding eminence; +that of writers submitting their work for candid criticism, charging him +with conceit if he suggested publication as unadvisable; if it were +advised, and the book failed, with deception. Probably many of those who +wrote thus soon repented of their eloquence; at any rate nothing of this +nature will be here preserved. But of the ordinary type of strangers’ +letters some specimens may be of interest. And although these few have +been chosen mainly from the letters addressed to my father during his last +fifteen years yet they will give a general impression of the vast quantity +received.</p> + +<p>I place first letters upon poetry submitted (or proposed for submission) +to my father’s judgment.]</p> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1884)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I hope you will forgive the liberty I am taking in writing to you. I +have heard a great deal about you, and I read a part of one of your +poems, “The May Queen.” I have not had an opportunity to read the +whole of it, but I like what I have seen very much.... I have tried<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_486" id="Page_486">[Pg 486]</a></span> +to write some poems myself. I have enclosed one for you to see, which +came into my mind while I was digging a ditch in my garden. I am only +nine years old, and if I keep on trying some day I shall write a grand +poem.</p></div> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1882)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Honoured Sir</span>—It has been said: where a great apology is most needed, +it is best to begin with the business at once.</p> + +<p>I never had the pleasure of seeing you, but it is enough for me to +have had the pleasure of reading your heart in your works, “though +they be but a part of your inward soul.” I am a lad scarcely seventeen +summers old. In some of my leisure hours, particularly morning and +evening ones, I penned a few thousand lines of small poems in fair +metre,—so my simple-minded friend or two pronounce them in their +partiality.... [He deprecates the suspicion that he is applying for +money.] Will you allow me to forward to you through the post a few of +my poems? And when your benevolent soul has given up time to read some +of my verses (“the primrose fancies of a boy”), and should my +productions be considered by you deserving of your good word, half the +difficulty of finding a willing publisher will, I know, be removed.</p></div> + +<p>There is something truly felt and pathetic in the two following letters. +The first is from a young poetess.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I hardly know how I have summoned up sufficient courage to address +you, although I have long wished to do so! Studying that most touching +of poems “Enoch Arden,” I felt somehow convinced that the heart that +had inspired so much which is beautiful and touching, would also +prompt a kind answer to me. Ever since I was a child (not so very long +ago), writing was my only consolation and solace in moments of great +grief or joy; writing—I shall not say <i>poetry</i> but rhyme.</p></div> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1881)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Dear Mr. Tennyson</span>—I have heard and believed that great men are always +the best hearted, and therefore hope you will kindly look at the +enclosed and tell me if there is any hope that I may ever write +anything worthy the name of poetry, and if those lines are anything +but doggerel, I hope you will not think me as presumptuous as I do; +something tells me you will be kind.</p></div> + +<p>Now follow good average specimens.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1890)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Dear and much-admired Lord Tennyson</span>—The writer of this, an humble +admirer of your Poetry,—an uneducated girl from the bogs of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_487" id="Page_487">[Pg 487]</a></span> Ireland, +has the audacity to send you her first effort in verse: whether it is +poetry or not I leave you to decide, as I am entirely incapable of +judging myself, as I am wholly ignorant of the art of versification, +and indeed would never dream of attempting to write verse, only I was +very anxious to succeed in prose writing....</p></div> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1882)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Will you kindly pardon my venturing to ask you to read some of my +verses, and to tell me whether you consider me capable of ever writing +poetry fit to be read? I have never had any desire to become a poet, +but lately ideas have come into my head, once I seemed to see a line +or two before my eyes, and in order to free myself from these fancies +I wrote.</p></div> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1884)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>—I remember your figure and attire at Shiplake Vicarage in +Mrs. Franklyn Rawnsley’s house, 1852, thirty-two years ago. Does your +memory travel back to a fine December morning when, the house full of +guests for the christening of the latest blossom of the Rawnsley +house, there drove up through the flooded meadows surrounding the low +old vicarage, a cab with a young foreigner, a child of sixteen +summers, all tremulous how she should be received, not speaking a word +of English but her native German tongue, besides French, introduced by +Miss Amélie Bodte, the authoress in Dresden, to teach music to Mrs. +Rawnsley’s children? What a woeful feeling for the well-known +counsellor’s daughter to be treated in a cool way as the engaged +teacher of little children. However, there was an oasis in the desert. +On the following morning Mrs. Rawnsley proposed to the assembled +guests to take a walk in a neighbouring Squire’s park while she looked +after some home duties, and a tall young gentleman with an enormous +Tyrolese hat offered to walk with a solitary stranger. He spoke a +little German and tried to divert the gloom of the young girl by +crossing the lawn and breaking a belated rose she admired coming from +snow-bound Saxony. They stopped at a turtle-dove house where he made +the prettiest little German pun she never forgot hereafter, “Ich bin +eine kleine Taube” (I am a little dove (deaf)?). And it began to rain, +and he—it was you—took off the Spanish cloak gathered with narrow +stitches on the throat, a black velvet collar falling over it, and +wrapped it round the girl’s shoulders. The ladies of the company +frowned, returning home, all told as with one voice to Mrs. Rawnsley +what had happened during the walk, and she laughed and said to me in +French, “My dear, you had all the honours as a German because you did +not try for them, this is the Poet Laureate, and it displeases him +that the ladies torment him for attentions.” And now do you remember, +of course you know this girl was I. And the next day you read the “Ode +to the Queen,” of which I did not understand a word, and you went away +to the sea to meet your wife<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_488" id="Page_488">[Pg 488]</a></span> and baby son, and I never saw you again. +Now after thirty-two years undergoing purification in the crucible of +humble life, I come to ask you to accept kindly the dedication of one +of my compositions—a song. Your name is as illustrious here as in +England, and my poor song will find more eager listeners with your +name attached as a patron than otherwise.... “A turtle dove” could but +bring an olive branch to a lone woman and gladden the heart of your +Lordship’s most respectful admirer,</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Maria</span> * * *</span></p></div> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1890)</p> + +<p>Now a Transatlantic poetess:</p> + +<p>(After excuse asked for “presumption” she says:)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I have to thank you for some of the best thoughts and the purest +pleasure I have ever derived from anything.</p> + +<p>I am an American girl nineteen years of age, and was named from the +hero of “Aylmer’s Field.”</p> + +<p>I enclose some verses I have written. I would like exceedingly to hear +your opinion of them and to know if they contain anything of promise.</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Leoline</span> * * *</span></p></div> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1877)</p> + +<p>From America also we have one who modestly describes himself as “a mere +Collegian, a youth to fortune and to fame unknown....”</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I have during the past summer been engaged, to my great entertainment +and instruction, in the perusal of your poetical works, reading many +for the first time though of course familiar with a large number; +having finished them, I could not refrain from expressing my +admiration of your great genius in a few lines which I send herewith.</p> + +<p class="poem">O Tennyson, how great a soul is thine!<br /> +Thy range of thought how varied<br /> +and how vast...</p></div> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1862)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Will you accept the enclosed lines as a slight testimonial of the high +admiration entertained for your exquisite genius, by a rhyming +daughter of Columbia; whose poetic wings just fledging from a first +unpublished vol. (commended by Wm. Cullen Bryant and Geo. Bancroft, +Esqrs.) permit only a feeble fluttering around the base of that +“Parnassus,” whose summit you have so brilliantly, and justly +attained. * * *</p></div> + +<p> <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_489" id="Page_489">[Pg 489]</a></span></p> +<p class="center">(187-)</p> + +<p>Then an “Agent for Stars” offers my father £20,000 if said Agent is +permitted to arrange a tour for him in the United States.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1884)</p> + +<p>The following is another—we will not say, a less acceptable offering:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I send you by my good friend —— a dozen small parcels of smoking +tobacco....</p> + +<p>We think it the best smoking tobacco in the world and I trust that you +may find reason to agree with us. If it shall give you one moment’s +pleasure in return for the countless hours of delight that you have +given me, I shall count myself a happy mortal.</p></div> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1890)</p> + +<p>A gift certainly not less acceptable comes from a little girl:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">My Lord</span>—<i>Please</i> let these flowers be in your room, and <i>do</i> wear the +little bunch.—I remain, your true admirer, * * *</p></div> + +<p>Now follows the <i>Grande Armée</i> of natural, amiable, but remorseless +autograph hunters. A miscellaneous group comes first.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1890)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Honoured Lord</span>—May I (an Australian maiden born 1870) hope to be +pardoned for taking the liberty of writing to you—so distinguished a +gentleman—to express my great admiration for your poems? It is my +admiration that has emboldened me to venture so far ... etc. etc.</p> + +<p>Let me conclude with one request: namely to ask you to do me the very +great honour to acknowledge this letter; so that I may be able to +boast of, and dearly treasure, even a line from the Great Poet.</p></div> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1890)</p> + +<p>An obvious fisher for good things follows:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>—I hope that you will kindly excuse the liberty I take in +requesting you to be so good as to inform me how the word “humble” +should be pronounced: <i>i.e.</i> whether or not it is proper to aspirate +the “h”?</p> + +<p>A reply at your kind convenience will inexpressibly oblige....</p></div> + +<p> <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_490" id="Page_490">[Pg 490]</a></span></p> +<p class="center">(1890)</p> + +<p>Another ingenuously finds it needful to ask whether the word be pronounced +<i>I</i>dylls or <i>E</i>dylls.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1891)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>—A simple child (who writes from Holland), would feel +extremely happy, would be in the seventh heaven, when she would be +favoured with a mere line of the greatest poet of renown, Alfred +Tennyson. Allow her, to offer you before, her sincere thanks for your +autograph, with which she would feel the happiest child in the world.</p> + +<p>With kind regards, most honourable lord, yours respectfully.</p></div> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1882)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>A (German) collector of autographs, who has an autograph of Mr. Kinkel +and Victor Hugo, the greatest living poets of Germany and France, only +misses in his collection the autograph of the greatest living English +poet. Therefore he requests you to give him an autograph of yours. May +it only be your signature, it will find in my album a place of honour.</p></div> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1882)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>To the prince of poets.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Monsieur</span>—Forgive me, I beseech you, the liberty I take in daring to +write to you; but I wish to beg the greatest of favours.</p> + +<p>This favour, Monsieur, it is your signature.</p> + +<p>I am only a young Belgian girl, and I have no reason to proffer why +you should thus distinguish me; but I feel you must love all girls, or +you could not have written “Isabel” or “Lilian”; and you must be kind +and good, or you would not have given them to the world.</p> + +<p>So, Monsieur, I humbly beg you send me the name we all venerate, +traced by the hand that has guided the world with so much beauty, and +make one more heart supremely happy.—One who loves you,</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">* * *</span></p></div> + +<p>Three petitions, which touched my father, may here have place.</p> + +<p>The first (1884) consists of some twenty letters, in very creditable +English and excellent hand-writing, each saying some handsome thing about +the “May Queen,” which they had learned, and now criticized with amusing +<i>naïveté</i>, and asking for a line from Tennyson—signed with the children’s +names, and dated from a German High School for girls:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_491" id="Page_491">[Pg 491]</a></span> “who,” says their +Mistress, “in the joy of their hearts tried to express their feeling of +admiration in their imperfect knowledge of the English language.”</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + +<p>In the next a young girl from India, training in England with comrades +apparently for Zenana work, thanks “Our dear aziz Sahib” for a copy of the +Poems, and then proceeds, in neat round hand:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Oh how we wish we could see you even for one minute The Great and good +Poet Laureate, whom everybody loves so much and we love you too dear +sweet Sahib, we are going to learn that pretty Poetry “The May Queen” +and several others out of that lovely Book. Will you please, dear +Sahib, write out “The May Queen” and “The Dedication of the Idyols of +the King,” with your own hand, we will keep it till the last day of +our lives.</p></div> + +<p>They then explain why the “Dedication” is asked for; “because we know how +dearly Prince Albert loved you, and, also our beloved Queen Empress, and +how you love them”: also how they long to go back “to our dear India,” and +sing hymns, and nurse and dose “our own countrywomen in the Zenanas.”</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Now good-bye our aziz (beloved) Sahib I am sending you some wild +daisies and moss as you are so fond of flowers and everything +beautiful in God’s world. May God give you a sweet smile every day, +prays your little loving, Indian Friend,,</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">* * *</span></p></div> + +<p>This last explains itself:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Dear Mr. Tennyson</span>—I am one of a large struggling family of girls and +boys who have never yet been able to afford to give 9s. for that +much-coveted green volume Tennyson’s “Poems,” so at last, the boys +having failed to obtain it as a prize, and the girls as a birthday +present, I, the boldest of the party, venture to ask if you would +kindly bestow a copy on a nest full of young admirers.,</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">* * *</span></p></div> + +<p>He wrote his little Indian maid a pretty letter, and sent his poems to the +“best girl.” And in many an instance, (requests for aid included) the +correspondence bears witness to my father’s open-hearted kindliness and +liberality. His <i>beggars</i>, at any rate, were often <i>choosers</i>.</p> + +<p>The wish for an autograph, we may again reasonably suppose, was not absent +from the minds of the following (and other analogous) writers. The first +dates from Scotland:</p> + +<p> <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_492" id="Page_492">[Pg 492]</a></span></p> +<p class="center">(1878)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I take the great liberty in writing to you, in order to settle a +dispute that has arisen amongst several parties, regarding the song +written by Sir Walter Scott, <i>Jock O’ Hazeldean</i>. The words are as +follows,</p> + +<p class="poem">And ye shall be his bride Lady;<br /> +So comely to be seen.</p> + +<p>Does comely apply to the bride, or the bridegroom? As your opinion +will be considered satisfactory to all, your reply will be considered +a lasting favour.,</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">* * *</span></p></div> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1883)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>I am an enthusiastic reader and admirer of your works, and have read +those which I like especially, over and over again, in particular +“Maud,” which I consider to be surpassingly fresh and beautiful—there +is a sort of fascination about the poem to me ... but I really cannot +understand the meaning of the end of it.</p> + +<p>I should very much like to know whether it is intended to mean that +Maud’s brother, “that curl’d Assyrian bull,” is slain by her lover: +whether Maud is supposed to die of a broken heart, or does her lover +come back, long after, presumably from the Russian war and marry her?</p></div> + +<p>The remaining examples, in which respect is curiously blended with +familiarity, are dated from the United States.</p> + +<p>A lively boy of thirteen (1884) who loves “Nature and Poetry” shall here +have precedence:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>In the first place I wish to ask your pardon for bothering you with +this letter, but I want to make a collection, or I mean get the +autographs of 5 or 6 distinguished poets; and so I thought I would +write and get yours if possible and then the minor ones may follow.</p> + +<p>I have read most of your poems, and like them <i>very much</i> indeed, etc. +etc.</p> + +<p>(A biographical sketch follows, including a visit to England.) When we +drove back from Stoke Pogis to Windsor we saw the deer in the Queen’s +hunting grounds, and the tall, mighty oaks on each side of the road +seemed to say, “This is an Earthly Paradise.”...</p> + +<p>If you would write a verse or two from some one of your poems and +write your name under it, I should be <i>very much</i> obliged to you +indeed.</p></div> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1885)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Forgive the intrusion of a stranger (says a lady). Long have I desired +to have some one of the noble thoughts, I have so learned to love, in +your own handwriting. I have felt a delicacy in asking this,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_493" id="Page_493">[Pg 493]</a></span> but the +wish is so earnest with me that I will venture this first and last +request.... I crave some tangible proof that my “hero-worship” has +some sympathetic, human foundation. Could I choose a couplet?... They +spring to my memory in legions. The wild melody of “Blow, bugle, +blow,” etc. etc. ... They have helped to make my life beautiful, +earnest and true, and I am grateful for it all. If I might be once +more your debtor it would be a real joy to me, but if it <i>feels</i> like +a burden, do not give it another thought.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +</div> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1891)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>... In behalf of <i>Charity Circle</i>, a non-sectarian organization of the +order of King’s Daughters, we are making a collection of autographs of +prominent men and women to be used in a souvenir banner: which when +finished will be sold and the proceeds devoted to charity work. We +feel as if the banner will not be complete without Lord Tennyson’s +autograph.</p></div> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1891)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Beloved Sir</span>—I feel awkward and abashed, as I thus come before you, +who are so great, so honored, so crowned with earthly fame and glory; +and, so worthy to be thus crowned, and known to fame: but, I know, +that in the midst of all these honors, which might spoil one, of the +common sort of souls; you are a poet, <i>born</i>, <i>not</i> made; and +therefore, you have the essential gift of the poet [sympathy] and can +feel for the imprisoned soul, beating against the stifling walls of +silence: and longing, fainting, to come forth into the glad sunshine, +the sweet, fresh air of <i>utterance</i>, so strangely withheld from it.... +From [youth] till now, Beloved Sir, you have been my friend, my +soother; the dear angel, whose kindly office it has been, ever and +anon, to speak <i>for</i> me ... and thus to give me the <i>sweet sense</i> of +having been led forth from prison for a while into the blessed light +and freedom of utterance.</p> + +<p>I will never forget the relief afforded by those lines:</p> + +<p class="poem">My very heart faints and my soul grieves<br /> +Etc. etc.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +</div> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1891)</p> + +<p>A lady writes to the honored Poet-Laureate of England, and the beloved +world-renowned verse-maker.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Knowing the value of even one verse and your autograph I write to you +and make my request, which if granted will be beyond my anticipations. +I want a dedicatory poem so much, but if I get only a line from you I +should be happy. I always loved your poetry. Now please, do send me +the coveted verse. I, a beggar-maid at the throne of poetry, kneel and +beg of the monarch a crumb. Have you any<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_494" id="Page_494">[Pg 494]</a></span> grandchildren? I wish I +could get one of their photos for my book. Hoping you will act like +the good king in the fairy kingdom and grant the request—I remain +etc. etc.</p></div> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1885)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Dear Lady Tennyson</span>—It is one of the glorious privileges of our +government that the “first ladies of the land” may be courteously +addressed without the formalities of an introduction, and why not the +same rule in your country? Therefore, without the semblance of an +apology, I request you will do me the honor to grant a small favor. I +am engaged in collecting souvenirs from celebrated writers, and you +being the wife of England’s Poet Laureate, I would prize beyond +measure a contribution from you: a <i>scrap</i> of silk or velvet from one +of <i>your dresses</i>, and also a scrap of one of your husband’s +<i>neckties</i>.... There is no one who loves his works as myself ... he +reaches further down into the human heart and touches its tender cords +(sic) as no man has since the days of Shakespeare.... My husband, who +has won an enviable reputation as a writer hopes soon to produce his +work on <i>The Lives of English and American Poets</i>. Hoping you will not +refuse me, etc. etc.</p></div> + +<p>A few miscellaneous oddities follow.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1883)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>—May I ask you as a favour where I could find a “wold,” to +illustrate the following verse:</p> + +<p class="poem">Calm and deep peace on this high wold,<br /> +And on these dews that drench the furze,<br /> +And all the silvery gossamers<br /> +That twinkle into green and gold:<br /> +(“In Memoriam,” XI.)</p> + +<p>which is the subject given this year for a painting (for the Gold +Medal), to the Students of the Royal Academy of Arts?</p></div> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1840)</p> + +<p>A young girl, writing from America, asks a natural question.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>We have your book of poems, and I have read “Enoch Arden.” So I +thought I would write and see if it is true. Was there a girl whose +name was Anna Lee, and two boys named Enoch Arden and Philip Ray?</p> + +<p>I felt very sorry for Philip at first and afterward for Enoch, when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_495" id="Page_495">[Pg 495]</a></span> +he came home and found his wife had married Philip and he saw her +children grown up, but could not go to see them....</p> + +<p>I have a pet rooster, and it is very cunning. I hold it and pet it and +I love it <i>lots</i>.</p> + +<p>Well, I must close, hoping to hear from you soon, for I want to know +if the story of Enoch is true.</p></div> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1891)</p> + +<p>U.S.A. again supplies the following <i>naïveté</i>:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>—I intrude a line on your notice, to ask a little favor.</p> + +<p>I am in my fourteenth year; am considered fairly advanced for my age, +by older heads. I <i>wish your opinion</i> of the <i>best line of books</i> for +me to read at leisure hours, aside from novels or fiction. I attend +the high school, and on Saturdays, clerk in the store, of which my +father is senior partner.</p> + +<p><i>P.S.</i>—You will find five cents for return postage.</p> + +<p><i>2nd P.S.</i>—My mother says you are not living, but I say to her, I +believe she is mistaken; in other words, I am glad one time to differ +with her.</p></div> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1888)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">My dear Lord Tennyson</span>—I once met you....</p> + +<p>You will think it strange indeed, my Lord, when I assure you that I am +often supposed to be your noble self, once in Scarborough, often in +Town at the great exhibitions and elsewhere. I wear a large Tyrolese +felt hat.</p> + +<p>There is to be a grand summer party here, my Lord, gentlemen to appear +in character, I having been requested to appear as “Lord Tennyson.”</p> + +<p>Could your Lordship kindly lend me any outer clothing, by Thursday +morning at latest? a cloak, etc.? Then I should feel so thankful and +fulfil the character better.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +</div> + +<p>America characteristically supplies the following:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Permit me to call your special attention to a pamphlet I mail you +herewith, of an address to the <i>New Shakespere Society</i>, containing +the announcement of a momentous discovery which I have made in the +“Shakespeare” plays.</p> + +<p>My unveiling therein of the allegory of <i>Cymbeline</i> is but a sample of +what I have similarly discerned in the other dramas, and in which I +find the same conclusions consistently to be reached.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +</div> + +<p>The fair writer’s answers to objections and discourse on her discovery +unhappily throw no light upon the subject. She proceeds:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_496" id="Page_496">[Pg 496]</a></span>I would add that it is singular to myself there should be so strong a +prejudice against the acceptance of Bacon’s authorship of these +dramas, investing them, as it does, with such additional interest both +of a historical and an autobiographical kind, in the light of his +concealment of it.</p> + +<p>The value of truth, and the interests of literature, constitute my +apology for this intrusion upon your valuable time.</p> + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> +</div> + +<p>[The acceptance of Bacon’s authorship of Shakespeare’s dramas and the +attack on Shakespeare’s character made my father register his opinion +thus:</p> + +<p class="poem">Not only with no sense of shame<br /> +On common sense you tread,<br /> +Not only ride your hobby lame,<br /> +But make him kick the dead.<span class="spacer"> </span><span class="smcap">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1882)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Right Honorable Sir</span>—The editor of a Bohemian literary journal takes +the liberty of applying, in a very delicate matter, to you the most +renowned poet of the first literature in the world. Yet this liberty I +draw from having a great belief in the generous character of the +English nation.</p> + +<p>What I do venture to impress on your mind is this, that a poem of +yours written on, and dedicated to the poor descendants of Bohemia’s +happier ancestors, would as a mighty missionary go the round all over +their fair country evoking everywhere loud echoes out of the graves of +their heroes!</p></div> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1892)</p> + +<p>The following is a letter from an hysterical Irishman:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Eminent Sir</span>—I send you the inside poem to show you what the American +people think of your lives of tyranny, and may the day come when your +infernal land may be torn to a million pieces. Curse you for your +highway robbery of Ireland, and then holding her down in such misery, +and also for your cowardly war with Napoleon. You could fight him +alone, could you? I wish that every Englishman was in the hottest +place of hell—their bones made into gridirons to roast their hearts +on. * * *</p></div> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">(1888-1892)</p> + +<p>A French chemist, hearing that “Monsieur” suffers from gout, has a certain +secret cure. If he could, he would come over to England, “et ... je vous +guérirais complètement.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_497" id="Page_497">[Pg 497]</a></span>He is assured that this remedy will rapidly make him rich. But it should +be known beyond France.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>On m’a dit que je pouvais trouver quelques-uns à l’étranger qui +sauraient l’apprécier et le faire valoir que cela vaut une petite +fortune pour moi; ne serai-je que pour l’humanité, je me tacherai de +la vendre.</p> + +<p>Je vous le répète, Monsieur, c’est bien regrettable que je ne sois pas +plus près de chez vous, car je vous soulagerois et, Monsieur, on peut +se renseigner sur moi; je ne suis pas riche mais honnête et d’une +bonne famille, et en faisant mon chimisterie je m’occupe un peu +d’antiquités.</p></div> + +<p>Two of the latest letters amused my father much, one from Canada from a +little boy who said that his mother liked cheeses, and he would like +Tennyson to send him money to buy a good cheese: the other from an English +artist who said that his speciality was drawing cows, but that he must +have a cow of his own to live with and make proper studies of, would +therefore Tennyson give him a cow?</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_498" id="Page_498">[Pg 498]</a></span></p> +<h2>APPENDIX D</h2> +<p class="center">TENNYSON’S ARTHURIAN POEM<a name='fna_119' id='fna_119' href='#f_119'><small>[119]</small></a></p> +<p class="center">By <span class="smcap">Sir James Knowles, K.C.V.O.</span></p> + + +<div class="blockquot"><p>[This letter was written after a talk with my father, and no doubt Sir +James Knowles has caught much of the meaning of “The Idylls of the +King.” About this poem my father said to me, “My meaning was +spiritual. I only took the legendary stories of the Round Table as +illustrations. Arthur was allegorical to me. I intended him to +represent the Ideal in the Soul of Man coming in contact with the +warring elements of the flesh.”—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>]</p></div> + +<p>The fine and wholesome moral breeze which always seems to blow about the +higher realms of Art comes to us fresh as ever from this great poem, and +more acceptably than ever just now. A constant worship of Purity, and a +constant reprobation of Impurity as the rock on which the noble projects +of the “blameless king” are wrecked, appear throughout upon the surface of +the story.</p> + +<p>But besides this, there doubtless does run through it all a sort of +under-tone of symbolism, which, while it never interferes with the clear +<i>melody</i> of the poem, or perverts it into that most tedious of riddles, a +formal allegory, gives a profound <i>harmony</i> to its music and a prophetic +strain to its intention most worthy of a great spiritual Bard.</p> + +<p>King Arthur, as he has always been treated by Tennyson, stands obviously +for no mere individual prince or hero, but for the “King within us”—our +highest nature, by whatsoever name it may be called—conscience; spirit; +the moral soul; the religious sense; the noble resolve. His story and +adventures become the story of the battle and pre-eminence of the soul and +of the perpetual warfare between the spirit and the flesh.</p> + +<p>For so exalting him there is abundant warrant in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_499" id="Page_499">[Pg 499]</a></span> language of many old +compilers, by whom “all human perfection was collected in Arthur”; as +where, for instance, one says,—“The old world knows not his peer, nor +will the future show us his equal,—he alone towers over all other kings, +better than the past ones, and greater than those that are to be”; or +another, “In short, God has not made, since Adam was, the man more perfect +than Arthur.”</p> + +<p>How and why Arthur ever grew to so ideal a height we need not now inquire, +it is sufficient here to note the fact, and that Tennyson is +archæologically justified thereby in making him the type of the soul on +earth, from its mysterious coming to its mysterious and deathless going.</p> + +<p>In the “Idylls of the King,” the soul comes first before us as a conqueror +in a waste and desert land groaning under mere brute power. Its history +before then is dark with doubt and mystery, and the questions about its +origin and authority form the main subject of the introductory poem.</p> + +<p>Many, themselves the basest, hold it to be base-born, and rage against its +rule:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">And since his ways are sweet,</span><br /> +And theirs are bestial, hold him less than man;<br /> +And there be those who deem him more than man,<br /> +And dream he dropt from heaven.</p> + +<p>Of those who recognize its claim, some, as the hoary chamberlain, accept +it on the word of wizards who have written all about it in a sacred book +which, doubtless, some day will become intelligible. Others, as Ulfius, +and Brastias, standing for commonplace men with commonplace views, are +satisfied to think the soul comes as the body does, or not to think at all +about it. Others, again, as Bedivere, with warmer hearts, feel there is +mystery, where to the careless all is plain, yet seek among the dark ways +of excessive natural passion for the key, and drift towards the scandalous +accordingly. Then comes the simple touching tenderness of the woman’s +discovery of conscience and its influence given by Queen Bellicent in the +story of her childhood; and this, again, is supplemented and contrasted by +the doctrine of the wise men and philosophers put into Merlin’s mouth. His +“riddling triplets” anger the woman, but are a wonderful summary of the +way, part-earnest, part-ironical, and all-pathetic, in which great wit +confronts the problem of the soul.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_500" id="Page_500">[Pg 500]</a></span>The inscrutableness of its origin being thus signified, we see next the +recognition of its supremacy, and its first act of kinghood,—the +inspiration of the best and bravest near it with a common enthusiasm for +Right. The founding of the Order of the Round Table coincides with the +solemn crowning of the soul. Conscience, acknowledged and throned as king, +binds at once all the best of human powers together into one brotherhood, +and that brotherhood to itself by vows so strait and high,</p> + +<p class="poem">That when they rose, knighted from kneeling, some<br /> +Were pale as at the passing of a ghost,<br /> +Some flush’d, and others dazed, as one who wakes<br /> +Half-blinded at the coming of a light.</p> + +<p>At that supreme coronation-moment, the Spirit is surrounded and cheered on +by all the powers and influences which can ever help it—earthly servants +and allies and heavenly powers and tokens—the knights, to signify the +strength of the body; Merlin, to signify the strength of intellect; the +Lady of the Lake, who stands for the Church, and gives the soul its +sharpest and most splendid earthly weapon; and, above all, three fair and +mystic Queens, “tall, with bright sweet faces,” robed in the living +colours sacred to love and faith and hope, which flow upon them from the +image of our Lord above. These, surely, stand for those immortal virtues +which only will abide “when all that seems shall suffer shock,” and +leaning upon which alone, the soul, when all else falls from it, shall go +towards the golden gates of the new and brighter morning.</p> + +<p>As the first and introductory idyll thus seems to indicate the coming and +the recognition of the soul, so the ensuing idylls of the “Round Table” +show how its influence fares—waxes or wanes—in the great battle of life. +Through all of these we see the body and its passions gain continually +greater sway, till in the end the Spirit’s earthly work is thwarted and +defeated by the flesh. Its immortality alone remains to it, and, with +this, a deathless hope.</p> + +<p>From the story of “Geraint and Enid,” where the first gust of poisoning +passion bows for a time with base suspicion, yet passes, and leaves pure a +great and simple heart, we are led through “Merlin and Vivien,” where, +early in the storm, we see great wit and genius succumb,—and through +“Lancelot and Elaine,” where the piteous early death of innocence and hope +results from it,—to “The Holy Grail,” where we find religion<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_501" id="Page_501">[Pg 501]</a></span> itself +under the stress of it, and despite the earnest efforts of the soul, blown +into mere fantastic shapes of superstition. It would be difficult to find +a nobler and manlier apology for pure and sane and practical religion, fit +for mighty men, than the verdict of the King at the end of this wonderful +poem.</p> + +<p>In “Pelleas and Ettarre” the storm of corruption culminates, whirling the +sweet waters of young love and faith (the very life-spring of the world) +out from their proper channels, sweeping them into mist, and casting them +in hail upon the land. A scarcely-concealed harlot here rides splendid to +the Court, and is crowned Queen of Beauty in the lists; the lust of the +flesh is all but paramount. Then comes in “Guinevere” the final lightning +stroke, and all the fabric of the earthly life falls smitten into dust, +leaving to the soul a broken heart for company, and a conviction that if +in this world only it had hope, it were of all things most miserable.</p> + +<p>Thus ends the “Round Table,” and the story of the life-long labour of the +soul....</p> + +<p>There remains but the passing of the soul “from the great deep to the +great deep,” and this is the subject of the closing idyll. Here the “last +dim, weird battle,” fought out in densest mist, stands for a picture of +all human death, and paints its awfulness and confusion. The soul alone, +enduring beyond the end wherein all else is swallowed up, sees the mist +clear at last, and finds those three crowned virtues, “abiding” true and +fast, and waiting to convey it to its rest. Character, upheld and formed +by these, is the immortal outcome of mortal life. They wail with it awhile +in sympathy for the failure of its earthly plans; but at the very last of +all are heard to change their sorrow into songs of joy, and departing, +“vanish into light.”</p> + +<p>Such or such like seems to be the high significance and under-meaning of +this noble poem,—a meaning worthy of the exquisite expression which +conveys it and of the wealth of beauty and imagery which enfolds it.</p> + +<p>But nothing is more remarkable than the way in which so much symbolic +truth is given without the slightest forcing of the current of the +narrative itself. Indeed, so subtle are the touches, and so consummately +refined the art employed, that quite possibly many readers may hold there +is no parable at all intended. It is most interesting, for instance, to +note the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_502" id="Page_502">[Pg 502]</a></span> thread of realism which is preserved throughout, and which, +whether intentionally or not, serves the double purpose of entirely +screening any such symbolic under-meaning from all who do not care to seek +it, and also of accounting naturally for all the supernatural adventures +and beliefs recorded in the story itself.</p> + +<p>Thus, in “The Holy Grail,” the various apparitions of the mystic vessel +are explicable by passing meteors or sudden lightning flashes seen in a +season of great tempests and thunderstorms—first acting on the hysterical +exaltation of an enthusiastic nun, and then, by contagion from her faith, +upon the imaginations of a few kindred natures.</p> + +<p>Again, in the “Coming of Arthur,” the marvellous story of his birth, as +told by Bleys, might simply have been founded on a shipwreck when the sea +was phosphorescent, and when all hands suddenly perished, save one infant +who was washed ashore.</p> + +<p>Or, again, in the same poem, the three mystic Queens at the +Coronation—who become, in one sense, so all-important in their +meaning—derive their import in the eyes of Bellicent simply from the +accident of coloured beams of light falling upon them from a stained-glass +window.</p> + +<p>May I, in conclusion say how happily characteristic of their English +author, and their English theme, seems to me the manner in which these +“Idylls of the King” have become a complete poem? It brings to mind the +method of our old cathedral-builders. Round some early shrine, too +precious to be moved, were gathered bit by bit a nave and aisles, then +rich side chapels, then the great image-crowded portals, then a more noble +chancel, then, perhaps, the towers, all in fulfilment of some general plan +made long ago, but each produced and added as occasion urged or natural +opportunity arose. As such buildings always seem rather to have <i>grown</i> +than been <i>constructed</i>, and have the wealth of interest, and beauty, and +variety which makes Canterbury Cathedral, for instance, far more poetical +than St. Paul’s—so with these “Idylls.” Bit by bit the poem and its +sacred purport have grown continually more and more connected and +impressive. Had Tennyson sat down in early youth to write the symbolic +epic of King Arthur which he then projected, his “Morte d’Arthur” is +enough to show how fine a work might have resulted. But, for once, at any +rate, the interposing critics did art good service, for they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_503" id="Page_503">[Pg 503]</a></span> deferred +till the experience of life had given him, as it were, many lives, a poem +which could not have been produced without wide acquaintanceship with the +world and human nature. We should never otherwise have had the parable +“full of voices” which we now fortunately possess.</p> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">THE END</p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center"><i>Printed by</i> <span class="smcap">R. & R. Clark, Limited</span>, <i>Edinburgh</i>.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><strong>Footnotes:</strong></p> + +<p><a name='f_1' id='f_1' href='#fna_1'>[1]</a> Henry Sellwood.</p> + +<p><a name='f_2' id='f_2' href='#fna_2'>[2]</a> Sister of Sir John Franklin.</p> + +<p><a name='f_3' id='f_3' href='#fna_3'>[3]</a> [<span class="smcap">Extract</span> from a <span class="smcap">Letter</span> from my <span class="smcap">Mother</span> to Mrs. +<span class="smcap">Granville Bradley</span>, April 23, 1873.</p> + +<p>“To think of your having been among our Aldworth giants (the monuments in +Aldworth Church)! Pibworth belonged to my grandmother, a Rowland from +Wales. I am glad you did not go there, for all the grand pine grove, which +backed it, was cut down as soon as it was bought, some years ago, by some +London man, and I hear it has sunk into a mere commonplace house. The +little estate, in which were the ruins of Beche Castle, was ours. The +tombs are those of the ‘de la Beches.’ Their pedigree was said to have +been taken down to show to Queen Elizabeth—when she came to look at the +old yew tree, the remains of which, I hope, still exist—and never to have +been replaced, so that no more is known of the giants than that they were +‘de la Beches.’ Neither do we know if they were really our ancestors, as +they have been reported to be, or whether the report came from our having +owned the remains of the castle.”—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><a name='f_4' id='f_4' href='#fna_4'>[4]</a> Rev. Drummond Rawnsley.</p> + +<p><a name='f_5' id='f_5' href='#fna_5'>[5]</a> This is written of the Lincolnshire coast.</p> + +<p><a name='f_6' id='f_6' href='#fna_6'>[6]</a> This taken from what he saw from the cliffs over Scratchell’s Bay near +the Needles in the Isle of Wight.</p> + +<p><a name='f_7' id='f_7' href='#fna_7'>[7]</a> Afterwards married to Judge Alan Ker, Chief Justice of Jamaica.</p> + +<p><a name='f_8' id='f_8' href='#fna_8'>[8]</a> At Mablethorpe there was no post at all, and Alfred tells how he was +indebted to the muffin man for communication with the outer world.</p> + +<p><a name='f_9' id='f_9' href='#fna_9'>[9]</a> His wife.</p> + +<p><a name='f_10' id='f_10' href='#fna_10'>[10]</a> Mother of Lady Boyne.</p> + +<p><a name='f_11' id='f_11' href='#fna_11'>[11]</a> [The unpublished letters from Frederick Tennyson, quoted throughout +the chapter, were written either to my father, or to my father’s friend, +Mary Brotherton, the novelist. The lives of my uncles Frederick and +Charles were so much interwoven with the lives of some of my father’s +friends that I have ventured to insert this account of them here. +Moreover, these two brothers represent “the two extremes of the Tennyson +temperament, the mean and perfection of which is found in Alfred.”—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><a name='f_12' id='f_12' href='#fna_12'>[12]</a> Unpublished letter to Alfred Tennyson.</p> + +<p><a name='f_13' id='f_13' href='#fna_13'>[13]</a> Alfred was always telling his brother that Spiritualism was a subject +well worthy of examination, but not to be swallowed whole. He had a great +admiration for certain passages in Swedenborg’s writings.</p> + +<p><a name='f_14' id='f_14' href='#fna_14'>[14]</a> Alfred used to say of the Sonnets that many of them had all the +tenderness of the Greek epigram, while a few were among the finest in our +language.</p> + +<p><a name='f_15' id='f_15' href='#fna_15'>[15]</a> The other three were Franklin, Harry, and Tom.</p> + +<p><a name='f_16' id='f_16' href='#fna_16'>[16]</a> She often used to sing to us “Elaine’s song” which she had set to +music.</p> + +<p><a name='f_17' id='f_17' href='#fna_17'>[17]</a> [My father was devoted to Henry Lushington, and pronounced him to be +the best critic he had ever known. To him he dedicated “In +Memoriam.”—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><a name='f_18' id='f_18' href='#fna_18'>[18]</a> There are also the fine “beardless bust” by Tennyson’s friend, Thomas +Woolner, R.A., and the earliest “beardless portrait” of him by his +sister-in-law, Mrs. Weld.</p> + +<p><a name='f_19' id='f_19' href='#fna_19'>[19]</a> This was a misunderstanding on the part of FitzGerald.</p> + +<p><a name='f_20' id='f_20' href='#fna_20'>[20]</a> This account of the talk in the Woodbridge garden has been taken from +a letter to me from the present Lord Tennyson.</p> + +<p><a name='f_21' id='f_21' href='#fna_21'>[21]</a> Sophocles, <i>Ajax</i>, 674-5.</p> + +<p><a name='f_22' id='f_22' href='#fna_22'>[22]</a> This old French paraphrase of Horace, <i>Odes</i>, I. xi., FitzGerald was +very fond of, and quotes more than once in his letters.</p> + +<p><a name='f_23' id='f_23' href='#fna_23'>[23]</a> Of the <i>Conversations with Eckermann</i>, he said, “almost as repeatedly +to be read as Boswell’s <i>Johnson</i>—a German Johnson—and (as with Boswell) +more interesting to me in Eckermann’s Diary than in all his own famous +works.”—<i>Letters to Mrs. Kemble.</i></p> + +<p><a name='f_24' id='f_24' href='#fna_24'>[24]</a> [Some of these sayings appeared in my Memoir of my father.—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><a name='f_25' id='f_25' href='#fna_25'>[25]</a> See <i>Tennyson: a Memoir, by his Son</i>, p. 373.</p> + +<p><a name='f_26' id='f_26' href='#fna_26'>[26]</a> See <i>Tennyson: a Memoir, by his Son</i>, p. 352.</p> + +<p><a name='f_27' id='f_27' href='#fna_27'>[27]</a> “I suppose the worship of wonder, such as I have heard grown-up +children tell of at first sight of the Alps.”—<i>Euphranor</i>, by E. F. G.</p> + +<p><a name='f_28' id='f_28' href='#fna_28'>[28]</a> Arthur Hallam, Harry Lushington, and Sir John Simeon.</p> + +<p><a name='f_29' id='f_29' href='#fna_29'>[29]</a> “The Death of Œnone.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_30' id='f_30' href='#fna_30'>[30]</a> [“Ulysses,” the title of a number of essays by W. G. Palgrave, +brother of my father’s devoted friend Francis T. Palgrave.—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><a name='f_31' id='f_31' href='#fna_31'>[31]</a> 1888.</p> + +<p><a name='f_32' id='f_32' href='#fna_32'>[32]</a> Garibaldi said to me, alluding to his barren island, “I wish I had +your trees.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_33' id='f_33' href='#fna_33'>[33]</a> The tale of Nejd.</p> + +<p><a name='f_34' id='f_34' href='#fna_34'>[34]</a> The Philippines.</p> + +<p><a name='f_35' id='f_35' href='#fna_35'>[35]</a> In Dominica.</p> + +<p><a name='f_36' id='f_36' href='#fna_36'>[36]</a> The Shadow of the Lord. Certain obscure markings on a rock in Siam, +which express the image of Buddha to the Buddhist more or less distinctly +according to his faith and his moral worth.</p> + +<p><a name='f_37' id='f_37' href='#fna_37'>[37]</a> The footstep of the Lord on another rock.</p> + +<p><a name='f_38' id='f_38' href='#fna_38'>[38]</a> The monastery of Sumelas.</p> + +<p><a name='f_39' id='f_39' href='#fna_39'>[39]</a> Anatolian Spectre stories.</p> + +<p><a name='f_40' id='f_40' href='#fna_40'>[40]</a> The Three Cities.</p> + +<p><a name='f_41' id='f_41' href='#fna_41'>[41]</a> Travels in Egypt.</p> + +<p><a name='f_42' id='f_42' href='#fna_42'>[42]</a> Lionel Tennyson.</p> + +<p><a name='f_43' id='f_43' href='#fna_43'>[43]</a> In Bologna.</p> + +<p><a name='f_44' id='f_44' href='#fna_44'>[44]</a> They say, for the fact is doubtful.</p> + +<p><a name='f_45' id='f_45' href='#fna_45'>[45]</a> Demeter and Persephone.</p> + +<p><a name='f_46' id='f_46' href='#fna_46'>[46]</a> [This Home was founded at the suggestion of my father, for he and +Gordon had discussed the desirability of founding training camps all over +England for the training of poor boys as soldiers or emigrants, Gordon +saying to him, “You are the man to found them.”—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><a name='f_47' id='f_47' href='#fna_47'>[47]</a> One of Tennyson’s friends asked a cabman at Freshwater, “Whose house +is that?” Cabman: “It belongs to one Tennyson.” Friend: “He is a great +man, you know?” Cabman: “He a great man! he only keeps one man-servant, +and he don’t sleep in the house!”</p> + +<p><a name='f_48' id='f_48' href='#fna_48'>[48]</a> Now grown into one hundred and fifty acres.</p> + +<p><a name='f_49' id='f_49' href='#fna_49'>[49]</a> He used to protest against the misuse of words of mighty content as +mere expletives, contrasting “God made Himself an awful rose of dawn,” and +the colloquial “young-ladyism,” as he called it, of “awfully jolly.” (See +the <i>Memoir</i>.)</p> + +<p><a name='f_50' id='f_50' href='#fna_50'>[50]</a> And, though I knew him to the end of his days, that interval never +seemed to lengthen. [Among Mr. Dakyns’s rough notes I find the Greek +phrase ἀεὶ παῖς, with an emphatic reference to “The Wanderer.” I +know he thought the spirit of him “who loves the world from end to end and +wanders on from home to home” was really Tennyson’s own.—F. M. S.]</p> + +<p><a name='f_51' id='f_51' href='#fna_51'>[51]</a> See <i>Memoir</i>, ii. 400.</p> + +<p><a name='f_52' id='f_52' href='#fna_52'>[52]</a> [I think that this riddle was originally made by Franklin +Lushington.—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><a name='f_53' id='f_53' href='#fna_53'>[53]</a> See <i>Memoir</i>, ii. 288.</p> + +<p><a name='f_54' id='f_54' href='#fna_54'>[54]</a> ii. 284 foll., 293, “Some Criticism on Poets and Poetry”; <i>ib.</i> 420 +foll., “Last Talks”: that wonderful chapter.</p> + +<p><a name='f_55' id='f_55' href='#fna_55'>[55]</a> See “Poets and Critics,” one of his last poems.</p> + +<p><a name='f_56' id='f_56' href='#fna_56'>[56]</a> <i>Solaciolum</i>, “poor dear, some solace”; <i>turgiduli ... ocelli</i> (see +below), “her poor dear swollen eyes.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_57' id='f_57' href='#fna_57'>[57]</a> <i>Miselle</i>, epithet of the dead like our “poor” So-and-so.</p> + +<p><a name='f_58' id='f_58' href='#fna_58'>[58]</a> Robinson Ellis notes, “The rhythm of the line and the continued +<i>a</i>-sound well represent the eternity of the sleep that knows no waking,” +and that is just the effect that Tennyson’s reading gave with infinite +pathos; and then the sudden passionate change, <i>da mi basia</i>——</p> + +<p><a name='f_59' id='f_59' href='#fna_59'>[59]</a> An old experiment, being written in 1859, finished in 1860. He +himself only called it “a far-off echo of the <i>Attis</i> of Catullus.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_60' id='f_60' href='#fna_60'>[60]</a> See Carlyle, <i>Fr. Rev.</i> (Part I. Bk. v. c. ix), for the cry of the +mob. And for Béranger, cf. <i>Memoir</i>, ii. 422.</p> + +<p><a name='f_61' id='f_61' href='#fna_61'>[61]</a> Compare Merlin’s song, “From the great deep to the great deep he +goes.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_62' id='f_62' href='#fna_62'>[62]</a> Some commentators insist that Tennyson was born on August 5 because +the date looks like 5th in the Register of his birth. He used to say, “All +I can state is that my mother always kept my birthday on August 6, and I +suppose she knew.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_63' id='f_63' href='#fna_63'>[63]</a> I can confirm this last statement from more than one talk with him. +He would note the perfection of the metre. The second line affords an +instance of the delicacy of his ear. We were speaking of the undoubtedly +correct reading:</p> + +<p class="poem">The lowing herd <i>wind</i> slowly o’er the lea,</p> + +<p>not, as is so often printed, <i>winds</i>. I forget his exact comment, but the +point of it was that the double s, wind<i>s</i> <i>s</i>lowly, would have been to +his ear most displeasing.</p> + +<p>Again, speaking of the line,</p> + +<p class="poem">And all the air a solemn stillness holds,</p> + +<p>he observed how seldom Gray seemed satisfied with this inversion of the +accusative and the nominative, and how he himself endeavoured, as a rule, +to avoid it.—H. M. B.</p> + +<p><a name='f_64' id='f_64' href='#fna_64'>[64]</a> My own writing he compared to “the limbs of a flea.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_65' id='f_65' href='#fna_65'>[65]</a> In <i>Problems and Persons</i> (Longmans), Appendix A.</p> + +<p><a name='f_66' id='f_66' href='#fna_66'>[66]</a> <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, January 1893.</p> + +<p><a name='f_67' id='f_67' href='#fna_67'>[67]</a> <i>Sunday, October 27, 1872.</i>—I asked A. T. at Aldworth what he +thought he had done most perfect. He said, “Nothing,” only fragments of +things that he could think at all so—such as “Come down, O Maid,” written +on his first visit to Switzerland, and “Tears, idle Tears.”</p> + +<p>He told me he meant to write the siege of Delhi, an ode in rhyme, but was +refused the papers.</p> + +<p><a name='f_68' id='f_68' href='#fna_68'>[68]</a> [“Until absorbed into the Divine.”—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><a name='f_69' id='f_69' href='#fna_69'>[69]</a> See Appendix C.</p> + +<p><a name='f_70' id='f_70' href='#fna_70'>[70]</a> See Translation by Frederick Tennyson, p. 56.</p> + +<p><a name='f_71' id='f_71' href='#fna_71'>[71]</a> Some extracts from the paper on Tennyson in <i>Studies and Memories</i> +are included in this chapter by kind permission of Messrs. Constable & Co.</p> + +<p><a name='f_72' id='f_72' href='#fna_72'>[72]</a> [First published as a preface to <i>Tennyson as a Student and Poet of +Nature</i> in 1910, and republished here by the kind permission of Sir Norman +Lockyer and Messrs. Macmillan.—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><a name='f_73' id='f_73' href='#fna_73'>[73]</a> See the fine Parsee Hymn to the Sun (written by Tennyson when he was +82) at the end of “Akbar’s Dream”:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 12em;">I</span><br /> +Once again thou flamest heavenward, once again we see thee rise.<br /> +Every morning is thy birthday gladdening human hearts and eyes.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Every morning here we greet it, bowing lowly down before thee,</span><br /> +Thee the Godlike, thee the changeless in thine ever-changing skies.<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;">II</span><br /> +Shadow-maker, shadow-slayer, arrowing light from clime to clime,<br /> +Hear thy myriad laureates hail thee monarch in their woodland rhyme.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Warble bird, and open flower, and, men, below the dome of azure</span><br /> +Kneel adoring Him the Timeless in the flame that measures Time!<br /> +</p> + +<p><a name='f_74' id='f_74' href='#fna_74'>[74]</a> [See <i>Tennyson: a Memoir</i>, p. 259. “It is impossible,” he said, “to +imagine that the Almighty will ask you, when you come before Him in the +next life, what your particular form of creed was: but the question will +rather be ‘Have you been true to yourself, and given in My Name a cup of +cold water to one of these little ones?’” Yet he felt that religion could +never be founded on mere moral philosophy; that there were no means of +impressing upon children systematic ethics apart from religion; and that +the highest religion and morality would only come home to the people in +the noble, simple thoughts and facts of a Scripture like ours.—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><a name='f_75' id='f_75' href='#fna_75'>[75]</a> [He added, “<i>The</i> Son of Man is the most tremendous title +possible.”—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><a name='f_76' id='f_76' href='#fna_76'>[76]</a> From Tennyson’s last published sonnet, “Doubt and Prayer.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_77' id='f_77' href='#fna_77'>[77]</a> [Toward the end of his life he would say, “My most passionate desire +is to have a clearer vision of God.”—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><a name='f_78' id='f_78' href='#fna_78'>[78]</a> [The eldest daughter of Sir John Simeon, who was my father’s most +intimate friend in later life—a tall, broad-shouldered, genial, generous, +warm-hearted, highly gifted, and thoroughly noble country gentleman; in +face like the portrait of Sir Thomas Wyatt, by Holbein.—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><a name='f_79' id='f_79' href='#fna_79'>[79]</a> This MS. was given back to Tennyson at his request after Sir John +Simeon’s death, and after Tennyson’s death presented by his son and +Catherine, Lady Simeon, to the library of Trinity College, Cambridge.</p> + +<p><a name='f_80' id='f_80' href='#fna_80'>[80]</a> He afterwards built a larger study for himself, “looking into the +heart of the wood,” as he said.</p> + +<p><a name='f_81' id='f_81' href='#fna_81'>[81]</a> “In the Garden at Swainston.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_82' id='f_82' href='#fna_82'>[82]</a> Tennyson said to her, “Perhaps your babe will remember all these +lights and this splendour in future days, as if it were the memory of +another life.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_83' id='f_83' href='#fna_83'>[83]</a> From “The Death of Œnone and other Poems,” afterwards published +1892.</p> + +<p><a name='f_84' id='f_84' href='#fna_84'>[84]</a> First published 1909, by Sidgwick and Jackson, Ltd., 1s. net., and +kindly corrected by the author for republication here.</p> + +<p><a name='f_85' id='f_85' href='#fna_85'>[85]</a> Now Lady Ritchie.</p> + +<p><a name='f_86' id='f_86' href='#fna_86'>[86]</a> οὐρανόθεν τε ὑπερράγη +ἄσπετος αἰθήρ.</p> + +<p><a name='f_87' id='f_87' href='#fna_87'>[87]</a> See note by Tennyson in the “Eversley Edition” of the poems: “I made +this simile from a stream (in North Wales), and it is different, tho’ like +Theocritus, <i>Idyll</i> xxii. 48 ff.:</p> + +<p class="poem">ἐν δὲ μύες στερεοῖσι +βραχίοσιν ἄκρον ὑπ᾽ ὦμον<br /> + +ἔστασαν, ἠΰτε πέτροι +ὁλοίτροχοι, .οὕστε κυλίνδων<br /> + +χειμάρρους ποταμὸς +μεγάλαις περιέξεσε δίναις.”</p> + +<p>When some one objected that he had taken this simile from Theocritus, he +answered: “It is quite different. Geraint’s muscles are not compared to +the rounded stones, but to the stream pouring vehemently over them.”—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span></p> + +<p><a name='f_88' id='f_88' href='#fna_88'>[88]</a> [I am much obliged to Mr. Sidgwick for having omitted his original +statement that Tennyson “takes the anti-reform line” in the matter of the +higher education of women. My father’s friends report him to have said +that the great social questions impending in England were “the housing and +education of the poor, and the higher education of women”; and that the +sooner woman finds out, before the great educational movement begins, that +“woman is not undevelopt man, but diverse,” the better it will be for the +progress of the world. She must train herself to do the large work that +lies before her, even though she may not be destined to be wife and +mother, cultivating her understanding, not her memory only, her +imagination in its higher phases, her inborn spirituality, and her +sympathy with all that is pure, noble, and beautiful, rather than mere +social accomplishments; then and then only will she further the progress +of humanity, then and then only will men continue to hold her in +reverence. See <i>Tennyson: a Memoir</i>, pp. 206, 208.—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><a name='f_89' id='f_89' href='#fna_89'>[89]</a> From Virgil’s Georgics.</p> + +<p><a name='f_90' id='f_90' href='#fna_90'>[90]</a> From Theocritus.</p> + +<p><a name='f_91' id='f_91' href='#fna_91'>[91]</a> [For another view of “Gareth” see FitzGerald’s letter to my father in +1873:</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">My dear Alfred</span>—I write my yearly letter to yourself this time, because I +have a word to say about “Gareth” which your publisher sent me as “from +the author.” I don’t think it is mere perversity that makes me like it +better than all its predecessors, save and except (of course) the old +“Morte.” The subject, the young knight who can endure and conquer, +interests me more than all the heroines of the 1st volume. I do not know +if I admire more <i>separate</i> passages in this “Idyll” than in the others; +for I have admired <i>many</i> in <i>all</i>. But I do admire several here very +much, as</p> + +<p class="poem">The journey to Camelot, pp. 13-14,<br /> +All Gareth’s vassalage, 31-34,<br /> +Departure with Lynette, 42,<br /> +Sitting at table with the Barons, 54,<br /> +Phantom of past life, 71,</p> + +<p>and many other passages and expressions “quae nunc perscribere longum +est.”—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><a name='f_92' id='f_92' href='#fna_92'>[92]</a> Bedivere.</p> + +<p><a name='f_93' id='f_93' href='#fna_93'>[93]</a> Reprinted, with some few alterations, from the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, +No. ccclxxxii., by the kind permission of the Editor and the late Sir +Alfred Lyall.</p> + +<p><a name='f_94' id='f_94' href='#fna_94'>[94]</a> E. FitzGerald.</p> + +<p><a name='f_95' id='f_95' href='#fna_95'>[95]</a> He said to Bishop Lightfoot, “The cardinal point of Christianity is +the Life after Death.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_96' id='f_96' href='#fna_96'>[96]</a> See Appendix C.</p> + +<p><a name='f_97' id='f_97' href='#fna_97'>[97]</a> [The sibilants give the lisping peacefulness of the waves. For beauty +of sound he would cite the following lines:</p> + +<p class="poem">The moan of doves in immemorial elms,<br /> +And murmuring of innumerable bees;</p> + +<p>and</p> + +<p class="poem">The mellow ouzel fluted in the elm;</p> + +<p>and</p> + +<p class="poem">And affluent Fortune emptied all her horn,</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><a name='f_98' id='f_98' href='#fna_98'>[98]</a> [My father would not have allowed this. He said, “It is pure nonsense +to say that my later poems are melancholy. In old age I have a stronger +faith in God and human good than I had in youth.”—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><a name='f_99' id='f_99' href='#fna_99'>[99]</a> [This is taken from Quintus Calaber.—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><a name='f_100' id='f_100' href='#fna_100'>[100]</a> [It is interesting to note that Sir Richard Jebb held that the +“Death of Œnone” was “essentially Greek.”—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><a name='f_101' id='f_101' href='#fna_101'>[101]</a> [This passage must not be misunderstood, as Sir Alfred Lyall thought +that he had touched high-water mark in some of his later poems, such as: +“In Memoriam,” certain passages in the “Idylls of the King,” “The Ancient +Sage,” and “Maud,” the “Northern Farmers,” “Rizpah,” “The Revenge,” the +Dedication to Edward FitzGerald of “Tiresias,” and “Crossing the +Bar.”—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><a name='f_102' id='f_102' href='#fna_102'>[102]</a> Presidential Address to the British Academy, October 1909 (Tennyson +centenary), published here by the late Professor Butcher’s kind +permission.</p> + +<p><a name='f_103' id='f_103' href='#fna_103'>[103]</a> The Master of Christ’s.</p> + +<p><a name='f_104' id='f_104' href='#fna_104'>[104]</a> Captain Thomas Hamilton, who then lived at Elleray. He was the +brother of Sir William Hamilton, and is frequently mentioned in Sir Walter +Scott’s Journal.</p> + +<p><a name='f_105' id='f_105' href='#fna_105'>[105]</a> <i>Philip van Artevelde</i>, by Henry Taylor.</p> + +<p><a name='f_106' id='f_106' href='#fna_106'>[106]</a> Probably August 10. See letter to Thompson, August 19, 1841.</p> + +<p><a name='f_107' id='f_107' href='#fna_107'>[107]</a> The reply referred to is:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Farringford</span>, <i>Jan. 19th, 1870</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">My dear James</span>—Send the box, please, not without your new volume +hither. I shall be grateful for both. I am glad that you find anything +to approve of in the “H. G.” I have not yet finished the Arthurian +legends, otherwise I might consider your Job theme. Strange that I +quite forgot our conversation thereupon. Where is Westbourne Terrace? +If I had ever clearly made out I should assuredly have called. I have +often when in town past by the old 60, the “vedovo sito,” with a +groan, thinking of you as no longer the comeatable, runupableto, +smokeablewith J. S. of old, but as a family man, far in the west, +sitting cigarless among many nieces, clean and forlorn, but I hope to +see you somewhere in ’70, for I have taken chambers in Victoria Street +for three years, though they are not yet furnished.</p> + +<p>Where is the difficulty of that line in the “Flower”? It is rather +rough certainly, but, had you followed the clue of “little flower” in +the preceding line, you would not have stumbled over this, which is +accentual anapaest,</p> + +<p class="poem">What you are, root and all:</p> + +<p>rough—doubtless.—Believe me yours ever,</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">A. Tennyson.</span></span></p></div> + +<p><a name='f_108' id='f_108' href='#fna_108'>[108]</a> [<i>The Holy Grail and other Poems.</i> It was Spedding chiefly who urged +my father about this time to write his plays, because he thought that he +had the true dramatic instinct. He criticized them in proof, and gave them +his warm commendation.—<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><a name='f_109' id='f_109' href='#fna_109'>[109]</a> <i>Life and Letters</i>, vol. v.</p> + +<p><a name='f_110' id='f_110' href='#fna_110'>[110]</a> The passage from Shakespeare prefixed to this paper contains +probably as much as can be said of the mental, not less than the +affectionate conditions, under which such a report as “In Memoriam” is +produced, and may give us more insight into the imaginative faculty’s mode +of working, than all our philosophizing and analysis. It seems to let out +with the fulness, simplicity, and unconsciousness of a child—“Fancy’s +Child”—the secret mechanism or procession of the greatest creative mind +our race has produced. In itself, it has no recondite meaning, it answers +fully its own sweet purpose. We are not believers, like some folks, in the +omniscience of even Shakespeare. But, like many things that he and other +wise men and many simple children say, it has a germ of universal meaning, +which it is quite lawful to bring out of it, and which may be enjoyed to +the full without any wrong to its own original beauty and fitness. A +dewdrop is not the less beautiful that it illustrates in its structure the +law of gravitation which holds the world together, and by which “the most +ancient heavens are fresh and strong.” This is the passage. The Friar +speaking of Claudio, hearing that Hero “died upon his words,” says:</p> + +<p class="poem">The idea of her life shall sweetly creep<br /> +Into his study of imagination;<br /> +And every lovely organ of her life<br /> +Shall come apparelled in more precious habit—<br /> +More moving delicate, and full of life,<br /> +Into the eye and prospect of his soul,<br /> +Than when she lived indeed.</p> + +<p>We have here expressed in plain language the imaginative memory of the +beloved dead, rising upon the past, like moonlight upon midnight:</p> + +<p class="poem">The gleam, the shadow, and the peace supreme.</p> + +<p>This is its simple meaning—the statement of a truth, the utterance of +personal feeling. But observe its hidden abstract significance—it is the +revelation of what goes on in the depths of the soul, when the dead +elements of what once was, are laid before the imagination, and so +breathed upon as to be quickened into a new and higher life. We have first +the <i>Idea of her Life</i>—all he remembered and felt of her, gathered into +one vague shadowy image, not any one look, or action, or time,—then the +idea of her life <i>creeps</i>—is in before he is aware, and <span class="smcaplc">SWEETLY</span> +creeps—it might have been softly or gently, but it is the addition of +affection to all this, and bringing in another sense,—and now it is in +his <i>study of imagination</i>—what a place! fit for such a visitor. Then out +comes the <i>Idea</i>, more particular, more questionable, but still ideal, +spiritual,—<i>every lovely organ of her life</i>—then the clothing upon, the +mortal putting on its immortal, spiritual body—<i>shall come apparelled in +more precious habit, more moving delicate</i>—this is the transfiguring, the +putting on strength, the <i>poco più</i>—the little more which makes +immortal,—<i>more full of life</i>, and all this submitted to—<i>the eye and +prospect of the soul</i>.</p> + +<p><a name='f_111' id='f_111' href='#fna_111'>[111]</a></p> + +<p class="poem">Dark house, by which once more I stand<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Here in the long unlovely street;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Doors, where my heart was wont to beat</span><br /> +So quickly, waiting for a hand.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 17em;">“In Memoriam.”</span></p> + +<p>This is a mistake, as his friend Dr. A. P. Stanley thus corrects: “‘The +long unlovely street’ was Wimpole Street, No. 67, where the Hallams lived; +and Arthur used to say to his friends, ‘You know you will always find us +at sixes and sevens.’”</p> + +<p><a name='f_112' id='f_112' href='#fna_112'>[112]</a> We had read these lives, and had remarked them, before we knew whose +they were, as being of rare merit. No one could suppose they were written +by one so young. We give his estimate of the character of Burke. “The mind +of this great man may perhaps be taken as a representation of the general +characteristics of the English intellect. Its groundwork was solid, +practical, and conversant with the details of business; but upon this, and +secured by this, arose a superstructure of imagination and moral +sentiment. He saw little, <i>because it was painful to him</i> to see anything, +beyond the limits of the national character. In all things, while he +deeply reverenced principles, he chose to deal with the concrete rather +than with abstractions. He studied men rather than man.” The words in +italics imply an insight into the deepest springs of human action, the +conjunct causes of what we call character, such as few men of large +experience attain.</p> + +<p><a name='f_113' id='f_113' href='#fna_113'>[113]</a> This will remind the reader of a fine passage in <i>Edwin the Fair</i>, +on the specific differences in the sounds made by the ash, the elm, the +fir, etc., when moved by the wind; and of some lines by Landor on flowers +speaking to each other; and of something more exquisite than either, in +<i>Consuelo</i>—the description of the flowers in the old monastic garden, at +the “sweet hour of prime.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_114' id='f_114' href='#fna_114'>[114]</a> <i>Remains</i>, vol. iii. p. 105.</p> + +<p><a name='f_115' id='f_115' href='#fna_115'>[115]</a> This is the passage referred to in Henry Taylor’s delightful <i>Notes +from Life</i> (“Essay on Wisdom”):</p> + +<p>“Fear, indeed, is the mother of foresight: spiritual fear, of a foresight +that reaches beyond the grave; temporal fear, of a foresight that falls +short; but without fear there is neither the one foresight nor the other; +and as pain has been truly said to be “the deepest thing in our nature,” +so is it fear that will bring the depths of our nature within our +knowledge. A great capacity of <i>suffering</i> belongs to genius; and it has +been observed that an alternation of joyfulness and dejection is quite as +characteristic of the man of genius as intensity in either kind.” In his +<i>Notes from Books</i>, p. 216, he recurs to it: “‘Pain,’ says a writer whose +early death will not prevent his being long remembered, ‘pain is the +deepest thing that we have in our nature, and union through pain has +always seemed more real and more holy than any other.’”</p> + +<p><a name='f_116' id='f_116' href='#fna_116'>[116]</a> From <i>Problems and Persons</i>, by Wilfrid Ward, published here by his +kind permission and that of Longmans, Green and Co.</p> + +<p><a name='f_117' id='f_117' href='#fna_117'>[117]</a> “From the great deep to the great deep he goes;” and “when that +which drew from out the boundless deep turns again home.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_118' id='f_118' href='#fna_118'>[118]</a></p> + +<p class="poem">For in the world which is not ours, they said,<br /> +“Let us make man,” and that which should be man,<br /> +From that one light no man can look upon,<br /> +Drew to this shore, lit by the suns and moons<br /> +And all the shadows.</p> + +<p><a name='f_119' id='f_119' href='#fna_119'>[119]</a> Reprinted from the <i>Spectator</i> of January 1, 1870.</p> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Tennyson and His Friends, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TENNYSON AND HIS FRIENDS *** + +***** This file should be named 38420-h.htm or 38420-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/8/4/2/38420/ + +Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images +generously made available by The Internet Archive/American +Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + + +</pre> + +</body> +</html> |