It is perhaps difficult for men of middle age to estimate Tennyson
aright. For we who love poetry were brought up, as it were, at his
feet, and he cast the magic of his fascination over our youth.
We have gone away, we have travelled in other lands, absorbed in
other preoccupations, often revolving problems different from those
concerning which we took counsel with him; and we hear new voices,
claiming authority, who aver that our old master has been superseded,
that he has no message for a new generation, that his voice is no
longer a talisman of power. Then we return to the country of our
early love, and what shall our report be? Each one must answer for
himself; but my report will be entirely loyal to those early and
dear impressions. I am of those who believe that Tennyson has still
a message for the world. Men become impatient with hearing Aristides
so often called just, but is that the fault of Aristides? They are
impatient also with a reputation, which necessarily is what all great
reputations must so largely be—the empty echo of living voices from
blank walls. “Now again”—not the people, but certain critics—“call
it but a weed.” Yet how strange these fashions in poetry are! I well
remember Lord Broughton, Byron’s friend, expressing to me, when I was
a boy, his astonishment that the bust of Tennyson by Woolner should
have been thought worthy of a place near that of Lord Byron in Trinity
College, Cambridge. “Lord Byron was a great poet; but Mr. Tennyson,
though he had written pretty verses,” and so on. For one thing, the men
of that generation deemed Tennyson terribly obscure. “In Memoriam,” it
was held, nobody could possibly understand. The poet, being original,
had to make his own public. Men nurtured on Scott and Byron could not
understand him. Now we hear no more of his obscurity. Moreover, he
spoke as the mouthpiece of his own time. Doubts, aspirations, visions
unfamiliar to the aging, breathed melodiously through him. Again, how
contemptuously do Broad-church psychologists like George Macdonald,
and writers for the _Spectator_, as well as literary persons belonging
to what I may term the _finikin_ school, on the other hand, now talk of
our equally great poet Byron. How detestable must the North be, if the
South be so admirable! But while Tennyson spoke to me in youth, Byron
spoke to me in boyhood, and I still love both.
Whatever may have to be discounted from the popularity of Tennyson on
account of fashion and a well-known name, or on account of his harmony
with the (more or less provincial) ideas of the large majority of
Englishmen, his popularity is a fact of real benefit to the public,
and highly creditable to them at the same time. The establishment of
his name in popular favor is but very partially accounted for by the
circumstance that, when he won his spurs, he was among younger singers
the only serious champion in the field, since, if I mistake not, he
was at one time a less “popular” poet than Mr. Robert Montgomery. _Vox
populi_ is not always _vox Dei_, but it may be so accidentally, and
then the people reap benefit from their happy blunder. The great poet
who won the laurel before Tennyson has never been “popular” at all, and
Tennyson is the only true English poet who has pleased the “public”
since Byron, Walter Scott, Tom Moore, and Mrs. Hemans. But he had to
conquer their suffrages, for his utterance, whatever he may have owed
to Keats, was original, and his substance the outcome of an opulent
and profound personality. These were serious obstacles to success,
for he neither went “deep” into “the general heart” like Burns, nor
appealed to superficial sentiments in easy language like Scott, Moore,
and Byron. In his earliest volume indeed there was a preponderance of
manner over matter; it was characterized by a certain dainty prettiness
of style, that scarcely gave promise of the high spiritual vision and
rich complexity of human insight to which he has since attained, though
it did manifest a delicate feeling for nature in association with human
moods, an extraordinarily subtle sensibility of all senses, and a
luscious pictorial power. Not Endymion had been more luxuriant. All was
steeped in golden languors. There were faults in plenty, and of course
the critics, faithful to the instincts of their kind, were jubilant
to nose them. To adapt Coleridge’s funny verses, not “the Church of
St. Geryon,” nor the legendary Rhine, but the “stinks and stenches” of
Kölntown do such offal-feeders love to enumerate, and distinguish. But
the poet in his verses on “Musty Christopher” gave one of these people
a Roland for his Oliver. Stuart Mill, as Mr. Mathews, in his lately
published and very instructive lecture on Tennyson, points out, was the
one critic in a million who remembered Pope’s precept,
“Be thou the first true merit to befriend,
His praise is lost who waits till all commend.”
Yet it is only natural that the mediocrities, who for a moment keep
the door of Fame, should scrutinize with somewhat jaundiced eye the
credentials of new aspirants, since every entry adds fresh bitterness
to their own exclusion.
But really it is well for us, the poet’s elect lovers, to remember that
he once had faults, however few he may now retain; for the perverse
generation who dance not when the poet pipes to them, nor mourn when he
weeps, have turned upon Tennyson with the cry that he “is all fault who
has no fault at all”—they would have us regard him as a kind of Andrea
del Sarto, a “blameless” artistic “monster, “a poet of unimpeachable
technical skill, but keeping a certain dead level of moderate merit. It
is as well to be reminded that this at all events is false. The dawn
of his young art was beautiful; but the artist had all the generous
faults of youthful genius—excess, vision confused with gorgeous color
and predominant sense, too palpable artifice of diction, indistinctness
of articulation in the outline, intricately-woven cross-lights flooding
the canvas, defect of living interest; while Coleridge said that he
began to write poetry without an ear for metre. Neither Adeline,
Madeline, nor Eleanore are living portraits, though Eleanore is
gorgeously painted. “The Ode to Memory” has isolated images of rare
beauty, but it is kaleidoscopic in effect; the fancy is playing with
loose foam-wreaths, rather than the imagination “taking things by
the heart.” But our great poet has gone beyond these. He has himself
rejected twenty-six out of the fifty-eight poems published in his first
volume; while some of those even in the second have been altogether
rewritten. Such defects are eminently present in the lately republished
poem written in youth, “The Lover’s Tale,” though this too has been
altered. As a storehouse of fine imagery, metaphor, and deftly moulded
phrase, of blank verse also whose sonorous rhythm must surely be a
fabric of adult architecture, the piece can hardly be surpassed; but
the tale as tale lingers and lapses, overweighted with the too gorgeous
trappings under which it so laboriously moves. And such expression as
the following, though not un-Shakspearian, is hardly quarried from
the soundest material in Shakspeare—for, after all, Shakspeare was a
euphuist now and then—
“Why fed we from one fountain? drew one sun?
Why were our mothers branches of one stem, if that same nearness
Were father to this distance, and that _one_
Vaunt courier to this _double_, if affection
Living slew love, and sympathy hewed out
The bosom-sepulchre of sympathy?”
Yet “Mariana” had the virtue, which the poet has displayed so
pre-eminently since, of concentration. Every subtle touch enhances the
effect he intends to produce, that of the desolation of the deserted
woman, whose hope is nearly extinguished; Nature hammering a fresh
nail into her coffin with every innocent aspect or movement. Beautiful
too are “Love and Death” and “The Poet’s Mind;” while in “The Poet” we
have the oft-quoted line: “Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of
scorn, the love of love.”
Mr. G. Brimley was the first, I believe, to point out the distinctive
peculiarity of Lord Tennyson’s treatment of landscape. It is treated
by him dramatically; that is to say, the details of it are selected so
as to be interpretative of the particular mood or emotion he wishes to
represent. Thus in the two Marianas, they are painted with the minute
distinctness appropriate to the morbid and sickening observation of the
lonely woman, whose attention is distracted by no cares, pleasures,
or satisfied affections. That is a pregnant remark, a key to unlock
a good deal of Tennyson’s work with. Byron and Shelley, though they
are carried out of themselves in contemplating Nature, do not, I
think, often take her as interpreter of moods alien to their own. In
Wordsworth’s “Excursion,” it is true, Margaret’s lonely grief is thus
delineated though the neglect of her garden and the surroundings of her
cottage; yet this is not so characteristic a note of his nature-poetry.
In the “Miller’s Daughter” and the “Gardener’s Daughter” the lovers
would be little indeed without the associated scene so germane to the
incidents narrated, both as congenial setting of the picture for a
spectator, and as vitally fused with the emotion of the lovers; while
never was more lovely landscape-painting of the gentle order than in
the “Gardener’s Daughter.” Lessing, who says that poetry ought never
to be pictorial, would, I suppose, much object to Tennyson’s; but
to me, I confess, this mellow, lucid, luminous word-painting of his
is entirely delightful. It refutes the criticism that words cannot
convey a picture by perfectly conveying it. _Solvitur ambulando_; the
Gardener’s Daughter standing by her rose-bush, “a sight to make an old
man young,” remaining in our vision to confound all crabbed pedants
with pet theories.
In his second volume, indeed, the poet’s art was well mastered, for
here we find the “Lotos-eaters,” “Œnone,” “The Palace of Art,” “A Dream
of Fair Women,” the tender “May-Queen,” and the “Lady of Shalott.”
Perhaps the first four of these are among the very finest works of
Tennyson. In the mouth of the love-lorn nymph Œnone he places the
complaint concerning Paris into which there enters so much delightful
picture of the scenery around Mount Ida, and of those fair immortals
who came to be judged by the beardless apple-arbiter. How deliciously
flows the verse!—though probably it flows still more entrancingly in
the “Lotos-eaters,” wandering there like clouds of fragrant incense,
or some slow heavy honey, or a rare amber unguent poured out. How
wonderfully harmonious with the dream-mood of the dreamers are phrase,
image, and measure! But we need not quote the lovely choric song
wherein occur the lines—
“Music that gentlier on the spirit lies
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes,”
so entirely restful and happy in their simplicity. If Art would always
blossom so, she might be forgiven if she blossomed only for her own
sake; yet this controversy regarding _Art for Art_ need hardly have
arisen, since Art may certainly bloom for her own sake, if only she
consent to assimilate in her blooming, and so exhale for her votaries,
in due proportion, all elements essential to Nature, and Humanity: for
in the highest artist all faculties are transfigured into one supreme
organ; while among forms her form is the most consummate, among fruits
her fruit offers the most satisfying refreshment. What a delicately
true picture have we here—
“And like a downward smoke, the slender stream
Along the cliff to fall, and pause and fall did seem,”
where we feel also the poet’s remarkable faculty of making word and
rhythm an echo and auxiliary of the sense. Not only have we the three
cæsuras respectively after “fall,” and “pause” and “fall,” but the
length, and soft amplitude of the vowel sounds with liquid consonants
aid in the realization of the picture, reminding of Milton’s beautiful
“From morn to noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, a summer’s day.”
The same faculty is notable in the rippling lilt of the charming
little “Brook” song, and indeed everywhere. In the “Dream of Fair
Women” we have a series of cabinet portraits, presenting a situation
of human interest with a few animating touches, but still chiefly
through suggestive surroundings. There occurs the magnificent phrase
of Cleopatra: “We drank the Lybian sun to sleep, and lit lamps which
outburned Canopus.” The force of expression could be carried no further
than throughout this poem, and by “expression” of course I do not mean
pretty words, or power-words for there own sweet sake, for these,
expressing nothing, whatever else they may be, are not “expression;”
but I mean the forcible or felicitous presentment of thought, image,
feeling, or incident, through pregnant and beautiful language in
harmony with them; though the subtle and indirect suggestion of
language is unquestionably an element to be taken into account by
poetry. The “Palace of Art” is perhaps equal to the former poem for
lucid splendor of description, in this instance pointing a moral,
allegorizing a truth. Scornful pride, intellectual arrogance, selfish
absorption in æsthetic enjoyment, is imaged forth in this vision of
the queen’s world-reflecting palace, and its various treasures—the
end being a sense of unendurable isolation, engendering madness, but
at last repentance, and reconcilement with the scouted commonalty of
mankind.
The dominant note of Tennyson’s poetry is assuredly the delineation
of human moods modulated by Nature, and through a system of
Nature-symbolism. Thus, in “Elaine,” when Lancelot has sent a courtier
to the queen, asking her to grant him audience, that he may present
the diamonds won for her in tourney, she receives the messenger with
unmoved dignity; but he, bending low and reverently before her, saw
“with a sidelong eye”
“The shadow of some piece of pointed lace
In the queen’s shadow vibrate on the walls,
And parted, laughing in his courtly heart.”
The “Morte d’Arthur” affords a striking instance of this peculiarly
Tennysonian method. That is another of the very finest pieces. Such
poetry may suggest labor, but not more than does the poetry of Virgil
or Milton. Every word is the right word, and each in the right place.
Sir H. Taylor indeed warns poets against “wanting to make every word
beautiful.” And yet here it must be owned that the result of such an
effort is successful, so delicate has become the artistic tact of
this poet in his maturity.[1] For, good expression being the happy
adaptation of language to meaning, it follows that sometimes good
expression will be perfectly simple, even ordinary in character, and
sometimes it will be ornate, elaborate, dignified. He who can thus vary
his language is the best verbal artist, and Tennyson can thus vary
it. In this poem, the “Morte d’Arthur,” too, we have “deep-chested
music.” Except in some of Wordsworth and Shelley, or in the magnificent
“Hyperion” of Keats, we have had no such stately, sonorous organ-music
in English verse since Milton as in this poem, or in “Tithonus,”
“Ulysses,” “Lucretius,” and “Guinevere.” From the majestic overture,
“So all day long the noise of battle rolled
Among the mountains by the winter sea,”
onward to the end, the same high elevation is maintained.
But this very picturesqueness of treatment has been urged against
Tennyson as a fault in his narrative pieces generally, from its
alleged over-luxuriance, and tendency to absorb, rather than enhance,
the higher human interest of character and action. However this be
(and I think it is an objection that does apply, for instance, to
“The Princess”), here in this poem picturesqueness must be counted
as a merit, because congenial to the semi-mythical, ideal, and
parabolic nature of Arthurian legend, full of portent and supernatural
suggestion. Such Ossianic hero-forms are nearly as much akin to the
elements as to man. And the same answer holds largely in the case of
the other Arthurian Idylls. It has been noted how well-chosen is the
epithet “water” applied to a lake in the lines, “On one side lay the
ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and the moon was full.” Why is
this so happy? For as a rule the concrete rather than the abstract
is poetical, because the former brings with it an image, and the
former involves no vision. But now in the night all Sir Bedevere could
observe, or care to observe, was that there was “some great water.” We
do not—he did not—want to know exactly what it was. Other thoughts,
other cares, preoccupy him and us. Again, of dying Arthur we are told
that “all his greaves and caisses were dashed with drops of onset.”
“Onset” is a very generic term, poetic because removed from all vulgar
associations of common parlance, and vaguely suggestive not only of
war’s pomp and circumstance, but of high deeds also, and heroic hearts,
since onset belongs to mettle and daring; the word for vast and shadowy
connotation is akin to Milton’s grand abstraction, “Far off _His
coming_ shone” or Shelley’s, “Where the Earthquake Demon taught her
young _Ruin_.”
It has been noted also how cunningly Tennyson can gild and furbish up
the most commonplace detail—as when he calls Arthur’s mustache “the
knightly growth that fringed his lips,” or condescends to glorify a
pigeon-pie, or paints the clown’s astonishment by this detail, “the
brawny spearman let his cheek Bulge with the unswallowed piece, and
turning stared;” or thus characterizes a pun, “and took the word, and
play’d upon it, and made it of two colors.” This kind of ingenuity,
indeed, belongs rather to talent than to genius; it is exercised
in cold blood; but talent may be a valuable auxiliary of genius,
perfecting skill in the technical departments of art. Yet such a gift
is not without danger to the possessor. It may tempt him to make his
work too much like a delicate mosaic of costly stone, too hard and
unblended, from excessive elaboration of detail. One may even prefer
to art thus highly wrought a more glowing and careless strain, that
lifts us off our feet, and carries us away as on a more rapid, if more
turbid torrent of inspiration, such as we find in Byron, Shelley,
or Victor Hugo. Here you are compelled to pause at every step, and
admire the design of the costly tesselated pavement under your feet.
Perhaps there is a jewelled glitter, a Pre-Raphaelite or Japanese
minuteness of finish here and there in Tennyson, that takes away
from the feeling of aërial perspective and remote distance, leaving
little to the imagination; not suggesting and whetting the appetite,
but rather satiating it; his loving observation of minute particulars
is so faithful, his knowledge of what others, even men of science,
have observed so accurate, his fancy so nimble in the detection of
similitudes. But every master has his own manner, and his reverent
disciples would be sorry if he could be without it. We love the little
idiosyncracies of our friends.
I have said the objection in question does seem to lie against “The
Princess.” It contains some of the most beautiful poetic pearls the
poet has ever dropped; but the manner appears rather disproportionate
to the matter, at least to the subject as he has chosen to regard
it. For it is regarded by him only semi-seriously; so lightly and
sportively is the whole topic viewed at the outset, that the effect
is almost that of burlesque; yet there is a very serious conclusion,
and a very weighty moral is drawn from the story, the workmanship
being labored to a degree, and almost encumbered with ornamentation.
But the poet himself admits the ingrained incongruity of the poem.
The fine comparison of the Princess Ida in the battle to a beacon
glaring ruin over raging seas, for instance, seems too grand for the
occasion. How differently, and in what burning earnest has a great
poet-woman, Mrs. Browning, treated this grave modern question of the
civil and political position of women in “Aurora Leigh!” Tennyson’s is
essentially a man’s view, and the frequent talk about women’s beauty
must be very aggravating to the “Blues.” It is this poem especially
that gives people with a limited knowledge of Tennyson the idea of
a “pretty” poet; the prettiness, though very genuine, seems to play
too patronizingly with a momentous theme. The Princess herself, and
the other figures are indeed dramatically realized, but the splendor
of invention, and the dainty detail, rather dazzle the eye away from
their humanity. Here, however, are some of the loveliest songs that
this poet, one of our supreme lyrists, ever sung: “Tears, idle tears!”
“The splendor falls,” “Sweet and low,” “Home they brought,” “Ask me no
more,” and the exquisite melody, “For Love is of the valley.” Moreover,
the grand lines toward the close are full of wisdom—
“For woman is not undeveloped man,
But diverse: could we make her as the man
Sweet love were slain,” &c.
I feel myself a somewhat similar incongruity in the poet’s treatment of
his more homely, modern, half-humorous themes, such as the introduction
to the “Morte d’Arthur,” and “Will Waterproof;” not at all in the
humorous poems, like the “Northern Farmer,” which are all of a piece,
and perfect in their own vein. In this introduction we have “The host
and I sat round the wassail bowl, then half-way ebb’d;” but this
metaphorical style is not (fortunately) sustained, and so, as good luck
would have it, a metaphor not being ready to hand, we have the honester
and homelier line, “Till I tired out with cutting eights that day upon
the pond;” yet this homespun hardly agrees with the above stage-king’s
costume. And so again I often venture to wish that the Poet-Laureate
would not say “flowed” when he only means “said.” Still, this may be
hypercriticism. For I did not personally agree with the critic who
objected to Enoch Arden’s fish-basket being called “ocean-smelling
osier.” There is no doubt, however, that “Stokes, and Nokes, and Vokes”
have exaggerated the poet’s manner, till the “murex fished up” by Keats
and Tennyson has become one universal flare of purple. Beautiful as
some of Mr. Rossetti’s work is, his expression in the sonnets surely
became obscure from over-involution, and excessive _fioriture_ of
diction. But then Rossetti’s style is no doubt formed considerably upon
that of the Italian poets. One is glad, however, that, this time, at
all events, the right man has “got the porridge!”
In connection with “Morte d’Arthur,” I may draw attention again to Lord
Tennyson’s singular skill in producing a rhythmical response to the
sense.
“The great brand
Made lightnings in the splendor of the moon,
And flashing round and round, and whirled in an arch.”
Here the anapest instead of the iambic in the last place happily
imitates the sword Excalibur’s own gyration in the air. Then what
admirable wisdom does the legend, opening out into parable, disclose
toward the end! When Sir Bedevere laments the passing away of the
Round Table, and Arthur’s noble peerage, gone down in doubt, distrust,
treachery, and blood, after that last great battle in the West, when,
amid the death-white mist, “confusion fell even upon Arthur,” and
“friend slew friend, now knowing whom he slew,” how grandly comes
the answer of Arthur from the mystic barge, that bears him from the
visible world to “some far island valley of Avilion,” “The old order
changeth, yielding place to new, and God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world!” The new commencement
of this poem, called in the idyls “The Passing of Arthur,” is well
worthy of the conclusion. How weirdly expressive is that last battle in
the mist of those hours of spiritual perplexity, which overcloud even
strongest natures and firmest faith, overshadowing whole communities,
when we know not friend from foe, the holiest hope seems doomed to
disappointment, all the great aim and work of life have failed; even
loyalty to the highest is no more; the fair polity built laboriously
by some god-like spirit dissolves, and “all his realm reels back into
the beast;” while men “falling down in death” look up to heaven only
to find cloud, and the great-voiced ocean, as it were Destiny without
love and without mind, with voice of days of old and days to be, shakes
the world, wastes the narrow kingdom, yea, beats upon the faces of
our dead! The world-sorrow pierces here through the strain of a poet
usually calm and contented. Yet “Arthur shall come again, aye, twice as
fair;” for the spirit of man is young immortally.
Who, moreover, has moulded for us phrases of more transcendent dignity,
of more felicitous grace and import, phrases, epithets, and lines
that have already become memorable household words? More magnificent
expression I cannot conceive than that of such poems as “Lucretius,”
“Tithonus,” “Ulysses.” These all for versification, language, luminous
picture, harmony of structure have never been surpassed. What pregnant
brevity, weight, and majesty of expression in the lines where Lucretius
characterizes the death of his namesake Lucretia, ending “and from it
sprang the commonwealth, which breaks, as I am breaking now!” What
masterly power in poetically embodying a materialistic philosophy,
congenial to modern science, yet in absolute dramatic keeping with the
actual thought of the Roman poet! And at the same time, what tremendous
grasp of the terrible conflict of passion with reason, two natures
in one, significant for all epochs! In “Tithonus” and “Ulysses” we
find embodiments in high-born verse and illustrious phrase of ideal
moods, adventurous peril-affronting Enterprise contemptuously tolerant
of tame household virtues in “Ulysses,” and the bane of a burdensome
immortality, become incapable even of love, in “Tithonus.” Any
personification more exquisite than that of Aurora in the latter were
inconceivable.
M. Taine, in his _Litterature Anglaise_, represents Tennyson as
an idyllic poet (a charming one), comfortably settled among his
rhododendrons on an English lawn, and viewing the world through the
somewhat insular medium of a prosperous, domestic and virtuous member
of the English comfortable classes, as also of a man of letters who
has fully succeeded. Again, either M. Taine, M. Scherer, or some other
writer in the _Revue des deux Mondes_, pictures him, like his own
Lady of Shalott, viewing life not as it really is, but reflected in
the magic mirror of his own recluse fantasy. Now, whatever measure
of truth there may formerly have been in such conceptions, they have
assuredly now proved quite one-sided and inadequate. We have only to
remember “Maud,” the stormier poems of the “Idylls,” “Lucretius,”
“Rizpah,” the “Vision of Sin.” The recent poem “Rizpah” perhaps marks
the high-water mark of the Laureate’s genius, and proves henceforward
beyond all dispute his wide range, his command over the deeper-toned
and stormier themes of human music, as well as over the gentler and
more serene. It proves also that the venerable master’s hand has not
lost its cunning, rather that he has been even growing until now,
having become more profoundly sympathetic with the world of action,
and the common growth of human sorrows. “Rizpah” is certainly one of
the strongest, most intensely felt, and graphically realized dramatic
poems in the language; its pathos is almost overwhelming. There is
nothing more tragic in Œdipus, Antigone, or Lear. And what a strong
Saxon homespun language has the veteran poet found for these terrible
lamentations of half-demented agony, “My Baby! the bones that had
sucked me, the bones that had laughed and had cried, Theirs! O no! They
are mine not theirs—they had moved in my side.” Then the heart-gripping
phrase breaking forth ever and anon in the imaginative metaphorical
utterance of wild emotion, to which the sons and daughters of the
people are often moved, eloquent beyond all eloquence, white-hot from
the heart! “Dust to dust low down! let us hide! but they set him so
high, that all the ships of the world could stare at him passing by.”
In this last book of ballads the style bears the same relation to the
earlier and daintier that the style of “Samson Agonistes” bears to that
of “Comus.” “The Revenge” is equally masculine, simple, and sinewy in
appropriate strength of expression, a most spirited rendering of a
heroic naval action—worthy of a place, as is also the grand ode on the
death of Wellington, beside the war odes of Campbell, the “Agincourt”
of Drayton, and the “Rule Britannia” of Thomson. The irregular metre
of the “Ballad of the Fleet” is most remarkable as a vehicle of the
sense, resonant with din of battle, full-voiced with rising and
bursting storm toward the close, like the equally spirited concluding
scenes of “Harold,” that depict the battle of Senlac. The dramatic
characterizations in “Harold” and “Queen Mary” are excellent—Mary,
Harold, the Conqueror, the Confessor, Pole, Edith, Stigand, and other
subordinate sketches, being striking and successful portraits; while
“Harold” is full also of incident and action—a really memorable modern
play; but the main motive of “Queen Mary” fails in tragic dignity and
interest, though there is about it a certain grim subdued pathos, as of
still life, and there are some notable scenes. Tennyson is admirably
dramatic in the portrayal of individual moods, of men or women in
certain given situations. His plays are fine, and of real historic
interest, but not nearly so remarkable as the dramatic poems I have
named, as the earlier “St. Simeon Stylites,” “Ulysses,” “Tithonus,” or
as the “Northern Farmer,” “Cobblers,” and “Village Wife,” among his
later works. These last are perfectly marvellous in their fidelity
and humorous photographic realism. That the poet of “Œnone,” “The
Lotus-eaters,” and the Arthur cycle should have done these also is
wonderful. The humor of them is delightful, and the rough homely
diction perfect. One wishes indeed that the “dramatic fragments”
collected by Lamb, like gold-dust out of the rather dreary sand-expanse
of Elizabethan playwrights, were so little fragmentary as these.
Tennyson’s short dramatic poems are quintessential; in a brief glimpse
he contrives to reveal the whole man or woman. You would know the old
“Northern Farmer,” with his reproach to “God Amoighty” for not “letting
him aloan,” and the odious farmer of the new style, with his “Proputty!
Proputty!” wherever you met them. But “Dora,” the “Grand-mother,” “Lady
Clare,” “Edward Gray,” “Lord of Burleigh,” had long since proved that
Tennyson had more than one style at command; that he was master not
only of a flamboyant, a Corinthian, but also of a sweet, simple, limpid
English, worthy of Goldsmith or Cowper at their best.
Reverting, however, to the question of Tennyson’s ability to fathom
the darker recesses of our nature, what shall be said of the “Vision
of Sin?” For myself I can only avow that, whenever I read it, I feel
as if some horrible gray fungus of the grave were growing over my
heart, and over all the world around me. As for passion, I know few
more profoundly passionate poems than “Love and Duty.” It paints
with glowing concentrated power the conflict of duty with yearning
passionate love, stronger than death. The “Sisters,” and “Fatima,”
too, are fiercely passionate, as also is “Maud.” I should be surprised
to hear that a lover could read “Maud,” and not feel the spring and
mid-noon of passionate affection in it to the very core of him, so
profoundly felt and gloriously expressed is it by the poet. Much of its
power, again, is derived from that peculiarly Tennysonian ability to
make Nature herself reflect, redouble, and interpret the human feeling.
That is the power also of such supreme lyrics as “Break, break!” and
“In the Valley of Cauterets;” of such chaste and consummate rendering
of a noble woman’s self-sacrifice as “Godiva,” wherein “shameless
gargoyles” stare, but “the still air scarcely breathes for fear;” and
likewise of “Come into the garden, Maud,” an invocation that palpitates
with rapture of young love, in which the sweet choir of flowers bear
their part, and sing antiphony. The same feeling pervades the delicious
passage commencing, “Is that enchanted moon?” and “Go not, happy day.”
All this may be what Mr. Ruskin condemns as “pathetic” fallacy, but it
is inevitable and right. For “in our life doth nature live, ours is
her wedding garment, ours her shroud.” The same Divine Spirit pervades
man and nature; she, like ourselves, has her transient moods, as well
as her tranquil immovable deeps. In her, too, is a passing as well as
an eternal, while we apprehend either according to our own capacity,
together with the emotional bias that dominates us at the moment. The
vital and permanent in us holds the vital and permanent in her, while
the temporary in us mirrors the transitory in her. I cannot think
indeed that the more troubled and jarring moods of disharmony and fury
are touched with quite the same degree of mastery in “Maud” as are the
sunnier and happier. Tennyson hitherto had basked by preference in
the brighter regions of his art, and the turbid Byronic vein appeared
rather unexpectedly in him. The tame, sleek, daintily-feeding gourmêts
of criticism yelped indeed their displeasure at these “hysterics,” as
they termed the “Sturm und Drang” elements that appeared in “Maud,”
especially since the poet dared appropriately to body these forth in
somewhat harsh, abrupt language, and irregular metres. Such elements,
in truth, hardly seemed so congenial to him as to Byron or Hugo. Yet
they were welcome, as proving that our chief poet was not altogether
irresponsive to the terrible social problems around him, to the
corruptions, and ever-festering vices of the body politic, to the
doubt, denial, and grim symptoms of upheaval at his very doors. For
on the whole some of us had felt that the Poet-Laureate was almost
too well contented with the general framework of things, with the
prescriptive rights of long-unchallenged rule, and hoar comfortable
custom, especially in England, as though these were in very deed
divine, and no subterranean thunder were ever heard, even in this
favored isle, threatening Church and State, and the very fabric of
society. But the temper of his class and time spoke through him. Did
not all men rejoice greatly when Prince Albert opened the Exhibition
of 1851; when Cobden and the Manchester school won the battle of
free-trade; when steam-engines and the electric telegraph were
invented; when Wordsworth’s “glorious time” came, and the Revised Code
passed into law; when science first told her enchanting fairy tales?
Yet the Millennium tarries, and there is an exceeding “bitter cry.”
But in “Maud,” as indeed before in that fine sonorous chaunt,
“Locksley Hall,” and later in “Aylmer’s Field,” the poet’s emphasis
of appreciation is certainly reserved for the heroes, men who have
inherited a strain of gloom, or ancestral disharmony moral and
physical, within whom the morbific social humors break forth inevitably
into plague-spots; the injustice and irony of circumstance lash them
into revolt, wrath, and madness. Mr. R. H. Hutton, a critic who often
writes with ability, but who seems to find a little difficulty in
stepping outside the circle of his perhaps rather rigid misconceptions
and predilections, makes the surely somewhat strange remark that
“‘Maud’ was written to reprobate hysterics.” But I fear—nay, I hope
and believe—that we cannot credit the poet with any such virtuous
or didactic intention in the present instance, though of course the
pregnant lines beginning “Of old sat Freedom on the heights,” the royal
verses, the recent play so forcibly objected to by Lord Queensberry,
together with various allusions to the “red fool-fury of the Seine,”
and “blind hysterics of the Celt,” do indicate a very Conservative and
law-abiding attitude. But other lines prove that after all what he
mostly deprecates is “the falsehood of extremes,” the blind and hasty
plunge into measures of mere destruction; for he praises the statesmen
who “take occasion by the hand,” and make “the bounds of freedom wider
yet,” and even gracefully anticipates “the golden year.”
The same principle on which I have throughout insisted as the key
to most of Tennyson’s best poetry is the key also to the moving
tale “Enoch Arden,” where the tropical island around the solitary
shipwrecked mariner is gorgeously depicted, the picture being as
full-Venetian, and resplendent in color, as those of the “Day-Dream”
and “Arabian Nights.” But the conclusion of the tale is profoundly
moving and pathetic, and relates a noble act of self-renouncement.
Parts of “Aylmer’s Field,” too, are powerful.
And now we come to the “Idylls,” around which no little critical
controversy has raged. It has been charged against them that they are
more picturesque, scenic, and daintily-wrought than human in their
interest. But though assuredly the poet’s love for the picturesque is
in this noble epic—for epic the Idylls in their completed state may be
accounted—amply indulged, I think it is seldom to the detriment of the
human interest, and the remark I made about one of them, the “Morte
d’Arthur,” really applies to all. The Arthur cycle is not historical,
as “Harold” or “Queen Mary” is, where the style is often simple
almost to baldness; the whole of it belongs to the reign of myth,
legend, fairy story, and parable. Ornament, image, and picture are as
much appropriate here as in Spenser’s “Fairy Queen,” of which indeed
Tennyson’s poem often reminds me. But “the light that never was on sea
or land, the consecration and the poet’s dream,” are a new revelation,
made peculiarly in modern poetry, of true spiritual insight. And this
not only throws fresh illuminating light into nature, but deepens
also and enlarges our comprehension of man. If nature be known for a
symbol and embodiment of the soul’s life, by means of their analogies
in nature the human heart and mind may be more profoundly understood;
while human emotions win a double clearness, or an added sorrow,
from their fellowship and association with outward scenes. Nature
can only be fathomed through her consanguinity with our own desires,
aspirations, and fears, while these again become defined and articulate
by means of her related appearances. A poet, then, who is sensitive to
such analogies confers a two-fold benefit upon us.
I cannot at all assent to the criticism passed upon the Idylls by Mr.
John Morley, who has indeed, as it appears to me, somewhat imperilled
his critical reputation by the observation that they are “such little
pictures as might adorn a lady’s school.” When we think of “Guinevere,”
“Vivien,” the “Holy Grail,” the “Passing of Arthur,” this dictum seems
to lack point and penetration. Indeed, had it proceeded only from
some rhyming criticaster, alternating with the feeble puncture of his
sting the worrying iteration of his own doleful drone, it might have
been passed over as simply an impertinence.[2] But while the poem
is in part purely a fairy romance tinctured with humanity, Tennyson
has certainly intended to treat the subject in part also as a grave
spiritual parable. Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Elaine, Galahad,
Vivien, are types, gracious or hateful. My own feeling, therefore,
would rather be that there is too much human nature in the Idylls, than
that there is too little; or at any rate that, while Arthur remains a
mighty Shadow, whose coming and going are attended with supernatural
portents, a worthy symbol of the Spirit of divine humanity, Vivien, for
instance, is a too real and unlovely harlot, too gross and veritably
breathing, to be in proportionate harmony with the general design.
Lancelot and Guinevere, again, being far fuller of life and color than
Arthur, the situation between these three, as invented, or at least
as recast from the old legends in his own fashion by the poet, does
not seem artistically felicitous, if regarded as a representation of
an actual occurrence in human life. But so vivid and human are many
of the stories that we can hardly fail so to regard them. And if the
common facts of life are made the vehicle of a parable, they must
not be distorted. It is chiefly, I think, because Arthur and Merlin
are only seen, as it were, through the luminous haze appropriate to
romance and myth, that the main motive of the epic, the loves of
Lancelot and Guinevere, appears scarcely strong enough to bear the
weight of momentous consequence imposed on it, which is no less than
the retributive ruin of Arthur’s commonwealth. Now, if Art elects to
appeal to ethical instinct, as great, human, undegraded Art continually
must, she is even more bound, in pursuance of her own proper end, to
satisfy the demand for moral beauty, than to gratify the taste for
beauty intellectual or æsthetic. And of course, while you might flatter
a poetaster, you would only insult a poet by refusing to consider what
he says, and only professing a concern for how he says it. Therefore
if the poet choose to lay all the blame of the dissolution and failure
of Arthur’s polity upon the illicit loves of Lancelot and Guinevere,
it seems to me that he committed a serious error in his invention of
the early circumstances of their meeting; nothing of the kind being
discoverable either in Mallory, or the old chronicle of Merlin. Great
stress, no doubt, is laid by Sir Thomas Mallory on this illicit love
as the fruitful source of much calamity; but then Mallory relates that
Arthur had met and loved Guinevere long before he asked for her in
marriage; whereas, according to Tennyson, he sent Lancelot to meet the
betrothed maiden, and she, never having seen Arthur, loved Lancelot,
as Lancelot Guinevere, at first sight. That circumstance, gratuitously
invented, surely makes the degree of the lovers’ guilt a problem
somewhat needlessly difficult to determine, if it was intended to brand
their guilt as heinous enough to deserve the ruin of a realm, and the
failure of Arthur’s humane life-purpose. Guinevere, seeing Lancelot
before Arthur, and recognizing in him (as the sweet and pure Elaine,
remember, did after her), the type of all that is noble and knightly
in man, loves the messenger, and continues to love him after she has
met her destined husband, whom she judges (and the reader of the
Idylls can hardly fail to coincide with her judgment) somewhat cold,
colorless, and aloof, however impeccable and grave; a kind of moral
phantom, or imaginative symbol of the conscience, whom Guinevere, as
typifying the human soul, ought indeed to love best (“not Lancelot,
nor another”), but whom, as a particular living man, Arthur, one quite
fails to see why Guinevere, a living woman with her own idiosyncracies,
should be bound to love rather than Lancelot. For if Guinevere, as
woman, ought to love “the highest” man “when she sees him,” it does
not appear why that obligation should not equally bind all the women
of her Court also! If the whole burden of the catastrophe was to be
laid upon the conception of a punishment deserved by the great guilt
of particular persons, that guilt ought certainly to have been so
described as to appear heinous and inexcusable to all beyond question.
The story need not have been thus moralized; but the Poet-Laureate
chose to emphasize the breach of a definite moral obligation as
unpardonable, and pregnant with evil issues. That being so, I submit
that the moral sense is left hesitating and bewildered, rather than
satisfied and acquiescent, which interferes with a thorough enjoyment
of the work even as art. The sacrament of marriage is high and holy;
yet we feel disposed to demand whether here it may not be rather the
letter and mere convention than the spirit of constant affection and
true marriage that is magnified. And if so, though popularity with the
English public may be secured by this vindication of their domestic
ideal, higher interests are hardly so well subserved. Doubtless the
treachery to husband and friend on the part of the lovers was black
and detestable. Doubtless their indulged love was far from innocent.
But then why invent so complicated a problem, and yet write as if
it were perfectly simple and easy of solution? What I complain of
is, that this love has a certain air of grievous fatality and excuse
about it, while yet the poet treats it as mere unmitigated guilt,
fully justifying all the disaster entailed thereby, not only on the
sinners themselves, but on the State, and the cause of human welfare.
Nor can we feel quite sure, as the subject is here envisaged, that,
justice apart, it is quite according to probability for the knowledge
of this constant illicit affection to engender a universal infidelity
of the Round Table Knights to vows which not only their lips, as in
the case of Guinevere, but also their hearts have sworn; infidelity
to their own true affection, and disloyalty to their own genuine
aspiration after the fulfilment of chivalrous duty in championing the
oppressed—all because a rich-natured woman like Guinevere proves
faithful to her affection for a rich kindred humanity in Lancelot!
How this comes about is at any rate not sufficiently explained in the
poet’s narrative; and if so, he must be held to have failed both as
artist and as ethical teacher, which in these Idylls he has certainly
aspired to be. Then comes the further question, not altogether an
easy one to answer, whether it is really true that even widespread
sexual excess inevitably entails deterioration in other respects, a
lowered standard of integrity and honor? The chivalry of the Middle
Ages was _sans peur_, but seldom _sans reproche_. History, on being
interrogated, gives an answer ambiguous as a Greek oracle. Was England,
for instance, less great under the Regency than under Cromwell? But
at all events, the old legends make the process of disintegration in
Arthur’s kingdom much clearer than it is made by Tennyson. In Mallory,
for instance, Arthur is by no means the sinless being depicted by
Tennyson. Rightly or wrongly, he is resolved to punish Guinevere for
her infidelity by burning, and Lancelot is equally resolved to rescue
her, which accordingly he does from the very stake, carrying her off
with him to his castle of Joyous Gard. Then Arthur and Sir Gawain make
war upon him; and thus, the great knightly heads of the Round Table
at variance; the fellowship is inevitably dissolved, for Modred takes
advantage of their dissension to seize upon the throne. But in the old
legends, who is Modred? The son of Arthur and his sister. According to
them, assuredly the origin of the doom or curse upon the kingdom is
the unwitting incest, yet deliberate adultery of Arthur, or perhaps
the still earlier and deeply-dyed sin of his father, Uther. Yet, Mr.
Swinburne’s contention, that Lord Tennyson should have emphasized the
sin of Arthur as responsible for the doom that came upon himself and
his kingdom, although plausible, appears to me hardly to meet all
the exigencies of the case. Mr. Hutton says in reply that then the
supernatural elements of the story could have found no place in the
poem; no strange portents could have been described as accompanying
the birth and death of Arthur. A Greek tragedian, he adds, would
never have dreamt of surrounding Œdipus with such portents. But surely
the latter remark demonstrates the unsoundness of the former. Has
Mr. Hutton forgotten what is perhaps one of the sublimest scenes in
any literature, the supernatural passing of this very deeply-dyed
sinner Œdipus to his divine repose at Colonos, in the grove of
those very ladies of divine vengeance, by whose awful ministry he
had been at length assoiled of sin? the mysterious stairs; Antigone
and Ismene expectant above; he “shading his eyes before a sight
intolerable;” after drinking to the dregs the cup of sin and sorrow,
rapt from the world, even he, to be tutelary deity of that land?
Neither Elijah nor Moses was a sinless man; yet Moses, after enduring
righteous punishment, was not, for God took him, and angels buried
him; it was he who led Israel out of Egypt, communed with Jehovah
on Sinai; he appeared with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration.
But I would suggest that the poet might have represented suffering
and disappointment, not as penalty apportioned to particular
transgressions, rather as integral elements in that mysterious destiny
which determines the lot of man in his present condition of defect,
moral, physical, and intellectual, involved in his “Hamartia,” or
failure to realize that fulness of being which yet ideally belongs to
him as divine. Both these ideas—the idea of Doom or destiny, and that
of Nemesis on account of voluntary transgression—are alike present
in due equipoise in the great conceptions of Greek drama, as Mr. J.
A. Symonds has conclusively proved in his brilliant, philosophic and
poetic work on the Greek poetry, against the more one-sided contention
of Schlegel. I feel throughout Shakspeare this same idea of mystic
inevitable destiny dominating the lives of men: you may call it, if
you please, the will of God. Yet if it dooms us to error, ignorance,
and crime, at all events this will cannot resemble the wills of men
as they appear to us now. Othello expiates his foolish credulity, and
jealous readiness to suspect her who had given him no cause to doubt
her love. But there was the old fool Brabantio, and the devil Iago;
there were his race, his temperament, his circumstances in general,
and the circumstances of the hour,—all these were toils woven about
him by Fate. Now, if the idea of Destiny be the more accentuated (and
a tragedian surely should make us feel both this, and the free-will of
man), then, as it seems to me, in the interests of Art, which loves
life and harmony, not pure pain, loss, discord, or negation, there
ought to be a purifying or idealizing process manifest in the ordeal
to which the victims are subjected, if not for the protagonists, at
all events for some of those concerned in the action. We must at least
be permitted to behold the spectacle of constancy and fortitude, or
devotion, as we do in Desdemona, Cordelia, Antigone, Iphigenia, Romeo
and Juliet. But the ethical element of free-will is almost exclusively
accentuated by Tennyson; and in such a case we desire to be fully
persuaded that the “poetical justice” dealt out by the poet is really
and radically justice, not a mere provincial or conventional semblance
thereof.
Yet if you confine your attention to the individual Idylls themselves,
they are undoubtedly most beautiful models of sinewy strength,
touched to consummate grace. There can be nothing more exquisite than
the tender flower-like humanity of dear Elaine, nor more perfect
in pathetic dignity than the Idyll of Guinevere. Vivien is very
powerful; but, as I said, the courtesan appears to me too coarsely and
graphically realized for perfect keeping with the general tone of this
faëry epic. The “Holy Grail” is a wonderful creation in the realm of
the supernatural; all instinct with high spiritual significance, though
some of the invention in this, as in the other Idylls, belongs to Sir
Thomas Mallory. The adventures of the knights, notably of Galahad,
Percivale, and Lancelot, in their quest for the Grail, are splendidly
described. What, again, can be nobler than the parting of Arthur and
Guinevere at Almesbury, where the King forgives and blesses her, she
grovelling repentant before him, the gleaming “dragon of the great
Pendragonship” making a vaporous halo in the night, as Arthur leaves
her, “moving ghost-like to his doom?” Here the scenic element blends
incorporate with the human, but assuredly does not overpower it, as has
been pretended. Then how excellent dramatically are the subordinate
figures of the little nun at Almesbury, and the rustic old monk, with
whom Percivale converses in the Holy Grail; while, if we were to notice
such similes (Homeric in their elaboration, though modern in their
minute fidelity to nature) as that in Enid, which concerns the man
startling the fish in clear water by holding up “a shining hand against
the sun,” or the happy comparison of standing muscle on an arm to a
brook “running too vehemently” over a stone “to break upon it,” our
task would be interminable. The Arthur Idylls are full too of elevating
exemplars for the conduct of life, of such chivalrous traits as
courage, generosity, courtesy, forbearance, consecration, devotion of
life for loyalty and love, service of the weak and oppressed; abounding
also with excellent gnomic sayings inculcating these virtues. What
admirable and delightful ladies are Enid, Elaine, Guinevere! Of the
Laureate’s longer works, this poem and “In Memoriam” are his greatest,
though both of these are composed of many brief song-flights.
It may not be unprofitable to inquire what idea Tennyson probably
intended to symbolize by the “Holy Grail,” and the quest for it. Is it
that of mere supernatural portent? Certainly not. The whole treatment
suggests far more. I used to think it signified the mystical blood of
Christ, the spirit of self-devotion, or, as Mallory defines it, “the
secret of Jesus.” But it scarcely seems possible that Tennyson means
precisely that, for then his ideal man Arthur would not discourage the
quest. Does it not rather stand for that secret of the higher life as
sought in any form of supernatural religion, involving acts of worship
or asceticism, and religious contemplation? Yet Arthur deprecates
not the religious life as such—rather that life in so far as it is
not the auxiliary of human service. It is while pursuing the quest
that Percivale (in the “Holy Grail”) finds all common life, even the
most sacred relations of it, as well as the most ordinary and vulgar,
turn to dust when he touches them; and to a religious fanatic that is
indeed the issue—this life is less than dust to him; he exists for the
future and “supernatural” only; his soul is already in another region
than this homely work-a-day world of ours; and because it is another,
he is only too ready to think it must be higher. What to him are our
politics, our bewilderments, our fair humanities, our art and science,
or schemes of social amelioration? Less than nothing. What he has to
do is to save first his own soul, and then some few souls of others,
if he can. But while, as Arthur himself complained, such an one waits
for the beatific vision, or follows “wandering fires” of superstition,
how often, for men with strength to right the wronged, will “the
chance of noble deeds come and go unchallenged!” Arthur even dares to
call the Holy Grail “a sign to maim this order which I made.” “Many
of you, yea most, return no more.” But, as the Queen laments, “this
madness has come on us for our sins.” Percivale turns monk, Galahad
passes away to the spiritual city, Sir Bors meets Lancelot riding madly
all abroad, and shouting, “Stay me not; I have been the sluggard,
and I ride apace, for now there is a lion in the path!” Lancelot
rides on the quest in order that, through the vision of the Grail,
the sin of which his conscience accuses him may be rooted out of his
heart. And so it was partly the sin—the infidelity to their vows—that
had crept in amongst the knights, which drove the best of them to
expiation, to religious fervors, whereby their sin might be purged,
thus completing the disintegration of that holy human brotherhood,
which had been welded together by Arthur for activities of righteous
and loving endeavor after human welfare. Magnificent is the picture
of the terrible, difficult quest of Lancelot, whose ineradicable sin
hinders him from full enjoyment of the spiritual vision after which he
longs. Nor will Arthur unduly discourage those who have thus in mortal
peril half attained. “Blessed are Bors, Lancelot, and Percivale, for
these have seen according to their sight.” Into his mouth the poet
also puts some beautiful lines on prayer. More indeed may be wrought
for the world by the silent spiritual life, by the truth-seeking
student, by the beauty-loving artist, than is commonly believed.
In worshipping the ideal they bless men. Arthur rebukes Gawain for
light infidel profanity, born only of blind contented immersion in
the slime of sense; while for the others, there was little indeed
of the true religious spirit in their quest. “They followed but the
leader’s bell, for one hath seen, and all the blind will see.” With
them it is mere fashion, and hollow lip-service, or superstitious
fear; a very devil-worship indeed, standing to them too often in the
place of justice, mercy, and plain human duty. Nay, what terrible
crimes have been committed against humanity in the name of this very
religion! Even Percivale only attained to spiritual vision through
the vision of Galahad, whose power of strong faith came upon him, for
he lacked humility, a heavenly virtue too often lacking in the _unco
guid_, as likewise in those raised above their fellows through any
uncommon gifts, whether of body or mind. In the old legends, the sin
of Lancelot himself is represented as consisting quite as much in
personal ambition, over-self-confidence, and pride on the score of his
prowess, as in his adultery with the Queen. Yet the “pure religion and
undefiled” of Galahad and St. Agnes had been long since celebrated
by our poet in two of his loveliest poems. But these sweet children
were not left long to battle for goodness and truth upon the earth;
heaven was waiting for them; though, while he remained, Galahad, who
saw the vision because he was pure in heart, “rode shattering evil
customs everywhere” in the strength of that purity and that vision.
Arthur, however, avers he could not himself have joined in the quest,
because his mission was to mould and guard his kingdom, although, that
done, “let visions come and welcome;” nay, to him the common earth and
air are all vision; and yet he knows himself no vision, nor God, nor
the divine man. To the spiritual, indeed, all is religious, sacred,
sacramental, for they look through the appearance to the reality,
half hidden and half revealed under it. This avowal reminds me of
Wordsworth’s grand passage in the “Ode on Immortality” concerning
“creatures moving about in worlds not realized.” But for men not so far
advanced revelations of the Holy Grail, sacramental observances, and
stated acts of worship, are indeed of highest import and utility. Yet
good, straightforward, modest Sir Bors, who is not over-anxious about
the vision, to him it is for a moment vouchsafed, though Lancelot and
Percivale attain to it with difficulty, and selfish, superstitious
worldlings, with their worse than profitless head-knowledge, bad
hearts, hollow worship of Convention and the Dead Letter, get no
inkling of it at all. This wholesome conviction I trace through many of
the Laureate’s writings. Stylites is not intended to be a flattering,
though it is certainly a veracious portrait of the sanctimonious,
self-depreciating, yet self-worshipping ascetic. The same feeling runs
through “Queen Mary;” and Harold, the honest warrior of unpretending
virtue, is well contrasted with the devout, yet un-English and only
half-kingly confessor, upon whose piety Stigand passes no very
complimentary remarks. So that the recent play which Lord Queensberry
objected to surprises me; for in “Despair” it is theological caricature
of the divine character which is made responsible for the catastrophe
quite as much as Agnosticism, a mere reaction from false belief.
Besides, has not Tennyson sung “There lives more faith in honest doubt,
believe me, than in half the creeds,” and “Power was with him in the
night, which makes the darkness and the light, and dwells not in the
light alone”?
Turning now to the philosophical and elegiac poetry of Tennyson,
one would pronounce the poet to be in the best sense a religious
mystic of deep insight, though fully alive to the claims of activity,
culture, science, and art. It would not be easy to find more
striking philosophical poetry than the lines on “Will,” the “Higher
Pantheism,” “Wages,” “Flower in the Crannied Wall,” the “Two Voices,”
and especially “In Memoriam.” As to “Wages,” it is surely true that
Virtue, even if she seek no rest (and that is a hard saying), does
seek the “wages of going on and still to be.” An able writer in
“To-day” objects to this doctrine. And of course an Agnostic may be,
often is, a much more human person—larger, kinder, sounder—than a
believer. But the truth is, the very feeling that Love and Virtue are
noblest and best involves the implicit intuition of their permanence,
however the understanding may doubt or deny. Again, I find myself
thoroughly at one with the profound teaching of the “Higher Pantheism,”
As for “In Memoriam,” where is the elegiac poetry equal to it in our
language? Gravely the solemn verse confronts problems which, mournful
or ghastly, yet with some far-away light in their eyes, look us men
of this generation in the face, visiting us with dread misgiving or
pathetic hope. From the conference, from the agony, from the battle,
Faith emerges, aged, maimed, and scarred, yet triumphing and serene.
Like every greater poet, Tennyson wears the prophet’s mantle, as he
wears the singer’s bay. Mourners will ever thank him for such words as,
“‘Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all;”
and, “Let love clasp grief, lest both be drowned;” and, “Our wills are
ours, we know not how; our wills are ours, to make them Thine;” as for
the lines that distinguish Wisdom and Knowledge, commending Wisdom as
mistress, and Knowledge but as handmaid. Every mourner has his favorite
section or particular chapel of the temple-poem, where he prefers to
kneel for worship of the Invisible. Yes, for into the furnace men may
be cast bound and come forth free, having found for companion One whose
form was like the Son of God. Our poet’s conclusion may be foolish and
superstitious, as some would now persuade us; but if he errs, it is in
good company, for he errs with him who sang, “In la sua voluntade e
nostra pace” and with Him who prayed, “Father, not My will, but Thine.”
The range, then, of this poet in all the achievements of his long life
is vast—lyrical, dramatic,[3] narrative, allegoric, philosophical.
Even strong and barbed satire is not wanting, as in “Sea-Dreams,” the
fierce verses to Bulwer, “The Spiteful Letter.” Of the most varied
measures he is master, as of the richest and most copious vocabulary.
Only in the sonnet form, perhaps, does his genius not move with so
royal a port, so assured a superiority over all rivals. I have seen
sonnets even by other living English writers that appeared to me more
striking; notably, fine sonnets by Mr. J. A. Symonds, Mr. Theodore
Watts, Mrs. Pfeiffer, Miss Blind. But surely Tennyson must have written
very little indifferent poetry when you think of the fuss made by his
detractors over the rather poor verses beginning “I stood on a tower in
the wet,” and the somewhat insignificant series entitled “The Window.”
For “The Victim” appears to me exceedingly good. Talk of daintiness
and prettiness! Yes; but it is the lambent, water-waved damascening
on a Saladin’s blade; it is the rich enchasement on a Cœur de Lion’s
armor. Amid the soul-subduing spaces, and tall forested piers of that
cathedral by Rhine, there are long jewelled flames for window, and
embalmed kings lie shrined in gold, with gems all over it like eyes.
While Tennyson must loyally be recognized as the Arthur or Lancelot
of modern English verse, even by those among us who believe that
their own work in poetry cannot fairly be damned as “minor,” while he
need fear the enthronement of no younger rival near him, the poetic
standard he has established is in all respects so high that poets who
love their art must needs glory in such a leader and such an example,
though pretenders may verily be shamed into silence, and Marsyas cease
henceforward to contend with Apollo.—_Contemporary Review._