[1] The material of these pages belongs in part to the course
mentioned on p. 99, and in part to a lecture given in November, 1905.
They have in consequence defects which I have not found it possible
to remove; and they also open questions too large and difficult for a
single lecture. This is one reason why I have not referred to the
prevalence of the novel in the nineteenth century, a prevalence which
doubtless influenced both the character and the popularity of the
long poems. I hope the reader will not gain from the lecture the
false impression that the writer's admiration for those poems is
lukewarm, or that he has any tendency to reaction against the
Romantic Revival of Wordsworth's time.
[2] This, and not the permanent value of the scientific product, is
the point.
[3] _Table-talk_, Feb. 16, 1833.
[4] The narrative poems that satisfy most, because in their way they
come nearest to perfection, will be found, I believe, to show this
balance. Such, for instance, are _The Eve of St. Agnes_, _Lamia_,
_Michael_, _The Vision of Judgment_, some of Crabbe's tales. It does
not follow, of course, that such poems must contain the greatest
poetry. Crabbe, for example, was probably the best artist of the day
in narrative; but he does not represent the full ideal spirit of the
time.
[5] See p. 110.
[6] Demogorgon is an instance of such a figure.
[7] This incongruity is not the only cause of the discomfort with
which many lovers of Tennyson read parts of Arthur's speech in that
Idyll; but it is the main cause, and, unlike other defects, it lies
in the plan of the story. It may be brought out further thus. So far
as Arthur is merely the blameless king and representative of
Conscience, the attitude of a judge which he assumes in the speech is
appropriate, and, again, Lancelot's treachery to him is intelligible
and, however wrong, forgivable. But then this Arthur or Conscience
could never be a satisfactory husband, and ought not to astound or
shock us by uttering his recollections of past caresses. If, on the
other hand, these utterances are appropriate, and if all along
Lancelot and Guinevere have had no reason to regard Arthur as cold
and wholly absorbed in his public duties, Lancelot has behaved not
merely wrongly but abominably, and as the Lancelot of the _Idylls_
could not have behaved. The truth is that Tennyson's design requires
Arthur to be at once perfectly ideal and completely human. And this
is not imaginable.
Having written this criticism, I cannot refrain from adding that I
think the depreciation of Tennyson's genius now somewhat prevalent a
mistake. I admire and love his poetry with all my heart, and regard
him as considerably our greatest poet since the time of Wordsworth.
[8] It is never to be forgotten, in comparing Goethe with the English
poets, that he was twenty years older than Wordsworth and Coleridge,
and forty years older than Byron and Shelley.
[9] The reader will remember that he must take these paragraphs as an
exaggerated presentment of a single, though essential, aspect of the
poetry of the time, and of Shelley's poetry in particular, and must
supply the corrections and additions for himself. But I may beg him
to observe that Godwin's formulas are called sublime as well as
ridiculous. _Political Justice_ would never have fascinated such
young men as Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, unless a great truth
had been falsified in it; and the inspiration of this truth can be
felt all through the preposterous logical structure reared on its
misapprehension.
[10] The theory criticised in this paragraph arises, I think, from a
misapplication of the truth that the content of a genuine poem is
fully expressible only in the words of that poem. It is seen that
this is so in a lyric, and then it is assumed that it is _not_ so in
a narrative or drama. But the assumption is false. At first sight we
may seem able to give a more adequate account of the long poem than
of the short one; but in reality you can no more convey the whole
poetic content of the _Divine Comedy_ in a form not its own than you
can the content of a song.
The theory is connected in some minds with the view that 'music is
the true type or measure of perfected art.' That view again rests on
the idea that 'it is the art of music which most completely realises
[the] artistic ideal, [the] perfect identification of form and
matter,' and that accordingly 'the arts may be represented as
continually struggling after the law or principle of music, to a
condition which music alone completely realises' (Pater, _The
Renaissance_, pp. 144, 145). I have by implication expressed dissent
from this idea (p. 25); but, even if its truth is granted, what
follows is that poetry should endeavour _in its own way_ to achieve
that perfect identification; but it does not in the least follow that
it should endeavour to do so by reducing itself as nearly as possible
to mere sound. Nor did Pater affirm this, or (so far as I see) imply
it. But others have.