"A heterogeneous mass of clotted bosh."
--Thomas Carlyle.
The death of Tennyson has called forth a vast deal of nonsense. Much
of it is even insincere. The pulpits have spouted cataracts of
sentimentality. Some of them have emitted quantities of sheer drivel. A
stranger would think we had lost our only poet, and well-nigh our only
teacher; whereas, if the truth must be told, we have lost one who was
occasionally a great poet, but for the most part a miraculous artist
in words. No man in his senses--certainly no man with a spark of
judgment--could call Tennyson a profound thinker. Mainly he gave
exquisite expression to ideas that floated around him. Nor did he
possess a high degree of the creative faculty, such as Shakespeare
possessed in inexhaustible abundance. Surely it is possible to admire
our dead poet's genius without telling lies over his grave.
Among the pulpit utterances on Tennyson we note the Rev. Hugh Price
Hughes's as perhaps the very perfection of slobbery incapacity. He
appears to be delivering a course of addresses on the poet. The first of
these escaped our attention; the second is before us in the supplement
to last week's _Methodist Times_. We have read it with great attention
and without the slightest profit. Not a sentence or a phrase in it rises
above commonplace. That a crowd of people should listen to such stuff
on a Sunday afternoon, when they might be taking a walk or enjoying a
snooze, is a striking evidence of the degeneration of the human mind, at
least in the circles of Methodism.
Mr. Hughes praises Tennyson for "conscientiousness in the use and
choice of words." He should have said "the choice and use of words," for
_choice_ must precede _use_ to be of any service. Mr. Hughes says it is
of great importance that we should all be as conscientious as Tennyson.
He might as well say it is of great importance that we should all be as
strong as Sandow.
Let us take a few examples of _Mr. Hughes's_ "conscientiousness."
He talks of "shining features" which "lie upon the very surface" of
Tennyson's poems. Now features seldom shine, they do not lie, and
they must be (not _upon_, but) _at_ the surface. Six lines further the
shining features change into "shining qualities," as though _features_
and _qualities_ were synonyms. Mr. Hughes speaks, in the style of
a penny-a-liner, of Tennyson's "amazing and unparalleled popular
influence." Will he tell us if anything could amaze us _without_ being
unparalleled? He remarks that Tennyson was "not merely and mainly a poet
of the educated classes." He should have said "merely _or_ mainly." He
enjoins upon us to "define our terms" and "know the exact meanings
of the terms we use"--which is absolute tautology. He says of
flirtation--on which he seems an authority--that "I greatly fear, and am
morally certain" it is as much perpetrated by men as by women. But if
he fears he cannot be certain, and if he is certain he cannot fear. He
calls duelling a form of "insanity and barbarism." But while it may be
one or the other, it cannot be both at once. The disjunctive, therefore,
not the copulative, is the proper conjunction. Mr. Hughes misspells the
name of Spenser, translates _mariage de convenance_ as a marriage
of convenience, and inserts one of his own inventions in a line of
_Locksley Hall_, which runs thus in the Hughes edition of Tennyson--
Puppet to a father's threat and servile to a mother's shrewish tongue.
"Mother's" spoils the line. It is not Tennyson's. Mr. Hughes may claim
it--"an ill-favored thing, sir, but mine own." It does equal credit to
his "conscientiousness" and his ears.
Mr. Hughes's style as a critic does not rise to the level of an active
contempt. Let us look at his matter and see if it shows any superiority.
"Yet although," Mr. Hughes says, with characteristic elegance--"yet
although he wrote so much, Tennyson never wrote a single line that would
bring a painful or anxious blush to the cheek of the most innocent or
sensitive maiden." What a curious antithesis! Why should a man write
impurely for writing much? And is _this_ the supreme virtue of a great
poet? It might be predicated of Martin Tupper. Milton, on the other
hand, must have made many a maiden rosy by his description of Eve's
naked loveliness--to say nothing of the scene after the Fall; while
Shakespeare must have turned many a maiden cheek scarlet, though we
do not believe he ever did the maiden any harm. Tennyson was not as
free-spoken as some poets--greater poets than himself. But what does Mr.
Hughes mean by his "Christ-like purity"? Is there a reference here to
the twelfth verse of the nineteenth chapter of Matthew?
Purity, if properly understood, is undoubtedly a virtue. Mr. Hughes
forgets, however, that his eulogy on Tennyson in this respect is a slur
upon the Bible. There are things in the Old Testament--not to mention
the New Testament--calculated to make "the most innocent or sensitive
maiden" vomit; things that might abash a prostitute and make a satyr
squeamish. We suggest, therefore, that Mr. Hughes should cease canting
about "purity" while he helps to thrust the Bible into the hands of
little children.
The reward of Tennyson's purity, according to Mr. Hughes, was that
"he was able to understand women." "The English race," exclaims the
eulogist, "has never contemplated a nobler or more inspiring womanhood
than that which glows on every page of Tennyson." This is the hectic
exaggeration in which Mr. Hughes habitually indulges. Tennyson never
drew a live woman. Maud is a lay figure, and the heroine of "The
Princess" is purely fantastic. George Meredith beats the late Laureate
hollow in this respect. He is second only to Shakespeare, who here, as
elsewhere, maintains his supremacy.
Mr. Hughes's remarks on _Locksley Hall_ are, to use his own expression,
amazing. "How terribly," he says, "does he [Tennyson] paint the swift
degeneration of the faithless Amy." Mr. Hughes forgets--or _does_ he
forget?--that in the sequel to this poem, entitled _Sixty Years After_,
Tennyson unsays all the high-pitched dispraise of Amy and her squire.
_Locksley Hall_ is a piece of splendid versification, but the hero is a
prig, which is a shade worse than a Philistine. Young fellows mouth the
poem rapturously; their elders smile at the disguises of egotism.
Loveless marriage was reprobated by Tennyson, and Mr. Hughes goes into
ecstacies over the tremendous fact. Like the Psalmist, he is in haste;
he cannot point to a poet who ever hinted the dethronement of love.
A choice Hughesean sentence occurs in this connexion. "I very much
regret," the preacher says, "that Maud's lover was such a conventional
idiot that he should have been guilty of the supreme folly of
challenging her brother to a duel." Shade of Lindley Murrey, what a
sentence! A boy who wrote thus would deserve whipping. And what right,
we ask, has a Christian minister to rail at duelling? It was unknown to
Greek or Roman society. Indeed, it is merely a form of the Ordeal, which
was upheld by Christianity. The duel was originally a direct and solemn
appeal to Providence. Only a sceptic has the right to call it a folly.
Enough of Mr. Hughes as a stylist, a critic, and teacher. What he really
shines in is invention.
His story of the converted Atheist shoemaker displays a faculty which
has no scope in a sermon on Tennyson.