“He ended: Arthur knew the voice; the face
Wellnigh was helmet-hidden, and the name
Went wandering somewhere darkling in his mind.
And Arthur deign’d not use of word or sword,
But let the drunkard, as he stretch’d from horse
To strike him, overbalancing his bulk,
Down from the causeway heavily to the swamp
Fall, as the crest of some slow-arching wave,
Heard in dead night along that table-shore,
Drops flat, and after the great waters break
Whitening for half a league, and thin themselves,
Far over sands marbled with moon and cloud,
From less and less to nothing; thus he fell
Head-heavy; then the knights, who watch’d him, roar’d
And shouted and leapt down upon the fall’n;
There trampled out his face from being known,
And sank his head in mire, and slimed themselves:
Nor heard the King for their own cries, but sprang
Thro’ open doors, and swording right and left
Men, women, on their sodden faces, hurl’d
The tables over and the wines, and slew
Till all the rafters rang with woman-yells,
And all the pavement stream’d with massacre:
Then, echoing yell with yell, they fired the tower,
Which half that autumn night, like the live North,
Red-pulsing up thro’ Alioth and Alcor,
Made all above it, and a hundred meres
About it, as the water Moab saw
Come round by the East, and out beyond them flush’d
The long low dune, and lazy-plunging sea.”
_Guinevere_ is one of the greatest of the Idylls. Malory makes Lancelot
more sympathetic; his fight, unarmed, in Guinevere’s chamber, against the
felon knights, is one of his most spirited scenes. Tennyson omits this,
and omits all the unpardonable behaviour of Arthur as narrated in Malory.
Critics have usually condemned the last parting of Guinevere and Arthur,
because the King doth preach too much to an unhappy woman who has no
reply. The position of Arthur is not easily redeemable: it is difficult
to conceive that a noble nature could be, or should be, blind so long.
He does rehabilitate his Queen in her own self-respect, perhaps, by
assuring her that he loves her still:—
“Let no man dream but that I love thee still.”
Had he said that one line and no more, we might have loved him better.
In the Idylls we have not Malory’s last meeting of Lancelot and
Guinevere, one of the scenes in which the wandering composite romance
ends as nobly as the _Iliad_.
_The Passing of Arthur_, except for a new introductory passage of great
beauty and appropriateness, is the _Morte d’Arthur_, first published in
1842:—
“So all day long the noise of battle roll’d
Among the mountains by the winter sea.”
The year has run its course, spring, summer, gloomy autumn, and dies in
the mist of Arthur’s last wintry battle in the west—
“And the new sun rose, bringing the new year.”
The splendid and sombre procession has passed, leaving us to muse as to
how far the poet has fulfilled his own ideal. There could be no new
epic: he gave a chain of heroic Idylls. An epic there could not be, for
the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ have each a unity of theme, a narrative
compressed into a few days in the former, in the latter into forty days
of time. The tragedy of Arthur’s reign could not so be condensed; and
Tennyson chose the only feasible plan. He has left a work, not
absolutely perfect, indeed, but such as he conceived, after many
tentative essays, and such as he desired to achieve. His fame may not
rest chiefly on the Idylls, but they form one of the fairest jewels in
the crown that shines with unnumbered gems, each with its own glory.
VIII.
_ENOCH ARDEN_. THE DRAMAS.
THE success of the first volume of the Idylls recompensed the poet for
the slings and arrows that gave _Maud_ a hostile welcome. His next
publication was the beautiful _Tithonus_, a fit pendant to the _Ulysses_,
and composed about the same date (1833–35). “A quarter of a century
ago,” Tennyson dates it, writing in 1860 to the Duke of Argyll. He had
found it when “ferreting among my old books,” he said, in search of
something for Thackeray, who was establishing the _Cornhill Magazine_.
What must the wealth of the poet have been, who, possessing _Tithonus_ in
his portfolio, did not take the trouble to insert it in the volumes of
1842! Nobody knows how many poems of Tennyson’s never even saw pen and
ink, being composed unwritten, and forgotten. At this time we find him
recommending Mr Browning’s _Men and Women_ to the Duke, who, like many
Tennysonians, does not seem to have been a ready convert to his great
contemporary. The Duke and Duchess urged the Laureate to attempt the
topic of the Holy Grail, but he was not in the mood. Indeed the vision
of the Grail in the early _Sir Galahad_ is doubtless happier than the
allegorical handling of a theme so obscure, remote, and difficult, in the
Idylls. He wrote his _Boadicea_, a piece magnificent in itself, but of
difficult popular access, owing to the metrical experiment.
In the autumn of 1860 he revisited Cornwall with F. T. Palgrave, Mr Val
Prinsep, and Mr Holman Hunt. They walked in the rain, saw Tintagel and
the Scilly Isles, and were fêted by an enthusiastic captain of a little
river steamer, who was more interested in “Mr Tinman and Mr Pancake” than
the Celtic boatman of Ardtornish. The winter was passed at Farringford,
and the _Northern Farmer_ was written there, a Lincolnshire reminiscence,
in the February of 1861. In autumn the Pyrenees were visited by Tennyson
in company with Arthur Clough and Mr Dakyns of Clifton College. At
Cauteretz in August, and among memories of the old tour with Arthur
Hallam, was written _All along the Valley_. The ways, however, in
Auvergne were “foul,” and the diet “unhappy.” The dedication of the
Idylls was written on the death of the Prince Consort in December, and in
January 1862 the Ode for the opening of an exhibition. The poet was busy
with his “Fisherman,” _Enoch Arden_. The volume was published in 1864,
and Lord Tennyson says it has been, next to _In Memoriam_, the most
popular of his father’s works. One would have expected the one volume
containing the poems up to 1842 to hold that place. The new book,
however, mainly dealt with English, contemporary, and domestic
themes—“the poetry of the affections.” An old woman, a district visitor
reported, regarded _Enoch Arden_ as “more beautiful” than the other
tracts which were read to her. It is indeed a tender and touching tale,
based on a folk-story which Tennyson found current in Brittany as well as
in England. Nor is the unseen and unknown landscape of the tropic isle
less happily created by the poet’s imagination than the familiar English
cliffs and hazel copses:—
“The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns
And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven,
The slender coco’s drooping crown of plumes,
The lightning flash of insect and of bird,
The lustre of the long convolvuluses
That coil’d around the stately stems, and ran
Ev’n to the limit of the land, the glows
And glories of the broad belt of the world,
All these he saw; but what he fain had seen
He could not see, the kindly human face,
Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard
The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl,
The league-long roller thundering on the reef,
The moving whisper of huge trees that branch’d
And blossom’d in the zenith, or the sweep
Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave,
As down the shore he ranged, or all day long
Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge,
A shipwreck’d sailor, waiting for a sail:
No sail from day to day, but every day
The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts
Among the palms and ferns and precipices;
The blaze upon the waters to the east;
The blaze upon his island overhead;
The blaze upon the waters to the west;
Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven,
The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again
The scarlet shafts of sunrise—but no sail.”
_Aylmer’s Field_ somewhat recalls the burden of _Maud_, the curse of
purse-proud wealth, but is too gloomy to be a fair specimen of Tennyson’s
art. In _Sea Dreams_ (first published in 1860) the awful vision of
crumbling faiths is somewhat out of harmony with its environment:—
“But round the North, a light,
A belt, it seem’d, of luminous vapour, lay,
And ever in it a low musical note
Swell’d up and died; and, as it swell’d, a ridge
Of breaker issued from the belt, and still
Grew with the growing note, and when the note
Had reach’d a thunderous fulness, on those cliffs
Broke, mixt with awful light (the same as that
Living within the belt) whereby she saw
That all those lines of cliffs were cliffs no more,
But huge cathedral fronts of every age,
Grave, florid, stern, as far as eye could see,
One after one: and then the great ridge drew,
Lessening to the lessening music, back,
And past into the belt and swell’d again
Slowly to music: ever when it broke
The statues, king or saint or founder fell;
Then from the gaps and chasms of ruin left
Came men and women in dark clusters round,
Some crying, ‘Set them up! they shall not fall!’
And others, ‘Let them lie, for they have fall’n.’
And still they strove and wrangled: and she grieved
In her strange dream, she knew not why, to find
Their wildest wailings never out of tune
With that sweet note; and ever as their shrieks
Ran highest up the gamut, that great wave
Returning, while none mark’d it, on the crowd
Broke, mixt with awful light, and show’d their eyes
Glaring, and passionate looks, and swept away
The men of flesh and blood, and men of stone,
To the waste deeps together.
‘Then I fixt
My wistful eyes on two fair images,
Both crown’d with stars and high among the stars,—
The Virgin Mother standing with her child
High up on one of those dark minster-fronts—
Till she began to totter, and the child
Clung to the mother, and sent out a cry
Which mixt with little Margaret’s, and I woke,
And my dream awed me:—well—but what are dreams?”
The passage is rather fitted for a despairing mood of Arthur, in the
Idylls, than for the wife of the city clerk ruined by a pious rogue.
The _Lucretius_, later published, is beyond praise as a masterly study of
the great Roman sceptic, whose heart is at eternal odds with his
Epicurean creed. Nascent madness, or fever of the brain drugged by the
blundering love philtre, is not more cunningly treated in the mad scenes
of _Maud_. No prose commentary on the _De Rerum Natura_, however long
and learned, conveys so clearly as this concise study in verse the sense
of magnificent mingled ruin in the mind and poem of the Roman.
The “Experiments in Quantity” were, perhaps, suggested by Mr Matthew
Arnold’s Lectures on the Translating of Homer. Mr Arnold believed in a
translation into English hexameters. His negative criticism of other
translators and translations was amusing and instructive: he had an easy
game to play with the Yankee-doodle metre of F. W. Newman, the ponderous
blank verse of Cowper, the tripping and clipping couplets of Pope, the
Elizabethan fantasies of Chapman. But Mr Arnold’s hexameters were
neither musical nor rapid: they only exhibited a new form of failure. As
the Prince of Abyssinia said to his tutor, “Enough; you have convinced me
that no man can be a poet,” so Mr Arnold went some way to prove that no
man can translate Homer.
Tennyson had the lowest opinion of hexameters as an English metre for
serious purposes.
“These lame hexameters the strong-wing’d music of Homer!”
Lord Tennyson says, “German hexameters he disliked even more than
English.” Indeed there is not much room for preference. Tennyson’s
Alcaics (_Milton_) were intended to follow the Greek rather than the
Horatian model, and resulted, at all events, in a poem worthy of the
“mighty-mouth’d inventor of harmonies.” The specimen of the _Iliad_ in
blank verse, beautiful as it is, does not, somehow, reproduce the music
of Homer. It is entirely Tennysonian, as in
“Roll’d the rich vapour far into the heaven.”
The reader, in that one line, recognises the voice and trick of the
English poet, and is far away from the Chian:—
“As when in heaven the stars about the moon
Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,
And every height comes out, and jutting peak
And valley, and the immeasurable heavens
Break open to their highest, and all the stars
Shine, and the Shepherd gladdens in his heart:
So many a fire between the ships and stream
Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy,
A thousand on the plain; and close by each
Sat fifty in the blaze of burning fire;
And eating hoary grain and pulse the steeds,
Fixt by their cars, waited the golden dawn.”
This is excellent, is poetry, escapes the conceits of Pope (who never
“wrote with his eye on the object”), but is pure Tennyson. We have not
yet, probably we never shall have, an adequate rendering of the _Iliad_
into verse, and prose translations do not pretend to be adequate. When
parents and dominies have abolished the study of Greek, something, it
seems, will have been lost to the world,—something which even Tennyson
could not restore in English. He thought blank verse the proper
equivalent; but it is no equivalent. One even prefers his own prose:—
Nor did Paris linger in his lofty halls, but when he had girt on his
gorgeous armour, all of varied bronze, then he rushed thro’ the city,
glorying in his airy feet. And as when a stall-kept horse, that is
barley-fed at the manger, breaketh his tether, and dasheth thro’ the
plain, spurning it, being wont to bathe himself in the fair-running
river, rioting, and reareth his head, and his mane flieth back on
either shoulder, and he glorieth in his beauty, and his knees bear
him at the gallop to the haunts and meadows of the mares; so ran the
son of Priam, Paris, from the height of Pergamus, all in arms,
glittering like the sun, laughing for light-heartedness, and his
swift feet bare him.
In February 1865 Tennyson lost the mother whose portrait he drew in
_Isabel_,—“a thing enskied and sainted.”
In the autumn of 1865 the Tennysons went on a Continental tour, and
visited Waterloo, Weimar, and Dresden; in September they entertained Emma
I., Queen of the Sandwich Islands. The months passed quietly at home or
in town. The poet had written his _Lucretius_, and, to please Sir George
Grove, wrote _The Song of the Wrens_, for music. Tennyson had not that
positive aversion to music which marked Dr Johnson, Victor Hugo,
Théophile Gautier, and some other poets. Nay, he liked Beethoven, which
places him higher in the musical scale than Scott, who did not rise above
a Border lilt or a Jacobite ditty. The Wren songs, entitled _The
Window_, were privately printed by Sir Ivor Guest in 1867, were set to
music by Sir Arthur Sullivan, and published by Strahan in December 1870.
“A puppet,” Tennyson called the song-book, “whose only merit is, perhaps,
that it can dance to Mr Sullivan’s instrument. I am sorry that my puppet
should have to dance at all in the dark shadow of these days” (the siege
of Paris), “but the music is now completed, and I am bound by my
promise.” The verses are described as “partly in the old style,” but the
true old style of the Elizabethan and cavalier days is lost.
In the summer of 1867 the Tennysons moved to a farmhouse near Haslemere,
at that time not a centre of literary Londoners. “Sandy soil and
heather-scented air” allured them, and the result was the purchase of
land, and the building of Aldworth, Mr Knowles being the architect. In
autumn Tennyson visited Lyme Regis, and, like all other travellers
thither, made a pilgrimage to the Cobb, sacred to Louisa Musgrove. The
poet now began the study of Hebrew, having a mind to translate the Book
of Job, a vision unfulfilled. In 1868 he thought of publishing his
boyish piece, _The Lover’s Tale_, but delayed. An anonymously edited
piracy of this and other poems was perpetrated in 1875, limited, at least
nominally, to fifty copies.
In July Longfellow visited Tennyson. “The Longfellows and he talked much
of spiritualism, for he was greatly interested in that subject, but he
suspended his judgment, and thought that, if in such manifestations there
is anything, ‘Pucks, not the spirits of dead men, reveal themselves.’”
This was Southey’s suggestion, as regards the celebrated disturbances in
the house of the Wesleys. “Wit might have much to say, wisdom, little,”
said Sam Wesley. Probably the talk about David Dunglas Home, the
“medium” then in vogue, led to the discussion of “spiritualism.” We do
not hear that Tennyson ever had the curiosity to see Home, whom Mr
Browning so firmly detested.
In September _The Holy Grail_ was begun: it was finished “in about a
week. It came like a breath of inspiration.” The subject had for many
years been turned about in the poet’s mind, which, of course, was busy in
these years of apparent inactivity. At this time (August 1868) Tennyson
left his old publishers, the Moxons, for Mr Strahan, who endured till
1872. Then he was succeeded by Messrs H. S. King & Co., who gave place
(1879) to Messrs Kegan Paul & Co., while in 1884 Messrs Macmillan became,
and continue to be, the publishers. A few pieces, except _Lucretius_
(_Macmillan’s Magazine_, May 1868) unimportant, appeared in serials.
Very early in 1869 _The Coming of Arthur_ was composed, while Tennyson
was reading Browning’s _The Ring and the Book_. He and his great
contemporary were on terms of affectionate friendship, though Tennyson,
perhaps, appreciated less of Browning than Browning of Tennyson.
Meanwhile “Old Fitz” kept up a fire of unsympathetic growls at Browning
and all his works. “I have been trying in vain to read it” (_The Ring
and the Book_), “and yet the _Athenæum_ tells me it is wonderfully fine.”
FitzGerald’s ply had been taken long ago; he wanted verbal music in
poetry (no exorbitant desire), while, in Browning, _carmina desunt_.
Perhaps, too, a personal feeling, as if Browning was Tennyson’s rival,
affected the judgment of the author of _Omar Kháyyám_. We may almost
call him “the author.”
_The Holy Grail_, with the smaller poems, such as _Lucretius_, was
published at the end of 1869. FitzGerald appears to have preferred _The
Northern Farmer_, “the substantial rough-spun nature I knew,” to all the
visionary knights in the airy Quest. To compare “—” (obviously Browning)
with Tennyson, was “to compare an old Jew’s curiosity shop with the
Phidian Marbles.” Tennyson’s poems “being clear to the bottom as well as
beautiful, do not seem to cockney eyes so deep as muddy waters.”
In November 1870 _The Last Tournament_ was begun; it was finished in May
1871. Conceivably the vulgar scandals of the last days of the French
Imperial _régime_ may have influenced Tennyson’s picture of the
corruption of Arthur’s Court; but the Empire did not begin, like the
Round Table, with aspirations after the Ideal. In the autumn of the year
Tennyson entertained, and was entertained by, Mr Huxley. In their ideas
about ultimate things two men could not vary more widely, but each
delighted in the other’s society. In the spring of 1872 Tennyson visited
Paris and the ruins of the Louvre. He read Victor Hugo, and Alfred de
Musset, whose comedies he admired. The little that we hear of his
opinion of the other great poet runs to this effect, “Victor Hugo is an
unequal genius, sometimes sublime; he reminds one that there is but one
step between the sublime and the ridiculous,” but the example by which
Tennyson illustrated this was derived from one of the poet’s novels. In
these we meet not only the sublime and the ridiculous, but passages which
leave us in some perplexity as to their true category. One would have
expected Hugo’s lyrics to be Tennyson’s favourites, but only _Gastibelza_
is mentioned in that character. At this time Tennyson was vexed by
“Art with poisonous honey stolen from France,”
a phrase which cannot apply to Hugo. Meanwhile _Gareth_ was being
written, and the knight’s song for _The Coming of Arthur_. _Gareth and
Lynette_, with minor pieces, appeared in 1872. _Balin and Balan_ was
composed later, to lead up to _Vivien_, to which, perhaps, _Balin and
Balan_ was introduction sufficient had it been the earlier written. But
the Idylls have already been discussed as arranged in sequence. The
completion of the Idylls, with the patriotic epilogue, was followed by
the offer of a baronetcy. Tennyson preferred that he and his wife
“should remain plain Mr and Mrs,” though “I hope that I have too much of
the old-world loyalty not to wear my lady’s favours against all comers,
should you think that it would be more agreeable to her Majesty that I
should do so.”
The Idylls ended, Tennyson in 1874 began to contemplate a drama, choosing
the topic, perhaps neither popular nor in an Aristotelian sense tragic,
of Mary Tudor. This play was published, and put on the stage by Sir
Henry Irving in 1875. _Harold_ followed in 1876, _The Cup_ in 1881 (at
the Lyceum), _The Promise of May_ (at the Globe) in 1882, _Becket_ in
1884, with _The Foresters_ in 1892. It seems best to consider all the
dramatic period of Tennyson’s work, a period reached so strangely late in
his career, in the sequence of the Plays. The task is one from which I
shrink, as conscious of entire ignorance of the stage and of lack of
enthusiasm for the drama. Great dramatic authors have, almost
invariably, had long practical knowledge of the scenes and of what is
behind them. Shakespeare and his contemporaries, Molière and his
contemporaries, had lived their lives on the boards and in the _foyer_,
actors themselves, or in daily touch with actors and actresses. In the
present day successful playwrights appear to live much in the world of
the players. They have practical knowledge of the conventions and
conditions which the stage imposes. Neither Browning nor Mr Swinburne
(to take great names) has had, it seems, much of this practical and daily
experience; their dramas have been acted but rarely, if at all, and many
examples prove that neither poetical genius nor the genius for prose
fiction can enable men to produce plays which hold their own on the
boards. This may be the fault of public taste, or partly of public
taste, partly of defect in practical knowledge on the side of the
authors. Of the stage, by way of practice, Tennyson had known next to
nothing, yet his dramas were written to be acted, and acted some of them
were. “For himself, he was aware,” says his biographer, “that he wanted
intimate knowledge of the mechanical details necessary for the modern
stage, although in early and middle life he had been a constant playgoer,
and would keenly follow the action of a play, criticising the
characterisation, incidents, scenic effects, situations, language, and
dramatic points.” He was quite prepared to be “edited” for acting
purposes by the players. Miss Mary Anderson says that “he was ready to
sacrifice even his _most_ beautiful lines for the sake of a real dramatic
effect.”
This proved unusual common-sense in a poet. Modern times and manners are
notoriously unfavourable to the serious drama. In the age of the Greek
tragedians, as in the days of “Eliza and our James,” reading was not very
common, and life was much more passed in public than among ourselves,
when people go to the play for light recreation, or to be shocked. So
various was the genius of Tennyson, that had he devoted himself early to
the stage, and had he been backed by a manager with the enterprise and
intelligence of Sir Henry Irving, it is impossible to say how much he
might have done to restore the serious drama. But we cannot regret that
he was occupied in his prime with other things, nor can we expect to find
his noblest and most enduring work in the dramatic experiments of his
latest years. It is notable that, in his opinion, “the conditions of the
dramatic art are much more complex than they were.” For example, we have
“the star system,” which tends to allot what is, or was, technically
styled “the fat,” to one or two popular players. Now, a poet like
Tennyson will inevitably distribute large quantities of what is most
excellent to many characters, and the consequent difficulties may be
appreciated by students of our fallen nature. The poet added that to be
a first-rate historical playwright means much more work than formerly,
seeing that “exact history” has taken the part of the “chance chronicle.”
This is a misfortune. The dramas of the Attic stage, with one or two
exceptions, are based on myth and legend, not on history, and even in the
_Persæ_, grounded on contemporary events, Æschylus introduced the ghost
of Darius, not vouched for by “exact history.” Let us conceive
Shakespeare writing _Macbeth_ in an age of “exact history.” Hardly any
of the play would be left. Fleance and Banquo must go. Duncan becomes a
young man, and far from “gracious.” Macbeth appears as the defender of
the legitimist prince, Lulach, against Duncan, a usurper. Lady Macbeth
is a pattern to her sex, and her lord is a clement and sagacious ruler.
The witches are ruled out of the piece. Difficulties arise about the
English aid to Malcolm. History, in fact, declines to be dramatic.
Liberties must be taken. In his plays of the Mary Stuart cycle, Mr
Swinburne telescopes the affair of Darnley into that of Chastelard, which
was much earlier. He makes Mary Beaton (in love with Chastelard) a kind
of avenging fate, who will never leave the Queen till her head falls at
Fotheringay; though, in fact, after a flirtation with Randolph, Mary
Beaton married Ogilvy of Boyne (really in love with Lady Bothwell), and
not one of the four Maries was at Fotheringay. An artist ought to be
allowed to follow legend, of its essence dramatic, or to manipulate
history as he pleases. Our modern scrupulosity is pedantic. But
Tennyson read a long list of books for his _Queen Mary_, though it does
not appear that he made original researches in MSS. These labours
occupied 1874 and 1875. Yet it would be foolish to criticise his _Queen
Mary_ as if we were criticising “exact history.” “The play’s the thing.”
The poet thought that “Bloody Mary” “had been harshly judged by the
verdict of popular tradition.” So have most characters to whom popular
dislike affixes the popular epithet—“Bloody Claverse,” “Bloody
Mackenzie,” “Bloody Balfour.” Mary had the courage of the Tudors. She
“edified all around her by her cheerfulness, her piety, and her
resignation to the will of Providence,” in her last days (Lingard).
Camden calls her “a queen never praised enough for the purity of her
morals, her charity to the poor” (she practised as a district visitor),
“and her liberality to the nobles and the clergy.” She was “pious,
merciful, pure, and ever to be praised, if we overlook her erroneous
opinions in religion,” says Godwin. She had been grievously wronged from
her youth upwards. In Elizabeth she had a sister and a rival, a constant
intriguer against her, and a kinswoman far from amiable. Despite “the
kindness and attention of Philip” (Lingard), affairs of State demanded
his absence from England. The disappointment as to her expected child
was cruel. She knew that she had become unpopular, and she could not
look for the success of her Church, to which she was sincerely attached.
M. Auguste Filon thought that _Queen Mary_ might secure dramatic rank for
Tennyson, “if a great actress arose who conceived a passion for the part
of Mary.” But that was not to be expected. Mary was middle-aged, plain,
and in aspect now terrible, now rueful. No great actress will throw
herself with passion into such an ungrateful part. “Throughout all
history,” Tennyson said, “there was nothing more mournful than the final
tragedy of this woman.” _Mournful_ it is, but not tragic. There is
nothing grand at the close, as when Mary Stuart conquers death and evil
fame, redeeming herself by her courage and her calm, and extending over
unborn generations that witchery which her enemies dreaded more than an
army with banners.
Moreover, popular tradition can never forgive the fires of Smithfield.
It was Mary Tudor’s misfortune that she had the power to execute, on a
great scale, that faculty of persecution to the death for which her
Presbyterian and other Protestant opponents pined in vain. Mr Froude
says of her, “For the first and last time the true Ultramontane spirit
was dominant in England, the genuine conviction that, as the orthodox
prophets and sovereigns of Israel slew the worshippers of Baal, so were
Catholic rulers called upon, as their first duty, to extirpate heretics
as the enemies of God and man.” That was precisely the spirit of Knox
and other Presbyterian denouncers of death against “Idolaters”
(Catholics). But the Scottish preachers were always thwarted: Mary and
her advisers had their way, as, earlier, Latimer had preached against
sufferers at the stake. To the stake, which he feared so greatly,
Cranmer had sent persons not of his own fleeting shade of theological
opinion. These men had burned Anabaptists, but all that is lightly
forgotten by Protestant opinion. Under Mary (whoever may have been
primarily responsible) Cranmer and Latimer were treated as they had
treated others. Moreover, some two hundred poor men and women had dared
the fiery death. The persecution was on a scale never forgiven or
forgotten, since Mary began _cerdonibus esse timenda_. Mary was not
essentially inclement. Despite Renard, the agent of the Emperor, she
spared that lord of fluff and feather, Courtenay, and she spared
Elizabeth. Lady Jane she could not save, the girl who was a queen by
grace of God and of her own royal nature. But Mary will never be
pardoned by England. “Few men or women have lived less capable of doing
knowingly a wrong thing,” says Mr Froude, a great admirer of Tennyson’s
play. Yet, taking Mr Froude’s own view, Mary’s abject and superannuated
passion for Philip; her ecstasies during her supposed pregnancy; “the
forlorn hours when she would sit on the ground with her knees drawn to
her face,” with all her “symptoms of hysterical derangement, leave little
room, as we think of her, for other feelings than pity.” Unfortunately,
feelings of pity for a person so distraught, so sourly treated by
fortune, do not suffice for tragedy. When we contemplate Antigone or
Œdipus, it is not with a sentiment of pity struggling against abhorrence.
For these reasons the play does not seem to have a good dramatic subject.
The unity is given by Mary herself and her fortunes, and these are
scarcely dramatic. History prevents the introduction of Philip till the
second scene of the third act. His entrance is _manqué_; he merely
accompanies Cardinal Pole, who takes command of the scene, and Philip
does not get in a word till after a long conversation between the Queen
and the Cardinal. Previously Philip had only crossed the stage in a
procession, yet when he does appear he is bereft of prominence. The
interest as regards him is indicated, in Act I. scene v., by Mary’s
kissing his miniature. Her blighted love for him is one main motive of
the tragedy, but his own part appears too subordinate in the play as
published. The interest is scattered among the vast crowd of characters;
and Mr R. H. Hutton remarked at the time that he “remains something of a
cold, cruel, and sensual shadow.” We are more interested in Wyatt,
Cranmer, Gardiner, and others; or at least their parts are more
interesting. Yet in no case does the interest of any character, except
of Mary and Elizabeth, remain continuous throughout the play. Tennyson
himself thought that “the real difficulty of the drama is to give
sufficient relief to its intense sadness. . . . Nothing less than the
holy calm of the meek and penitent Cranmer can be adequate artistic
relief.” But not much relief can be drawn from a man about to be burned
alive, and history does not tempt us to keen sympathy with the recanting
archbishop, at least if we agree with Macaulay rather than with Froude.
I venture to think that historical tradition, as usual, offered a better
motive than exact history. Following tradition, we see in Mary a cloud
of hateful gloom, from which England escapes into the glorious dawn of
“the Gospel light,” and of Elizabeth, who might be made a triumphantly
sympathetic character. That is the natural and popular course which the
drama might take. But Tennyson’s history is almost critical and
scientific. Points of difficult and debated evidence (as to Elizabeth’s
part in Wyatt’s rebellion) are discussed. There is no contest of day and
darkness, of Truth and Error. The characters are in that perplexed
condition about creeds which was their actual state after the political
and social and religious chaos produced by Henry VIII. Gardiner is a
Catholic, but not an Ultramontane; Lord William Howard is a Catholic, but
not a fanatic; we find a truculent Anabaptist, or Socialist, and a
citizen whose pride is his moderation. The native uncritical tendency of
the drama is to throw up hats and halloo for Elizabeth and an open Bible.
In place of this, Cecil delivers a well-considered analysis of the
character of Elizabeth:—
“_Eliz._ God guide me lest I lose the way.
[_Exit Elizabeth_.
_Cecil_. Many points weather’d, many perilous ones,
At last a harbour opens; but therein
Sunk rocks—they need fine steering—much it is
To be nor mad, nor bigot—have a mind—
Nor let Priests’ talk, or dream of worlds to be,
Miscolour things about her—sudden touches
For him, or him—sunk rocks; no passionate faith—
But—if let be—balance and compromise;
Brave, wary, sane to the heart of her—a Tudor
School’d by the shadow of death—a Boleyn, too,
Glancing across the Tudor—not so well.”
This is excellent as historical criticism, in the favourable sense; but
the drama, by its nature, demands something not critical but triumphant
and one-sided. The character of Elizabeth is one of the best in the
play, as her soliloquy (Act III. scene v.) is one of the finest of the
speeches. We see her courage, her coquetry, her dissimulation, her
arrogance. But while this is the true Elizabeth, it is not the idealised
Elizabeth whom English loyalty created, lived for, and died for. Mr
Froude wrote, “You have given us the greatest of all your works,” an
opinion which the world can never accept. “You have reclaimed one more
section of English History from the wilderness, and given it a form in
which it will be fixed for ever. No one since Shakespeare has done
that.” But Mr Froude had done it, and Tennyson’s reading of “the
section” is mainly that of Mr Froude. Mr Gladstone found that Cranmer
and Gardiner “are still in a considerable degree mysteries to me.” A
mystery Cranmer must remain. Perhaps the “crowds” and “Voices” are not
the least excellent of the characters, Tennyson’s humour finding an
opportunity in them, and in Joan and Tib. His idyllic charm speaks in
the words of Lady Clarence to the fevered Queen; and there is dramatic
genius in her reply:—
“_Mary_. What is the strange thing happiness? Sit down here:
Tell me thine happiest hour.
_Lady Clarence_. I will, if that
May make your Grace forget yourself a little.
There runs a shallow brook across our field
For twenty miles, where the black crow flies five,
And doth so bound and babble all the way
As if itself were happy. It was May-time,
And I was walking with the man I loved.
I loved him, but I thought I was not loved.
And both were silent, letting the wild brook
Speak for us—till he stoop’d and gather’d one
From out a bed of thick forget-me-nots,
Look’d hard and sweet at me, and gave it me.
I took it, tho’ I did not know I took it,
And put it in my bosom, and all at once
I felt his arms about me, and his lips—
_Mary_. O God! I have been too slack, too slack;
There are Hot Gospellers even among our guards—
Nobles we dared not touch. We have but burnt
The heretic priest, workmen, and women and children.
Wet, famine, ague, fever, storm, wreck, wrath,—
We have so play’d the coward; but by God’s grace,
We’ll follow Philip’s leading, and set up
The Holy Office here—garner the wheat,
And burn the tares with unquenchable fire!”
The conclusion, in the acting edition, printed in the Biography, appears
to be an improvement on that in the text as originally published.
Unhappy as the drama essentially is, the welcome which Mr Browning gave
both to the published work and to the acted play—“a complete success”:
“conception, execution, the whole and the parts, I see nowhere the shadow
of a fault”—offers “relief” in actual human nature. “He is the
greatest-brained poet in England,” Tennyson said, on a later occasion.
“Violets fade, he has given me a crown of gold.”
Before writing _Harold_ (1876) the poet “studied many recent plays,” and
re-read Æschylus and Sophocles. For history he went to the Bayeux
tapestry, the _Roman de Rou_, Lord Lytton, and Freeman. Students of a
recent controversy will observe that, following Freeman, he retains the
famous palisade, so grievously battered by the axe-strokes of Mr Horace
Round. _Harold_ is a piece more compressed, and much more in accordance
with the traditions of the drama, than _Queen Mary_. The topic is tragic
indeed: the sorrow being that of a great man, a great king, the bulwark
of a people that fell with his fall. Moreover, as the topic is treated,
the play is rich in the irony usually associated with the name of
Sophocles. Victory comes before a fall. Harold, like Antigone, is torn
between two duties—his oath and the claims of his country. His ruin
comes from what Aristotle would call his _ἁμαρτία_, his fault in swearing
the oath to William. The hero himself; recking little, after a
superstitious moment, of the concealed relics over which he swore, deems
his offence to lie in swearing a vow which he never meant to keep. The
persuasions which urge him to this course are admirably presented:
England, Edith, his brother’s freedom, were at stake. Casuistry, or even
law, would have absolved him easily; an oath taken under duresse is of no
avail. But Harold’s “honour rooted in dishonour stood,” and he cannot so
readily absolve himself. Bruce and the bishops who stood by Bruce had no
such scruples: they perjured themselves often, on the most sacred relics,
especially the bishops. But Harold rises above the mediæval and magical
conception of the oath, and goes to his doom conscious of a stain on his
honour, of which only a deeper stain, that of falseness to his country,
could make him clean. This is a truly tragic stroke of destiny. The
hero’s character is admirably noble, patient, and simple. The Confessor
also is as true in art as to history, and his vision of the fall and rise
of England is a noble passage. In Aldwyth we have something of Vivien,
with a grain of conscience, and the part of Edith Swan’s-neck has a
restrained and classic pathos in contrast with the melancholy of
Wulfnoth. The piece, as the poet said, is a “tragedy of doom,” of
deepening and darkening omens, as in the _Odyssey_ and _Njal’s Saga_.
The battle scene, with the choruses of the monks, makes a noble close.
FitzGerald remained loyal, but it was to “a fairy Prince who came from
other skies than these rainy ones,” and “the wretched critics,” as G. H.
Lewes called them, seem to have been unfriendly. In fact (besides the
innate wretchedness of all critics), they grudged the time and labour
given to the drama, in an undramatic age. _Harold_ had not what
FitzGerald called “the old champagne flavour” of the vintage of 1842.
_Becket_ was begun in 1876, printed in 1879, and published in 1884.
Before that date, in 1880, Tennyson produced one of the volumes of poetry
which was more welcome than a play to most of his admirers. The
intervening years passed in the Isle of Wight, at Aldworth, in town, and
in summer tours, were of no marked biographical interest. The poet was
close on three score and ten—he reached that limit in 1879. The days
darkened around him, as darken they must: in the spring of 1879 he lost
his favourite brother, himself a poet of original genius, Charles
Tennyson Turner. In May of the same year he published _The Lover’s
Tale_, which has been treated here among his earliest works. His hours,
and (to some extent) his meals, were regulated by Sir Andrew Clark. He
planted trees, walked, read, loitered in his garden, and kept up his old
friendships, while he made that of the great Gordon. Compliments passed
between him and Victor Hugo, who had entertained Lionel Tennyson in
Paris, and wrote: “Je lis avec émotion vos vers superbes; c’est un reflet
de gloire que vous m’envoyez.” Mr Matthew Arnold’s compliment was very
like Mr Arnold’s humour: “Your father has been our most popular poet for
over forty years, and I am of opinion that he fully deserves his
reputation”: such was “Mat’s sublime waggery.” Tennyson heaped coals of
fire on the other poet, bidding him, as he liked to be bidden, to write
more poetry, not “prose things.” Tennyson lived much in the society of
Browning and George Eliot, and made the acquaintance of Renan. In
December 1879 Mr and Mrs Kendal produced _The Falcon_, which ran for
sixty-seven nights; it is “an exquisite little poem in action,” as Fanny
Kemble said. During a Continental tour Tennyson visited Catullus’s
Sirmio: “here he made his _Frater Ave atque Vale_,” and the poet composed
his beautiful salutation to the
“Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago.”
In 1880 _Ballads and other Poems_ proved that, like Titian, the great
poet was not to be defeated by the years. _The First Quarrel_ was in his
most popular English style. _Rizpah_ deserved and received the splendid
panegyric of Mr Swinburne. _The Revenge_ is probably the finest of the
patriotic pieces, and keeps green the memory of an exploit the most
marvellous in the annals of English seamen. _The Village Wife_ is a
pendant worthy of _The Northern Farmer_. The poem _In the Children’s
Hospital_ caused some irritation at the moment, but there was only one
opinion as to the _Defence of Lucknow_ and the beautiful re-telling of
the Celtic _Voyage of Maeldune_. The fragment of Homeric translation was
equally fortunate in choice of subject and in rendering.
In the end of 1880 the poet finished _The Cup_, which had been worked on
occasionally since he completed _The Falcon_ in 1880. The piece was read
by the author to Sir Henry Irving and his company, and it was found that
the manuscript copy needed few alterations to fit it for the stage. The
scenery and the acting of the protagonists are not easily to be
forgotten. The play ran for a hundred and thirty nights. Sir Henry
Irving had thought that _Becket_ (then unpublished) would prove too
expensive, and could only be a _succès d’estime_. Tennyson had found out
that “the worst of writing for the stage is, you must keep some actor
always in your mind.” To this necessity authors like Molière and
Shakespeare were, of course, resigned and familiar; they knew exactly how
to deal with all their means. But this part of the business of
play-writing must always be a cross to the poet who is not at one with
the world of the stage.
In _The Cup_ Miss Ellen Terry made the strongest impression, her part
being noble and sympathetic, while Sir Henry Irving had the ungrateful
part of the villain. To be sure, he was a villain of much complexity;
and Tennyson thought that his subtle blend of Roman refinement and
intellectuality, and barbarian, self-satisfied sensuality, was not “hit
off.” Synorix is, in fact, half-Greek, half-Celt, with a Roman
education, and the “blend” is rather too remote for successful
representation. The traditional villain, from Iago downwards, is not apt
to utter such poetry as this:—
“O Thou, that dost inspire the germ with life,
The child, a thread within the house of birth,
And give him limbs, then air, and send him forth
The glory of his father—Thou whose breath
Is balmy wind to robe our bills with grass,
And kindle all our vales with myrtle-blossom,
And roll the golden oceans of our grain,
And sway the long grape-bunches of our vines,
And fill all hearts with fatness and the lust
Of plenty—make me happy in my marriage!”
The year 1881 brought the death of another of the old Cambridge friends,
James Spedding, the biographer of Bacon; and Carlyle also died, a true
friend, if rather intermittent in his appreciation of poetry. The real
Carlyle did appreciate it, but the Carlyle of attitude was too much of
the iron Covenanter to express what he felt. The poem _Despair_
irritated the earnest and serious readers of “know-nothing books.” The
poem expressed, dramatically, a mood like another, a human mood not so
very uncommon. A man ruined in this world’s happiness curses the faith
of his youth, and the unfaith of his reading and reflection, and tries to
drown himself. This is one conclusion of the practical syllogism, and it
is a free country. However, there were freethinkers who did not think
that Tennyson’s kind of thinking ought to be free. Other earnest persons
objected to “First drink a health,” in the re-fashioned song of _Hands
all Round_. They might have remembered a royal health drunk in water an
hour before the drinkers swept Mackay down the Pass of Killiecrankie.
The poet did not specify the fluid in which the toast was to be carried,
and the cup might be that which “cheers but not inebriates.” “The common
cup,” as the remonstrants had to be informed, “has in all ages been the
sacred symbol of unity.”
_The Promise of May_ was produced in November 1882, and the poet was once
more so unfortunate as to vex the susceptibilities of advanced thinkers.
The play is not a masterpiece, and yet neither the gallery gods nor the
Marquis of Queensberry need have felt their withers wrung. The hero, or
villain, Edgar, is a perfectly impossible person, and represents no kind
of political, social, or economical thinker. A man would give all other
bliss and all his worldly wealth for this, to waste his whole strength in
one kick upon this perfect prig. He employs the arguments of evolution
and so forth to justify the seduction of a little girl of fifteen, and
later, by way of making amends, proposes to commit incest by marrying her
sister. There have been evolutionists, to be sure, who believed in
promiscuity, like Mr Edgar, as preferable to monogamy. But this only
proves that an evolutionist may fail to understand evolution. There be
also such folk as Stevenson calls “squirradicals”—squires who say that
“the land is the people’s.” Probably no advocate of promiscuity, and no
squirradical, was present at the performances of _The Promise of May_.
But people of advanced minds had got it into their heads that their
doctrines were to be attacked, so they went and made a hubbub in the
sacred cause of freedom of thought and speech. The truth is, that
controversial topics, political topics, ought not to be brought into
plays, much less into sermons. Tennyson meant Edgar for “nothing
thorough, nothing sincere.” He is that venomous thing, the
prig-scoundrel: he does not suit the stage, and his place, if anywhere,
is in the novel. Advocates of marriage with a deceased wife’s sister
might have applauded Edgar for wishing to marry the sister of a mistress
assumed to be deceased, but no other party in the State wanted anything
except the punching of Edgar’s head by Farmer Dobson.
In 1883 died Edward FitzGerald, the most kind, loyal, and, as he said,
crotchety of old and dear Cambridge friends. He did not live to see the
delightful poem which Tennyson had written for him. In almost his latest
letter he had remarked, superfluously, that when he called the task of
translating _The Agamemnon_ “work for a poet,” he “was not thinking of Mr
Browning.”
In the autumn of 1883 Tennyson was taken, with Mr Gladstone, by Sir
Donald Currie, for a cruise round the west coast of Scotland, to the
Orkneys, and to Copenhagen. The people of Kirkwall conferred on the poet
and the statesman the freedom of the burgh, and Mr Gladstone, in an
interesting speech, compared the relative chances of posthumous fame of
the poet and the politician. Pericles is not less remembered than
Sophocles, though Shakespeare is more in men’s minds than Cecil. Much
depends, as far as the statesmen are considered, on contemporary
historians. It is Thucydides who immortalises Pericles. But it is
improbable that the things which Mr Gladstone did, and attempted, will be
forgotten more rapidly than the conduct and characters of, say, Burleigh
or Lethington.
In 1884, after this voyage, with its royal functions and celebrations at
Copenhagen, a peerage was offered to the poet. He “did not want to alter
his plain Mr,” and he must have known that, whether he accepted or
refused, the chorus of blame would be louder than that of applause.
Scott had desired “such grinning honour as Sir Walter hath”; the title
went well with the old name, and pleased his love of old times. Tennyson
had been blamed “by literary men” for thrice evading a baronetcy, and he
did not think that a peerage would make smooth the lives of his
descendants. But he concluded, “Why should I be selfish and not suffer
an honour (as Gladstone says) to be done to literature in my name?”
Politically, he thought that the Upper House, while it lasts, partly
supplied the place of the American “referendum.” He voted in July 1884
for the extension of the franchise, and in November stated his views to
Mr Gladstone in verse. In prose he wrote to Mr Gladstone, “I have a
strong conviction that the more simple the dealings of men with men, as
well as of man with man, are—the better,” a sentiment which, perhaps, did
not always prevail with his friend. The poet’s reflections on the horror
of Gordon’s death are not recorded. He introduced the idea of the Gordon
Home for Boys, and later supported it by a letter, “Have we forgotten
Gordon?” to the _Daily Telegraph_. They who cannot forget Gordon must
always be grateful to Tennyson for providing this opportunity of
honouring the greatest of an illustrious clan, and of helping, in their
degree, a scheme which was dear to the heroic leader.
The poet, very naturally, was most averse to personal appearance in
public matters. Mankind is so fashioned that the advice of a poet is
always regarded as unpractical, and is even apt to injure the cause which
he advocates. Happily there cannot be two opinions about the right way
of honouring Gordon. Tennyson’s poem, _The Fleet_, was also in harmony
with the general sentiment.
In the last month of 1884 _Becket_ was published. The theme of Fair
Rosamund had appealed to the poet in youth, and he had written part of a
lyric which he judiciously left unpublished. It is given in his
Biography. In 1877 he had visited Canterbury, and had traced the steps
of Becket to his place of slaughter in the Cathedral. The poem was
printed in 1879, but not published till seven years later. In 1879 Sir
Henry Irving had thought the play too costly to be produced with more
than a _succès d’estime_; but in 1891 he put it on the stage, where it
proved the most successful of modern poetic dramas. As published it is,
obviously, far too long for public performance. It is not easy to
understand why dramatic poets always make their works so much too long.
The drama seems, by its very nature, to have a limit almost as distinct
as the limit of the sonnet. It is easy to calculate how long a play for
the stage ought to be, and we might think that a poet would find the
natural limit serviceable to his art, for it inculcates selection,
conciseness, and concentration. But despite these advantages of the
natural form of the drama, modern poets, at least, constantly overflow
their banks. The author _ruit profusus_, and the manager has to reduce
the piece to feasible proportions, such as it ought to have assumed from
the first.
_Becket_ has been highly praised by Sir Henry Irving himself, for its
“moments of passion and pathos, . . . which, when they exist, atone to an
audience for the endurance of long acts.” But why should the audience
have such long acts to endure? The reader, one fears, is apt to use his
privilege of skipping. The long speeches of Walter Map and the immense
period of Margery tempt the student to exercise his agility. A
“chronicle play” has the privilege of wandering, but _Becket_ wanders too
far and too long. The political details of the quarrel between Church
and State, with its domestic and international complexities, are apt to
fatigue the attention. Inevitable and insoluble as the situation was,
neither protagonist is entirely sympathetic, whether in the play or in
history. The struggle in Becket between his love of the king and his
duty to the Church (or what he takes to be his duty) is nobly presented,
and is truly dramatic, while there is grotesque and terrible relief in
the banquet of the Beggars. In the scene of the assassination the poet
“never stoops his wing,” and there are passages of tender pathos between
Henry and Rosamund, while Becket’s keen memories of his early days, just
before his death, are moving.
“_Becket_. I once was out with Henry in the days
When Henry loved me, and we came upon
A wild-fowl sitting on her nest, so still
I reach’d my hand and touch’d; she did not stir;
The snow had frozen round her, and she sat
Stone-dead upon a heap of ice-cold eggs.
Look! how this love, this mother, runs thro’ all
The world God made—even the beast—the bird!
_John of Salisbury_. Ay, still a lover of the beast and bird?
But these arm’d men—will you not hide yourself?
Perchance the fierce De Brocs from Saltwood Castle,
To assail our Holy Mother lest she brood
Too long o’er this hard egg, the world, and send
Her whole heart’s heat into it, till it break
Into young angels. Pray you, hide yourself.
_Becket_. There was a little fair-hair’d Norman maid
Lived in my mother’s house: if Rosamund is
The world’s rose, as her name imports her—she
Was the world’s lily.
_John of Salisbury_. Ay, and what of her?
_Becket_. She died of leprosy.”
But the part of Rosamund, her innocent ignorance especially, is not very
readily intelligible, not quite persuasive, and there is almost a touch
of the burlesque in her unexpected appearance as a monk. To weave that
old and famous story of love into the terribly complex political intrigue
was a task almost too great. The character of Eleanor is perhaps more
successfully drawn in the Prologue than in the scene where she offers the
choice of the dagger or the bowl, and is interrupted, in a startlingly
unexpected manner, by the Archbishop himself. The opportunities for
scenic effects are magnificent throughout, and must have contributed
greatly to the success on the stage. Still one cannot but regard the
published _Becket_ as rather the marble from which the statue may be hewn
than as the statue itself. There are fine scenes, powerful and masterly
drawing of character in Henry, Eleanor, and Becket, but there is a want
of concentration, due, perhaps, to the long period of time covered by the
action. So, at least, it seems to a reader who has admitted his sense of
incompetency in the dramatic region. The acuteness of the poet’s power
of historical intuition was attested by Mr J. R. Green and Mr Bryce.
“One cannot imagine,” said Mr Bryce, “a more vivid, a more perfectly
faithful picture than it gives both of Henry and Thomas.” Tennyson’s
portraits of these two “go beyond and perfect history.” The poet’s
sympathy ought, perhaps, to have been, if not with the false and
ruffianly Henry, at least with Henry’s side of the question. For
Tennyson had made Harold leave
“To England
My legacy of war against the Pope
From child to child, from Pope to Pope, from age to age,
Till the sea wash her level with her shores,
Or till the Pope be Christ’s.”
IX.
LAST YEARS.
THE end of 1884 saw the publication of _Tiresias and other Poems_,
dedicated to “My good friend, Robert Browning,” and opening with the
beautiful verses to one who never was Mr Browning’s friend, Edward
FitzGerald. The volume is rich in the best examples of Tennyson’s later
work. _Tiresias_, the monologue of the aged seer, blinded by excess of
light when he beheld Athene unveiled, and under the curse of Cassandra,
is worthy of the author who, in youth, wrote _Œnone_ and _Ulysses_.
Possibly the verses reflect Tennyson’s own sense of public indifference
to the voice of the poet and the seer. But they are of much earlier date
than the year of publication:—
“For when the crowd would roar
For blood, for war, whose issue was their doom,
To cast wise words among the multitude
Was flinging fruit to lions; nor, in hours
Of civil outbreak, when I knew the twain
Would each waste each, and bring on both the yoke
Of stronger states, was mine the voice to curb
The madness of our cities and their kings.
Who ever turn’d upon his heel to hear
My warning that the tyranny of one
Was prelude to the tyranny of all?
My counsel that the tyranny of all
Led backward to the tyranny of one?
This power hath work’d no good to aught that lives.”
The conclusion was a favourite with the author, and his blank verse never
reached a higher strain:—
“But for me,
I would that I were gather’d to my rest,
And mingled with the famous kings of old,
On whom about their ocean-islets flash
The faces of the Gods—the wise man’s word,
Here trampled by the populace underfoot,
There crown’d with worship—and these eyes will find
The men I knew, and watch the chariot whirl
About the goal again, and hunters race
The shadowy lion, and the warrior-kings,
In height and prowess more than human, strive
Again for glory, while the golden lyre
Is ever sounding in heroic ears
Heroic hymns, and every way the vales
Wind, clouded with the grateful incense-fume
Of those who mix all odour to the Gods
On one far height in one far-shining fire.”
Then follows the pathetic piece on FitzGerald’s death, and the prayer,
not unfulfilled—
“That, when I from hence
Shall fade with him into the unknown,
My close of earth’s experience
May prove as peaceful as his own.”
_The Ancient Sage_, with its lyric interludes, is one of Tennyson’s
meditations on the mystery of the world and of existence. Like the poet
himself, the Sage finds a gleam of light and hope in his own subjective
experiences of some unspeakable condition, already recorded in _In
Memoriam_. The topic was one on which he seems to have spoken to his
friends with freedom:—
“And more, my son! for more than once when I
Sat all alone, revolving in myself
The word that is the symbol of myself,
The mortal limit of the Self was loosed,
And past into the Nameless, as a cloud
Melts into Heaven. I touch’d my limbs, the limbs
Were strange not mine—and yet no shade of doubt,
But utter clearness, and thro’ loss of Self
The gain of such large life as match’d with ours
Were Sun to spark—unshadowable in words,
Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world.”