season; there had been a plentiful harvest of verse in the preceding
generation, but it had been garnered, and the field was clear. The hour
had come for a new writer to take up the succession to that brilliant and
illustrious group who, in the first quarter of the last century, raised
English poetry to a height far above the classic level of the age before
them. Three leaders of that band--Byron, Keats, and Shelley--died young;
the sum total of their years added together exceeds by no more than a
decade the space of Tennyson's single life. And if the creative period of
a poet's life may be reckoned as beginning at twenty-one (which is full
early), it sums up to no more than thirty-one years for all the three
poets whom we have named, and to sixty years for Tennyson alone. When his
first volume appeared (1832), Byron, Shelley, and Keats were dead; Scott
and Coleridge had long ceased to write poetry, and were dying; Wordsworth,
who had done all his best work long before, alone survived, for Southey
cannot be counted in the same rank. Moreover, England may be said to have
been just then passing through one of those periods of artistic depression
that precede a revival; the popular taste was artificial and decadent, it
was running down to the pseudo-romantic and false Gothic, to the
conventional Keepsake note in sentiment, to extravagant admiration of such
poems as Moore's _Lalla Rookh_. The purchase by the State of the Elgin
Marbles, and the opening of the National Gallery, had prepared the way for
better things in art; but I may affirm, speaking broadly, that it was a
flat interval, when the new generation was just looking for some one to
give form to an upward movement of ideas.
It was upon the rising wave after this calm that Tennyson was lifted
forward by the quick recognition of his talent among his ardent and
open-minded contemporaries; although his general popularity came
gradually, since even in 1850, as may be seen from the list already given
of his competitors for the Laureateship, his pre-eminence had not been
indisputably established in high political society. Yet all genuine judges
might perceive at once that here was the man to raise again from the lower
plane the imaginative power of verse, who knew the magical charm that
endows with beauty and dramatic force the incidents and impressions which
the ordinary artist can only reproduce in a commonplace or unreal way,
while the master-hand suddenly illumines the whole scene, foreground and
background. He struck a note that touched the feelings and satisfied the
spiritual needs of his contemporaries, and herein lay the promise of his
poetry; for to the departing generation the coming man can say little or
nothing. We have to bear in mind, also, that during Tennyson's youth the
whole complexion and "moving circumstance" of the age had undergone a
great alteration. It was the uproar and martial clang, the drums and
trampling of long and fierce wars, the mortal strife between revolutionary
and reactionary forces, that kindled the fiery indignation of Shelley and
Byron, inspiring such lines as
Still, Freedom, still thy banner, torn yet flying,
Streams like a meteor flag _against_ the wind,
and affected Coleridge and even Southey "in their hot youth, when George
the Third was king." Tennyson's opportunity came when these thunderous
echoes had died away, when the Reform Bill had become law, when the era of
general peace and comfortable prosperity that marks for England the middle
of this century was just setting in. The change may be noticed in
Tennyson's treatment of landscape, of the aspects of earth, sea, and sky.
With Byron and Coleridge the prevailing effects were grand, stormy, wildly
magnificent; with Tennyson the impressions are mainly peaceful,
melancholy, mysterious: he is looking on the happy autumn fields, or
listening in fancy to the long wash of Australasian seas. There are of
course exceptions on both sides; yet in Byron the best-known descriptive
passages are all of the former, and in Tennyson of the latter, character.
The difference in style corresponds, manifestly, not only with the
contrast in the temper of their times, warlike for the earlier poets and
peaceful for the later, but also with the disorder and unrest which vexed
the private lives of Byron, Shelley, and Coleridge, as compared with the
happy domestic fortunes of Tennyson.
It is almost superfluous to lay stress on the well-known metrical variety
of Tennyson's poems, or upon the musical range of his language. He
followed the best models, and perhaps improved upon them, in using the
primitive onomatopoeia as the base for a higher order of composition,
in which the words have a subtle connotation, blending sound and colour
into harmonies that accord with the sense and spirit of a passage, convey
the thought, and create the image. His skill in wielding the long flowing
line was remarkable, nor had any poet before him employed it so
frequently; its flexibility lent freedom and scope to his impersonations
of character, and in other pieces he could give it the rolling melody of a
chant or a chorus. On the instrumental power of blank verse we know that
he set the highest value; he had his own secret methods of scansion, and
his long practice enabled him to extend the capabilities of this
peculiarly English metre. But for an excellent critical analysis of
Tennyson's blank verse, in comparison with the rhythm of other masters, I
must refer my readers to Mr. J. B. Mayor's _Chapters on English Metre_,
with especial reference to the final chapter, where the styles of Tennyson
and Browning, as representative of modern English verse, are
scientifically examined.
I make no apology for having included some criticisms of Tennyson's work
in this review of his life, because not the least valuable feature of the
_Memoir_ is that it has been so arranged as to form a running commentary
upon and interpretation of his poems, as reflecting his mind and his
manner of life. Throughout the second half of the last century Tennyson
has been foremost among English men of letters, and it is his proud
distinction to have maintained the apostolic succession of our national
poets in a manner not unworthy of those famous men who went immediately
before him.
TENNYSON: THE POET AND THE MAN
By PROFESSOR HENRY BUTCHER[102]
A hundred years have passed since Tennyson's birth, seventeen years since
his death. It is too soon to attempt to fix his permanent place among
English poets, but it is not too soon to feel assured that much that he
has written is of imperishable worth. Will you bear with me if I offer
some brief remarks, not by way of critical estimate, but in loving
appreciation of the poet and the man? And let me say at once how deeply
all who care for Tennyson are indebted to the illuminating _Memoir_ and
Annotated Edition published by his son.
Tennyson's poetic career is in some respects unique in English literature.
He fell upon a time when fiction, science, and sociology were displacing
poetry. He succeeded in conquering the poetic indifference of his age. For
nearly sixty years he held a listening and eager audience, including not
only fastidious hearers but also the larger public. Probably no English
poet except Shakespeare has exercised such a commanding sway over both
learned and unlearned. He unsealed the eyes of his contemporaries and
revealed to them again the significance of beauty. To the English people,
and indeed the English-speaking race, he was not merely the gracious and
entrancing singer, but also the seer who divined their inmost thoughts
and interpreted them in melodious forms of verse.
At the outset of his poetic life, Arthur Hallam notes the "strange
earnestness of his worship of beauty." Like Milton, he was studious of
perfection. Like Milton, too, he had in a supreme degree the poet's double
endowment of an exquisite ear for the music of verse and an unerring eye
for the images of nature. Like Milton, he acquired a mastery of phrase
which has enriched the capacities of our English speech; and not Milton
himself drew from the purely English elements in the language more finely
modulated tones. No poet since Milton has been more deeply imbued with
classical literature, and the perfection of form which he sought fell at
once into a classic and mainly a Hellenic mould. We find in him
reminiscences or close reproductions not only of Homer and Theocritus, of
Virgil and Horace, of Lucretius and Catullus, of Ovid and Persius, but
also of Sappho and Alcman, of Pindar and Aeschylus, of Moschus,
Callimachus, and Quintus Smyrnaeus, more doubtfully of Simonides and
Sophocles. We can follow the tracks of his reading also in Herodotus,
Plato, Plutarch, and Livy. His early volumes contain varied strains of
classical and romantic legend. In some of the poems we are aware at once
of the pervasive atmosphere and enchantment of romance, as in "The Lady of
Shalott," "Mariana," "Sir Galahad," and many more. Others--such as
"Oenone," "The Lotos-Eaters," "Ulysses," "Tithonus"--what are we to call
them, classical or romantic? The thought and the form are chiefly
classical, but the poems are shot through with romantic gleams and tinged
with modern sentiment. Yet so skilful is the handling that there is no
sense of incongruity between the things of the past and the feelings of a
later day. The harmony of tone and colour is almost faultless, more so
than in the treatment of the longer themes taken from Celtic sources. But
while some poems are dominantly classical, others dominantly romantic,
Tennyson's genius as a whole is the spirit of romance expressing itself in
forms of classical perfection. To the romanticist he may seem classical;
to the classicist he is romantic: romantic in his choice of subjects, in
his attitude towards Nature, in his profusion of detail, in an ornateness
sometimes running to excess; in his moods, too, of reverie or languor and
in the slumberous charm that broods over many of his landscapes. Yet he is
free from the disordered individualism of the extreme romantic school.
Disquietude and unrest are not wanting, but there is no unruly
self-assertion; the cry of social revolt is faintly heard, and, when
heard, its tones are among the least Tennysonian. Those who demand subtle
or curious psychology find him disappointing; his characters are in the
Greek manner _broadly human_, types rather than deviations from the type.
That he was capable of expressing intense and poignant feeling is shown by
such impassioned utterances as those of "Fatima" and "Maud"; but passion
with him is usually restrained. There are critics for whom passion is
genuine only if turbid, just as thought is profound only if obscure; and
for them Tennyson's reserve--again a Greek quality--seems an almost
inhuman calm. His own most deeply felt experiences find their truest
expression when passed through the medium of art; they come out
tranquillized and transfigured. The sorrow and love of "In
Memoriam"--which poem I take to be the supreme effort of his genius--are
merged in large impersonal emotions. The poem, as he himself says, "is
rather the cry of the whole human race than mine." Tennyson's intense
humanity gives rise to a peculiar vein of pathos, and even of melancholy.
Side by side there are his "mighty hopes" for the future and the power and
"passion of the past"--"the voice of days of old and days to be": on the
one hand the forward straining intellect, on the other the backward
glance, the lingering regret, and "some divine farewell." Those haunting
and recurrent words, "the days that are no more," "for ever and for ever,"
and the "vague world whisper" of the "far-far-away," are charged with a
sadness which recalls the pathetic but stoical refrain of "Nequiquam" in
Lucretius.
Throughout Tennyson's long career we can trace the essential oneness of
his mind and art, beginning with his early experiments in language and
metrical form. By degrees his range of subjects was enlarged; we are
amazed at the ever-growing variety of theme and treatment and his manifold
modes of utterance. In some, as in his lyrics and dramatic monologues, he
displays a flawless excellence, in almost all consummate art. But diverse
as are the chords he has struck, the voice, the touch, the melody are all
his own. In his latest poems we may miss something of the early rapture of
his lyric song, but he is still himself and unmistakable; and had he
written nothing but the lines "To Virgil" and "Crossing the Bar" he would
surely take rank among the highest. We think of him primarily as the
artist, but the artist and the man in him were never far apart; and as
years went on his human sympathies, always strong, were strengthened and
broadened, and drew him closer to the common life of humble people. We
overhear more of "the still sad music of humanity." Towards the close of
his life the moral and religious content of the poems becomes fuller with
his deepening sense of the grandeur and the pathos of man's existence.
Some see in this a weakening of his art, the intrusion into poetry of an
alien substance. Yet eliminate this element from art, and how much of the
greatest poetry of the world is gone! Now and then, it must be confessed,
the ethical aim in Tennyson seems to some of us unduly prominent, but
_very rarely_ does the artist lose himself in the teacher or the preacher.
He has a message to deliver, but it is not a mere moral lesson: its true
appeal is to the imagination; put it into prose and it is no longer his.
It lives only in its proper form of imaginative beauty.
Aristotle noted two types of poet, the [Greek: euphyês], the finely gifted
artist, plastic to the Muse's touch, who can assume many characters in
turn; and the [Greek: manikos], the inspired poet, with a strain of
frenzy, who is lifted out of himself in a divine transport. Were we asked
to select three examples of the former type, one from Greece, one from
Rome, and one from England, our choice from the ancient world would
probably fall on Sophocles and Virgil, and might we not, as a fitting
third, add Tennyson to the list? I do not attempt to determine their
relative rank, but I do suggest that they all belong to the same family,
and that already in this centenary year of our Poet we can recognize the
poetic kinship. Each of the three had in him the inmost heart of poetry,
beating with a full humanity and instinct with human tenderness; each
remained true to his calling as an artist and pursued throughout life the
vision of beauty; and each achieved, in his own individual way, a noble
and harmonious beauty of thought and form, of soul and sense.
JAMES SPEDDING
JAMES SPEDDING
By W. ALDIS WRIGHT, Vice-Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.
"Spedding was the Pope among us young men--the wisest man I
know."--_Tennyson: a Memoir, by his Son_, p. 32.
James Spedding, of whom FitzGerald wrote, "He was the wisest man I have
known," was born June 20, 1808, at Mirehouse, Keswick, and was the third
son of John Spedding. He was educated at the Grammar School, Bury St.
Edmunds, where his father, leaving his Cumberland home, went to live for
the purpose of putting his sons under the care of Dr. Malkin. Among his
school-fellows were W. B. Donne, J. M. Kemble (the Anglo-Saxon scholar),
the three brothers FitzGerald, and his own brother Edward, who with
himself was at the head of the school when they left. From Bury he went to
Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1827, where he was contemporary with
Frederick, Charles, and Alfred Tennyson, Arthur Hallam, Monckton Milnes
(afterwards Lord Houghton), and W. H. Thompson (afterwards Master of
Trinity), and was very early admitted into the fellowship of the Apostles.
On Commemoration Day, 1830, he was called upon to deliver an oration in
the College Chapel, the subject being "An Apology for the Moral and
Literary Character of the Nineteenth Century," which was afterwards
printed. Another of his early productions was a speech against Political
Unions, written for a debating society in the University of Cambridge,
which, although anonymous, attracted the notice of the author of _Philip
van Artevelde_, afterwards his colleague in the Colonial Office, who
quoted some passages from it in the notes to his poem, with the remark:
"It is a singular trait of the times that a speech containing so much of
sagacity and mature reflection as is to be found in this exercitation,
should have been delivered in an academical debating club, and should have
passed away in a pamphlet, which, as far as I am aware, attracted no
notice. Time and place consenting, a brilliant Parliamentary reputation
might be built upon a tithe of the merit." In 1831 he won the Members'
Prize with a Latin essay on "Utrum boni plus an mali hominibus et
civitatibus attulerit dicendi copia," and in 1832 he was again a
candidate, and wrote to Thompson on the 4th of May about it:
Tennant and I both got in our Essays, both in a very imperfect state,
and both the last minute but one.... I find that Alford also wrote. So
the Apostles have three chances. What Alford's may be I do not know.
But Tennant's and mine are neither of them worth much: Tennant's from
dryness, mine from impertinence: for of all the impertinent things I
ever wrote (and this is a bold word) my "Dissertatio Latina" was the
most impertinent. It was in the form of a letter from Son Marcus to
Father Cicero; cutting up the Offices in the most reverential way
possible. The merit of it is, that if no prize is given at all I may
fairly put it down to the novelty of the experiment and the nature of
the Judges, whom to my horror I found out the day after to be the
Heads of Colleges! Marry, God forbid! I rather calculated on
Graham's[103] being one of the chief voters, who is fond of fun in
general, and of my Latin in particular. However, it is no matter. I
spent an amusing fortnight and improved my composition: and my mind is
easy anyhow, which you will not easily believe.
On June 21 he writes again:
You will be glad to know that scoffing and utilizing march (like
humanity according to the St. Simonians), and that Cicero the son has
justified his parentage by getting the first prize for Latin
composition. You will be sorry to hear that not Alford nor Tennant,
but Hildyard Pet. hath obtained the second. Whether their labour has
been lost I know not, but mine has been fairly paid, being at the rate
of a guinea a day, and therefore 365 guineas a year, a very tolerable
income, and I shall increase my establishment accordingly.... I wish
you would decide, with your character, to come to Cambridge in the
vacation and not stay by that dismal sea. There will be George Farish,
and Edm. Lushington, and God knows whether Tennant, and do but add
yourself to myself, and ourselves to the aforesaid: and lo you a
select company as ever smoked under the shadow of a horse chesnut. If
you do not come, you will simply be behind the world of the wise
(which you know is as much like a goad as like a nail fastened by the
master of an assembly) in the understanding of things spoken. For we
talk out of the "Palace of Art" and the "Legend of Fair Women." The
great Alfred is here, _i.e._ in Southampton Row, smoking all the day,
and we went from this house [14 Queen Square, Westminster] on a
pilgrimage to see him; to wit, Two Heaths, my brother and myself, and,
meeting Allen on the way, we took him along with us, and when we
arrived at the place appointed we found A. T. and A. H. H. and J. M.
K. So we made a goodly company, and did as we do at Cambridge, and,
but that you were not among us, we should have been happy.
Again, on the 18th of July:
A new volume by A. T. is in preparation and will, I suppose, be out in
Autumn. In the meantime I have no copy of the "Palace of Art," but
shall be happy to repeat it to you when you come,--no copy of the
"Legend of Fair Women," but can repeat about a dozen stanzas which are
of the finest,--no copy of the conclusion of "Oenone" but one in
pencil which no one but myself can read. The two concluding stanzas of
"The Miller's Daughter," I can give you in this letter.... A broad
smiling letter from John Heath commissions me this morning to engage
Mrs. Perry's lodgings for Dunbar, whereat I rejoice: also informs me
that he himself keeps a Parroquet, and that Douglas has become a great
Berkeleian, and would leave his body, like Jeremy Bentham's, to be
dissected, if he thought he had one.
His brother Edward, who had been for some time in delicate health, died on
the 24th of August 1832, and a few days later Spedding writes to Thompson:
If you have seen Tennant you will be prepared to hear that my brother
Edward died early on Friday morning, after above a month of severe
suffering, leaving a ghastly vacancy in my prospects, not to be filled
up. However, what is past--the profit and the pleasure which I have
gathered out of long and pleasant years of brotherly society--this at
least is safe, and is so much to be thankful for. Why should I be the
sorrier because I have so long been graced with a source of comfort
and of pride, which, if I had never known, I should now be as cheerful
as when I last wrote to you? You knew him but little, but you knew him
enough to form some notion of how much I have to regret--or, in other
words, how much I have had to bless God for. He made a good and a
Christian end, and it is ascertained by a _post-mortem_ inspection
that he could not possibly have had health for any length of time
together. His disease was the formation of internal abscesses, in
consequence of a failure of some of the membranes, and quite beyond
the reach of surgery, so that, had one been at liberty to decide by a
wish whether he should live or die, it would have been an act of
unpardonable selfishness to wish him a moment more of captivity. This
too is something to take off the bitterness of regret, which, however,
in any way has no business to be bitter. But whether it is that I
value high human friendship more highly than I ought to do, or
whatever be the cause, a strange fatality seems to hang over the
objects of my more especial esteem, and I would have you, Thompson,
beware in time. But I shall lose my character with you if I do not
take care. I hope you will communicate the news to Tennant and Farish,
and to all our common friends, for explanations face to face are
formidable things.
It was the death of this brother that gave occasion to the verses "To J.
S." which Tennyson published in the volume then in course of preparation.
In October 1832, after unsuccessfully sitting for a Fellowship, he decided
upon another trial. Writing from Mirehouse to Thompson, he says:
I find it impossible to read here, the valleys look so independent of
circumstances. There stand the mountains, there lie the valleys, and
there is that brook which thou hast made to take its pastime therein,
a jolly old beck that has lately taken to worshipping its maker; for
it overflowed and went into the church, turning us Christians out, or
rather preventing us from going in--a better thing, inasmuch as
prevention is better than cure.
He was again unsuccessful, and Whiston was elected before him.
In the spring of this year (1833) he had written to Thompson: "Hallam
announces himself this morning as not otherwise than unwell." He had long
been delicate, and his early and sudden death at Vienna on the 15th of
September came as a shock but not a surprise to his friends. There was a
suggestion that his memory should be perpetuated by an inscription in the
College Chapel, but it came to nothing. Spedding wrote to Thompson on
November 18:
Phillips has been consulting me and others as to the propriety and
possibility of getting a tablet to Arthur Hallam's memory erected in
Trinity Chapel. Everybody approves cordially to whom he has
communicated the proposal, and he now wishes it to be known among
Hallam's friends that such a plan is in contemplation, but privately
and quietly. He will then get Christopher Wordsworth to get the
Master's permission, and then it will be time to think about the rest.
It is just possible that there may be some College etiquette or other
in the way, and it would be a pity in that case that the intention
should have been talked about publicly. Will you communicate this to
friends in Cambridge who may communicate with friends out of
Cambridge, and so there will be little difficulty in letting every one
know who is interested in the matter? Kemble can tell Trench, etc.;
Merivale, Alford, etc. Who will write to Monteith, or send me his
address? I will write to Donne myself. I think you must know every
friend of Hallam's whom I know. I have communicated with no one yet,
except those in town. You will be able to do what is fitting better
than I can tell you.
The scheme came to nothing, for what reason we do not know; possibly
"college etiquette," as Spedding anticipated, might stand in the way, for
Hallam was neither Fellow nor Scholar of the College.
In the spring of 1834 Spedding was still at Mirehouse, and gives Thompson
an account of a day and night he spent with Hartley Coleridge: