brother of my father's devoted friend Francis T. Palgrave.--ED.]
[31] 1888.
[32] Garibaldi said to me, alluding to his barren island, "I wish I had
your trees."
[33] The tale of Nejd.
[34] The Philippines.
[35] In Dominica.
[36] The Shadow of the Lord. Certain obscure markings on a rock in Siam,
which express the image of Buddha to the Buddhist more or less distinctly
according to his faith and his moral worth.
[37] The footstep of the Lord on another rock.
[38] The monastery of Sumelas.
[39] Anatolian Spectre stories.
[40] The Three Cities.
[41] Travels in Egypt.
[42] Lionel Tennyson.
[43] In Bologna.
[44] They say, for the fact is doubtful.
[45] Demeter and Persephone.
[46] [This Home was founded at the suggestion of my father, for he and
Gordon had discussed the desirability of founding training camps all over
England for the training of poor boys as soldiers or emigrants, Gordon
saying to him, "You are the man to found them."--ED.]
[47] One of Tennyson's friends asked a cabman at Freshwater, "Whose house
is that?" Cabman: "It belongs to one Tennyson." Friend: "He is a great
man, you know?" Cabman: "He a great man! he only keeps one man-servant,
and he don't sleep in the house!"
[48] Now grown into one hundred and fifty acres.
[49] He used to protest against the misuse of words of mighty content as
mere expletives, contrasting "God made Himself an awful rose of dawn," and
the colloquial "young-ladyism," as he called it, of "awfully jolly." (See
the _Memoir_.)
[50] And, though I knew him to the end of his days, that interval never
seemed to lengthen. [Among Mr. Dakyns's rough notes I find the Greek
phrase [Greek: aei pais], with an emphatic reference to "The Wanderer." I
know he thought the spirit of him "who loves the world from end to end and
wanders on from home to home" was really Tennyson's own.--F. M. S.]
[51] See _Memoir_, ii. 400.
[52] [I think that this riddle was originally made by Franklin
Lushington.--ED.]
[53] See _Memoir_, ii. 288.
[54] ii. 284 foll., 293, "Some Criticism on Poets and Poetry"; _ib._ 420
foll., "Last Talks": that wonderful chapter.
[55] See "Poets and Critics," one of his last poems.
[56] _Solaciolum_, "poor dear, some solace"; _turgiduli ... ocelli_ (see
below), "her poor dear swollen eyes."
[57] _Miselle_, epithet of the dead like our "poor" So-and-so.
[58] Robinson Ellis notes, "The rhythm of the line and the continued
_a_-sound well represent the eternity of the sleep that knows no waking,"
and that is just the effect that Tennyson's reading gave with infinite
pathos; and then the sudden passionate change, _da mi basia_----
[59] An old experiment, being written in 1859, finished in 1860. He
himself only called it "a far-off echo of the _Attis_ of Catullus."
[60] See Carlyle, _Fr. Rev._ (Part I. Bk. v. c. ix), for the cry of the
mob. And for Béranger, cf. _Memoir_, ii. 422.
[61] Compare Merlin's song, "From the great deep to the great deep he
goes."
[62] Some commentators insist that Tennyson was born on August 5 because
the date looks like 5th in the Register of his birth. He used to say, "All
I can state is that my mother always kept my birthday on August 6, and I
suppose she knew."
[63] I can confirm this last statement from more than one talk with him.
He would note the perfection of the metre. The second line affords an
instance of the delicacy of his ear. We were speaking of the undoubtedly
correct reading:
The lowing herd _wind_ slowly o'er the lea,
not, as is so often printed, _winds_. I forget his exact comment, but the
point of it was that the double s, wind_s_ _s_lowly, would have been to
his ear most displeasing.
Again, speaking of the line,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
he observed how seldom Gray seemed satisfied with this inversion of the
accusative and the nominative, and how he himself endeavoured, as a rule,
to avoid it.--H. M. B.
[64] My own writing he compared to "the limbs of a flea."
[65] In _Problems and Persons_ (Longmans), Appendix A.
[66] _Nineteenth Century_, January 1893.
[67] _Sunday, October 27, 1872._--I asked A. T. at Aldworth what he
thought he had done most perfect. He said, "Nothing," only fragments of
things that he could think at all so--such as "Come down, O Maid," written
on his first visit to Switzerland, and "Tears, idle Tears."
He told me he meant to write the siege of Delhi, an ode in rhyme, but was
refused the papers.
[68] ["Until absorbed into the Divine."--ED.]
[69] See Appendix C.
[70] See Translation by Frederick Tennyson, p. 56.
[71] Some extracts from the paper on Tennyson in _Studies and Memories_
are included in this chapter by kind permission of Messrs. Constable & Co.
[72] [First published as a preface to _Tennyson as a Student and Poet of
Nature_ in 1910, and republished here by the kind permission of Sir Norman
Lockyer and Messrs. Macmillan.--ED.]
[73] See the fine Parsee Hymn to the Sun (written by Tennyson when he was
82) at the end of "Akbar's Dream":
I
Once again thou flamest heavenward, once again we see thee rise.
Every morning is thy birthday gladdening human hearts and eyes.
Every morning here we greet it, bowing lowly down before thee,
Thee the Godlike, thee the changeless in thine ever-changing skies.
II
Shadow-maker, shadow-slayer, arrowing light from clime to clime,
Hear thy myriad laureates hail thee monarch in their woodland rhyme.
Warble bird, and open flower, and, men, below the dome of azure
Kneel adoring Him the Timeless in the flame that measures Time!
[74] [See _Tennyson: a Memoir_, p. 259. "It is impossible," he said, "to
imagine that the Almighty will ask you, when you come before Him in the
next life, what your particular form of creed was: but the question will
rather be 'Have you been true to yourself, and given in My Name a cup of
cold water to one of these little ones?'" Yet he felt that religion could
never be founded on mere moral philosophy; that there were no means of
impressing upon children systematic ethics apart from religion; and that
the highest religion and morality would only come home to the people in
the noble, simple thoughts and facts of a Scripture like ours.--ED.]
[75] [He added, "_The_ Son of Man is the most tremendous title
possible."--ED.]
[76] From Tennyson's last published sonnet, "Doubt and Prayer."
[77] [Toward the end of his life he would say, "My most passionate desire
is to have a clearer vision of God."--ED.]
[78] [The eldest daughter of Sir John Simeon, who was my father's most
intimate friend in later life--a tall, broad-shouldered, genial, generous,
warm-hearted, highly gifted, and thoroughly noble country gentleman; in
face like the portrait of Sir Thomas Wyatt, by Holbein.--ED.]
[79] This MS. was given back to Tennyson at his request after Sir John
Simeon's death, and after Tennyson's death presented by his son and
Catherine, Lady Simeon, to the library of Trinity College, Cambridge.
[80] He afterwards built a larger study for himself, "looking into the
heart of the wood," as he said.
[81] "In the Garden at Swainston."
[82] Tennyson said to her, "Perhaps your babe will remember all these
lights and this splendour in future days, as if it were the memory of
another life."
[83] From "The Death of Oenone and other Poems," afterwards published
1892.
[84] First published 1909, by Sidgwick and Jackson, Ltd., 1s. net., and
kindly corrected by the author for republication here.
[85] Now Lady Ritchie.
[86] [Greek: ouranothen te huperragê aspetos aithêr.]
[87] See note by Tennyson in the "Eversley Edition" of the poems: "I made
this simile from a stream (in North Wales), and it is different, tho' like
Theocritus, _Idyll_ xxii. 48 ff.:
[Greek: en de myes stereoisi brachiosin akron hyp' ômon
estasan, êute petroi holoitrochoi, houste kylindôn
cheimarrous potamos megalais periexese dinais.]"
When some one objected that he had taken this simile from Theocritus, he
answered: "It is quite different. Geraint's muscles are not compared to
the rounded stones, but to the stream pouring vehemently over them."--ED.
[88] [I am much obliged to Mr. Sidgwick for having omitted his original
statement that Tennyson "takes the anti-reform line" in the matter of the
higher education of women. My father's friends report him to have said
that the great social questions impending in England were "the housing and
education of the poor, and the higher education of women"; and that the
sooner woman finds out, before the great educational movement begins, that
"woman is not undevelopt man, but diverse," the better it will be for the
progress of the world. She must train herself to do the large work that
lies before her, even though she may not be destined to be wife and
mother, cultivating her understanding, not her memory only, her
imagination in its higher phases, her inborn spirituality, and her
sympathy with all that is pure, noble, and beautiful, rather than mere
social accomplishments; then and then only will she further the progress
of humanity, then and then only will men continue to hold her in
reverence. See _Tennyson: a Memoir_, pp. 206, 208.--ED.]
[89] From Virgil's Georgics.
[90] From Theocritus.
[91] [For another view of "Gareth" see FitzGerald's letter to my father in
1873:
MY DEAR ALFRED--I write my yearly letter to yourself this time, because I
have a word to say about "Gareth" which your publisher sent me as "from
the author." I don't think it is mere perversity that makes me like it
better than all its predecessors, save and except (of course) the old
"Morte." The subject, the young knight who can endure and conquer,
interests me more than all the heroines of the 1st volume. I do not know
if I admire more _separate_ passages in this "Idyll" than in the others;
for I have admired _many_ in _all_. But I do admire several here very
much, as
The journey to Camelot, pp. 13-14,
All Gareth's vassalage, 31-34,
Departure with Lynette, 42,
Sitting at table with the Barons, 54,
Phantom of past life, 71,
and many other passages and expressions "quae nunc perscribere longum
est."--ED.]
[92] Bedivere.
[93] Reprinted, with some few alterations, from the _Edinburgh Review_,
No. ccclxxxii., by the kind permission of the Editor and the late Sir
Alfred Lyall.
[94] E. FitzGerald.
[95] He said to Bishop Lightfoot, "The cardinal point of Christianity is
the Life after Death."
[96] See Appendix C.
[97] [The sibilants give the lisping peacefulness of the waves. For beauty
of sound he would cite the following lines:
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees;
and
The mellow ouzel fluted in the elm;
and
And affluent Fortune emptied all her horn,
ED.]
[98] [My father would not have allowed this. He said, "It is pure nonsense
to say that my later poems are melancholy. In old age I have a stronger
faith in God and human good than I had in youth."--ED.]
[99] [This is taken from Quintus Calaber.--ED.]
[100] [It is interesting to note that Sir Richard Jebb held that the
"Death of Oenone" was "essentially Greek."--ED.]
[101] [This passage must not be misunderstood, as Sir Alfred Lyall thought
that he had touched high-water mark in some of his later poems, such as:
"In Memoriam," certain passages in the "Idylls of the King," "The Ancient
Sage," and "Maud," the "Northern Farmers," "Rizpah," "The Revenge," the
Dedication to Edward FitzGerald of "Tiresias," and "Crossing the
Bar."--ED.]
[102] Presidential Address to the British Academy, October 1909 (Tennyson
centenary), published here by the late Professor Butcher's kind
permission.
[103] The Master of Christ's.
[104] Captain Thomas Hamilton, who then lived at Elleray. He was the
brother of Sir William Hamilton, and is frequently mentioned in Sir Walter
Scott's Journal.
[105] _Philip van Artevelde_, by Henry Taylor.
[106] Probably August 10. See letter to Thompson, August 19, 1841.
[107] The reply referred to is:--
FARRINGFORD, _Jan. 19th, 1870_.
MY DEAR JAMES--Send the box, please, not without your new volume
hither. I shall be grateful for both. I am glad that you find anything
to approve of in the "H. G." I have not yet finished the Arthurian
legends, otherwise I might consider your Job theme. Strange that I
quite forgot our conversation thereupon. Where is Westbourne Terrace?
If I had ever clearly made out I should assuredly have called. I have
often when in town past by the old 60, the "vedovo sito," with a
groan, thinking of you as no longer the comeatable, runupableto,
smokeablewith J. S. of old, but as a family man, far in the west,
sitting cigarless among many nieces, clean and forlorn, but I hope to
see you somewhere in '70, for I have taken chambers in Victoria Street
for three years, though they are not yet furnished.
Where is the difficulty of that line in the "Flower"? It is rather
rough certainly, but, had you followed the clue of "little flower" in
the preceding line, you would not have stumbled over this, which is
accentual anapaest,
What you are, root and all:
rough--doubtless.--Believe me yours ever,
A. TENNYSON.
[108] [_The Holy Grail and other Poems._ It was Spedding chiefly who urged
my father about this time to write his plays, because he thought that he
had the true dramatic instinct. He criticized them in proof, and gave them
his warm commendation.--ED.]
[109] _Life and Letters_, vol. v.
[110] The passage from Shakespeare prefixed to this paper contains
probably as much as can be said of the mental, not less than the
affectionate conditions, under which such a report as "In Memoriam" is
produced, and may give us more insight into the imaginative faculty's mode
of working, than all our philosophizing and analysis. It seems to let out
with the fulness, simplicity, and unconsciousness of a child--"Fancy's
Child"--the secret mechanism or procession of the greatest creative mind
our race has produced. In itself, it has no recondite meaning, it answers
fully its own sweet purpose. We are not believers, like some folks, in the
omniscience of even Shakespeare. But, like many things that he and other
wise men and many simple children say, it has a germ of universal meaning,
which it is quite lawful to bring out of it, and which may be enjoyed to
the full without any wrong to its own original beauty and fitness. A
dewdrop is not the less beautiful that it illustrates in its structure the
law of gravitation which holds the world together, and by which "the most
ancient heavens are fresh and strong." This is the passage. The Friar
speaking of Claudio, hearing that Hero "died upon his words," says:
The idea of her life shall sweetly creep
Into his study of imagination;
And every lovely organ of her life
Shall come apparelled in more precious habit--
More moving delicate, and full of life,
Into the eye and prospect of his soul,
Than when she lived indeed.
We have here expressed in plain language the imaginative memory of the
beloved dead, rising upon the past, like moonlight upon midnight:
The gleam, the shadow, and the peace supreme.
This is its simple meaning--the statement of a truth, the utterance of
personal feeling. But observe its hidden abstract significance--it is the
revelation of what goes on in the depths of the soul, when the dead
elements of what once was, are laid before the imagination, and so
breathed upon as to be quickened into a new and higher life. We have first
the _Idea of her Life_--all he remembered and felt of her, gathered into
one vague shadowy image, not any one look, or action, or time,--then the
idea of her life _creeps_--is in before he is aware, and SWEETLY
creeps--it might have been softly or gently, but it is the addition of
affection to all this, and bringing in another sense,--and now it is in
his _study of imagination_--what a place! fit for such a visitor. Then out
comes the _Idea_, more particular, more questionable, but still ideal,
spiritual,--_every lovely organ of her life_--then the clothing upon, the
mortal putting on its immortal, spiritual body--_shall come apparelled in
more precious habit, more moving delicate_--this is the transfiguring, the
putting on strength, the _poco più_--the little more which makes
immortal,--_more full of life_, and all this submitted to--_the eye and
prospect of the soul_.
[111]
Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street;
Doors, where my heart was wont to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand.
"In Memoriam."
This is a mistake, as his friend Dr. A. P. Stanley thus corrects: "'The
long unlovely street' was Wimpole Street, No. 67, where the Hallams lived;
and Arthur used to say to his friends, 'You know you will always find us
at sixes and sevens.'"
[112] We had read these lives, and had remarked them, before we knew whose
they were, as being of rare merit. No one could suppose they were written
by one so young. We give his estimate of the character of Burke. "The mind
of this great man may perhaps be taken as a representation of the general
characteristics of the English intellect. Its groundwork was solid,
practical, and conversant with the details of business; but upon this, and
secured by this, arose a superstructure of imagination and moral
sentiment. He saw little, _because it was painful to him_ to see anything,
beyond the limits of the national character. In all things, while he
deeply reverenced principles, he chose to deal with the concrete rather
than with abstractions. He studied men rather than man." The words in
italics imply an insight into the deepest springs of human action, the
conjunct causes of what we call character, such as few men of large
experience attain.
[113] This will remind the reader of a fine passage in _Edwin the Fair_,
on the specific differences in the sounds made by the ash, the elm, the
fir, etc., when moved by the wind; and of some lines by Landor on flowers
speaking to each other; and of something more exquisite than either, in
_Consuelo_--the description of the flowers in the old monastic garden, at
the "sweet hour of prime."
[114] _Remains_, vol. iii. p. 105.
[115] This is the passage referred to in Henry Taylor's delightful _Notes
from Life_ ("Essay on Wisdom"):
"Fear, indeed, is the mother of foresight: spiritual fear, of a foresight
that reaches beyond the grave; temporal fear, of a foresight that falls
short; but without fear there is neither the one foresight nor the other;
and as pain has been truly said to be "the deepest thing in our nature,"
so is it fear that will bring the depths of our nature within our
knowledge. A great capacity of _suffering_ belongs to genius; and it has
been observed that an alternation of joyfulness and dejection is quite as
characteristic of the man of genius as intensity in either kind." In his
_Notes from Books_, p. 216, he recurs to it: "'Pain,' says a writer whose
early death will not prevent his being long remembered, 'pain is the
deepest thing that we have in our nature, and union through pain has
always seemed more real and more holy than any other.'"
[116] From _Problems and Persons_, by Wilfrid Ward, published here by his
kind permission and that of Longmans, Green and Co.
[117] "From the great deep to the great deep he goes;" and "when that
which drew from out the boundless deep turns again home."
[118]
For in the world which is not ours, they said,
"Let us make man," and that which should be man,
From that one light no man can look upon,
Drew to this shore, lit by the suns and moons
And all the shadows.
[119] Reprinted from the _Spectator_ of January 1, 1870.
Transcriber's Notes:
Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
The original text contains letters with diacritical marks that are not
represented in this text version.
The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these
letters have been replaced with transliterations.