POETRY FROM 1830 TO 1850. THE GREATER POETS: TENNYSON AND BROWNING.
While it is in the prose of Thomas Carlyle that we first find a key to the
ultimate and deeper tendencies of literature, it is in verse that we see
most clearly its characteristics for the moment. In the interesting
preface to _Philip van Artevelde_, published in 1834, Henry (afterwards
Sir Henry) Taylor remarked that the poetry which had been recently
popular, of which he took Byron's as typical, was marked by great
sensibility and fervour, profusion of imagery and easy and adroit
versification; while it showed inadequate appreciation of what he called
the intellectual and immortal part, and a want of subject-matter. 'No
man,' he adds, 'can be a very great poet who is not also a great
philosopher.' About the poetry of his own days, he says that 'whilst it is
greatly inferior in quality, it continues to be like his [Byron's] in
kind.'
The criticism is just, and the aspiration is not only towards a desirable
reform, but towards that which in point of fact has redeemed literature in
the later decades of the century, and has given the Victorian age a
position among the great poetic epochs of English literature. At the
moment when Taylor wrote, the sinking so frequently noticeable between two
great periods of literature was plainly to be seen, and it was far deeper
in poetry than in prose. The great poets were somewhat later in coming
than their brethren in prose, Macaulay and Carlyle; and, still more, it
was longer before they proved to the satisfaction of criticism their title
to be considered great. The field was for the time in possession of a band
of minor poets, some of them not merely minor but insignificant. It is not
enough to say that they are inferior to Byron, they belong to a different
order altogether; for Byron, with all his faults, was great. It was
however in his footsteps that they trod. As Keats and Shelley and
Wordsworth have been the ruling powers since 1840, so during his brilliant
life, and from his death down to about that year, was Byron. The poetry of
the opening years of this period is therefore rightly affiliated to him.
Even Tennyson, a man of wholly alien genius, felt the influence, as the
_Poems by Two Brothers_ shows; while the verse of Letitia Elizabeth Landon
proves that sex was no barrier to it.
Want of subject-matter and of capacity for the intellectual and immortal
part is precisely the defect of the poetry of those years. It is
essentially trivial. It leaves the impression that the poet is writing not
because he must, but because he has determined to do so. For the present
purpose it is safer to draw conclusions from the work of a single great
man than from that of many mediocre writers; and when we find Tennyson,
already great in technical skill and graceful in style, sinking to
triviality in subject and to commonplace sentiment, we look for an
explanation not wholly confined to himself. We find it in the fact that
those years were an interregnum between the philosophy of Rousseau and
that gospel of work of which even Carlyle was as yet only half master, and
which no one else had then grasped at all. Men were oppressed by a sense
that the Revolution had shattered the old foundations of society; and they
had scarcely gathered courage to attempt the task of reconstruction. To
call therefore for a philosophy in poetry was right; but to supply it was
impossible until the hour had come, and the man. Meanwhile the ordinary
writer of verse groped in darkness or walked by a borrowed light. But in a
sense, the man, or the men, had come, and the hour was rapidly
approaching. Just three years before the beginning of the period Alfred
Tennyson began to write, and just three years after it Robert Browning
published his first poem.
[Sidenote: Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892).]
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was born at Somersby in Lincolnshire, of which
place his father was rector. He was educated at Trinity College,
Cambridge, where he was contemporary with and made the acquaintance of an
unusual number of men afterwards highly distinguished. Tennyson's most
intimate friend was Arthur Henry Hallam (1811-1833), son of the historian,
and himself a writer of high promise, both in verse and prose. The
literary remains published after Hallam's death can only be regarded as
the promise of something that might have been. There is nothing great in
them, but there is evidence of power which would probably have led the
writer to greatness. Dying so young however, Hallam is memorable not so
much for anything he did himself, as for his influence on his friend, and
especially for the fact that he inspired _In Memoriam_.
During his course at Cambridge Tennyson won the Chancellor's prize with
the poem of _Timbuctoo_, a piece above the ordinary prize-poem level, but
not in itself remarkable. Still earlier, in 1827, he had joined with his
brother Charles in a small volume entitled _Poems by Two Brothers_. But
these compositions were merely boyish, and Tennyson's first noteworthy
contribution to literature was the _Poems, chiefly Lyrical_, of 1830. This
was followed by another volume bearing the date 1833, and entitled simply
_Poems_. Then came nine years of almost complete silence, broken, in 1842,
by two volumes entitled once more, _Poems_. These mark the end of
Tennyson's first period of authorship. In the volumes of 1830 and 1833 we
may look upon him as in many respects an apprentice in poetry; in those of
1842 he has passed far beyond mere apprenticeship. _The Princess_ (1847)
indicates a change in his method and in the nature of his ambitions; while
_In Memoriam_ (1850), though it has its roots in the early life of
Tennyson, and was in part at least written when the grief it commemorates
was fresh, is connected by its subject-matter rather with Tennyson's later
work and with the interests of the second half of the century. In the year
when _In Memoriam_ was published Tennyson succeeded Wordsworth in the
laureateship, an office which he held for a longer period than any of his
predecessors. His appointment was the public recognition of him as the
chief poet of his time.
The most interesting feature of Tennyson's writings during those years is
the evidence of development they present; and this is especially important
in any attempt to gauge the tendencies of the time. This evidence has been
much obscured by changes and omissions. Part of the contents of the
volumes of 1830 and 1833 has been incorporated in the collected editions
of Tennyson's poems. About half of the collection of 1842 consisted of
select poems from the earlier volumes; but many pieces were omitted, and
of those retained almost all were freely changed, and some nearly
re-written. For this reason it is difficult for the reader of the present
day to appreciate fairly the early criticisms of Tennyson. It is well
known that he was severely handled, especially by Lockhart in the
_Quarterly Review_; and it is supposed, on the ground of the poet's great
achievements, that this is only another example of perverse and utterly
mistaken criticism. But such a judgment is hardly fair to the critic.
Carlyle long afterwards condensed the criticism in his expressive way into
a word,--'lollipops.' A great many of Tennyson's early poems were
'lollipops,' dainty, exquisite, delicious to taste, but not food. They are
elegant, not strong. They are deficient in two things essential to great
poetry, depth of thought, and fervour of passion. The need of passion to
poetry will be universally admitted; and to the need of thought,
especially in the present century, one of the greatest of English critics
has borne emphatic testimony. 'I do not think,' says Matthew Arnold in his
_Letters_, 'that any poet of our day can make much of his business unless
he is intellectual.'
Now, among the early poems of Tennyson there are many pieces in which the
want of these qualities is felt. He was certainly not in those days a poet
of passion. His pulse temperately keeps time all the while he is drawing
his Lilian, his Margaret and his Adeline. Though these pieces deserve,
within certain limits, warm praise, they cannot be ranked as great poetry.
They are masterpieces of grace, but they want depth. The writer is himself
unmoved, and in consequence he leaves his readers equally calm. The same
holds true of the thought in these volumes. It is usually cold and
somewhat superficial. The critics, alive to these defects, were, it is
true, both incautious and unfair. The early volumes contained a few poems
showing no small force of mind, as well as a technical skill remarkable in
so young a man. They contained, in particular, _The Palace of Art_ and _A
Dream of Fair Women_, both, even in their original shape, indubitably the
productions of a strong intellect. In them also we find the exquisite
_Lotos-Eaters_, with its wonderful melody, one of the most poetic poems
Tennyson ever wrote, and one which, for suggestive beauty of thought as
well as for rhythm, ranks among the masterpieces of the English language.
Tennyson then, judged by those early volumes, was a man who might prove to
be less gifted intellectually than artistically. He certainly had grace,
but it might be reasonably questioned whether he had much strength. On the
other hand, it might prove that the surface show of weakness was the fault
rather of the time than the man. For the production of truly great poetry
two things must co-operate,--great gifts in the individual, and a great
life in the community in which his lot is cast. Without the latter the
former will lie dormant, like the strength of Samson till the Philistines
are upon him. Now, this is exactly what has been described as the position
of matters when Tennyson began to write. The old impulse which had stirred
the giants of the Revolution was failing or was undergoing transformation;
the new impulse was only beginning to be felt.
As the poet was, so to speak, in the balance, his next publication is an
object of special interest. He had taken plenty of time; and an interval
of nine years, considerable at any time of life, is great in the space
between twenty and thirty. He had moreover undergone a great personal
sorrow in the death of his friend Hallam. If any change was ever to take
place in his work it might be expected now. And we do find a great change,
partly in the tone of the new poems, and hardly less in the omissions and
revisions of the old. The purely trivial pieces are not reprinted. It is
hardly less instructive to note that in the lighter pieces which are
retained the changes made are comparatively slight; for they were already
nearly perfect of their kind. Very different is the treatment of the more
weighty poems. Tennyson evidently felt that he had been less successful
with these; and accordingly he freely revised all, and nearly rewrote some
of them. The new pieces present similar evidence of development. The poet
is still an artist first of all, but in a large proportion of the pieces
he is a thinker as well. The whole tone of these volumes is therefore more
thoughtful and more profoundly serious than that of their predecessors.
_Ulysses_, _Locksley Hall_, _Morte d'Arthur_ and the _Vision of Sin_ may
be mentioned as typical of the new work. Edward FitzGerald thought that
Tennyson never rose above, nor even equalled, the poems of 1842; and, if
we judge by the perfect balance of thought and expression, much might be
said in defence of this view. At any rate, he had proved himself a poet
who must be taken seriously, and it is from this date that we may regard
his position among the greater English poets as assured. We have glimpses
of artistic ideals to be realised and of intellectual problems to be
solved. On the artistic side, the ideals are fundamentally a development
from Keats, but they are a development by an original genius. On the
intellectual side, _Locksley Hall_ presents social problems, and the
_Vision of Sin_ raises moral and religious difficulties similar, it is
true, in essence to those which men had discussed in former days, but seen
in the light of the poet's own time.
Hitherto Tennyson's pieces had all been short. In 1847 he published his
first long poem, the medley of _The Princess_. This serio-comic production
on what is called 'the woman question' will probably not hold for long a
high place among Tennyson's works. The main body of it contains no great
illuminating thought. The reflexions upon the position of women and the
relations of the sexes are not beyond the range of an intelligence
considerably short of genius, and the jest and earnest are not very
happily mingled. The poem is remarkable rather for fine passages than for
greatness as a whole. In point of length it was the most important
experiment Tennyson had yet made in the most difficult but most flexible
form of English metre, blank verse. There is however no part of _The
Princess_ of similar length which can be ranked as equal to _Morte
d'Arthur_; and its best feature, the lyrics between the parts, were a
subsequent addition. But whatever may be the intrinsic merit of _The
Princess_, it is valuable as a symptom. The poet who had at first held so
far aloof from the interests of everyday life is now found devoting his
longest work to a social question of the day. He is at least endeavouring
to be what Sir Henry Taylor says the great poet must be, a philosopher as
well as an artist. If 'art for art's sake' be the proper creed of the
poet, then Tennyson is wrong, and he remains wrong all the rest of his
life. We must rank him among those poets who seek to base their work on an
intellectual foundation, not among those who hold that feeling alone is
sufficient. He seeks to see Truth as well as Beauty, instead of resting
satisfied, like Keats, with their ultimate identity.
[Sidenote: Robert Browning (1812-1889).]
Robert Browning is the only poet of that time who can be placed beside
Tennyson, and it is only in respect of greatness that the two can be
conjoined; for in the great features of his poetry Browning stands apart,
not only from Tennyson, but from all contemporary writers. The Browning
family were dissenters in religion, and in those days dissenters were to a
large extent cut off from society and from the usual course of education.
The young poet went to no public school, and his higher education was
given not at Oxford or Cambridge, but in the University of London,
afterwards University College. There he remained only one year, and the
travels on the continent which followed were unquestionably more important
for his intellectual development. On his return he settled down to a
literary life, and, notwithstanding narrow means and want of appreciation,
became a poet by profession. His works consequently are the landmarks of
his life. The most important event, outside the record of his
publications, is his marriage in 1846 to Elizabeth Moulton Barrett, who
was already known as a poetess. This union is unique in the records of
English literature, and indeed, it would be hardly too much to say, of all
literature. It has been said that men of genius usually marry commonplace
wives. The two Brownings were, the one certainly among the greatest of
nineteenth century poets, the other generally regarded as the greatest of
English poetesses. The health of Mrs. Browning necessitated their living
abroad; and the works of both bear deep marks of the influence of their
long residence of fifteen years at Florence.
Browning, like Tennyson, lived and worked all through the present period,
and far beyond its lower limit; but, unlike Tennyson, he neither
illustrates in his own writings the characteristic influence of the time,
nor did he in the early years make any deep mark upon it. One reason for
his escape from the influence was that his interests were during those
years more purely intellectual than those of any other poet. He had
moreover a native buoyancy which saved him from the paralysing effect of
disappointment and of fading hopes. He was an idealistic optimist born
into a world where pessimism, or faith only in material prosperity and
material progress, prevailed. Hence we find that from the start his works,
unlike those of Tennyson or his contemporaries in general, were
characterised by an even extravagant largeness of design. His first work,
_Pauline_ (1833), though it contains more than one thousand lines, is a
mere fragment of a most ambitious scheme, which the poet afterwards
admitted to have been far beyond his strength. _Paracelsus_, _Sordello_,
_Strafford_, and the other dramas, all exhibit a similar boldness. While
the other poets of the time had to be slowly made conscious of their
strength and encouraged to undertake great things, Browning had by degrees
to become aware of the limits of his powers, and to learn that he must
reach through small things up to great. It was after what we may call an
apprenticeship in the shorter dramatic monologue, such as we find in
_Dramatic Romances_, _Dramatic Lyrics_ and _Men and Women_, that he
achieved his greatest triumph, _The Ring and the Book_.
_Pauline_ is interesting chiefly for the evidence it presents of the
poet's early tastes. Shelley was the poet to whom in this piece he owed
most; but Shelley's genius was not in harmony with Browning's, and
afterwards his influence vanished almost as completely as did that of
Byron from the works of Tennyson. _Pauline_ was followed by _Paracelsus_
(1835), a poem in which the writer seemed to spring all at once to the
full maturity of his powers. He failed however to maintain his ground.
_Strafford_ (1837) was the first of a series of dramas published between
that year and 1846, when the last number of _Bells and Pomegranates_,
containing _Luria_ and _A Soul's Tragedy_, appeared. Browning never
afterwards attempted the drama proper, for _In a Balcony_, first published
among _Men and Women_, is rather a dramatic episode than a drama. Besides
the dramas, there had appeared during those years _Sordello_ (1840), the
most enigmatical poem Browning ever wrote. Despite the beauty of the
descriptive passages in the poem, it may be questioned whether the enigma
is worth the trouble of solution; at any rate, all the ingenuity bestowed
upon it has not yet suggested a satisfactory explanation. There had
appeared also, as parts of the series of _Bells and Pomegranates_,
_Dramatic Lyrics_ (1842) and _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_ (1845).
_Pippa Passes_ (1841) is sometimes misleadingly classed as a drama. It is
far more closely akin to the dramatic romances and dramatic lyrics.
The decade between _Strafford_ and _A Soul's Tragedy_ may be described
then as, for Browning, a period of dramatic experiment. The result was to
demonstrate that, though his genius was in some respects intensely
dramatic, he was not fitted to write for the stage. His failure is all the
more remarkable because of his keen interest in character and his great
success, under certain conditions, in understanding and interpreting it.
The question naturally arises whether there is any connexion between
Browning's failure and the often noted incapacity of the present century
to nourish a dramatic literature. This incapacity is conspicuous in the
preceding period as well as in that now under discussion. Scott failed
completely as a dramatist. The once great reputation of Joanna Baillie has
withered away. The dramas of Byron are striking, but their centre is
always George Gordon. Shelley succeeded once, in _The Cenci_; for, great
as is _Prometheus Unbound_, its greatness is not dramatic. With respect to
the present period, the most convincing proof of the scarcity of dramatic
talent is the fact that there is no need to devote a separate section to
the criticism of this form of literature. To most writers the drama has
been a mere interlude among other literary work, and this in spite of the
fact that fiction alone can compare with it in respect of the material
rewards it offers. Almost the sole exception, among those who can be
regarded as rising into the ranks of literature, is James Sheridan Knowles
who belongs more to the preceding period than to this. As literature, his
plays are far from remarkable. His tragedies are of little interest, and
his comedies, while ingenious, are pieces of skilful mechanism rather
than works inspired by the poetic spirit. Men like Tom Taylor and James
Robinson Planche and Douglas Jerrold, gifted with fluency, and capable of
writing as many dramas as the theatres might demand, have a place only in
ephemeral literature. Even better men, such as Thomas Noon Talfourd
(1795-1854) and John Westland Marston (1819-1890), hold but a low position
in its annals. The cold dignity of Talfourd's style hardly atones for the
commonplace character of his thought; and Marston betrays an incapacity,
fatal in a dramatist, to draw clear and consistent characters. Henry
Taylor, who ranks much higher, will be considered elsewhere. As a rule,
such drama as there is in the period comes under names more conspicuous in
other departments. Great as are his literary defects, Bulwer Lytton is
pretty nearly the best in the dramatic list; and, like Charles Reade, he
is a novelist first and a dramatist only in the second place.
In some of these cases it might be fairly urged that the cause of failure
is want of dramatic talent in the man himself; but this does not explain
the strange fact that in one age, the Elizabethan, nearly all writers
should prove themselves capable of producing dramas, always respectable
and often great; while in another, our own, no one, except Tennyson in his
old age, has written a drama that is likely to rank permanently among the
treasures of literature. We can only account for this by the operation of
the law of development in literature. We observe, in point of fact, that
particular literary forms flourish at particular times. We observe,
further, that in ancient Greece and in modern France and Spain, as well as
in England, the golden age of the drama is neither at the beginning nor at
the end, and that in each case it coincides with a period of great
national activity and exaltation. The fact is susceptible of a
psychological explanation. The drama requires an even balance between the
spirit of action and the spirit of reflexion. On the one hand, we can
hardly conceive of the drama being as naive as the poems of Homer; on the
other hand, the growth of self-consciousness is apt to interfere, as it
did in Byron's case, with true dramatic portraiture.
Herein we find the secret of Browning's failure. Though he rightly
proclaimed that all his poetry was 'dramatic in principle,' yet he never
wrote a successful drama. The reason is that in him the spirit of
reflexion predominates unduly over the spirit of action. In his plays the
action stagnates, because he has no interest in it. All his wealth of
intellect is devoted to the unfolding of motive and inner feeling,
because, little as he cares for what a man does, he cares very much for
what he _is_ and _why_ he does it. The characters therefore, in Browning's
mode of conception, are seen individually, each in himself; they are not
developed, in accordance with the true dramatic method, by mutual
interaction. Hence too it comes that Browning's stage is never more than
half filled, and that even of the sparse _dramatis personae_ only one as a
rule, or at most two or three, are brought out with tolerable fulness of
detail.
In the dramas then we may say that Browning was merely learning what he
could not do. Side by side with them he was doing work which taught him
what he could do eminently well. His name is associated, more than that of
any other poet, with the dramatic monologue. Excluding the regular dramas,
nearly all his work of the period under consideration is either dramatic
monologue or closely akin to it. _Pippa Passes_ is only slightly
different, a series of dramatic scenes, bound together by a lyric thread
and by the character and doings of the girl Pippa. Most of the _Dramatic
Lyrics_ and _Dramatic Romances_ are pure monologues. _Paracelsus_ may be
described as modified monologue. And not only during these years, but
throughout his life, Browning's success depended principally upon two
things; first, on the fidelity with which he kept to monologue; and
secondly, on his remembrance of the fact that the poet must be not only
intellectual, but artistic. With few exceptions Browning's greatest
things--in _Men and Women_, in _Dramatis Personae_ and in _The Ring and the
Book_, as well as in the works above named--are monologues in which he
bears this fact in mind. With few exceptions his failures in later days
are due to the fact that he forgets the poet in the philosopher.
Reasons may easily be found to account for the fact that dramatic
monologue proved so much more suitable to the genius of Browning than
either the regular drama or any other form of verse. It gave scope to his
interest in character, without demanding of him that interest in action
which he only showed spasmodically. Moreover, it suited his analytic
method. For Browning is not, like Shakespeare, an intuitive but a
reflective artist. His delineations are the result of a conscious mental
process; and hence he can hardly call up more than one character at a
time. Further, he does not care to trace character through a train of
events. His pictures are usually limited to moments of time, to single
moods. They reveal the inner depth seen through some crisis in life; and
therefore, though they are highly impressive, they do not exhibit growth.
Now, for purposes such as these the monologue is admirably adapted. It
leaves the poet free to choose his own moment, to begin when he likes and
end when he likes; and this is essential to the effect of many of
Browning's poems, as for instance _In a Gondola_ and _The Lost Mistress_.
It explains likewise the extraordinary suddenness of his style, which is
one among the many causes of the difficulty so often felt in understanding
him. There is no preparation, no working up to the crisis. The scene
opens abruptly on some tempest of the soul, and the reader has to
penetrate the mystery amidst thunder-claps and lightning-flashes. Yet the
method does not always give rise to difficulty. There is no better example
of it in Browning than the magnificent sketch of _Ottima and Sebald_ in
_Pippa Passes_. It is not a monologue, for there are two interlocutors;
but they stand isolated from all the world, bound together by crime, and
are seen only in their moment of supreme tension. Yet everything is so
clear that dulness itself could hardly mistake the meaning.
_Paracelsus_ is so much the most important of the works of this period
that it demands separate notice. Although several characters appear in the
course of it the method is fundamentally that of monologue. The whole
interest is concentrated on the fortunes and spiritual development of
Paracelsus; but in this instance they are followed through a life. The
poem may be described as a poetical treatise on the necessity of a union
of love with knowledge and of feeling with thought. But though loaded with
reflexion it never, like Browning's later works, ceases to be poetical,
and it must be ranked very nearly at the head of its author's writings.
The intellectual theory of the universe which underlies all Browning's
poetry is never afterwards as fairly stated, nor are the difficulties as
fully faced, as in _Paracelsus_. It has the advantage therefore, not only
as poetry but also as philosophy, over the works written after _The Ring
and the Book_.
Boldness of design then, and an even excessive opulence of intellect, were
from the first the characteristics of Browning. He did not acquire them,
they were his birthright. Carlyle stood out from among his contemporaries
by virtue of conquests won through toil and pain, Browning entered into
his inheritance at once and without effort. The one might have said, like
the chief captain, "With a great sum obtained I this freedom;" and the
other might have answered, with St. Paul, "But I was free born." Yet the
advantage was not all on one side. Carlyle had the deeper sympathy with
the difficulties of the time, and laborious as was his way upwards he had
far more power over his own generation than Browning. The latter was for
many years one of the least popular of poets, and what influence he
possessed operated slowly and unseen. It was men of less vigorous
intellect who stamped their character upon this early part of the period.