"Alfred, Alfred Vere de Vere,
If time be heavy on your hands,
Are there no toilers in our streets,
Nor any poor in all these lands?
Oh, teach the weak to strive and hope;
Oh, teach the great to help the low;
Pray Heaven for a noble heart,
And let the foolish title go."
There was undoubtedly much disappointment that Tennyson did not refuse
the title bestowed upon him, as he had previously declined to be
knighted, and was looked upon as something of a liberal. He probably was
this when young, judging by some things in his writings; but he is now
looked upon as a tory of the tories.
Tennyson has probably received higher prices for his poems than any
other poet. When he was paid ten pounds a line for "Sea Dreams," it was
considered a fabulous price; but he has received much more than that
since.
During his long literary life--for he has been writing over fifty
years--he has of course written a great deal; yet he is very slow and
laborious in composition, and spends much time in rewriting and
polishing. The garden song in "Maud" was rewritten fifty times, and
almost as great labor has been given to other famous bits of writing.
He was seventeen years in writing "In Memoriam," and he brought it
almost to perfection of finish; but he has spent laborious years upon
poems which are comparative failures. After the inspiration has waned,
or if the inspiration is wanting in the first place, the pains taken in
revision go for little in the making of a poem which will live. Given
the inspiration, and the labor usually, though not always, adds to its
chances for immortality. Tennyson, with all his fastidious delicacy in
writing, is a robust, manly man,--strong, healthy, active, fond of
out-of-door life, and not greatly given to study. He spends whole days
in the open air, and has all an Englishman's fondness for walking. He is
martial in spirit, too, and rejoices in the heroic deeds of his
countrymen. He can write a spirited war song, as he proved a few years
ago when he thrilled all England with the lyric:--
"Form, form, riflemen, form;
Ready, be ready to meet the storm."
On the whole, Tennyson must be said to have had a very prosperous and
well-ordered life. He has enjoyed more of the blessings of this world
than almost any one of his famous contemporaries; and his name is likely
to live after that of most of the others shall have passed away. He has
had the appreciation and the applause of all of the great men of his
time, and the friendship of such as he desired; and his old age is full
of honor, and ministered unto by loving and faithful hands. May it still
be long before an admiring world shall read at the end of his life's
story the words, "IN MEMORIAM, ALFRED TENNYSON."
[Illustration]
[Illustration]