way what Browning has more artistically illustrated in "Childe Roland
to the Dark Tower Came." It was written one evening after the poet had
received a letter from his beloved friend, Charles Sumner, full of
lofty sentiments, expressed in the classic rhetoric of the time. As he
dropped the letter the word "Excelsior" caught his eye, and the
inspiration and the vision of the poem came. He wrote it on the back
of the letter which contained the magic word.
It is said that the words "Cumnor Hall," in Meckle's ballad, so
haunted the mind of Sir Walter Scott as to compel him to write
"Kenilworth." "I was led, I think," said Longfellow, "to write the
'Wreck of the Hesperus' by the words 'Norman's Woe' I had been reading
one dreary night of the disasters that had befallen the Gloucester
fishing fleet, and my eye met the words 'Norman's Woe.' I went to bed,
but the story haunted me. I arose and began to write, and the poem
came to me in whole stanzas."
"The Old Clock on the Stairs" was suggested by an old farmhouse
timepiece at the country house of Mr. Appleton, his father-in-law.
While the house described was in the country, the description answers
well to the poet's own residence, which also contained an eight-day
clock which reached from floor to ceiling. Many people never so much
as doubted that the Cragie House and its clock were meant in the poem.
The clock in the Cambridge house was so old and antique that most
visitors fancied that they saw in it the real "old clock on the
stairs." The refrain was suggested by the French words "Toujours
jamais, jamais toujours" in an elegant French quotation.
"Hiawatha" was pictured to the poet by the story which Abraham le
Fort, an Onondaga chief, gave to Schoolcraft. The musical vocabulary
in which the Indian words suggest their own meaning may be found in
Schoolcraft. It is the one poem which commemorates the legends of the
Indian races; it will doubtless outlive those races, and be their
tradition in future ages. The Indian words, as in the instance of
"Norman's Woe," must have suggested in many cases the scenes and
incidents of the poet's creative fancy.
"The March of Miles Standish," which followed, repeats the old
apocryphal Puritan story, which no one but a critic would care to
question. We think, however, that the ancient fable of Europa is
likely to have suggested the ride to Duxbury on the back of the bull,
for at that time there were few cattle in the colonies.
"'The Tales of a Wayside Inn,'" said Mr. Longfellow, "received that
name merely to give them locality. I had never been in the Wayside
Inn, but once." (We think that he stopped there on his first return
from Europe when travelling from Albany to Boston, on which road there
were the White Horse, Red Horse (Wayside), and Black Horse Inns.) "I
had written the stories in verse, and I wished to connect them with a
sympathetic place and a company of story-tellers. My friends were
accustomed to dine occasionally at the Wayside Inn, and it seemed a
pleasing fancy to place my story-tellers there." The Poet of the
company was Mr. Parsons, the Dante scholar; the Theologian, Mr. Wales;
the Sicilian, Luigi Monte, an exile from Sicily, whom President
Lincoln sent back in an official capacity, under the influence of
Charles Sumner, when Sicily became free during the Italian revolution;
the Jew was Edrika, an accomplished Boston merchant.
"Paul Revere's Ride" is perhaps the most popular, and the "Vision
Beautiful" the most philosophical, of these many tales. The story of
"Lady Wentworth" is a most charming story of old New England
folk-lore, and wears the quaint and sympathetic colorings of colonial
times.
"I have given up the theory," said Mr. Longfellow, "that the old stone
tower at Newport is to be connected with the Norsemen. I feel certain
now that it is merely a windmill. I have a model of just such a mill,
which was a common sight on the coasts of the North Sea." His
residence in Scandinavia as a student gave him a love of the
literature of the North, and hence his tales from the Sagas.
The melodious and sympathetic qualities of Longfellow's verse meet
well the wants of the composer. The songs of the poet are more and
more being wedded to music. "The Bridge," "The Rainy Day," "The Day is
Done," "The Legend of the Crossbill," "The Silent Land," "Allah," "The
Sea Hath its Pearls" (translation), and many other poems have found
expression in musical art as inspired and beautiful as themselves, and
thus winged will long go singing through the world. The English
composers have thus far been the best interpreters of his songs.
His view of literature at that time, when he had made his fame and
stood in the ripeness of the harvest, was expressed in the words of
Fitz Greene Halleck, which he quoted: "A little well written is
immortality." He had always acted on Horace's advice as given in the
"Poetic Art," and had chosen subjects that waited a voice, and made
what was useful, agreeable. Every poem, even though an inspiration,
had been carefully revised, until the best and most sympathetic,
picturesque, and worthy expression was found. His poems grew in art
with years. One of his earliest volumes was "Outre Mer," which was
followed by "Hyperion" after some years; both prose works were filled
with the spirit of poetry. In 1839 he published his first popular
volume of verse under the title of "Voices of the Night;" in 1841,
"Ballads and other Poems;" in 1842, "Poems on Slavery;" in 1843, "The
Spanish Student;" in 1846, "The Belfry of Bruges;" and in 1847,
"Evangeline," which established his fame. His other works were
published after intervals of two or three years, with a long silence
after the death of his wife in 1861. The last of his great poems was
"Morituri Salutamus," read by him at the fiftieth reunion of his class
at Bowdoin College. One of his most perfect poems, and perhaps the
most elegant of its kind in any language, was produced at this period
of the beginning of life's winter, "Three Friends of Mine."
One March day in 1882, a lad from one of the Boston schools came to
me, and said that some pupils from the school wished to call on the
poet, and asked me if I supposed that he would receive them and give
them his autograph. I recalled that Longfellow had said to me that he
always answered applications for autographs, adding, "Would it not be
discourteous in me to refuse my name to one who took such an interest
in anything which I had written as to write me for such a favor?" I
replied that I had no doubt but that the poet would receive them
kindly; that he loved young people, and advised them to make the call.
He received the lads with his usual kindness, showed them the historic
associations of the old house, and then in their company looked over
on the Brighton meadows and the Charles River with its now icy _C_,
for the last time. The day was declining, the last March day that he
would ever see in health. Illness came soon after this visit from the
school-boys, and soon he who had lived on the way to Mt. Auburn, was
borne to the calm city of the dead. His grave is near Spurzheim's, not
far from the gate, on a beautiful knoll, and is marked by a simple
stone with a plain inscription.
Longfellow was the poet of humanity and eternal hope, and his poetic
scriptures are always sought and always will be by spirits seeking
sympathy. He doubtless will live as the poet of the heart long after
greater rhetoricians and more philosophical poets have lost their
influence. It is the poet that is most human that has the greatest
influence and the most enduring fame.
As the poet of eternal hope, his horizons ever lift. He could not have
written Browning's "Lost Leader." His characters are all happy in the
end; his ships of song all come to blue harbors and happy ports. Poems
like Lowell's "Rhoecus," where opportunity is lost forever, find no
expression in his muse, but rather the rainbow always that shines in
the "Legend Beautiful." His Sordellos do not fail; they attain; the
people of his fancy overcome even their sins and mount on them like
ladders to heaven. Even old age in his view is full of opportunity,
and all experiences have their kindly helps and opportunities. Though
a translator of Dante, his own muse had no "Inferno," hut only a
"Purgatorio."
He is the most loved poet of our own or of any age; the American
Horace, whose pictures of all that is best in our early history will
ever remain. To study him is to grow. He never gave to the world a
soiled thought, or planted a seed in any mind whose flower and fruit
were not good. "The most beautiful character I ever knew," said Lowell
amid the shadows of the royal tombs of the Abbey, as his white bust
was placed among the ghosts; and so felt those who laid him down to
rest in the kindly earth of Mt. Auburn's fields and flowers, on the
banks of the calm, rippling Charles; and so feel those who visit that
simple spot, and rest in thought there amid the vines and roses under
the trees.
He touched all life to make it better, and humanity will ever be
grateful to the Heavens that he lived and sang.
[Signature of the author.]
ALFRED TENNYSON[16]
[Footnote 16: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]
By CLARENCE COOK
(1809-1892)
[Illustration: Alfred Tennyson.]
Few of the world's great poets have woven into their verse so much
autobiographical material as the late Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate of
England. All his early poetry is suffused with tints, sombre or
bright, and breathes of sounds that recall the landscape of the
Lincolnshire in whose sunniest spot he was born, but in near
neighborhood to "the level waste, the rounding gray" of "the dark
fen," and within sight and sound of the "sandy tracts" and "the ocean
roaring into cataracts." Later, we find in some of the poems that have
made for themselves a place in the heart of all English-speaking
people, vivid pictures in words or phrases, recalling his travels in
Italy and Greece; and in the latter half of his life we follow him to
the southern part of England, to Surrey and the Isle of Wight, where
we find him in his "careless-ordered garden, close to the edge of a
noble down," or "hear the magpie gossip garrulous under a roof of
pine." But, to quote the lines that illustrate this autobiographic
element in Tennyson's poetry, or that show his happy way of making use
of his actual experiences, by which again we are able to get an
impression of his way of life, and of the manner of man he was, would
be to transfer a goodly portion of his verse to these pages.
Alfred Tennyson was born August 5, 1809, at Somersby, Lincolnshire,
and was the third son in a family of five sons and seven daughters
born to the Reverend George Clayton Tennyson, who was rector of
Somersby, and held, besides, the livings of Beg-Enderby and Great
Grimsby.
Tennyson's father was a man of various tastes and accomplishments,
dabbling in poetry, painting, architecture, music, the study of
language and mathematics, but doing nothing of note in any of these
things. Even as a preacher he seems to have made but little
impression, if we may judge by the answer made by one of his old
parishioners to the question: "What sort of sermons did Mr. Tennyson
preach?" "Eee read um from a paaper, an I didn't knaaw what um meant."
But the father's versatility doubtless did his children good service;
for in such a village as Somersby, the opportunities for general
culture were few. Up to the age of seven, when he was sent to the
grammar-school at Louth, Alfred was taught at home by his father. We
are told that in the case of each of his boys, Mr. Tennyson was in the
habit, before presenting them at the grammar-school, of making them
commit to memory and recite every day one of the Odes of Horace,
beginning with the Ode to Maecenas and ending with the "In Praise of
Augustus"--the last Ode of the four Books. Alfred went to Louth,
entering the grammar-school the Christmas after the battle of
Waterloo. His brother Charles was already there, and the whole family
moved to Louth from Somersby in order to make a home for the boys. In
1820, at the age of eleven, Alfred left the school, and returned with
his family to the parsonage at Somersby. In 1828 he went to Cambridge,
and the years that elapsed between his leaving the grammar-school and
his entering the university were among the most important in the youth
of the poet. His further instruction in preparation for college was
carried on at home; but on the whole the teaching was desultory;
although, judging from the results, what was done in the way of direct
instruction was done thoroughly. As Mr. Graham tells us, there was not
a clever man in the county who was not asked to give his assistance in
the task. One tutor drilled Alfred in mathematics; another in music;
and a Roman Catholic priest taught him and his brother linguistics
with a view to the university; and Alfred was allowed to spend much
time in wandering about the moors, or in the woods that covered the
hills on whose skirts the village of Somersby stood. Carlyle writes to
Emerson: "You see in Tennyson's verse that he is a native of moated
grange and green flat pastures, not of mountains and their torrents,"
and this is true in part; but Mr. Graham tells us that the country
about Somersby is not flat, but broken and hilly, and that the place
is named Somersby, _i.e._, summer's town, because it abounds in birds
and flowers; and, indeed, one may know by the frequent allusions to
flowers and birds and the nice observation shown in these allusions,
that these things must have made a strong impression on the youthful
mind of the poet. He learned nature at first hand, and had his lesson
by heart, unconsciously imbibing it from his walks alone, or with his
dearly loved elder brother, Charles--elder by five years--over all the
country-side; and there is no doubt that the wild and dreary side of
that region, the flat expanse of the fens slowly rescuing from the
ever threatening and invading sea, the long line of the coast with
its beaches and ridged mounds of sand built by the winds, and
strengthened by the bird-sown seeds of grass to be barriers against
the ocean--that all these scenes made an impression on his mind strong
to balance the sweet woodland pastoral note of the Somersby brooks and
flowery hollows, no one can doubt who knows Tennyson's poetry. He had
little love for the hardier sports of boys, but was not a retiring
child either, nor over-contemplative, although he was described by one
of the old Northern Farmers he has immortalized, as a boy who would
"sit for hours on a gate gawmin about him!" But this indolence was a
trait that he had in common with many men destined to greatness, and
it clung to him all his life. It was no sign of an indolent mind, but
rather evidence of, perhaps, an over-active one. His earliest volume
of poems--made up of his own with contributions from his brothers,
Charles and Frederick, and published when he was eighteen--though
written all along the track of the preceding years, bears evidence of
much youthful wrestling with the problems of life, mingled with much
that witnesses to the boy's pure joy in living. He began to write
poetry at a very early age, and he found in his family an audience by
no means at one in their appreciation of his talent. After hearing
some of his verses, his grandfather gave him a half-guinea, and
prophesied that it would prove the first and the last of his earnings
by that trade. Whether or not the old gentleman lived to hear of his
getting a whole guinea a line for some of his work, as we think we
remember to have heard was the case with "Sea Dreams," we do not know;
but, with his probable taste in poetry, supposing him to have cared
for the poetry of his time, he would doubtless have looked upon
Alfred's success as another sign of the degeneracy of the age. As has
been hinted, Mr. Tennyson was very careful of his money, and his boys
were not allowed much spending money. Alfred and his brother Charles
had the natural youthful desire to see their poetry in print, but they
could not with all their savings raise the money to meet the expense
of publication. An old nurse of the family, the wife of the coachman,
is authority for the statement that it was her husband who first
showed the boys a way out of the difficulty. "Why don't you make a
book of some of these poems you are all the time writing, and sell it
to a publisher?" Acting on this hint the boys offered their small
collection to a publisher, who doubtless thinking that two families so
well-placed in the county as the Tennysons and the Fytches would
insure the success of their young offshoots' venture, assumed the
expense of printing, and gave the budding poets ten pounds to boot.
The "Poems by two Brothers" appeared in 1827. The news of its
publication was greeted by one of the uncles with the remark: "I hear
that my nephew has made a book. I wish it had been a wheelbarrow!" The
thin volume has long ago passed into the domain of "books not to be
had," and when by any chance a copy is brought to light the price it
brings in the open market would have taken the uncle's breath away.
The book has lately been reprinted, and in this form is now
accessible.
[Illustration: Tennyson in his Library.]
At Cambridge, Tennyson entered Trinity College, and while there made
the acquaintance of Arthur Henry Hallam, which soon ripened into the
friendship that has been made immortal in the poem "In Memoriam."
The only distinction Tennyson would seem to have gained at Cambridge
was the Chancellor's gold medal awarded for the prize-poem
"Timbuctoo," a curious production long consigned to oblivion but now
included in the authorized edition of the poet's collected work.
In 1811 the Rev. Mr. Tennyson died, and on leaving Cambridge, Alfred
returned to Somersby and lived with his mother and sisters. In 1830 he
published "Poems chiefly Lyrical," in 1832 "Poems," and in 1842
"Poems," in two volumes, which first opened the eyes of the English
public to the fact that a new planet had appeared in the heaven of
poetry, and Tennyson's name soon became a household word. In 1845 he
was awarded a pension of L200 per annum from the Civil List, and in
1850 he was made Poet Laureate, on the death of Wordsworth. In the
same year he married Miss Emily Sellwood, whom he had long known at
Somersby, the daughter of a lawyer, and niece of Sir John Franklin. In
1855 he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law from
Oxford and in 1884, being then in his seventy-fifth year, he was
raised to the peerage under the title of Baron Tennyson of Aldworth
and Farringford.
Tennyson was an ardent lover of England, and seldom left his native
country, and never for any long time. He had two residences, one at
Freshwater, in the Isle of Wight, and the other at Aldworth on the top
of Blackdown, in Surrey. He changed from one of these places to the
other according to the seasons and led in both the same quiet family
life, devoted to poetry, and enjoying to the full the delights of the
country, caring little for other society than that of his intimate
friends--a strong contrast in this respect to his great contemporary
Browning, who delighted in the social life of London, as that life
delighted in him. Mr. Edwin Arnold has given in a recent number of
_The Forum_ (1891) a very pleasant account of a day spent at
Farringford in the company of the venerable poet and his only
surviving son Hallam, named after the friend of his father's early
years. Although Tennyson was averse to mingling in general society,
and was difficult of access in his home, except to his intimate
friends, yet those friends were among the elect spirits of England,
and he has recorded his feeling for some of them--for Maurice,
Fitzgerald, Spedding, Lear, among others--in poems that deserve a
place among his best. His friendship for Carlyle grew out of his
admiration for the genius of the man as well as his character, and
Carlyle has left more than one sketch of his friend among his
inimitable word-portraits of notable men.
The interest of Tennyson's life really centres in his early days spent
in his father's parish of Somersby; his later life has flowed on in a
stream rarely interrupted by any events with which the public was
concerned, or that can be said to have greatly influenced his poetry.
He was no doubt the product of his time, and took a deep interest in
what was going on in the world, especially in so much of it as
affected England. But his strong conservatism made him unsympathetic
with much that is called progress, and which at any rate is change;
and change of any sort was little welcome to Tennyson. He was not born
to be a reformer, and was ill-fitted by his temper to lead public
opinion. But his lofty moral character, the noble purity and elevation
of his life, and his singleness of aim, joined with his extraordinary
powers as a poet, as a wielder of the English language--and no poet
since the great days has had such a varied power over all chords of
the lyre--these elements combined to make the name of Tennyson without
a doubt the greatest of his time among the poets of the
English-speaking race. He died at Aldworth House, in Surrey, October
6, 1892.
[Signature of the author.]
CHARLES DICKENS
By WALTER BESANT
(1812-1870)
[Illustration: Charles Dickens.]