story, as Dr. Dawson aptly points out. "Ridiculous in the lecture room,
the babe in the poem, as in the songs, is made the central point upon
which the plot turns, for the unconscious child is the concrete
embodiment of Nature herself, clearing away all merely intellectual
theories by her silent influence." This is the explanation, then, of the
appearance of the babe--symbol of the power and tenderness of Nature--in
critical passages of the poem, as well as in the unsurpassably beautiful
intercalary songs, for it is the child that enables the poet to soften
the Princess's nature toward the Prince, and to effect the
reconciliation between the Princess and Lady Psyche, while imparting
beauty as well as high meaning in the recital of the incidents and
development of the tale.
"In Memoriam," as we have stated, appeared in 1850, and was unique in
its appeal to the mind of the era as a stately meditative poem on a
single theme,--the death of the poet's friend, Arthur Hallam. The
English language, if we except Milton's 'Lycidas' and 'Hymn to the
Nativity,' and Wordsworth's grand 'Ode on Intimations of Immortality,'
has no poem so noble or so faultless in its art as this magnificent
series of detached elegies. The high thought, philosophic reflection,
and passionate religious sentiment that mark the whole work, added to
the exquisiteness of the versification, place it wellnigh supreme in the
literature of elegiac poetry. Its grave, majestic hymnal measure adds to
its solemn beauty and stateliness, while the varied phases of
spiritualized thought and emotional grief which find expression in the
poem seem to elevate it in its harmonies to the rank of a profound
psalm-chant from the choir of heaven. In the sumptuously embellished
edition of the elegy, embodying Mr. Harry Fenn's drawings, with a
sympathetic preface by the Rev. Dr. Henry Van Dyke, there is a brief but
luminous analysis of the nine divisions of the poem, or commentary on
the great classic. To those who desire to read the great elegy
understandingly, the value of Dr. Van Dyke's work is earnestly
commended, since without this commentary, or such as are to be obtained
in other critical sources, there is much of poetic beauty, of
sorrow-brooding thought, and especially of emotional reflection on life,
death, and immortality, in the hundred and thirty lyrics of which the
poem consists, which will be lost to even the thoughtful reader. The
poem, as a critic truthfully observes, has done much "to express and to
consolidate all that is best in the life of England, its domestic
affection, its patriotic feeling, its healthful morality, its rational
and earnest religion."
The sentimental metrical romance "Maud" appeared in 1855 (the year of
the Crimean War), with some additional poems, including 'The Charge of
the Light Brigade,' written after Raglan's repulse of the Russians at
Balaclava, and the fine 'Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington.'
The lyrical love-drama, "Maud," we are told, was one of Tennyson's
favorite productions, of which he was wont to read parts to his guests.
As the poet has himself said of the monodrama, "it is a little Hamlet,"
"the history of a morbid poetic soul, under the blighting influence of a
recklessly speculative age. He is the heir of madness, an egotist with
the makings of a cynic, raised to sanity by a pure and holy love which
elevates his whole nature, passing from the heights of triumph to the
lowest depths of misery, driven into madness by the loss of her whom he
has loved, and when he has at length passed through the fiery furnace,
and has recovered his reason, giving himself up to work for the good of
mankind through the unselfishness born of his great passion." The poem,
when it appeared, was reviled by some critics as an allegory of the war
with Russia, and they did its author the injustice of supposing that he
lauded war for war's sake, instead of, as is the case, applauding war
only in defence of liberty. Apart from this misunderstanding, due to
abhorrence of the war-frenzy of the period, the poem has outlived the
mistaken objections to it when it appeared, and is now admired in its
vindicated light, and especially for the rich and copious beauty
manifest throughout the work, and for the magnificent lyric art with
which it is composed.
We now come to Tennyson's masterpiece, the "Idylls of the King," an epic
of chivalry, interpreted as personifying in its various characters the
soul at war with the senses. These appeared during the years 1859 and
1872. Each of the Idylls, which has a connecting thread binding it to
its fellow-allegory, takes its plot or fable from the legendary lore
that has clustered round the name of Arthur, mythical King of the
Britons about the era of the first invasion by the English. Out of the
mass of material which was gathered by Sir Thomas Malory for his prose
history of Arthur and his Knights, Tennyson takes the chief incidents
and noblest heroic traits of character in the legends and blends them in
a fashion of his own, steeping them in an atmosphere which his
imagination creates, and lighting up all with a passion and glory of
knightly adventure, as well as with a chasteness, purity, and high
fervor of ethical thought, that must perpetuate the romance, as he has
given it us, unto all time. The sections of the work as it now stands,
in addition to its introductory dedication to the late Prince Consort,
and the closing poem to the late Queen Victoria, are as follows: 'The
Coming of Arthur,' which relates the mystery of the birth of the King,
his marriage to Guinevere, daughter of Leodogran, King of Cameliard, and
the wonders attending his crowning and establishment on the throne; next
comes 'Gareth and Lynette,' a tale of love and scorn, and of the
conflict between a false pride and a true ambition; to this is appended
'The Marriage of Geraint,' of Arthur's court, and a member of the great
order of the Round Table. Next follows 'Geraint and Enid,'--Enid, the
gentle and timid, whom Geraint had married after wooing the haughty
Lynette,--a tale of pure and loyal womanhood, darkened for awhile by the
clouds of jealousy and suspicion, yet closing happily long after the
"spiteful whispers" had died down, and Geraint, assured of Enid's
fealty, had ruled his kingdom well and gone forth to "crown a happy life
with a fair death" against the heathen of the Northern Sea, "fighting
for the blameless King." The next Idyll relates how the venerable
magician Merlin succumbs to the thrall of the wily harlot Vivien, decked
in her rare robe of samite, and yields to her the charm which was his
secret. 'Lancelot and Elaine' follows with its conflict between the
virgin innocence of Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat, and the guilty
passion of the noble though erring Lancelot. To this, in order, succeeds
'The Holy Grail,' telling of the vain quest of Arthur's Knights for the
sacred relic. Despite its mystic character, this is admittedly one of
the finest of the series of Idylls, and rich in its spiritual
teaching,--that the heavenly vision is to be seen only by the eyes of
purity and grace. 'Pelleas and Ettarre' is a tale of dole, showing the
evil at work at the court, and the wrecking effect of another woman's
perfidy. 'The Last Tournament' has for its hero the court fool, who,
amid the treason of Arthur's knights, is firm in his loyal allegiance to
the King. In contrast to him is Sir Tristram, who, despite his prowess,
in jousts on the tilting-field, is "one to whom faith is foolishness,
and the higher life an idle delusion." The climax is reached in
'Guinevere,' whom, in spite of her faithlessness and guilty intrigue
with Lancelot, Arthur, with his great high soul, pityingly loves and
forgives. The end comes with the sad though shadowy 'Passing of Arthur,'
the royal barge mysteriously carrying him out into the beyond, whence
issue sounds of hail and greeting to the victor-hero
"----as if some fair city were one voice
Around a king returning from his wars."
In 1864 Tennyson published "Enoch Arden," an idyll of the hearth,
depicting a pathetic incident in a seafarer's career, of much simple
idyllic beauty. The poem has some fine descriptive passages, and many
examples of the poet's rich word-painting in treating of the splendid
tropic scenery among which the mariner is for the time cast. The volume
contained also some minor pieces, including the dialect poem, 'The
Northern Farmer,' with its humorous rendering of yokel speech. This was
followed (1875-84) by three dramas on English historical themes, which,
as the poet had not, as we have already hinted, the gifts of a
Shakespeare, were somewhat unsuccessful, though written, despite
Tennyson's advanced years, with much fine force and vividness of
character delineation. These dramas (to enumerate them in their historic
order) were "Harold," "Becket," and "Queen Mary." "Becket" is the best
and most ambitious of them, though not, as "Queen Mary" is, a play
designed for the stage. It is a vigorous Englishman's closet study of a
prolonged and bitter struggle--the conflict in Henry II.'s time between
the church and the crown--as exhibited in the person and dominant
ecclesiastical attitude of the audacious prelate who met his tragic end
by Canterbury's altar. "Harold" strikingly realizes to the modern reader
the stirring activities of a strenuous time,--that of the English
conquest by Norman William, opposed to the death by Harold at Senlac in
1066. The drama is as rich in character as it is swift and energetic in
action. "Queen Mary" deals with the religious and political dissensions
(the struggle between the Papacy and the Reformation) of Mary Tudor's
era, with her love for and marriage with Philip of Spain, and her
hopeless yearning for an heir to the double crown of England and Spain.
An important and prized addition to our English literature the drama
undoubtedly is, but it is not more than a careful, accurate, and
elaborate historical study. It lacks, both in spirit and movement, the
characteristics of the Shakespearian drama. Its characters, however, are
vividly brought out, and its situations are often picturesque and
telling. The personages, moreover, are wanting in the play of creative
effect, and the incidents lack the stir of inventive resource. Further,
though the story of Mary's life is essentially dramatic, and the
incidents of her reign are tragic in the extreme, the poet does not seem
to have extracted from either that which goes to the making of a great
drama. This evidently is the result of following too faithfully the
events of history and the records of the time, as well as, in some
degree, from want of sympathy, which Tennyson could not impart, with the
leading characters and their actions. Still, much is made of the
materials; and though the personages and incidents appear in the
narrative in the neutral tints of history, yet the period is made to
reappear with a freshness and distinctness which, while it satisfies the
scholar, gives a true charm to every lover of the drama. Again and
again, as we read, are we reminded of the Laureate's rare poetical fancy
and fine literary instinct, and the dialogues contain many passages of
striking thought and noble utterance. But the work is overcast by the
great gloom of its central figure,--the gloom of bigotry, passion,
jealousy, disappointment, and despair which ever environs the miserable
Queen; and much though the poet has striven to brighten the picture and
awaken sympathy for the weakness of the woman, who, royal mistress
though she was, could not command her love to be requited, the poetic
measure of his lines roughens and hardens to the close, when the curtain
falls on what is felt to be a tragic and unlovely life.
We can only briefly refer to the other _dramatis personae_ introduced to
us, who are among the notable historical characters that figure during
Mary Tudor's reign. They are those who take part in the incidents,
religious, civil, and political, of the period, and are, for the most
part, both in speech and bearing, the portraits familiar to us in Mr.
Froude's history. Of these the most pleasing is the Princess Elizabeth,
whose portrait is drawn with masterly skill, and engages our interest as
the fortunes of its original oscillates "'Twixt Axe and Crown":--
"A Tudor
Schooled by the shadow of death, a Boleyn too
Glancing across the Tudor."
But, aside from the interest in the safety of her person, which is in
constant jeopardy from the jealousy of her half-sister, Elizabeth wins
upon the reader by her modest, maidenly bearing, her frankness of
manner, and by a playfulness of disposition which readily adapts itself
to the restraints which the Queen is ever placing upon her person, and
which endears her to the people, who, could the hated Mary be got rid
of, would fain become her subjects. The civil strife of the period
furnishes material for some powerful passages, which are wrought up with
excellent effect, and in this connection Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Thomas
Stafford, the Earl of Devon, Sir William Cecil, and other historical
personages appear upon the stage. The other incidents introduced are
those which attach themselves to the religious persecutions of the time,
and which brought Cranmer to the stake, and give play to the papal
intrigues of Pole, Gardiner, and the emissaries of the Spanish court.
The second and third scenes in the fourth act devoted to Cranmer, which
detail his martyrdom, are hardly so satisfactory as we think they might
have been, though the poet here again follows closely the historical
accounts. The scenes, however, give occasion for the introduction of a
couple of local gossips whose provincial dialect and keen interest in
the national and religious policy of the time, here as in occasional
street scenes, are cleverly portrayed. This sapient reflection in the
mouth of one of these gossips, Tib, is a specimen at hand:--
"A-burnin' and a-burnin', and a-making o' volk madder and madder; but
tek thou my word vor't, Joan,--and I bean't wrong not twice i' ten
year,--the burnin' o' the owld archbishop 'ill burn the Pwoap out o'
this 'ere land for iver and iver."
Philip we have not spoken of; but he fills such a hateful niche in the
historical gallery of the time, and the poet introduces him but to act
his pitiful role, that we pass him by, though many of the grandest
passages in the drama are those which give expression to Mary's
passionate love for him, and her longing desire for an issue of their
marriage, which afterwards culminates in her madness and death.
We have to speak of but one other character in the drama, whose death,
it has been said, was sufficient to honor and to dishonor an age. The
beautiful Lady Jane Grey appears for a little among the shadows of the
poem, and moves to her tragic fate.
"Seventeen,--a rose of grace!
Girl never breathed to rival such a rose!
Rose never blew that equalled such a bud."
A few songs of genuine Tennysonian harmony, pitched in the keys that
most fittingly suit the singer's mood, are interspersed through the
drama, and serve to relieve the narratives of their gloom and plaint.
Their presence, we cannot help thinking, recalls work better done, and
more within the limitations of the poet's genius, than this drama of
"Queen Mary." As a dramatic representation the drama had the advantage
of being produced at the Lyceum Theatre, London, with all the historic
art and sumptuous stage-setting with which Sir Henry Irving could well
give it,--Irving himself personating Philip, while Miss Bateman took the
part of Queen Mary. "Becket," we should here add, was also given on the
stage, and with much dramatic effectiveness, by Irving,--over fifty
performances of it being called for. None of the dramas, however, as we
have said, was a success, though each has its merit, while all are
distinguished by many passages of noble and strenuous thought.
Other dramatic compositions the poet attempted, though of minor
importance to the trilogy just spoken of. These were "The Falcon," the
groundwork of which is to be found in "The Decameron;" "The Cup," a
tragedy, rich in action, with an incisive dialogue, borrowed from
Plutarch. The former was staged by Mr. and Mrs. Kendal, and had a run of
sixty-seven nights; the latter also was staged with liberal
magnificence, by Irving, and met with considerable success. "The Promise
of May" is another play which was staged, in 1882, by Mrs. Bernard
Beere, but met with failure by the critics, owing, in some degree, to
its supposed caricature of modern agnostics, and to the repellent
portrayal of one of the characters in the piece, the sensualist, Philip
Edgar. Later, in (1892) appeared "The Foresters," a pretty pastoral
play, on the theme of Robin Hood and Maid Marian, which was produced on
the boards in New York by Mr. Daly and his company, with a charming
woodland setting. The later publications of the Laureate, in his own
distinctive field of verse, embrace "The Lover's Tale" (1879), "Ballads
and other Poems" (1880), "Tiresias and Other Poems" (1885), "Locksley
Hall Sixty Years After" (1886), "Demeter and Other Poems" (1889), and
"The Death of Oenone, Akbar's Dream, and Other Poems," in the year of
the Poet's death (1892). In these various volumes there is much
admirable work and many tuneful lyrics in the old charming, lilting
strain, with not a few serious, thoughtful, stately pieces of verse,
"the after-glow," as Stedman phrases it, "of a still radiant genius....
His after-song," continues this fine critic, "does not wreak itself upon
the master passions of love and ambition, and hence fastens less
strongly on the thoughts of the young; nor does it come with the unused
rhythm, the fresh and novel cadence, that stamped the now hackneyed
measure with a lyric's name. Yet, as to its art and imagery, the same
effects are there, differing only in a more vigorous method, an
intentional roughness, from the individual early verse. The new burthen
is termed pessimistic, but for all its impatient summary of ills, it
ends with a cry of faith."
We must now hasten to a close, delightful as it would be to linger over
so attractive a theme, and to dwell upon the personality of one who so
uniquely represents the mind, as he has so remarkably influenced the
thought, of his age. But considering the length of the present paper,
this cannot be. Happily, however, the fruitage is ever with us of the
poet's full fourscore years of splendid achievement with the hallowing
memory of a forceful, opulent, and blameless life. To few men of the
past century can the reflecting mind of a coming time more interestingly
or more instructively turn than to this profound thinker and mighty
musical singer, steeped as he was in the varied culture of the ages,
endowed with great prophetic powers, with phenomenal gifts of poetic
expression, and with a soul so attuned to the harmonies of heaven as to
make him at once the counsellor and the inspiring teacher of his time.
Who, in comparison with him, has so felt the subtle charm, or so
interpreted to us the infinite beauty, of the world in which we live, or
more impressively deepened in the mind and conscience of the age belief
in the verities of religion, while quelling its doubts and quickening
its highest hopes and faith? "Tennyson was a passionate believer in the
immortal life; this was so real to him that he had no patience with
scepticism on the subject. To question it in his presence was to bring
upon one's head a torrent of denunciation and wrath. His great soul was
intuitively conscious of spiritual realities, and he could not
understand how little soulless microbes of men and women were destitute
of his deep perception. Prayer was to him a living fact and power, and
some of his words about it are among the noblest ever written. When some
one asked him about Christ, he pointed to a flower and said, 'What the
sun is to that flower, Christ is to my soul.'"
Apart as he stood from the tumult and the frivolities of his age, he was
yet of it, and sensibly and beneficently influenced it for its higher
and nobler weal. In politics, as we know, he was a liberal
conservative,--a conserver of what was best in the present and the past,
and an advancer of all that tended to true and harmonious progress. His
knowledge of men and things was wide and deep; in the philosophic
thought and even in the science of his time he was deeply read; while he
was lovingly interested in all nature, and especially in the common
people, whom he often wrote of and touchingly depicted in their humble
ways of toil as well as of joy and sorrow. Above all, he was a man of
high and real faith, who believed that "good" was "the final goal of
ill;" and in "the dumb hour clothed in black" that at last came to him,
as it comes to all, he confidingly put his trust in Loving Omnipotence
and reverently and beautifully expressed the hope of seeing the guiding
Pilot of his life when, with the outflow of its river-current into the
ocean of the Divine Unseen, he crossed the bar. For humanity's sake and
the weal of the world in a coming time this was his joyous cry:--
"Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
* * * * *
"Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
* * * * *
"Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be!"
What our formative, high-wrought English literature has suffered in
Tennyson's passing from the age on which he has shed so much glory those
can best say who are of his era, and have been intimate, as each
appeared, with every successive issue of his works. To the latter, as to
all thoughtful students of his writings, his has been the supreme
interpreting voice of the past century, while his influence on the
literary thought of his time has been of the highest and most potent
kind. Especially influential has Tennyson been in carrying forward, with
new impulses and inspiration, the poetic traditions of that grand old
motherland of English song to which our own poets in the New World, as
well as the younger bards of the British Isles, owe so much. If we
except the Laureate, there have been few who have worn the singing robe
of the poet who, in these later years at least, have spoken so
impressively to cultured minds on either side of the ocean, or have more
effectively expressed to his age the high and hallowing spirit of modern
poetry. It is this that has given the Laureate his exalted place among
the great literary influences of the century, and made him the one
indubitable representative of English song, with all its tuneful music
and rare and delicate art. To a few of the great choir of singers of the
past Tennyson admittedly owed something, both in tradition and in
art,--for each new impulse has caught and embodied not a little of the
spirit and temper, as well as the culture and inspiration, of the
old,--but his it was to impart new and fresher thought and a wider range
of harmony and emotion than had been reached by almost any of his
predecessors, and to speak to the mind and soul of his time as none
other has spoken or could well speak. From the era of Shakespeare and
Milton and their chief successors, it is to Tennyson's honor and fame
that he has given continuity as well as high perfection to the great
coursing stream of noble British verse.
AUTHORITIES.
Brooke, Stopford A. Tennyson: his Art and Relation to Modern Life.
Van Dyke, Henry. The Poetry of Tennyson.
Bayne, Peter. Tennyson and his Teachers.
Brimley, George. Essays on Tennyson.
Tainsh, Ed. C. Study of the Works of Tennyson.
Waugh, Arthur. Tennyson: A Study of his Life and Work.
Stedman, E. C. Victorian Poets.
Buchanan, R. Master Spirits.
Forman. Our Living Poets.
Dowden, Ed. Tennyson and Browning.
Tennyson, Hallam. Memoir of the Poet (by his Son).
Kingsley, C. Miscellanies.