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ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
All rights reserved
Copyright 1892


Артрити

ALFRED


LORD TENNYSON
42676
A STUDY OF HIS LIFE
AND WORK
BY
ARTHUR WAUGH
B. A. OXON.
SECOND EDITION

MA
SC
GORIETA
ᏌᏞ
T
REVISED AND ENLARGED
LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
M D C C C XCIII
1893
FIRST EDITION-October 1892
Edinburgh: T, and A, CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty
deja ch 17 -91-21 yom
ΤΟ
AUSTIN DOBSON
Even the gods must go:
Only the lofty Rhyme
Not countless years o'erthrow,—
Not long array of time.'
PREFACE
THIS volume was completed, all but the last page of
biography, when the sudden illness of Lord Tennyson
startled me at the task of minute revision, which I had
hoped might long be my pleasant occupation. Such as it
is, the book has been my companion during the last two
years, and grew into shape as the natural result of a love
for the poetry, and a desire to possess in convenient shape
all that could be recorded of the life of one whom I re-
garded with sincere enthusiasm.
In process of time, no doubt, a life of Lord Tennyson
will be written, based upon material which at the present
moment is in the possession of the family. The present
volume does not pretend to be the official life of the
late Poet Laureate, and expressly deprecates the sup-
position that it is built upon any but public data;
nevertheless it will not be found to be altogether devoid
of novelty. Perhaps I may claim to have searched more
patiently and widely than any of my predecessors for every
available record; and I certainly have left no important
source of likely information untested. It is my hope, there-
fore, that without trespassing upon any one's privacy, or
committing any act of literary indiscretion, I have been
viii
PREFACE
successful in making a study of Lord Tennyson more
complete, more detailed, and, I hope, more accurate than
any at present in the possession of the public.
I must acknowledge, in the first instance, the kind help
and sympathetic interest of Mr. J. Dykes Campbell, who
generously placed at my disposal his valuable collection
of Tennysoniana; and, secondly, of Mr. Austin Dobson,
who has not only encouraged me in my task, but has
allowed me to attach his name to this volume.
I also desire to express my indebtedness to Mr. W.
Aldis Wright's Life and Letters of Edward FitzGerald, and
Mr. T. Wemyss Reid's Life, Letters, and Friendships of
Richard Monckton Milnes, First Lord Houghton, from which
much valuable information has been gathered.
The second edition has been amplified by several
personal notes for which I am indebted to the kindness.
of Mr. Frederick Locker-Lampson, Professor F. T. Pal-
grave, and Dr. A. H. Japp.
Other aid and other encouragement, which I had hoped
to acknowledge, must here be left, by promise, to the more
difficult tribute of silence.
December 1892.
ARTHUR WAUGH.
LINCOLNSHIRE
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
I
CHAPTER II
CAMBRIDGE
22
CHAPTER III
LITERARY TROUBLES AND ARTHUR HALLAM'S DEATH
CHAPTER IV
EARLY YEARS IN LONDON
51
69
CHAPTER V
THE BEGINNINGS OF FAME
93
CHAPTER VI
FROM THE PRINCESS TO IN MEMORIAM
105
MAUD
IDYLLS OF THE KING
Ъ
CHAPTER VII
129
CHAPTER VIII
156
X
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER IX
FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS
177
CHAPTER X
QUEEN MARY AND HAROLD
213
CHAPTER XI
THE FALCON AND THE CUP
•
235
CHAPTER XII
THE PROMISE OF MAY AND BECKET
252
CHAPTER XIII
FROM TIRESIAS TO DEMETER
271
CHAPTER XIV
288
THE CLOSING YEARS
CHAPTER XV
THE VOICE OF THE AGE.
305
INDEX
317
ILLUSTRATIONS
Portrait of Lord Tennyson, after G. F. Watts, R.A.
(By permission of the Proprietors of Black and White.)
Somersby Rectory
Somersby Church
•
Holywell Glen
Bridge Street, Louth
Westgate Place, Louth
Tennyson's Rooms, Corpus Buildings, Cambridge
Hallam's Rooms, New Court, Trinity
Clevedon Church
Fireplace in the Cock Tavern
In the Garden at Swainston
Exterior of Shiplake Church
PAGE
Frontispiece
4
นก
5
IO
12
13
22
24
+
67
77
106
I 12
•
Interior of Shiplake Church
Shiplake Rectory
The Marriage Register, June 13, 1850
The Hallam Memorial Tablet
114
116
118
124
Hon. Hallam and Lionel Tennyson, after G. F. Watts, R.A.
Farringford (front view) .
The Maud' Cedar at Swainston
(
Facsimile of MS. from Gareth and Lynette'
Lady Tennyson, after G. F. Watts, R.A.
'The Quarried Downs of Wight'
Aldworth, Surrey.
Farringford (back view)
130
136
142
176
190
197
208
224
Facsimile Letter
Portrait of Lord Tennyson
Tennyson's Bridge, Farringford .
•
263
264
(By permission of Messis. CAMERON and SMITII)
288
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
CHAPTER I
LINCOLNSHIRE
THE study of a life and work, the beginnings and
growth of which, while they lie beyond our own
memory, are still within the limits of present report,
is beset with many difficulties. Reminiscences and
sentiments which are purely personal stand in the
way of clear judgment; trivial anecdotes, often half
or wholly untrue, are still in the air, and the voices
of sound and unsound criticism are too closely blended
for an unprejudiced view of the position which the
author's work will ultimately attain. But apart from
these difficulties, which are common to all studies in
contemporary literature, a life of Alfred Tennyson is
made the harder to write by his own discouragement
of the attempt.
Once or twice in the history of
letters the situation has repeated itself. Shakespeare's
'Cursed be he who moves my bones,' Thackeray's
'Let there be none of this nonsense about me after
my death,' Gordon's 'Better be dead than praised,
and Tennyson's 'My Shakespeare's curse on clown and
knave who will not let his ashes rest,' are expressions
of an identical feeling, coloured a little differently by
A
2
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
the variety in the temperament of the speakers. Such
a sentiment may, one feels, be uttered with all sincerity
at the moment, yet with no intention of giving it the
weight and authority of an ultimatum; still the senti-
ment, once written down, remains to confront the
biographer at the outset. Reflections and memories
of this kind have filled the present writer with a very
genuine diffidence in undertaking a work which rever-
ent affection has made in every sense a labour of love.
For, before he can write a word about Tennyson,
he is bound to excuse himself for writing about him
at all, and to make his peace with that implacable
deprecation of the irreverent doom of those that
wear the poet's crown.' The cause might be pleaded
in many ways. The writer could, perhaps, defend
his right to speak on the ground of his intention in
speaking; he could maintain that what has been
written, though it might indeed be worthier, has
been written in no spirit of irreverent paragraph-
making, no desire to rush in where better taste would
shrink to tread, but with every instinct of respect and
veneration. The case could conceivably be stated so.
But the present writer prefers to keep the inconsider-
able shadow of himself in the background, and to
base his excuse not on his own treatment of the life,
but on the very nature of the life itself. There are
lives which require much tact in the writing, much
weighing of what shall be said and what left unsaid,
much veiling of ugly scars, much concealment of
deformities. It is not so with Tennyson. His life
has been so peaceful, so far removed from the smoke
and stir of the world of petty aims and narrow
LINCOLNSHIRE
3
ambitions, so free from passages to be passed over
in silence, and events to be excused, that nothing,
it seems, but grossly bad taste or hopelessly incorrect
judgment on the part of the writer, could cause him
to offend seriously in his work. And he can scarcely
be condemned as too sanguine, who trusts at least to
escape an accusation of such faults as these.
The life of Tennyson remains to be written.
Materials must exist which are at present inaccessible
to any but the poet's nearest relatives; the few who
were privileged to know him intimately have, no
doubt, much to tell of him that must here be left
untold. The present work makes no claim-indeed,
it could ill afford to do so-to give a detailed and
finished portrait, or even an exact epitome of events.
Yet, until an authoritative biography be forthcoming,
there must, we hope, be some who would wish to
know a little more of a life, the high thought, earnest-
ness, and love of which are so clearly written in the
work it leaves behind it. For such readers, what
reverence and sincere admiration could do has been
done in the present pages.
Of the many temptations to artifice and ingenuity
which beset the biographer, none is more alluring
than the charm of insisting upon the influence which
the surroundings of childhood exercise upon the after
life. It is so easy to draw parallels and trace ten-
dencies, and to appear rather clever in the process
of so doing, that one is apt to forget that this is
nothing but fancy after all, and that Truth is not
found on these surface-levels. Lives which become
4
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
<
crowded with events in the period immediately follow-
ing childhood are not greatly moved by the earliest
influences of all. The power of childhood over later
years belongs rather to uneventful lives, and Tenny-
son's was just the kind of life to fall under its spell.
The character and scenery of his home-life had a
more than ordinary share in his development, for he
lived in its immediate neighbourhood, in daily famili-
arity with the 'grey hillside,' 'the seven elms and
poplars four,' the brook and the ridged wolds,' for
the first twenty years of his life: the period, in short,
during which impressions are most vivid, and the
mind readiest to receive them. The influences of
the home-life and home-scenery set their mark upon
him very early, and never left him. More than forty
years after Tennyson went up to Cambridge, his
friend FitzGerald could trace them in 'The Last
Tournament,' in a description of a wave spending
itself upon the shore. 'That was Lincolnshire, I
know,' FitzGerald wrote.
It was in Lincolnshire, at Somersby Rectory, that
Alfred Tennyson was born, on Sunday, August 6,
1809. His father, the Rev. George Clayton Tenny-
son, LL.D., held this living, to which he was ap-
pointed in 1807, in connection with those of Grimsby
and Bag Enderby; his mother was a daughter of the
Rev. Stephen Fytche, Vicar of Louth, the town in
which Alfred's schooldays were afterwards passed.
Somersby itself is but a tiny village; in 1821 there were
sixty-two inhabitants in all. Alfred was one of twelve
children, seven of whom were sons, Frederick and
Charles (afterwards Charles Tennyson Turner), poets

M
SOMERSBY RECTORY.
At p. 4

LINCOLNSHIRE
5
both, being his seniors. The home and its surround-
ings were full of a picturesque charm. The rectory
is a rather low, two-storeyed building, on one side
separated from the road by a narrow drive, upon the
other faced by a mossy lawn with a stretch of meadow-
land beyond. A quaint old-fashioned dining-hall, with
medieval windows, built by the poet's father, extends
SOMERSBY CHURCH.
the house to the right, as one looks up at the Rectory
from the lawn. It was in this hall that the family
was wont to gather on
games and conversation.
winter evenings for round
On the north a straggling
road winds up the steep hill towards the summit of the
wold, while on the south a pebbly brook babbles along
close to the edge of the garden. Not at all the sort of
6
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
scenery one associates with the fen-country: instead
of dreary waters and low-lying levels, the landscape
sweeps up into hills and drops into valleys, full of the
sights and sounds of country-life, and rich in flowery
hollows and patches of tangled meadow-land. It re-
quires no strain of imagination to catch the spirit of
Tennyson's song here, where the little brook of his
poem dances along through the heart of the country,
chattering as it goes, while not far from Somersby
the traveller is shown an old, half-ruined grange
which fancy dreams over as the probable original
of Mariana's prison.
The process of identification, however, has led
more than one writer into difficulties. Poetry is
not always inspired by its surroundings. 'Break,
break, break,' for instance, has been generally
ascribed to the influence of Clevedon. But we have
Tennyson's own denial. It was made,' he said,
in a Lincolnshire lane at five o'clock in the morning.'
Such, among these Lincolnshire lanes, was the
poet's home, and from stray allusions here and there
we get glimpses of the inmates of the Rectory itself.
The father was a man of many interests, something of
a poet and an artist, much of a scholar and a linguist,
and, above all, of powerful physique. The poet's
mother was of a sweet and tender disposition. A story
is told of village roughs who traded on her gentleness
by beating their dogs within hearing of the Rectory
windows, in hope of a 'tip' to induce them to spare the
unfortunate victims of their greed. A combination of
the parents' qualities often reappears in the children,
and it seems only natural to trace to the father's
LINCOLNSHIRE
7
1
influence the power and energy of 'Maud' and 'The
Idylls,' to the mother's the tender passion of 'In
Memoriam' and 'The Princess.'
Such specious fancies are, perhaps, a little too
artificial to be insisted upon with any freedom; but
much of the poet's earlier life has to be left to con-
jecture and imagination of one kind and another; for
the actual, palpable facts that come to hand are very
meagre
indeed. Still the few there are have value. Mrs.
Richmond Ritchie, in a delightfully picturesque paper
published some years since in Harper's Magazine, and
since reprinted in book-form, gives us a glimpse of
Alfred Tennyson when he was no more than five
years old. She tells of him caught and swept along
by the wind down the Rectory garden, crying as
he was hurried past: 'I hear a voice that's speaking
in the wind.' It was his first line of poetry, and
the idea was not to leave him with the moment.
The sound of the storm has always had a voice
for Tennyson, as clear in later years as when it
first whispered to his babyhood. The miserable
mother in Rizpah' catches 'Willy's voice in the
wind'; Arthur, sleeping before his last battle, hears
the ghost of Gawain shrilling through the wandering
wind: Hollow! Hollow, all delight!' To the nurse
in 'The Children's Hospital' the voice of the wind
blends mysteriously with 'the motherless bleat of a
lamb in the storm and the darkness without.' One
cannot help fancying-nor is it, perhaps, too curious
a fancy that this story of his childhood, told to
the poet afterwards, has recurred to him, half un-
consciously, when from time to time his mind was
(
8
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
со
dwelling on the idea of storm and tumult. The
wind has always had a voice that speaks to him; as
every common sight and sound of nature has spoken
to him, and inspired him with a new interpretation.
A story of this kind now and again seems to
show the bent of his mind; but in the nursery
and schoolroom days Alfred was not the most
prominent member of the family. A retiring and
reserved disposition, rare in children, rendered him
comparatively unattractive; and Charles, who, though
a year his senior, was much more boyish and high-
spirited, naturally had qualities which were quicker to
make friends for him. Charles was, indeed, a universal
favourite; and a story told of the two brothers
seems to indicate that, with all his youthful spirits,
he actually developed the earlier of the two. One
Sunday, when the rest were going to church,
Charles suggested that Alfred should fill up the
time by writing some poetry, giving him as a
subject the flowers in the Rectory garden. By the
time the service was finished Alfred had filled his
slate with verses, which he hastened to submit to
his brother's criticism upon his return. Their atti-
tude to each other, the mutual relation of poet and
critic, shows, as Mr. H. J. Jennings has shrewdly
remarked, that Charles was regarded, at any rate
by his younger brother, as the cleverer of the two.
These verses on the garden flowers were not
Alfred's only attempt at youthful poetry. The next
time he essayed verse his grandfather was the task-
master, and the subject the death of the poet's
grandmother. For this first 'In Memoriam' the critic
LINCOLNSHIRE
9
slipped half a sovereign into the boy's hand, with the
remark—just a little like a snub,-'That is the first
money, my boy, that you've made by poetry; and—
take my word for it-it will be the last!'
To those who are rich in the wisdom that comes
after the event, the sentence sounds like a text for a
little sermon on the futility of prophecy.
A piece of verse, 'On the Death of my Grand-
mother,' occurs in Poems by Two Brothers, and this,
no doubt, was an emended version of the early effort.
It opens quietly, and with a certain sober dignity.
'There on her bier she sleeps!
E'en yet her face its native sweetness keeps.
Ye need not mourn above that faded form,
Her soul defies the ravage of the worm ;
Her better half has sought its heavenly rest,
Unstain'd, unharm'd, unfetter'd, unopprest ;
And far above all worldly pain and woe,
She sees the God she almost saw below.'
By this time the application to poetry had become
continuous. Between his eleventh and twelfth birth-
days Alfred wrote an epic poem of some four or five
thousand octosyllabic lines in the manner of Sir
Walter Scott; and three years later he was busy
upon a drama in iambics, a chorus from which was
afterwards printed in Poems, chiefly Lyrical. These
early excursions into poetry were much more ambitious
than the work to which he applied himself during his
Cambridge Terms; but the young mind is always
blind to difficulty.
The children do not seem to have played many
games in the old rectory garden, which must have
been very quiet in the dreamy summer afternoons.
At that time cricket was not in full vogue; football

10
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
was even less popular. A kind of 'King of the Castle'
seems to have been the boys' favourite game; they
found scope in it, perhaps, for fancy and imagination
beyond the mere pleasure of the exercise. Another
imaginative game is related in Frederick Tennyson's
letters as having enlivened his aunt's garden. 'I and
HOLYWELL GLEN.
Charles and Alfred,' he says, 'enthusiastic children,
used to play at being emperors of China, each
appropriating a portion of the old echoing gardens
as our domain.' In the evening they told long stories
round the fire, and Alfred-in amusing contrast to the
quintessential narrative of his prime—is reported to
have spent months in the recital of his tale-The
Old Horse.' The prolixity was to pass with boyhood;
it is said that, in after years, he pronounced 'Mr. Sludge

LINCOLNSHIRE
I I
the Medium' terribly long-winded, adding, 'I'd have
done the thing in a third of the space.'
Meanwhile, the lessons were not neglected. Every
day the boys walked to Cadney's village school in
Holywell Glen, a deep, shady nook, enshrining the
well which tradition magnified into a second Pool of
Bethesda. Alfred, we learn, was ill at numbers; and
one of his schoolfellows, a little his senior, earned
many a tip from the Rector of Somersby by coach-
ing the future poet in his mathematics after school-
hours. They must have made an easy-going, rather
primitive, and very picturesque life, these early days
in Lincolnshire. Bird-nesting on bright spring
mornings, rambles by the brook on summer half-
holidays to Stockworth, Harrington, or Scrivelsby,
gradual familiarity with all the life and growth of the
countryside-these were the earliest influences that
touched the children of Somersby Rectory, and
inspired that harmony of mind with Nature which
was afterwards to prove so distinctive a characteristic
of the Laureate's verse.
:
'Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair,
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.'
It needed many years of communion with Nature to
give voice to that feeling, that sense of something want-
ing, that stir of sweet regret that is so easily invoked
by the sight of these scenes of loneliness: but the early
days at Somersby helped him to that sympathy with
Nature which ripened to maturity in his later verse.
And so one hesitates to pass too rudely over the

12
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
days of this childhood; for, uneventful as they were,
they were at work all the while on the fibre of the
poet's spirit. The spirit was a little too solitary, no
doubt, a little too shy and over-reserved: it would
have been better for Alfred Tennyson, perhaps, if he
had gone early to a great public school and mixed
more with action,-fallen sooner into the rush and
swirl of life, and had less time to dream. For his
schooldays seem to have been unusually free from

BRIDGE STREET, LOUTH.
excitement. Cadney's village school was followed
by Louth Grammar School, where Alfred went as a
new boy in the Christmas term of the year after
Waterloo. Under Mr. Waite's mastership Louth
was a drowsy little school; and the terms that
Tennyson spent there seem to have brought very

LINCOLNSHIRE
13
little with them to be remembered afterwards.
Indeed, there appears to be but one solitary
reminiscence of his schooldays to record; and, since
it is the one story, it has been told over and over
again, so often as to be scarcely worth re-telling.
But where there is little, there can be no choice,
and our single
glimpse of this
time must be the
poet's own recol-
lection of the fes-
tivities on the
occasion of the
coronation of
George the
Fourth, when he
and the other
boys were decked
out in rosettes,
and there were
processions and
merry-making.
Alfred seems
to have left Louth
Grammar School
after some four
years with Mr.
M
45
WESTGATE PLACE, LOUTH.
Waite, and was consequently not twelve years old when
his school career finally closed. Mrs. Tennyson's
mother, Mrs. Fytche, lived with her daughter, Miss
Mary Anne Fytche, at Westgate Place; and while
Alfred was at Louth, his parents often came and stayed
14
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
!
with their relatives, to be near him. When he left school
he went home again to be under his father's tuition. The
father was a strong, sensible man, without doubt, full
of interests, and an admirable companion for his sons;
but the continued parental supervision was a mistake.
A boy of Alfred's sensitive and imaginative tempera-
ment needed to be more among his contemporaries
and less by himself. However, his parents thought
otherwise; he came home again, and during the next
few years the brothers were together at Somersby.
We learn enough of this period to feel that the
studies must have been rather desultory, and the
amusements simple enough. Their father's teaching
was supplemented by the classics of a Roman
Catholic priest and the music of a teacher at Horn-
castle. For half-holidays they had the endless
pleasure of wild rambles over the country with their
pipes in their mouths-for Alfred had begun to
smoke already. An early love for the seashore was
fostered by frequent visits to Mablethorpe, a small
town in a flat country, where the sand slowly shifts
into banks, and builds up a barrier between the sea
and the fields. Here the days would be spent in
much the same way as at Somersby a little roaming
about the shore, a little verse-making, and a good deal
of dreaming. It was an idle time, but it had its interests.
An affection for animal life was one of Alfred's
earliest characteristics. One of the rooms on the
second floor was set apart as his den, and here he would
sit of an evening, pondering his verses. One night, as
he leant from the window, he heard an owl hooting; and,
with a faculty for imitation which was strong in him,
LINCOLNSHIRE
15
he cried back to the bird. The poet's 'tu-whit, tu-
whoo' was so natural that the owl flew to the window,
and into the room, where it was captured and kept for
a long while as a pet. Ingenuity has traced to this
story the origin of the later poem 'The Owl,' which
catches with singular fidelity an echo of the bird's cry.
And if we try to take the character out of its
surroundings, and to find for ourselves what manner
of boy Alfred Tennyson was at this time, we get the
clearest insight into his real nature in the anecdote,
recorded by Mrs. Ritchie, that tells of the effect of
Byron's death upon the household at Somersby.
'Byron is dead!' The whole world seemed full of
the cry and the boy crept away to think its mean-
ing out alone, and to cut 'Byron is dead!' into the
sandstone. We get very close to the heart of the
child here: the reserve with which he chooses to be
by himself, his appreciation of the loss, and his record
of it, carved with his knife in the stone, seem to show
us the Alfred Tennyson of the moment very vividly
indeed. There is the inclination to solitude on the
one hand, and the strength of sympathy and affection
on the other, the two dissonant elements in that
strange combination which makes him such a power-
fully interesting figure. He has had friends who have
seen the one side only, and thought him brusque and
unsociable; he has had other friends who have shut
their eyes to this side of his character, and preferred
to dwell on the tender and lovable element. But
the true portrait must be frank and candid: and the
subject is the more engaging for its contradictory
complexity. The little Alfred, creeping off alone to
16
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
engrave his poet's cenotaph, was a very perfect fore-
shadowing of that older Alfred who would be silent
to his friends for years, and yet in any moment of
their trouble send them the strengthening assurance
of his tender sympathy. This was the Tennyson
who, after long silence, wrote to his old friend, Lord
Houghton, condoling with him upon his wife's death;
and wrote in such a strain as this:
'I was the other day present at a funeral here, and one
of the chief mourners reached me her hand silently almost
over the grave, and I as silently gave her mine. No words
were possible: and this little note, that can do really no-
thing to help you in your sorrow, is just such a reaching of
the hand to you, my old college comrade of more than forty
years' standing, to show you that I think of you.'
But all this comparison has carried us a long way
from the little boy sitting, knife in hand, by his boulder
of sandstone. There is little enough to record, how-
ever, of these years between Louth and Cambridge.
Frederick went up to Trinity in 1827, and Charles
and Alfred were left together at Somersby, living the
same home-life-picking up some learning from
books (the first volume of poems proves that), and more
from Nature,-taking long walks across the country,
vying with each other in poetry from time to time;
wanting nothing-save an occasional half-sovereign.
For to many other excellent qualities (it is
whispered), the Rector of Somersby added a talent
for economy, and Charles and Alfred were never
supplied with a surplus of pocket-money. Now and
then, when money was needed for some excursion or
other amusement, they were sorely put about to
scrape together enough for their purpose; and on one
LINCOLNSHIRE
17
occasion when they were discussing ways and means
in the saddle-room, they were overheard by the
family coachman. Appreciating the position at once,
and racking his brains for a plan, the servant be-
thought himself of the verses which his young masters
were always writing, they could not be much good,
still they might serve. The idea pleased the boys:
it opened a pleasant prospect of a road that led to
both wealth and fame at once. They proceeded to
make a collection of their best verses, and found they
had quite enough for a respectable little volume. So,
under the title of Poems by Two Brothers, with a
quotation from Martial-' Haec nos novimus esse
nihil' on the title-page, the precious manuscript was
submitted to Mr. Jackson, a bookseller of Louth,
who offered the young poets ten pounds for the copy-
right of their work, a sum which, according to some
accounts, was subsequently doubled. Ten pounds was
great riches to the brothers; the bargain was struck,
and Alfred Tennyson had begun his career as a poet.
Poems by Two Brothers, now a very rare little
volume, consists of 102 poems which occupy 228
pages. Quotation and footnote abound, both Latin
and English authors being cited with freedom.
The separate poems were in the manuscript signed
with the initials of the brothers; but the signatures
were cancelled before the book was published, and
any attempt at distinguishing between the work of
the authors can only be of value as an effort of
ingenuity. For, while the verses show considerable
facility, and have at intervals much melody and grace
in their composition, they are too imitative to afford
B
18
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
any evidence of separate individuality. The young
poets enter the field with a very boyish little piece of
self-depreciation: 'We have passed the Rubicon, and
we leave the rest to fate; though its edict may create
a fruitless regret that we ever emerged from "the
shade" and courted notoriety.' Fate issued no
special edict in their case, however: the volume
attracted scarcely any notice. It was improbable it
should for the work was inevitably immature. The
poems (it is the habit of youthful verse), take to
themselves a quaint assumption of sentiments and
situations quite foreign to the experience of the
writers. The young poets are continually projecting
themselves into old age, and looking back upon their
youth as a treasure that is lost to them. This is how
they sing :
'Memory dear enchanter !
Why bring back to view
Dreams of youth, which banter
All that e'er was true?
'Round every palm-tree, springing
With bright fruit in the waste,
A mournful asp is clinging
Which sours it to our taste.
'I stand like some lone tower
Of former days remaining,
Within whose place of power
The midnight owl is plaining.'
And again:
'The vices of my life arise,
Pourtrayed in shapes, alas! too true,
And not one beam of hope breaks through
To cheer my old and aching eyes.'
And in another place the poet is full of reflection
upon the memory of youth as it recurs to age :
LINCOLNSHIRE
19
'For youth-whate'er may be its petty woes,
Its trivial sorrows-disappointments—fears,
As on in haste life's wintry current flows—
Still claims, and still receives, its debt of tears.'
Indeed, the authors are very tolerant of sorrow: there
is a little poem in praise of tears, and another of
consolation; and the latter is, perhaps, of all the
verses, the nearest akin to Alfred Tennyson's later
work :
'Why should we sorrow for the dead?
Our life on earth is but a span ;
They tread the path that all must tread,
They die the common death of man.'
'Antony to Cleopatra' is generally considered the
most successful poem in the volume; and it has un-
questionably a share of fire and movement :
'Then when the shriekings of the dying
Were heard along the wave,
Soul of my soul ! I saw thee flying
I followed thee, to save.
The thunder of the brazen prows
O'er Actium's ocean rung;
Fame's garland faded from my brows,
Her wreath away I flung.
I sought, I saw, I heard but thee :
For what to love was victory?'
But the chief interest of the book lies in its evidence
of the poetry which was most congenial to the taste
of the young authors. A large proportion of the
work is imitative, and the principal influence is Byron's.
Here and there we catch echoes of Scott and Moore:
'Oh! Harp of my Fathers!
No more in the hall
The souls of the chieftains
Thy strains shall enthrall.
One sweep will I give thee
And wake thy bold swell;
Then, thou friend of my bosom
For ever farewell.'
20
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
And in another place :
'The low, dull gale can scarcely stir
The branches of that blackening fir,
Which betwixt me and heav'n flings wide
Its shadowy boughs on either side,
And o'er yon granite rock appears
Its giant form of many years.
And the shrill owlet's desolate wail
Comes to mine ear along the gale,
As, list'ning to its lengthened tones
I dimly pace the Vale of Bones.'
It is to Byron, however, that the brothers turn
most readily for their inspiration; and at times they
catch his manner with a fidelity that is almost
amusing.
'We meet no more-the die is cast,
The chain is broke that tied us,
Our every hope on earth is past,
And there's no helm to guide us :
We meet no more-the roaring blast
And angry seas divide us.'
There is a touch of Byron here: but in the following
there is more than a touch-it is a very palpable hit :
'I saw thee, Bassorah! in splendour retiring
Where thy waves and thy walls in their majesty meet ·
I saw the bright glory thy pinnacles firing,
And the broad vassal river that rolls at thy feet.'
And even again :
'Like the fiends of destruction they rush on their way,
The vulture behind them is wild for his prey;
And the spirits of death, and the demons of wrath,
Wave the gloom of their wings o'er the desolate path.
For thy glory is past, and thy splendour is dim,
And the cup of thy sorrow is full to the brim ;
And where is the chief in thy realms to abide
The "Monarch of Nations," the strength of his pride?'
A
This selection, already too long, may fitly close with
LINCOLNSHIRE
21
a quotation from a little poem of an easy melody and
singularly individual touch :
'In Savoy's vales, with green array'd,
A thousand blossoms flower,
'Neath the odorous shade by the larches made,
In their own ambrosial bower:
But sweeter still,
Like the cedars that rise
On Lebanon's hill
To the pure blue skies,
Is the breath of the Maid of Savoy.'
The volume apparently elicited but a single notice,
in The Literary Chronicle and Weekly Review.
But it was remembered in the neighbourhood and
at the Grammar School, where Edward Eyre, enter-
ing as a new boy some two years later, heard that two
of the old boys had published a book of poems, and
had actually received ten pounds for the copyright. It
seemed a dazzling achievement to the newcomer.
With this little publication the two brothers
entered upon the literary life hand in hand. The
money which the publication brought them was spent
upon a tour around the Lincolnshire churches. And
it is pleasant to remember that when, more than
fifty years afterwards, Charles Tennyson Turner's
sonnets were collected into a volume, the book was
prefaced by a poem by his younger brother, recalling
with a grateful memory this early effort together:
C
When all my griefs were shared with thee,
And all my hopes were thine—
As all thou wert was one with me;
May all thou art be mine!
The interest of that first partnership of boyhood was
not to be impaired by the successes and disappoint-
ments of the more memorable years to come.

CHAPTER II
CAMBRIDGE
IN October 1828, Charles and Alfred joined Frede-
rick at Trinity College, Cambridge, where the eldest
brother had already distinguished himself by win-

ning the Chancel-
lor's medal for Greek
verse, the subject of
his composition be-
ing
Egypt.'
The
TENNYSON'S ROOMS, CORPUS BUILDINGS.
two younger brothers
were, we learn from
Professor C. V. Stan-
ford, entered on the
books on November
9, 1827, and matri-
culated on February
20 of the following
year. Alfred Tenny-
son first lived in
Rose Crescent over
a Tobacconist's shop;
but at the end of
their first year he and Charles moved to lodgings in
Trumpington Street, next door to the gate of Corpus.
Unused to the society of men of their own age, they
22
CAMBRIDGE
23
were at first reserved and nervous to a degree that
was almost painful. There is a story told of them,
that, starting for College with every intention of
dining in Hall, they would often find their courage
fail them when they saw the full tables and heard
the buzz of conversation, and hurry back to their
lodgings dinnerless. The late Master of Trinity,
Dr. W. H. Thompson, we are told, was wont to say
that it was on one such occasion, as Alfred Tennyson
stood proud and shy at the doors of the lighted hall,
that he noticed him for the first time, and asked a
fellow-undergraduate his name.
But though the shyness lived on, the solitude was
broken through; and the brothers soon fell into a
set of literary spirits, akin to themselves, many of
whom were destined to more than ordinary promi-
nence. Among the earliest of these new friends was
the one who was to exert so pleasantly powerful an
influence upon Alfred Tennyson's life, Arthur Henry
Hallam himself. Hallam was nearly two years
Tennyson's junior (he was born at Bedford Place
in February 1811), but in learning and experience he
was undoubtedly the poet's better. He had travelled
on more than one occasion into Germany and Switzer-
land, while his schooldays had been passed at Eton,
in vivid contrast to the drowsy education at Louth.
At school he had read poetry with an eagerness that
found especial satisfaction in Sappho, Lucretius,
Catullus, Dante, Milton, Fletcher, Byron, Words-
worth, Shelley, and, above all, Shakespeare; had taken
an active part in the school debates, and had written
in the Eton Miscellany several prize essays and a

24
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
story in verse, the scene of which was laid among
the Lakes of Killarney. After leaving school he had
visited Italy with his parents, and came into residence
at Trinity in October 1828, occupying rooms in the
New Court. Such is a formal summary of Hallam's
H
HALLAM'S ROOMS, NEW COURT, TRINITY.
early life, but it
is the man him-
self who appeals
to us more ten-
derly than his
achievements.
As near perfec-
tion as mortal
man can be,' said
Alfred
Tenny-
son: and the sin-
gular sweetness
of his disposition
seems to have left
a keener impres-
sion on his con-
temporaries than
all the lore and
logic which he
brought from the
schools. Henry
Alford shared Tennyson's enthusiasm: His was such
a lovely nature that life seemed to have nothing more
to teach him.' With Hallam were many others, who
soon became numbered in the list of Tennyson's
closest friends. Richard Monckton Milnes and R. C.
Trench, W. H. Thompson (afterwards Master of

CAMBRIDGE
25
Trinity) and J. W. Blakesley, F. D. Maurice, and
James Spedding, Henry Alford, Charles Merivale,
G. S. Venables, E. R. Kennedy, and E. Lushington
were all members of the society known as 'The
Apostles' at the time that Tennyson joined it. This
association, started some eight years previously, and
limited to twelve members, was, and I believe is, a
small debating society which has drawn to itself all
the brightest literary promise of the college. They
held discussions:
'A band
Of youthful friends, on mind and art,
And labour, and the changing mart,
And all the framework of the land;
And one would aim an arrow fair,
But send it slackly from the string,
And one would pierce an outer ring
And one an inner, here and there;
And last the master bowman, he
Would cleave the mark.
A willing ear
We lent him. Who but hung to hear
The rapt oration flowing free
From point to point with power and grace
And music in the bounds of law,
To those conclusions when we saw
The God within him light his face?'
Hallam was the foremost of Tennyson's friends,
but in point of time he was not actually the first.
On the very day on which he came up to Cambridge
Tennyson was caught by a face which charmed him at
first sight, and drew from him the remark: That
looks the best-tempered fellow I ever saw.'
'The
best-tempered fellow' was Milnes, and the friendship
which Tennyson coveted was soon realised.
To Spedding's inspiration were due the lines:
26
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
'You ask me why, though ill at ease.' They are
almost a version in metre of a speech made by
Spedding on Political Unions at the Cambridge
Debating Hall in 1832. His name is, of course,
also connected with the beautiful poem in which
Tennyson speaks of his father's death.
Tennyson, it is reported, never read a paper to
'The Apostles' himself. On one occasion he had
prepared one on the subject of 'Ghosts'; but when
the meeting was assembled, his old shyness reasserted
itself, and he tore the essay into pieces before them
all, and threw the scraps into the fire. His prowess
was to come to him through other channels.
Poetry still held his heart of hearts. During his
first year at Cambridge, he wrote the first two parts
of 'The Lover's Tale,' which were printed in 1833,
and then withdrawn from the press. He felt, as he
tells us himself, the imperfection of the poem.' But
a few copies, with many misprints to mar them, fell
into the hands of one of his friends, who distributed
them among Tennyson's Trinity associates without
the poet's knowledge. To the survival of some of
these copies and their subsequent piracy we owe the
fact that some fifty years afterwards the Laureate pub-
lished the whole poem in a revised form with a third
part added. The Lover's Tale,' then, was suppressed;
but in the meanwhile, Tennyson had been at work
upon a poem which defied suppression. The subject
of the Chancellor's Prize Poem for the year was
'Timbuctoo,' and three among the little body of
Trinity friends were candidates for the University
laurel. Milnes and Hallam were unsuccessful; but
CAMBRIDGE
27
Tennyson was declared the prizeman. His poem, it
is said, was written at his father's instigation, and
remodelled on The Battle of Armageddon,' a copy
of verses which he had begun before going up to
Cambridge. The poems were sent in in April, and
the result of the competition was announced on
June 6, 1829. Hallam's poem was printed at the
time, and afterwards reprinted with Tennyson's in
1834 in a little volume of the Transactions of the
Union Society, to which we shall have occasion to
refer hereafter. The fame of prize poems is usually
short-lived enough, but Tennyson's Timbuctoo'
made quite a little stir. A review in The Athenæum
of July 22, variously attributed to John Sterling and
Frederick Maurice, declared, with rather extravagant
eulogy, that it would have done honour to any man
that ever wrote'; while Milnes, who afterwards
quoted two lines from it as the motto for his prize
essay on 'The Influence of Homer,' wrote to his
father saying that it was 'equal to most parts of
Milton.' All this is high praise indeed, and gave
reason to Trench's fear (expressed in a letter to
W. B. Donne) that 'Cambridge might materially
injure Tennyson'; since 'no young man under any
circumstances should believe that he has done any-
thing, but should still be looking forward.'
But Tennyson had done something, in which he
might, perhaps, rest some confidence. 'Timbuctoo'
is quite unique as a specimen of prize poetry, which
is apt to come from the author like a piece of
machine-made embroidery, stiffly regular without a
touch of art. At the very outset Tennyson threw
28
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
(
aside conventionality. Poems sent in for the
Chancellor's medal were invariably written in the
heroic couplet, but Timbuctoo' is in blank verse.
It must have required some searchings of heart on
the part of the examiners before they could break
a custom and create a precedent. It must have
needed some critical acumen, too, to have recognised
in so unacademical an effort the ripening greatness
of the poet. Their decision is interesting, and even
remarkable.
The poem, which occupied sixteen pages in its
original form, opens with a description of the writer
standing on a mountain overlooking the Mediter-
ranean. His thought recurs to the isles of fancy,
the earthly paradises of the old-world wanderers-to
Atalantis and Eldorado-and, as he muses, he
wonders whether Africa holds any city so fair as
those of the older world.
'Wide Afric, doth thy Sun
Lighten, thy hills enfold a city as fair
As those which starr'd the night o' the elder World?
Or is the rumour of thy Timbuctoo
A dream as frail as those of ancient time?'
Then suddenly a Seraph is with him, speaking :
'Thy sense is clogged with dull mortality,
Thy spirit fettered with the bond of clay :
Open thine eyes and see.'
The poet looks; and all his senses are quickened.
he says,
'I saw,'
'The smallest grain that dappled the dark Earth,
The indistinctest atom in deep air,
CAMBRIDGE
29
The Moon's white cities, and the opal width
Of her small glowing lakes, her silver heights
Unvisited with dew of vagrant cloud,
And the unsounded, undescended depth
Of her black hollows.'
Then suddenly there bursts on the vision a glory
of towers:
'A wilderness of spires, and chrystal pile
Of rampart upon rampart, dome on dome,
Illimitable range of battlement
On battlement, and the imperial height
Of canopy o'ercanopied.
The glory of the place
Stood out a pillar'd front of burnished gold,
Interminably high, if gold it were
Or metal more ethereal, and beneath
Two doors of blending brilliance, where no gaze
Might rest, stood open, and the eye could scan
Through length of porch and valve and boundless hall
Part of a throne of fiery flame, wherefrom
The snowy skirting of a garment hung,
And glimpse of multitudes on multitudes
That minister'd around it.'
And the Seraph raises the poet as he falls, and tells
him his name. He is the mighty spirit who teaches
man to attain
'By shadowing forth the Unattainable ’-
playing about his heart, visiting his eye with visions,
haunting his ear
'With harmonies of wind and wave and wood.'
'I am the Spirit,
The permeating life which courseth through
All th' intricate and labyrinthine veins
Of the great vine of Fable.'
And with a sigh he reflects that soon he must render
(
up this glorious home to Keen Discovery,' till the
30
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
brilliant towers shrink into huts, low-built, mud-walled,
the loathly opposite of this City of Dream.
So the Seraph leaves him, and the poet is alone on
Calpe
'And the Moon
Had fallen from the night, and all was dark !
The poem, suffering as it does from a certain
unreality, a sense of forced art and laboured decora-
tion, is nevertheless very remarkable as the work of
a man in his twentieth year. It has a richness of
imagination and a brilliance of light and colour that
are almost dazzling; it shows, too, an ease and skill in
handling the metre, and a sense of melody which are
quite Tennysonian. Many of the lines have all the
sound of his maturer verse.
'Blenched with faery light,
Uncertain whether faery light or cloud.'
'Look into my face
With his unutterable shining orbs.'
'The clear Galaxy
Shorn of its hoary lustre, wonderful.'
'In accents of majestic melody.'
These lines might have fallen directly from the
'Idylls.' A tendency to weak endings-such as:
'Listenest the lordly music flowing from
Th' illimitable years.'
'Bathes the cold head with tears, and gazeth on
Those eyes.'
shows the immature hand; but there is very little in
the poem that falls below the level of the whole.
It is a well-sustained, fantastic piece of work, imagina-
tive, æsthetic, polished—a curiously-interesting indica-
tion of the character which his later work was to
1
31
CAMBRIDGE
assume.
Here and there is a touch of Wordsworth
and a reminiscence of 'The Excursion,' but its chief
interest lies in its faint prophecy of form and treat-
ment to be.
In the scarcity of contemporary criticism it is
interesting to read a letter from Christopher Words-
worth to his brother Charles, in which he speaks of
the Prize Poem with very genuine enthusiasm. 'What
do you think,' he wrote from Cuddesdon on Septem-
ber 4, 1829, of Tennyson's Prize Poem? If such an
exercise had been sent up at Oxford, the author
would have had a better chance of being rusticated—
with the view of his passing a few months in a Lunatic
Asylum—than of obtaining the prize. It is certainly
a wonderful production; and if it had come out under
Lord Byron's name, it would have been thought as
fine as anything he ever wrote.' This is high praise
too high, indeed. And it is a little hard on the
Oxford judges, who from time to time have not
lacked the wit to appreciate the early promise of
Bishop Heber, Matthew Arnold, Mr. John Ruskin, Mr.
John Addington Symonds, and Sir Edwin Arnold.
Before we leave 'Timbuctoo' altogether, another
incident in the history of the poem gives it interest,
and demands a brief record. Thackeray, who was
another contemporary of Tennyson's at Trinity,
though apparently in a different set, published in a
weekly periodical called The Snob a travesty of the
prize poem of the year; and the burlesque attracted
some attention from members of the college. The
novelist's diary relates that at a wine-party the parody
'received much laud,' and that he could not help
32
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
finding out that he was very fond of this same praise.'
It does not seem to be a very happy parody, however;
if the praise was based on its imitative felicity, it was
easily won.
'In Africa- a quarter of the world-
Men's skins are black; their hair is crisped and curled;
And somewhere there, unknown to public view,
A mighty city lies, called Timbuctoo.'
This cannot be intended as a travesty: the story
bears error upon the face of it. Thackeray's poem is
not only not in the least degree like Tennyson's in
matter or style, but it is written in the heroic couplet.
A parodist would first of all have seized on the blank
verse, the unprecedented novelty in form. It is hardly
to be doubted that Thackeray's was merely a 'rejected
address,' 'a comic effort on the theme suggested for
the prize. It was most probably written before any
one knew who the prizeman was, or had seen Tenny-
son's poem.
Meanwhile the friendship between Hallam and
Tennyson was growing in fervour, and during the
next year they were together at Somersby Rectory.
They had determined to publish a volume of poems
together, and Charles was occupied in the same field
too.
He had secured an academic success as well, a
Bell scholarship, which was awarded him chiefly in con-
sideration of the exquisite English into which he had
translated the Greek and Latin unseen papers. The
world was opening before the brothers, full of hopes
and aspirations. But Frederick seems to have stood
for the moment out of the tide, reserved, and a little
sad. Milnes describes him as a prey to 'melancholy
idleness,' withdrawing himself from society, unwilling
CAMBRIDGE
33
to compete for the Greek Ode, which his friends
thought a certainty for him, altogether given over to
something very like a morbid moroseness. Frederick's
moodiness is the only shadow in a picture of otherwise
unbroken gaiety. Stories of the time represent him
as sinister in aspect, terrific in manner, even to the
alarm and discomfiture of elderly dons.
Among the many interests of the Cambridge
circle amateur theatricals had their place. On March
19, 1830, a performance of 'Much Ado about Nothing'
found three of Tennyson's friends in leading parts.
Richard Monckton Milnes played Beatrice, while
John Mitchell Kemble and Arthur Hallam were re-
spectively the Dogberry and Verges. Milnes was
also stage-manager.
All this time Alfred Tennyson was continually at
work upon poetry of one kind or another. In the
evenings a few chosen friends would congregate in
his rooms, and the young poet in his deep, half-
articulate, melodious monotone would read them his
latest verses. Henry Alford's Journal mentions such
an occasion, when Hallam, Merivale, and others
listened to the 'Hesperides.'
This poem, which was one of the chief objects
of disapproval to 'The Quarterly Reviewer,' was
printed in the Poems in 1832, but subsequently
suppressed. It is full of a weird fancy, mystical, and
undefined, with a tendency to allusiveness which
deprives it of real power. But it is melodious, and
very highly finished.
'Father Hesper, Father Hesper, watch, watch, night and day,
Lest the old wound of the world be healed
C
34
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
The glory unsealèd,
The golden apple stol'n away,
And the ancient secret revealed.
Look from west to east along :
Father, old Himala weakens, Caucasus is bold and strong.
Wandering waters unto wandering waters call ;
Let them clash together, foam and fall.
Out of watchings, out of wiles
Comes the bliss of secret smiles.
All things are not told to all.
Half-round the mantling night is drawn,
Purple fringed with even and dawn.
Hesper hateth Phospher, evening hateth dawn.'
It has the sound of some chorus from a Greek drama:
and one can fancy how Tennyson's deep voice trolled
it out and made music of its unaccustomed metre.
Archbishop Trench, towards the end of his life,
gave a vivid description of these readings to Mr.
Edmund Gosse, to whose kindness the writer owes
the possibility of its recapitulation here.
It was
an understood thing, the Archbishop said, that the
listeners should remain listeners only: while they
were free to hear, they were forbidden to criticise.
They sat round the table, while the poet, with his face
lit by the lamp, crooned out his mellifluous music. If
they were pleased, it was understood that they might
eventually say so; but silence must be the nearest
approach to disapproval. Even as early as this, it seems,
Tennyson was the victim of an exquisite sensitiveness,
which was quite intolerant of direct criticism.
seemed to be like physical pain to him that his friends
should find fault with his work. But an antidote to
the susceptibility was found in the severe scrutiny to
which he subjected every word he wrote.
He was
his own critic, and knew no mercy for himself.
It
In this way he continued writing and correcting,
CAMBRIDGE
35
but the book of poems by Tennyson and Hallam was
never published. Hallam's father, the historian, did
not approve of the idea; so instead of the joint
volume, the author of Timbuctoo' appeared in print
alone in a thin volume of 154 pages-called Poems,
chiefly Lyrical-published in 1830 by Effingham
Wilson. Perhaps the most interesting copy of this
book still extant is that in the Dyce collection at South
Kensington, which contains an inscription: 'Robert
Southey, 27 July, 1830, Keswick, from James Sped-
ding.' It would be tedious to recapitulate an entire
table of the contents, but mention may perhaps be
made of a few poems which subsequent issue has made
familiar to us. Among the Juvenilia still preserved in
the Laureate's collected works, 'Claribel,' 'Nothing
will die,' 'All things will die,' 'The Kraken,' 'Lilian,'
'Isabel,' Mariana,' Madeline,' 'The Owl,' 'Re-
collections of the Arabian Nights,' 'The Ode to
Memory,' 'A Character,' 'The Poet,' The Poet's
Mind,' 'The Deserted House,' 'The Dying Swan,'
'Love and Death,' 'A Dirge,' 'Oriana,' Circum-
stance,' 'The Merman' and 'The Mermaid,' 'The
Sea Fairies,' 'Adeline,' and the Sonnet to J. M.
Kemble, all appeared in this volume.
The song
(
(
(
6
'The Winds, as at their hour of birth,' the lines
beginning Clear-headed friend, when joyful scorn,
and The Sleeping Beauty,' afterwards expanded,
are also among the contents of Poems, chiefly
Lyrical.
It was
The book met with some attention.
criticised in The Westminster Review of January
1831, in a notice which, while it doubted the instant
36
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
appreciation of the poems, predicted a brilliant future
for the writer. The reviewer remarked:
'That these poems will have a very rapid and extensive
popularity we do not anticipate. Their very originality will
prevent their being generally appreciated for a time. But
that time will come, we hope, to a not far-distant end.
They demonstrate the possession of powers, to the future
direction of which we look with some anxiety. A genuine
poet has deep responsibilities to his country and the world,
to the present and future generations, to earth and heaven.
He, of all men, should have distinct and worthy objects
before him, and consecrate himself to their promotion. It
is thus that he best consults the glory of his art, and his own
lasting fame. Mr. Tennyson has a dangerous quality in that
facility of impersonation on which we have remarked, and by
which he enters so thoroughly into the most strange and
wayward idiosyncrasies of other men. It must not degrade
him into a poetical harlequin. He has higher work to do
than that of disporting himself amongst "mystics" and
"flowing philosophers." He knows that "the Poet's mind is
holy ground"; he knows that the poet's portion is to be
"Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
The love of love";
he has shown, in the lines from which we quote, his own just
conception of the grandeur of a poet's destiny; and we look
to him for its fulfilment. It is not for such men to sink into
mere verse-makers for the amusement of themselves or others.
They can influence the associations of unnumbered hearts;
they can disseminate principles; they can give those prin-
ciples power over men's imaginations; they can excite in a
good cause the sustained enthusiasm that is sure to conquer ;
they can blast the laurels of the tyrants, and hallow the
memories of the martyrs of patriotism; they can act with a
force, the extent of which it is difficult to estimate, upon
national feelings and character, and consequently upon
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37
national happiness. If our estimate of Mr. Tennyson be
correct, he too is a poet, and many years hence may he read
his juvenile description of that character with the proud
consciousness that it has become the description and history
of his own work.'
6
This notice gave great satisfaction to Tennyson's
friends. Have you seen the review of A. T.'s
poems in the Westminster,' wrote Monteith to Milnes.
'It is really enthusiastic. If we can get him well
reviewed in the Edinburgh it will do.'
Samuel Taylor Coleridge also admired, but with
reservation. He was overpowered by the brilliance
and wealth of the metre: he had never heard such
music before. He could not measure it.
'I have not,' he wrote, 'read through all Mr. Tennyson's
poems which have been sent me, but I think there are some
things of a good deal of beauty in that I have seen. The mis-
fortune is, that he has begun to write verses without very well
understanding what metre is. Even if you write in a known
and approved metre, the odds are, if you are not a metrist
yourself, that you will not write harmonious verses; but to deal
in new metres without considering what metre means and re-
quires, is preposterous. What I would, with many wishes of
success, prescribe to Tennyson-indeed without it he can never
be a poet in art-is to write for the next two or three years in
none but one or two well-known and strictly-defined metres;
such as the heroic couplet, the octave stanza, or the octosyllabic
measure of the Allegro and Penseroso. He would probably thus
get imbued with a sensation, if not a sense of metre, without
knowing it, just as Eton boys get to write such good Latin
verses by conning Ovid and Tibullus. As it is, I can scarcely
scan his verses.'
This was the difficulty with so many of Tennyson's
38
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
critics. His work was so bold, his melody so fluent,
that they could not understand him. But his friends
knew him better. In August of the same year Arthur
Hallam contributed a paper to The Englishman's
Magazine, 'On some Characteristics of Modern
Poetry, and on the Lyrical Poems of Alfred Tenny-
son,' full of the praises of his friend. 'The features
of original genius,' he said, 'are clearly and strongly
marked. The author imitates nobody.'
Five excellences in especial attracted Hallam
towards his friend's work. First, his luxuriance of
imagination, and at the same time, his control over it.
Secondly, his power of embodying himself in ideal
characters, or rather moods of character, with such
extreme accuracy of adjustment that the circumstances
of the narrative seem to have a natural correspond-
ence with the predominant feeling, and, as it were, to
be evolved from it by assimilative force. Thirdly,
his vivid, picturesque delineation of objects, and the
peculiar skill with which he holds all of them fused, to
borrow a metaphor from science, in a medium of
strong emotion. Fourthly, the variety of his lyrical
measures, and exquisite modulation of harmonious
words and cadences to the swell and fall of the
feelings expressed. Fifthly, the elevated habit of
his thought, implied in these compositions, and im-
parting a mellow soberness of tone, more impressive,
to our minds, than if the author had drawn up a set
of opinions in verse, and sought to instruct the under-
standing rather than to communicate the love of
beauty to the heart.'
Friends are naturally carried away into superla-
CAMBRIDGE
39
tives; but the poems had undoubted power. They
had more; they argued originality. They were
full of that appreciation of nature which had been
born again, after an age of conventional poetry, in the
work of Wordsworth, while they combined with his
sympathy with the countryside a richness and variety
of melody, which may have been due to the influence
of Shelley and Keats, for whom Alfred Tennyson had
at the time a special affection. At the same time
there was an originality of treatment, an individuality
of feeling, about them which justified Hallam's verdict
(
the author imitates nobody.' The portraits of
feminine character, delicate miniatures, as it were,
painted on ivory, have a fresh charm and melody
which has rendered them a permanent addition to
our literature. Airy, fairy Lilian,' 'Ever-varying
Madeline,' Revered Isabel, the crown and head, the
stately flower of female fortitude,' Shadowy, dream-
ing Adeline'; they are a perfect picture-gallery in
themselves. One might well add Mariana, too,
drawing her casement-curtain to glance athwart the
gloomy flats, with the eternal sigh: 'He cometh not.
This was all something new to poetry, something
human and direct, with a touch of its own that
claimed attention. 'The Ballad of Oriana' must also
be ranked as one of the wildest and most pathetic of
his poems.
He has never surpassed the tender
yearning of the metre. 'When Norland winds pipe
down the sea' is a splendid line, full of the sweep
and melancholy of the storm.
Several of the pieces have not been reprinted.
Among those suppressed, at least for a time, are two
40
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
rather involved efforts at mental analysis, dealing with
the struggle of doubt and faith-'Supposed confessions
of a second-rate sensitive mind not in unity with itself,'
and The How and the Why.' The latter poem has
some strange lines which suggest the germ of 'The
Higher Pantheism.' The spirit and its treatment are
very like.
'The bulrush nods unto its brother :
What is it they say? What do they here?
Why two and two make four? Why round is not square?
Why the rock stands still, and the light clouds fly?
Why the heavy oak groans, and the white willows sigh?
Why deep is not high, and high is not deep?
Whether we wake, or whether we sleep?
Whether we sleep, or whether we die?
How you are you? Why I am I?
Who will riddle me the how and the why?'
The other poem is stronger, and has the advantage
of a metre better adapted to the thought. Tennyson
prevented its republication by The Christian Signal;
but during the last ten years his view has been
changed, and the poem has been finally included in
his collected works.
'Ay me! I fear
All may not doubt, but everywhere
Some must clasp Idols. Yet, my God,
Whom call I Idol? Let Thy dove
Shadow me over, and my sins.
Be unremembered, and Thy love
Enlighten me.
Oh, teach me yet
Somewhat before the heavy clod
Weighs on me, and the busy fret
Of that sharp-headed worm begins
In the gross blackness underneath.
O weary life! O weary death !
O spirit and heart made desolate !
O damned vacillating state!'
Dualisms,' also suppressed, is playfully alluded
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4I
to in a correspondence between Wordsworth and
Claughton, Bishop of St. Albans. The latter wrote,
in January 1834, 'While you have been reading Rose
(Hugh Rose's University Sermons) to Cantelupe, I
have been doing the same here. These coincidences
are what Tennyson calls "dualisms."
The poem, however, is rather melodious than
metaphysical.
'Where in a creeping cove the wave unshocked
Lays itself calm and wide,
Over a stream two birds of glancing feather
Do woo each other, carolling together;
Both alike they glide together,
Side by side
Both alike they sing together,
Arching blue-glossed necks beneath the purple weather.'
Another little piece, since omitted from his works
sounds like an echo from the Elizabethan poets. It is
called The Burial of Love,' and is rather artificial.
(
'Love is dead :
His last arrow is sped;
He hath not another dart;
Go, carry him to his dark death-bed ;
Bury him in the cold, cold heart-
Love is dead.'
More in the Tennysonian spirit, with the life and
fire of Fatima,' but with a startlingly clear echo of
Shelley, is Hero and Leander,' a very passionate
outburst of love in this strain:
'Oh, go not yet, my love,
The night is dark and vast ;
The white moon is hid in her heaven above,
And the waves climb high and fast.
Oh ! kiss me, kiss me, once again,
Lest thy kiss should be the last.
Oh kiss me ere we part;
Grow closer to my heart.
My heart is warmer surely than the bosom of the main.
42
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
(
O joy! O bliss of blisses!
My heart of hearts art thou.
Come bathe me with thy kisses,
My eyelids and my brow.
Hark how the wild rain hisses,
And the loud sea roars below.'
The other suppressed poems were less worthy-
one A National Song,' inspired by Campbell and
Allan Cunningham, was perhaps scarcely worth
printing, though, in an altered form, it reappeared
sixty-two years later in 'The Foresters,' where (such
is the forgetfulness of critics) it was reviewed as an
entirely new lyric. But the blemishes on the book
were very few, and the beauties were undeniable.
Small wonder that Tennyson's friends were full of
enthusiasm. Truly one of the great of the earth,'
said Blakesley of the poet. In Alfred's mind the
materials of the greatest work are heaped in an
abundance which is almost confusion,' said John
Kemble. And yet again, Arthur Hallam, standing
in the Somersby garden, said to Tennyson, 'Fifty
years hence, people will make pilgrimages to this
place. The promise on which the friends based
their praise has not been belied by the performance.
At the time, however, the young poet was not to
be left to the admiration of his friends, without some
critic to question his promise. In May 1832,
Professor Wilson, under the pseudonym of 'Christo-
pher North,' wrote for Blackwood's Magazine a
violent attack upon Tennyson and his little band of
followers. The Englishman's Magazine had come
to an untimely end, and this afforded the critic an
opportunity for his cynicism. It was the essay on
CAMBRIDGE
43
The Genius of Alfred Tennyson,' he declared, which
sent the periodical to its grave: for the essay was
distinguished by a 'supernatural pomposity' which
'incapacitated the whole work for living one day
longer in this unceremonious world.' People, he
added, were not yet prepared to set Alfred Tennyson
'among the stars'; but if he had not some genius,
he would scarcely have survived the critique.' So
'Christopher North' and to Tennyson's sensitive
temperament the attack must have been a cruel one.
Indeed, in his next volume of poems, published
at the end of the same year, he included a little
polemic in verse, retorting upon 'musty, rusty, fusty'
Christopher, in language that shows that the sting of
the critic struck deep. The critique, says Tennyson,
mingled blame and praise: but praise was intolerable
from North.
'When I learnt from whom it came,
I forgave you all the blame,
Musty Christopher;
I could not forgive the praise,
Fusty Christopher.'
Second thoughts, and a nature that hates 'the spites
and the follies' have erased these lines from later
collections of his poetry.
But before reviews had appeared and the fame
of the book had been noised abroad, much had been
happening in Tennyson's life to draw him even
nearer to Arthur Hallam. During the summer of
1830, the two friends made an exciting journey to
the Pyrenees. The tyranny of Ferdinand of Spain had
been answered by the voice of conspiracy, and the
War of Spanish Independence was at its height.
44
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Trench and Sterling, Tennyson and Hallam, were
all much interested by the struggle, and the two
last named actually made an expedition to the relief
of the rebels, carrying with them some money and
letters written in invisible ink. 'And a wild
bustling time we had of it,' said Hallam. I played
'I
my part as conspirator in a small way, and made
friends with two or three gallant men who have
since been trying their luck with Valdes.'
This must have been an experience calculated
to knit the friends very firmly to one another, and
within a few months of their return Alfred Tennyson
had to face a trouble which naturally threw him even
more than before upon the sympathy of his friends.
In the March of the following year one went who
never hath returned'; and the death of his father fell
upon Tennyson as no common loss. Himself deeply
interested in literature and art, the father must have
sympathised keenly with his son's early successes,
and in missing his genial advice and encouragement,
the poet missed much that would have lent a brighter
colour to his after progress..
'He will not smile-not speak to me
Once more. Two years his chair is seen.
Empty before us. That was he
Without whose life I had not been.'
After his father's death, Alfred Tennyson left
Cambridge, without taking his degree. The Somersby
home was not, however, immediately broken up:
Mrs. Tennyson remained in the rectory until 1837,
the duty being taken by Mr. E. A. Robinson, a curate.
Hallam's sympathy with Tennyson's loss must have
CAMBRIDGE
45
1.0
•
been the more heartfelt, since before this time he
had begun to feel an affection for the poet's sister
Emily. Indeed, during 1831 the affection developed
into something stronger, and ripened into a private
engagement-kept secret at the wish of Hallam's
father, until Arthur should come of age. During
that time it was agreed that the young people should
not meet, and Hallam went back to Cambridge. It
was at this time that he won a prize for declamation.
His subject was 'The Conduct of the Independent
Party during the Civil War'; and, in consequence of
this success, he had to deliver a speech in the chapel
upon 'The Influence of Italian upon English Litera-
ture.'
Meanwhile Charles Tennyson had published a
volume of sonnets, which appeared about the same
time as
as Poems, chiefly Lyrical. These poems
Trench compared to Keats, while Kemble declared
them 'superb'; and the two brothers were reviewed
together by Leigh Hunt in The Tatler, his notice
of them extending from Thursday, February 23rd, to
Thursday, March 30th. The consideration ended in
the critic's decision that Alfred was the more promis-
ing poet of the two. Alfred contributed also some
three or four poems during the year to periodicals :
'No More,' 'Anacreontics,' and 'A Fragment' appear-
ing in The Gem, and a sonnet beginning Check
every outflash, every ruder sally' in The English
Magazine for August. These poems were not re-
printed, though they were quite worthy of preserva-
tion.
It is natural that, in the course of time, much of
46
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
his earlier work should seem to its author to demand
rejection but the final choice is best determined by
the question of the place filled by the poems in the
gradual progress of development. Does this or that
poem represent an influence, typify a period? Then
it should be retained. Each of the short pieces under
discussion has interest as an example of a phase of
the poet's thought. Each is an example of a different
course in his progress. They might, therefore, with
justice find their place in the collected edition of his
work.
The Gem for 1831, in which Tennyson's three
poems appeared, was further enriched by contributions
from W. M. Praed, Bernard Barton, the Hon. Mrs.
Norton, Mary Howitt, Sir Aubrey de Vere, and
Miss Mitford. The first of Tennyson's pieces, 'No
More,' has much in common with his later songs.
It is picturesque, dreamy, melancholy.
'Oh sad No More! Oh sweet No More!
Oh strange No More!'
he sighs, and the sight and scent of the wild-weed
flowers remind him, as the harvest-fields and the
breaking wave among the rocks were to remind him
anew, of hopes lost and loves remembered. The
drowsy melancholy of nature enthrals him, and draws
him into sorrow.
'Surely all pleasant things had gone before,
Low buried fathom-deep beneath with thee, NO MORE!'
In the 'Anacreontics,' which are richer in colour
than in thought, there is an echo of the full, deep-
mouthed music which rolled through 'Claribel.' And
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47
there is the same thinness of motive. A dozen lines
are used to describe a garland of
'roses musky breathed
And drooping daffodilly,
And silver-leaved lily,
And ivy darkly wreathed,'
with which the poet crowns his Lenora, winning her
love by his gift. The workmanship is too elaborate
for the picture: the impression produced is but slight.
The 'Fragment' of thirty-one lines is a veritable
fragment, a description of Eastern scenery, vivid, but
not very suggestive. An extract will recall the tone
and touch of Timbuctoo,' of which it was probably a
rejected passage.
'Where,
Mysterious Egypt, are thine obelisks,
Graven with gorgeous emblems undiscerned?
Thy placid Sphinxes brooding o'er the Nile?
Thy shadowy Idols in the solitudes,
Awful Memnonian countenances calm,
Looking athwart the burning flats, far off
Seen by the high-necked camel on the verge,
Journeying southward.'
It
There remains the sonnet printed in The English-
man's Magazine for August 1831, the number that
included Hallam's paper on Tennyson's verses.
lacks the completeness and the centred thought of a
perfect sonnet, but it is richly decorated with brilliant
words. The second and third lines, too, have interest
from their subsequent connection with 'The Lotos
Eaters.'
'Check every outflash, every ruder sally,
Of thought and speech: speak low, and give up wholly
The spirit to mild-minded Melancholy :
This is the place.'
48
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
(
And the rest of the sonnet describes a valley,
with its blue-green river' winding through it, with
the cry of the nightingale in the larches, and the
sleeping pine-wood above, a valley of enchantment
in the poet's eyes, since here he first told his love.
This is not the matter for a sonnet, nor has Tennyson
often succeeded in throwing into the limit of fourteen
lines the high seriousness and completeness of thought
through which alone a sonnet can attain perfection.
It is the form in which he is least a master.
To turn for a moment from the work to the man :
a picture of the poet as he was at this time, sketched
by the best pen able to draw him, appears in a letter
of Arthur Hallam's, dated March 20, 1832. 'His
nervous temperament,' he says, 'and habits of solitude.
give an appearance of affectation to his manner, which
is no true interpretation of the man, and wears off on
further knowledge. I think you would hardly
•
fail to see much for love, as well as for admiration.'
It was always so with Alfred Tennyson. The keenest
shyness is ever apt to issue in a sort of mannerism,
which to the casual eye appears affectation. A fuller
friendship breaks down the reserve and pierces to the
heart of the man itself.
In the same year Hallam took his degree and left
Cambridge for London, where his name was entered
at the Inner Temple. But before he went up to
town the summer was spent at Somersby. His year
of probation was over. He was now of age; and the
engagement to Tennyson's sister, was generally ac-
knowledged. 'I am now at Somersby,' he wrote to
R. C. Trench, 'not only as the friend of Alfred
1
49
CAMBRIDGE
Tennyson, but as the lover of his sister. An attach-
ment on my part of near two years' standing, and an
engagement of one year's are, I hope, only the com-
mencement of an union which circumstances may not
impair, and the grave itself not conclude.' The letter,
which is one of those confidences almost too sacred
for publication, speaks with the most delicate feeling
and the soundest sense of his father's earlier pro-
hibition, and of the comfort and new life given him
in the realisation of his love.
The sonnet published in the Remains,' which
opens: 'Lady, I bid thee to a sunny dome,' was
written to her: and the brother's memory of this time
finds voice in one of the most beautiful passages in
' In Memoriam.' There we see Arthur Hallam, now
mixing in all the 'simple sports,' now reading 'the
Tuscan poets on the lawn.'
her.
'Or in the all-golden afternoon
A guest, or happy sister, sung,
Or here she brought the harp and flung
A ballad to the brightening moon.'
It was so that Arthur Hallam himself remembered
'Sometimes I dream thee leaning o'er
The harp I used to love so well;
Again I tremble and adore
The soul of its delicious swell;
Again the very air is dim
With eddies of harmonious might,
And all my brain and senses swim
In a keen madness of delight.'
Or again, it might be a picnic in the woods that
formed the day's entertainment, brightened by dis-
cussions on books and politics, or a debate on the
pleasures and drawbacks of town and country life.
D
50
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
And Arthur was all for the country, full of the beauty
of
'The woodbine veil,
The milk that bubbled in the pail,
And buzzings of the honeyed hours.'
And when the evening fell, the little circle lingered
on the lawn, and the sound of the brook came to
them across the evening mist, and the bats wheeled
round under the trees, while the party sang old songs
till it grew late,
'And in the house light after light
Went out.'
Tennyson, describing this evening scene of years
afterwards, when Hallam was lost to him, tells us how
vividly it brought back to him the glad year when
they were together; so that, when the rest were gone
to bed, the poet was left in a trance, which dreamed
on the likeness and yet unlikeness of the two nights.
The scene remained the same, but the light was gone
out from it nothing but the memory remained.
So these days at Somersby become a time to
linger fondly over,—a fresh, green glade, as it were,
in the wilderness of life; a rest and consolation by
the way.
CHAPTER III
LITERARY TROUBLES AND ARTHUR
HALLAM'S DEATH
IN October 1832 Arthur Hallam went up to London,
working with a Mr. Walters, a conveyancer in
Lincoln's Inn Fields, and living at 67 Wimpole
Street, the dark house in the 'long, unlovely street.'
His little joke on the address-'You will always find
me at sixes and sevens'—is well known. During the
summer he had again applied himself to literary work,
with a rejoinder to Rossetti's 'Disquisizioni Sullo
Spirito Antipapale,' in which he combated the theory
that Dante and Petrarch had merely invented their
characters for the sake of veiling an attack upon the
current religious tenets of the day. From the date of
his going to London, however, the duller work of life
claimed him, the brawling courts and dusty purlieus
of the law.' While he was at work in his office,
Alfred Tennyson was busy preparing a new volume
for the press, and contributed two sonnets to The
Yorkshire Literary Annual, and Friendship's Offer-
ing respectively. Towards the end of the year the
new volume appeared, a volume a little larger than
Poems, chiefly Lyrical, since it amounted to some
163 pages. It was published by Edward Moxon. A
(
51
1
52
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
copy of this book, preserved in the Dyce collection at
South Kensington, contains on the fly-leaf, written in
pencil, an irregular sonnet, which reads like a very
boyish depreciation of Cambridge and its tuition. It
is best forgotten.
(
Many of the pieces are among his best-known
works; but of the thirty poems which composed the
volume, a dozen have since been cancelled. 'The
Lady of Shalott,' 'Mariana in the South,' Eleanore,'
'The Miller's Daughter,' interesting from its associa-
tion with Granchester Mill, 'Œnone,' inspired by the
visit of Hallam and the poet to the Pyrenees, 'The
Sisters,' The Palace of Art,' 'The May Queen,'
'New Year's Eve,' 'The Lotos Eaters,' and 'A
Dream of Fair Women,' are the best reputed poems
in the volume, while Fatima,' 'Margaret,' the sonnet
to Poland, 'The Death of the Old Year,' and the
lines to 'J. S.' have also been preserved in later
editions. The book was in every way an advance
on the 1830 volume. The lyrical melody and flow,
which permeated 'Oriana' and the portraits, had
grown even richer in The Lady of Shalott' and
'The Lotos Eaters'; and, while the music and in-
spiration of the verse had deepened, the poet's mind
had, in its growth, drawn to itself stronger and more
permanent subjects, and treated them with a firmer
and more dramatic touch. It is interesting to note
how early the mind, searching for scenes and charac-
ters akin to its temperament, lighted upon the
Arthurian legend and took it to itself.
'The Lady
of Shalott' is one of the earliest signs of an inclina-
tion which had not yet crystallised into performance.
LITERARY TROUBLES
53
It is, moreover, an excellent example of the perfection
with which Tennyson catches every detail in the phase
of nature which he is picturing. The early part of the
poem is a sequence of pictures, reflected in the mirror
with a vivid exactitude. The long fields of barley,
the island among its lily-beds, the stretch of the river
with the wind sweeping across it, where
'Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver'-
all these are views, lovingly touched in by the sympa-
thetic hand of an artist. And when movement enters
the poem, a sharp stroke breaks the reflection, and
hurries us out into life.
'Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror cracked from side to side.'
The second half of the poem is alive with the flow of
the river; it sweeps along to the sound of the ripple.
'Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right—
The leaves upon her falling light-
Thro' the noises of the night
She floated down to Camelot:
And, as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott."
This is a double view of nature; its picturesque
and vital elements are contrasted with a swift dis-
crimination. In The Lotos Eaters' we get a still
more vivid appreciation of the influence of nature
upon the senses. This poem breathes the very
essence of the complete self-abandonment of a sen-
suous temperament to the dreamy charm of summer
54
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
SON
scenery. All memory of the outer world is lost in
the ecstasy of the moment. The life of work seems
most weary, and one of the band of dreamers finds
voice for the thought that the others have scarcely
the energy to utter: 'We will return no more! . .
Why should life all labour be?' To the spirit
stagnant in the charm of the Lotos-land there seems
no true happiness, save the idle carelessness of the
Gods, at ease beside their nectar,
'Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.'
It is the very apotheosis of sensuous enjoyment.
This was something new to literature. The
formal, restrained poetry of Wordsworth had wedded
itself to the melody and colour of Keats and Shelley
and the vigour of Byron, and the result was Tennyson.
Keats had not more colour, nor Shelley more music.
Wordsworth's skill in reading nature's secrets com-
bined in Tennyson with a delicacy and refinement of
observation which turned every scene he touched into
a little masterpiece. Words cannot evoke a deeper
colour than the tints of such scenery as the following:
'It was the deep midnoon : one silvery cloud
Had lost his way between the piney sides
Of this long glen. Then to the bower they came.
Naked they came to that smooth-swarded bower,
And at their feet the crocus brake like fire,
Violet, amaracus, and asphodel,
Lotos and lilies and a wind arose,
And overhead the wandering ivy and vine,
This way and that, in many a wild festoon
Ran riot, garlanding the gnarled boughs
With branch and berry and flower thro' and thro'.'
And again, the drowsy, motionless luxury of a
summer afternoon never found a voice to equal this :
LITERARY TROUBLES
55
How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,
With half-shut eyes ever to seem
Falling asleep in a half-dream!
To aream and dream, like yonder amber light,
Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height;
To hear each other's whispered speech;
Eating the Lotos day by day,
To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,
And tender curving lines of creamy spray ;
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
To the influence of mild-eyed melancholy;
To muse and brood and live again in memory,
With those old faces of our infancy
Heap'd over with a mound of grass,
Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass!'
This was no boy-poet, playing with his girl-com-
panions down the garden-paths, laughing with Lilian,
changing with Madeline's caprices, or wondering over
the unfathomed depths in Adeline's eyes.
This was
a man who looked at nature with a man's clear gaze,
and felt it with a man's strong passion. His poetry
was the voice of a sensitive, nervous mind, quivering
in sympathy with nature.
The strength of the passion in 'Fatima' proved
that Tennyson had passed out of his boyhood; there
are few lines more eloquent of love, even in Swin-
burne.
'O Love, O fire! once he drew
With one long kiss my whole soul thro'
My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.
I will grow round him in his place,
Grow, live, die looking on his face,
Die, dying clasp'd in his embrace.'
But it was not as an artist and a lover alone that
Tennyson claimed attention; he showed himself a
thinker as well. The Palace of Art,' opening with
56
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
a characteristically luxurious description of the 'lordly
pleasure-house' which the poet built his soul, pro-
ceeded through a keen process of mental analysis to
sift the discomfort with which the glorious home
infected his spirit. This was the cry of a mind that
had suffered, and through suffering had overcome.
It was an allegory, too, of the poet's own course of
thought. His lordly palace of art had no charm for
his soul:
'So when four years were wholly finished,
She threw her royal robes away.
"Make me a cottage in the vale," she said,
"Where I may mourn and pray."'
It is not till after this communing with nature in her
secresy that the soul will be fit to live among the
shining treasures of art.
These two elements, the artistic and the intel-
lectual, unite in his sketches of life and character,
which showed already a certain dramatic power, and
a skill in fixing on the distinctive features of the
subject. Here is a finished little sketch of genre:
'I see the wealthy miller yet,
His double chin, his portly size,
And who that knew him could forget
The busy wrinkles round his eyes?
The slow, wise smile, that round about
His dusty forehead drily curl'd,
Seem'd half-within and half-without,
And full of dealings with the world?'
There is a fineness of touch in the portrait which was
denied to the early impressionist pictures of girl-life;
a familiarity with the medium gives the poet a con-
fidence in his own power. He ceases to generalise
mistily; and strikes the living picture down upon the
LITERARY TROUBLES
57
page. The rather artificial setting in A Dream of
Fair Women' is almost obliterated by the brilliance
of the gems it encloses. We get a true touch of
dramatic power in such a speech as this:
We drank the Libyan Sun to sleep, and lit
Lamps which out-burn'd Canopus. O my life
In Egypt! O the dalliance and the wit,
The flattery and the strife,
And the wild kiss, when fresh from war's alarms,
My Hercules, my Roman Antony,
My mailèd Bacchus leapt into my arms,
Contented there to die!'
Or again:
""Moreover it is written that my race
Hew'd Ammon, hip and thigh, from Aroer
On Arnon unto Minneth." Here her face
Glow'd, as I look'd at her.'
The poet loses himself in his character; and nowhere
does he lose himself more completely than in 'The
May Queen,' a poem which is simple without triviality,
while the chastened pathos of the sentiment is as full
of dramatic energy as it is free from rhetorical posture.
These were the principal riches of the volume ;
there are other poems interesting from their sub-
sequent suppression, and others, again, from their
association.
Among the latter are the lines to Christopher
North, already quoted, and the little piece, 'Darling
Room,' satirically alluded to in Bulwer Lytton's sub-
sequent attack on Tennyson. This last poem, rather
an inconsequential effort, describes the study in which
the poet preferred to work. There are a tendency
58
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
to gush, and a weakness in touch, which gave an
opportunity to Tennyson's reviewer.
'O darling room, my heart's delight,
Dear room, the apple of my sight;
With thy two couches, soft and white,
There is no room so exquisite ;
No little room so warm and bright,
Wherein to read, wherein to write.'
The critic treated the sentiment captiously; but there
was room for a reprimand. This is how The Quarterly
Review proceeded: We entreat our readers to note
how, even in this little trifle, the singular taste and
genius of Mr. Tennyson break forth. In such a dear
little room a narrow-minded scribbler would have
been content with one sofa, and that one he would
probably have covered with black mohair or red
cloth, or a good striped chintz; how infinitely more
characteristic is white dimity !-'tis, as it were, a type
of the purity of the poet's mind.'
:
This is a badinage which overleaps itself and falls
on the other side. But the poem was not worthy of
the poet it is the finical work of a dilettante, suggest-
ing a mind busied with little things—a mind, in short,
inferior to Tennyson's. It is well omitted.
(
There are two poems, however, the omission of
which may be regretted: two additions to the por-
trait-gallery of maidenhood-Rosalind' and Kate.'
There was room for each of these types, and each
is treated with Tennyson's full felicity. It needs but
a brief extract to prove their excellence. 'Rosalind,'
suppressed for many years, but finally revived, is
delightful. Kate' has never been deemed worthy
of restoration.
LITERARY TROUBLES
59
'My Rosalind, my Rosalind,
My frolic falcon, with bright eyes,
Whose keen delight, from any height of rapid flight,
Stoops at all game that wing the skies.
My Rosalind, my Rosalind,
My bright-eyed, wild-eyed falcon, whither,
Careless both of wind and weather,
Whither fly ye, what game spy ye,
Up or down the streaming wind?'
This is a very spirited portrait of a spirited girl,
untamed, untamable. And then the contrast,-the
Kate of his consolation and his strength,-passionate
and true:
'I know her by her angry air,
Her bright-black eyes, her bright-black hair,
Her rapid laughters wild and shrill,
As laughters of the woodpecker
From the bosom of a hill.
'Tis Kate-she sayeth what she will:
For Kate hath an unbridled tongue,
Clear as the twanging of a harp.
Her heart is like a throbbing star.
Kate hath a spirit ever strung
Like a new bow, and bright, and sharp
As edges of the scymetar.
Whence shall she take a fitting mate?
For Kate no common love will feel ;
My woman-soldier, gallant Kate,
As pure and true as blades of steel.'
These were worthy of a continued and permanent
place in his picture-gallery; but the poet was his
own keenest critic.
Such were the riches of the little ship that came
ashore to an inhospitable country. There was every
evidence of wealth and power.
There were variety
of subject, variety of treatment, variety of melody;
there were a sense of beauty, a depth of passion, and
a keen analytical insight into man and nature. There
60
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
was, moreover, a new note in literature. The natural
poetry of the preceding period had been, in fact, arti-
ficial; its simplicity had been studied, its ease was
affectation. Tennyson was to free literature from
these shackles, to soar above convention into the
clear, unclouded atmosphere of nature.
He was a
new influence, a new genius, a new power. The
Quarterly Review thought otherwise. In a strain of
bombastic praise it hailed another star in 'that milky-
way of which the lamented Keats was the harbinger':
'the lamented Keats,' in whose case the great literary
journal had already sufficiently stultified itself. The
reviewer found Tennyson's sympathy with nature
ludicrous; and reviled Enone' altogether, since he
found the same line repeated no fewer than sixteen
times. The tone of the criticism may be best judged
by a short extract, which is characteristic of the
reviewer's taste. He quotes and comments in this
manner :
'
""Then let wise Nature work her will,
And on my clay her darnels grow,
Come only when the days are still,
And at my headstone whisper low,
And tell me
Now, what would the ordinary bard wish to be told
under such circumstances? Why, perhaps, how his
sweetheart was, or his child, or his family, or how
the Reform Bill worked, or whether the last edition
of his poems had sold?—papae! our genuine poet's
first wish is:
“And tell me—if the woodbines blow."
It was not a very critical estimate for a great review.
LITERARY TROUBLES
61
It
Nor was Blackwood's Magazine much calmer.
found Tennyson hampered by a 'puerile partiality
for particular forms of expression,' and 'self-willed
and perverse in his infantile vanity.' These were
bitter attacks; and they wounded Tennyson to the
quick. The Lover's Tale' was in the press at the
time, and the poet was so nervously sensitive to its
shortcomings that he immediately withdrew it. But
a few copies, as we have mentioned before, survived
in proof among the collections of his personal friends.
At that time the first two parts alone were written,
and it was not till 1869 that 'The Golden Supper
was printed, without the preludes, in the volume
which included The Holy Grail.' Ten years later
the work was issued in its entirety. Without the
conclusion, the story lacks motive and progress; and
the poem is best considered in its perfect form, which
has the additional advantage of being the shape which
the author ultimately approved.
A bare outline of the story requires few words.
Julian, the narrator, has been brought up with his
cousin and foster-sister Camilla, for whom he con-
ceives a passionate love. His worship of her is
silent, however: he never tells his passion.
'I did not speak I could not speak my love.
:
Love lieth deep: Love dwells not in lip-depths.'
But he feeds his life on hopes, which are cruelly
shattered one summer morning when, unconscious of
his thought of her, Camilla tells him of her love for
his friend Lionel. Julian's heart is broken, and he
wastes his life in moody solitude. He is haunted by
62
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
visions of her death; his fancy sees her funeral, and
again, her wedding. Then, as he approaches the
real event of the story, he breaks off overwhelmed
by emotion, and in 'The Golden Supper' the
narrative is taken up by a friend. Camilla married
Lionel, and died within the year. They buried her
in an open coffin in the family vault, whither, like
Romeo, Julian stole to look upon her, and kiss her in
death. And, as he holds her to him, he feels her
heart beat beneath his hand she is alive. In secret
haste he carries her to his house, where she returns
to life, and immediately afterwards her child is born.
Then Julian lives 'his golden hour of triumph.' He
bids Lionel to a feast; and sets his best before him.
At the end, citing an Eastern custom which shows
the honoured guest the richest treasures of his enter-
tainer, he brings Camilla into the hall. She is re-
united to Lionel, and Julian, conscious of having
crowned his love with magnanimity, rushes from the
spectacle of their happiness.
'It is over: let us go-
There were our horses ready at the doors-
We bade them no farewell, but mounting these
He past for ever from his native land;
And I' (says the narrator)' with him.'
The poem, in its complete shape, is an admirable
indication of the development of Tennyson's style.
The first two parts—those, that is, which were finished
in 1833-are markedly different from the conclusion.
The whole of the early part of the poem is adorned and
elaborated even beyond the author's wont.
It is a
study of the moods and impulses of the lover, but the
dramatic progress of the work is continually impeded
LITERARY TROUBLES
63
by masses of imagery and long passages of descrip-
tion. The mind wantons in the luxury of the scene,
calls up every detail of the picture, and dwells
lovingly on the aspect of the hillside and the lake
beside which Camilla and Julian wandered.
'We trod the shadow of the downward hill
We past from light to dark. On the other side
Is scoop'd a cavern and a mountain hall,
Which none have fathom'd
•
The cavern mouth,
Half overtrailed with a wanton weed,
Gives birth to a brawling brook, that passing lightly
Adown a natural stair of tangled roots,
Is presently received in a sweet grave
Of eglantines, a place of burial
Far lovelier than its cradle; for unseen,
But taken with the sweetness of the place,
It makes a constant bubbling melody
That drowns the nearer echoes.
Lower down
Spreads out a little lake, that, flooding, leaves
Low banks of yellow sand; and from the woods
That belt it rise three dark, tall cypresses,--
Three cypresses, symbols of mortal woe,
That men plant over graves.'
The voluptuous affection for nature, the warm, over-
loaded phraseology, and the long-drawn eloquence of
melancholy passion are indisputable signs of an early
study of Shelley. The influence was transitory, and
its trace is almost obliterated. It remains clear, how-
ever, in the first part of 'The Lover's Tale.' When
the poem appeared in its entirety in 1879, Mr. Edmund
Gosse, reviewing it in The Academy, set an instant
finger on the pulse of the work. Especially inter-
esting,' he said, 'is the proof that this poem gives of
the mastery held over the style of Tennyson at that
moment by Shelley, a mastery that would have left
little or no mark in literature but for this poem, in the
64
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
first part of which the recent reading of "Episychidion"
has frequently seduced the young poet aside from his
own more characteristic language. This influence
was soon to fade before the much more powerful one
of Keats, the one poet antecedent to Tennyson, to
whom the latter has at any time stood directly in the
relation of a disciple. But there is yet but very little
of Keats in the music or imagery of "The Lover's
Tale."
With 'The Golden Supper' there comes a change.
The treatment is more dramatic, the grasp on the
subject more confident. Event follows event with
spirited rapidity: the narrative is keen, concise,
eager. The pictures are not less vivid, but they are
sketched with bolder, clearer touches.
'He rose and went, and entering the dim vault,
And making there a sudden light, beheld
All round about him that which all will be.
The light was but a flash, and went again.
Then at the far end of the vault he saw
His lady with the moonlight on her face ;
Her breast as in a shadow-prison, bars
Of black and bands of silver, which the moon
Struck from an open grating overhead
High in the wall, and all the rest of her
Drown'd in the gloom and horror of the vault.'
Every word gives colour, and the whole picture is
wrought in with masterly rapidity.
It was well, perhaps, that 'The Lover's Tale'
was detained for its vigorous conclusion; but its
suppression at the time must have been a pain to
Tennyson and a disappointment to his friends. The
article in The Quarterly Review was cruel enough to
discourage a young writer; but its inclination to
ARTHUR HALLAM'S DEATH
65
carp, and its occasional hypercriticism, might have
deprived it, one feels, of some of the weight it carried.
The rebuke was not without its use, however.
Trench's fear lest the young poet should be spoiled
by admiration was rendered groundless. He felt the
rebuff very keenly; and, when next he appeared with
a volume of poems, it was to take the world by
storm. The ten years' silence, caused to no small
degree by the virulence of The Quarterly Review, was
a period of seed-time and harvest, which was to bring
his power into something like full maturity.
In March 1833 Tennyson was in town with his
sister, not the one to whom Hallam was engaged,—
studying the Elgin Marbles. During his visit to
London he must have been with Arthur Hallam, who
was still at work, but ailing. He had never been
strong; and during his first year at Cambridge the
symptoms of a delicate constitution had become more
threatening. A rapid determination of blood to the
brain, his father tells us, continually deprived him of
physical power. During the spring of 1833 he was
attacked by influenza, and his recovery was so slow
that his parents decided to take him abroad.
August they left for Germany. Here, travelling on a
wet day between Vienna and Pesth, he developed an
intermittent fever, of which he died upon the fifteenth
of September 1833. His remains were brought back
to England, and buried at Clevedon on the 3rd of
January in the following year, in the church which
belonged to his mother's father, Sir Abraham
Elton.
In
The tablet that preserves the memory, which is
E
66
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
more lastingly written in 'In Memoriam,' bears the
following inscription :-
IN MEMORY OF
ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM,
OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, B.A.
ELDEST SON OF HENRY HALLAM, ESQ.,
AND OF JULIA MARIA, HIS WIFE,
DAUGHTER OF SIR ABRAHAM ELTON, BART.,
OF CLEVEDON COURT,
WHO WAS SNATCHED AWAY BY SUDDEN DEATH
AT VIENNA, ON SEPT. 15, 1833,
IN THE 23RD YEAR OF HIS AGE.
AND NOW IN THIS OBSCURE AND SOLITARY CHURCH,
REPOSE THE MORTAL REMAINS OF
ONE TOO EARLY LOST FOR PUBLIC FAME,
BUT ALREADY CONSPICUOUS AMONG HIS
CONTEMPORARIES
FOR THE BRIGHTNESS OF HIS GENIUS,
THE DEPTH OF HIS UNDERSTANDING,
THE NOBLENESS OF HIS DISPOSITION,
THE FERVOUR OF HIS PIETY,
AND THE PURITY OF HIS LIFE.
Vale, dulcissime,
vale dilectissime, desideratissime,
requiescas in pace.
Pater ac Mater hic posthac requiescamus tecum
usque ad tubam.
His death fell as a terrible blow upon Alfred
Tennyson and his sister. Francis Garden, writing
to Trench, describes the Tennyson family as 'plunged

ARTHUR HALLAM'S DEATH
67
in the deepest affliction.' The mutual love of the
two friends was a singularly beautiful one, and the
separation was a loss such as can come but once or
twice in a lifetime. Other loves and other interests
were to succeed: but this first passionate love never
lost its hold upon the poet's heart, and at the moment
CLEVEDON CHURCH.
Alfred Tennyson was too much overwhelmed to
work. Even poetry failed to charm him from his
sorrow. It was not till many years afterwards that
his grief was to find voice in one of the most refined
and most keenly analytic poems in the language, a
poem which may well be set side by side with
Milton's Lycidas,' and that 'Adonais' which Arthur

68
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
3
Hallam himself first introduced to English readers.
The grief was then softened by resignation, and
hallowed by the purity of faith.
Forgive,' he could say—
'Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
Confusions of a wasted youth;
Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise.'
CHAPTER IV
EARLY YEARS IN LONDON
AFTER Hallam's death Tennyson came to live in
London, and to apply himself to literary work. The
years that follow partake of that silent development
which, while its worth is proved in after years, is
wont to be monotonously unattractive at the time.
The severe criticism vented upon the Poems of
1832 threw the writer back upon himself even more
intimately than before; and the keenness in judging
his own work, which had marked his Cambridge
days, rendered him peculiarly diffident of further
publication. For nearly ten years no book from
his pen was given to the general public. In 1834
the Cambridge Union issued a small volume of
Transactions, which seems, as it were, the last cord
to bind the old associations together. In this
pamphlet was included the 'Adonais' of Shelley,
which Arthur Hallam had brought to England from
Italy. The poem had been originally printed at
Pisa under the care of Lord Byron, and this
Cambridge reprint was practically its introduction
into English literature. The volume, besides this
greater gem, contained some
contained some verses by Charles
Tennyson on the expedition of Napoleon Buonaparte
69
70
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
to Russia, and the two poems by Hallam and
Tennyson upon Timbuctoo."
This little book brought the Cambridge associa-
tions to a close; and for the next few years a desultory
poem or two, published in annual collections, were
all the evidence of Tennyson's progress to maturity.
At the same time, he was always at work. 'Alfred
Tennyson,' wrote Trench to Donne, as early as in
January 1834, 'has so far recovered from the
catastrophe in which his sister was involved as to
have written some new poems, and, they say, fine
ones.' It was a time of laborious production and
pre-eminently quiet growth: with a strong effort of
will the poet denied himself the satisfaction of
immediate performance. It was a time, too, of
some privation. The literary beginner's life in
London is apt to involve a struggle, and the struggle
becomes the sterner when the equipment is the
unsought commodity of poetry. So it happens that
we hear little of Tennyson in the next few years; he
was keeping to himself—as ever, reserved, and, as
ever, particular in the choice of his friends. Those
friends, however, whose adoption he had tried, were
always eager in their admiration. To the small
circle already mentioned another of the old under-
graduate companions at Trinity comes to be added
during the next year-Edward FitzGerald, who
stayed with him in Cumberland with the Speddings,
in the end of April and beginning of May 1835. It
was a delightful visit. In the evening FitzGerald
would play chess with Spedding's mother, while
Tennyson and Spedding retired together to read
EARLY YEARS IN LONDON
71
(
over 'Morte d'Arthur,' 'The Lord of Burleigh,' and
the rest of the poet's new work. Old Mr. Spedding
used to object to his son spending so much time in
this friendly criticism. 'Well, Mr. FitzGerald,' he
would say, 'and what is it? Mr. Tennyson reads.
and Jim criticises? Is that it?' FitzGerald never
forgot this time, when his favourite 1842 volumes
were growing into life and colour, like the daffodils
breaking round the hall door.' He seems to have
been struck, as all who knew Tennyson were struck,
by the unusual and sustained promise of his friend.
The more I have seen of him,' he says, 'the
more cause I have to think him great.' While
amused with his 'little humours and grumpinesses,'
he could not resist, he adds, an occasional feeling of
depression 'from the overshadowing of a so much
more lofty intellect' than his own. He found in
Tennyson 'a universality of the mind,' which benefited
him by the consciousness of his own 'dwarfishness.'
The affection for the man was even surpassed by his
admiration for the poet. He placed him, thus early,
second only to Wordsworth, because he felt that
Tennyson did no little by raising and filling the
brain with noble images and thoughts, which purify
and cleanse us from mean and vicious objects, and
so prepare and fit us for the reception of the higher
philosophy.' FitzGerald's early estimate of Tennyson
sums itself up in his own words: When he has felt
life, you will see him acquire all that at present you
miss he will not die fruitless of instruction as he is.'
It is pleasant to find that the friend, who was after-
wards one of the most candid, and often one of the
72
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
least sympathetic of his critics, started, at any rate,
full of enthusiasm and of hope for the future.
Among new friends, too, whom this London sojourn
brought to Tennyson was Thomas Carlyle, who
about this time settled down in Cheyne Row to his
task of The French Revolution, and was one of the
first to recognise the genius of the future Laureate.
Meanwhile Tennyson's friendship for that earliest
of his friends, Richard Monckton Milnes, was none
the less vivid for occasional relapses into silence. 'I
shall not easily forget you,' wrote Alfred, during the
last month of the year of Hallam's death, 'for you
have that about you which one remembers with
pleasure.' And during the winter of 1836 Milnes and
Tennyson were thrown together in a correspondence
which has in it much that is interesting, and even more
that is characteristic. Milnes had been deputed to
solicit contributions for an annual, called The Tribute,
edited by Lord Northampton, and published for some
charitable purpose.
Milnes at once bethought him
of his old Cambridge friends, asking with others
Trench, Spedding, Aubrey de Vere, and Whewell.
Most of them were ready enough to assist: but
a difficulty arose over Tennyson's contribution.
'Three years back,' he answered, 'provoked by the
incivility of editors, I swore an oath that I would
never again have to do with their vapid books." 'To
write for people with prefixes to their names,' he con-
tinued, 'is to milk he-goats; there is neither honour
nor profit.' Milnes presumably knew his friend, and
might with reason have been expected to understand
his waywardness. Yet, at that moment, he was vexed
EARLY YEARS IN LONDON
73
-not only with the refusal, but with the manner of
its expression; and Tennyson was treated to one of
those momentary flashes of anger which were so
characteristic of his correspondent. Tennyson's
answer showed how little he had expected to be
(
taken seriously. Why, what in the name of all the
powers, my dear Richard, makes you run me down in
this fashion? . . . What has so jaundiced your good-
natured eyes as
to make them mistake harmless
banter for insolent irony?' So, in a mood of the
merriest badinage, he proceeds to a promise to help
the annual, if he can, and to get contributions from
his brothers as well.
Eventually all three gave their aid: and Alfred's
was the aid of his happiest inspiration. The verses
which he sent to The Tribute were those which
afterwards formed the groundwork of 'Maud'—the
noble lines beginning
'Oh that 'twere possible
After long grief and pain
To find the arms of my true love
Round me once again !'
It was worth the little difference of opinion to have
elicited such a contribution,-'a poem,' as Mr.
Swinburne has said, 'of deepest charm and fullest
delight of pathos and melody.'
The same winter saw the appearance of another
short poem by Tennyson, 'St. Agnes,' which was printed
in The Keepsake for 1837. The title was altered, in
the volume published in 1855, to 'St. Agnes' Eve,' the
name by which it has been subsequently known. It is
a calm, religious poem, in a manner which has since
found more than one imitator: and, no doubt, it was
74
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
the kind of poem to appeal to a wide, if slightly
unlettered public. At any rate it had some vogue at
its appearance: but Tennyson's friends, hearing its
fame from afar, appear to have been a little dis-
appointed when they came to read it. 'An iced
saint,' said one of them, 'is certainly better than an
iced cream, but not much better than a frosted tree.
The original Agnes is worth twenty of her.' It is a
crude criticism, but there is truth at the heart of it.
'St. Agnes,' displaying the momentary influence of
Keble, was not representative of Tennyson's best.
While Alfred's life was harassed by the unsettled
fluctuations of a literary struggle, his brother, Charles,
was moving through stiller waters. In 1835 he was
ordained, and appointed to the curacy of Tealby, and
shortly after became Vicar of Grasby, a village in the
midst of the Lincolnshire wolds. In 1836 he was
married, at Horncastle, to Miss Louisa Sellwood, and
on the death of his great-uncle, Mr. Turner, in 1838,
he moved to Caistor, some three miles from Grasby,
where his brother Alfred was an occasional visitor.
At this time he took the name of Turner; but still
retained the living of Grasby, where he built a new
vicarage and schools.
In 1837 Mrs. Tennyson had to leave Somersby,
and moved to High Beach, Essex. Subsequently,
three years later, the family settled at Tunbridge
Wells, where they only remained one year, moving to
Boxley, near Maidstone, in 1841.
It must have been about the time of leaving
Somersby that Alfred Tennyson wrote the 'Progress of
Spring,' a poem laid aside and forgotten by the writer,
EARLY YEARS IN LONDON
75
till it turned up again in 1888, to be printed in the
'Demeter' volume in the following year. It was the
inspiration of a spring holiday, when the sloe was
whitening and the kingcup ablaze,— a holiday, too,
of stir and adventure, 'in rickfire days.' And
Tennyson himself was out with the other hands to
the rescue, passing the buckets to quench the fire of
thirty ricks, which had been set alight by roughs,
rioting in a demand for 'the People's Charter.' It
was at this time that he first knew Miss Mary Boyle
(to whom he afterwards dedicated 'The Progress of
Spring')-
'a lover's fairy dream,
His girl of girls—————
with whom he was to preserve a friendship of more
than fifty years.
It is supposed, too, that it was
to her sister that he addressed the later verses :
'Rose, on this terrace fifty years ago.'
'In
Little was published at this time; but Tennyson
was brooding over and conceiving his best.
Memoriam' was opening into gradual growth: and
other poems were being written and re-written, which
were shortly to lift his name to the foremost position
among the poets of the day. The continual self-
criticism, however, did not prevent him from showing
his most congenial side to the few friends he encour-
aged. FitzGerald was often with him-a very apprecia-
tive companion. 'We have had Alfred Tennyson
here,' he wrote in April 1838 to Bernard Barton, the
Quaker poet who was afterwards to be his father-in-
law; 'very droll and very wayward: and much sitting
up of nights till two and three in the morning, with
76
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
pipes in our mouths: at which good hour we would
get Alfred to give us some of his magic music, which
he does between growling and smoking; and so to
bed.' Tennyson's friends were always charmed to
have him read his work to them, and yet he was
never a good reader. His ear, nervously anxious to
emphasise the rhythm, was careless of articulation, and
the deep monotone, in which he almost chanted the
lines, left the actual words strangely indistinct.
required a full knowledge of the poem to appreciate
the recitation. I rather need to know by heart what
he is reading,' wrote the late Sir Henry Taylor many
years later; 'for otherwise I find sense to be lost in
sound from time to time. . . . The rhythm so sounded
loses something of its musical, and more of its intel-
lectual, significance. .
Nevertheless his reading is
It
very fine of its kind.' So, too, Bayard Taylor: 'His
reading is a strange monotonous chant, with un-
expected falling inflexions, which I cannot describe,
but can imitate exactly. It is very impressive."
Besides a welcome to single friends, Tennyson
had an occasional enthusiasm for literary gatherings.
'The Anonymous Club,' which was afterwards re-
named The Sterling,' numbered him among its
members. It used to meet once a month to discuss
philosophical and literary subjects, and the associates
must have been men after the poet's heart of hearts.
Carlyle was there, and Cunningham, Macready and
John Stuart Mill, Forster and Sterling, Thackeray and
Walter Savage Landor. A distinguished coterie, and a
friendly body of congenial spirits. Here is a dinner
invitation from Landor to Tennyson, which, to judge

EARLY YEARS IN LONDON
77
from its geniality, promises a convivial evening to
follow :-
'I entreat you, Alfred Tennyson,
Come and share my haunch of venison.
I have, too, a bin of claret,
Good, but better if you share it.
Tho' 'tis only a small bin,
There's a stock of it within,
And as sure as I'm a rhymer,
Half a butt of Rudesheimer.
Come; among the sons of men is one
Welcomer than Alfred Tennyson?'
And so Tennyson continued during the next year
or two, now toil-
ing over his
manuscript in his
London lodging,
now running
down into the
country with a
friend, finding
fresh inspiration
in every nook ;
now talking over
literary prospects
with his associ-
ates, or, again,
dining at the
'Cock' in Fleet
Street, and sit-
ting late into the
evening over the
pint of port and
the cigars. Such
FIREPLACE IN THE COCK TAVERN.
a dinner is recalled by Spedding, when the two
78
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
(
dined together, and two chops and a pickle, two
cheeses and a pint of stout, preceded the port and
the tobacco. The old Cock' is swept away now,
with a bank on its site; and the enthusiast who is
anxious to get a notion of its appearance must content
himself with the pictures of its staircase and dining-
room, which hang in a room in a new tavern under
the old name, almost opposite the Fleet Street end of
Chancery Lane. The old grill-room,' as it is called,
is refitted with the boxes 'larded with the steam of
thirty thousand dinners,' with their brass rods and
rusty curtains.
The fine old oak fire-place has been
moved there bodily: the floor is still sanded, and the
crockery is of the willow pattern. And ever bustling
and hustling his two boy assistants, Paul, himself a
waiter at the former house, strives with a genial
contempt for conventionality to keep the old spirit
astir in the new surroundings. 'Chump chop—
opposight the fireplace. Two kippers in order. Hurry
up that rabbit for the chair-table, ple-a-se. Good
evening, gentlemen, and thank you.' And Paul
rattles you out as hurriedly as he welcomed you in.
The Lyrical Monologue,' surmounted by a portrait
of the 'Cock,' carved by Grinling Gibbons, has been
reprinted by the proprietor, and Paul is proud to
give his customer a copy. Tennyson wrote all that,
he says confidingly, ' wrote it in the old "Cock," after
dinner. Tennyson, you know: Lord Tennyson now,
he is'; and Paul's eyes glisten before the splendour
of the title.
(
When he was not dining at the 'Cock,' Tennyson
would have the meal in his own lodgings in Camden
EARLY YEARS IN LONDON
79
Town, where Trench often joined him. The port
was never omitted, though it had to be fetched from
a neighbouring public-house. Sometimes the poet's
friends would expostulate, and wonder how he kept
well on such a dangerous vintage. But Tennyson was
easily contented. 'As long as it is sweet, and black,
and strong,' he said, 'it's good enough for me.' And
so the evenings were spent; and almost every day
some new poem slipped from his pen. His work was
continuous; friends were always urging him to
publish, but the poet was adamant. Trench re-
gretted the silence. 'I think,' he said, 'with the
exception of myself and him, everybody sent to The
Tribute the poorest, or nearly the poorest things
that they had by them. His poem was magnificent.'
Milnes regretted it. 'Tennyson composes every day,
he wrote to Aubrey de Vere, 'but nothing will per-
suade him to print, or even write it down.' But the
value of the silence was proved when it was broken.
Tennyson was determined that his next volume
should be as good as he could make it; and the event
justified the labour.
In the early summer of 1840 he was with Fitz-
Gerald at Leamington; and the two made pleasant
excursions together, visiting, among many places,
Kenilworth, and Stratford-on-Avon. The little knot
of Cambridge friends still kept together in London.
Spedding was living in Lincoln's Inn Fields, working
all day at the Colonial Office, and frequently at the
theatres at night. 'Pollock and Pride,' says Fitz-
Gerald, 'travel to and fro between their chambers in
the Temple and Westminster, occasionally varying
80
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
their travels, when the Chancellor chooses, to the
Courts in Lincoln's Inn.'
Tennyson was 'busy pre-
paring for the press, full of doubts and troubles.'
Early in 1842 the little fears and hesitations were
at an end two volumes of Poems by Alfred Tennyson
were issued by Moxon of Dover Street, and a new era
in the poet's reputation had begun. The first volume
of the new edition consisted-chiefly of poems already
published in the 1830 and 1832 collections, some un-
touched, some slightly altered, others entirely re-
written; while some half-dozen new poems, written for
the most part in 1833, were added. The second
volume was composed of entirely new poems, with two
exceptions- The Sleeping Beauty,' which appeared
in 1830, and St. Agnes,' Tennyson's contribution to
The Keepsake for 1837. Among these new poems
were 'The Epic,' 'The Gardener's Daughter,' 'Dora,'
'Audley Court,' Walking to the Mail,' St. Simeon
Stylites,' 'The Talking Oak,' 'Love and Duty,'
'Locksley Hall,' Ulysses,' 'Godiva,' 'The Two
Voices,' 'Sir Galahad,' 'Edward Gray,' 'Will Water-
proof's Lyrical Monologue,' 'Lady Clare,' 'The Lord
of Burleigh,''Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere,'
'A Farewell,' The Beggar Maid,' 'The Vision of
Sin,' 'Break, Break, Break,' and 'The Poet's Song.'
(
(
<
'The Morte d'Arthur' was read to Landor as
early as 1837, and 'The Two Voices' was dated 1833
in the first edition. Another bibliographical point
worthy of notice is the fact that 'Dora' was sug-
gested by a story of Miss Mitford's, called Dora
Cresswell, and 'Lady Clare' by Miss Ferrier's novel,
The Inheritance, which was first published in 1824.
EARLY YEARS IN LONDON
81
was The
Among poems subsequently omitted
Skipping Rope,' which FitzGerald deprecated from
the first.
Sure never yet was Antelope
Could skip so lightly by.
Stand off, or else my skipping rope
Will hit you in the eye.'
It is a curious evidence of an excursion into a
field in which the poet never found his way. It
reminds us of the rough humour of Amphion,'—an
attempt to write with the pen of the popular singer of
society. But Tennyson was no drawing-room bard.
The swing of the melody is ruined by the triviality of
the wit and FitzGerald's criticism is juster than
usual. 'Alfred,' he said, 'whatever he may think,
cannot trifle.
His smile is rather a grim one. . . .
I grieve for the insertion of these little things, on
which reviewers and dull readers will fix, so that the
right appreciation of the book will be retarded a
dozen years.'
The right appreciation of the book, however, was
scarcely retarded for six months. The Quarterly
Review for September 1842 sang a generous palinode,
in recantation of its earlier attack, finding the volume
'a real addition to our literature.' Among the
streams and rocks,' said the reviewer, 'he begins to
discourse of virtue; and when he has risen on the
ladder of his vision to the stars, we shall hear him
singing from the solar way that it is by temperance,
soberness, and chastity of soul he has so climbed, and
that the praise of this heroic discipline is his last
message to mankind.'
F
82
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Milnes had something to say, too, and an ap-
preciative critique from his pen was printed in The
Westminster Review for October 1842.
Other praise was not wanting. Edgar Allan Poe,
in The Democratic Review, declared himself unable to
decide whether Tennyson was not 'the greatest of
poets'; and Charles Dickens, reading his volume at
Broadstairs on August 7, 1842, wrote: I have
been reading Tennyson all this morning by the
seashore. Who else could conjure up such a close
to the extraordinary, and (as Landor would say)
"most woonderful" series of pictures in "The Dream
of Fair Women"?—
'Squadrons and squares of men in brazen plates,
Scaffolds, still sheets of water, divers woes,
Ranges of glimmering vaults with iron grates,
And hush'd seraglios."
>
Dickens's admiration for Tennyson never waned.
Two years later, he wrote: I have been reading
Tennyson again and again. What a great creature
he is!' And again, when the 'Idylls' appeared:
'Lord! what a blessed thing it is to read a man.
who really can write: I thought nothing could be
finer than the first poem till I came to the third; but
when I had read the last, it seemed to me to be
absolutely unapproachable.'
Poe's admiration, also, rose rather than decreased
as the years brought new poems from Tennyson's
pen.
Some five years after his first utterance, he
gave another criticism in an essay on 'The Poetic
Principle,' which abandoned all uncertainty of sound
for a thorough strain of praise. In perfect sincerity,'
EARLY YEARS IN LONDON
83
he wrote, I regard Alfred Tennyson as the noblest
poet that ever lived. I call him, and think him, the
noblest of poets, not because the impresssions he
produces are at all times the most profound, not
because the poetical excitement which he induces is
at all times the most intense, but because it is at all
times the most ethereal,-in other words, the most
elevating and most pure. No poet is so little of the
earth earthy.'
This enthusiasm was not momentary: Poe was
continually expressing himself to the same effect.
The favourable opinion of the poems entertained by
Poe was shared, too, by other critics across the
water; and the admiration of Emerson and his
followers induced a Boston publisher to reprint the
two volumes in an exact facsimile of the English
edition. It is pleasing to read amid the turmoil of
American piracy that the reprint was issued for
the author's benefit. Emerson's estimate was direct
and just. Tennyson is endowed,' he said, 'precisely
in the points where Wordsworth wanted. There is
no finer ear, nor more command of the keys of
language.'
The rise of Alfred Tennyson must be dated, then,
from the appearance of these poems, which derive
a singular interest from their instantaneous success.
M. Taine declares that the earliest attraction which
readers found in Tennyson's work was centred in
his portraiture of women-in 'Adeline,' 'Eleanore,'
'Lilian,' and the like, 'Keepsake characters,' he
calls them, from the hand of a lover and an artist.'
It suited M. Taine to trace the vogue of the poet
84
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
The
from these melodious, delicately-tinted lyrics, because
his object was to show Tennyson as an artist rather
than a thinker, to find him the dreamer of a summer.
afternoon, a drowsy contrast to Alfred de Musset,
who, 'from the heights of his doubt and despair, saw
the infinite, felt the inner tempest of deep sensations,
quaint dreams, and intense voluptuousness, whose
desire enabled him to live, and whose lack forced him
to die.' It suited M. Taine to take this view, and
the view had a side-light of truth to illumine it. But
the critic who saw in Tennyson's early poems merely
the languor and restful ease of an idle singer of an
empty day was blind to the clearer, the more
individual side of his message to mankind.
lyrical poems, the absence of whose champagne
flavour' FitzGerald mourned in Tennyson's later
work, were rich in melody, full of the joy of life,
and coloured with the rosy tint of youth; but the
poet had a heart for higher things than the sweetest
'ballad made to his mistress' eyebrow.' These
formed the riches of his earliest volume, and the
riches were great for immaturity. But the interval
had brought new gifts, and ripened the old ones into
something stronger. It had stirred in the poet that
dramatic power of self-effacement, richly manifested
in 'St. Simeon Stylites,' and that depth of sympathy
with other minds through which alone poetry of the
first order can be produced. It had brought him
clearer reasoning power, and the faculty of sustained
thought, which moves through the rapids of more
turbulent emotion to a goal defined and constantly
kept in view. It had crystallised fancy and imagina-
EARLY YEARS IN LONDON
85
tion into a calmer philosophy of life, a philosophy of
faith and unshaken confidence in the eternal progress
of existence towards the 'far-off divine event,' the
ultimate realisation of God's best. With him there
was 'no room for sense of wrong': for 'love that
never found his earthly close' the sequel was no
eternity of despair, no woeful retrospect melting into
tears, but a repose of the will, that finds its comfort
-not in a rebellious memory-nor yet in entire
forgetfulness. Ulysses, after all the wanderings and
weariness of the years, is still unwilling to be idle.
"Tis not too late to seek a newer world .
Tho' much is taken, much abides.'
The passion and the restlessness of the forsaken
lover in 'Locksley Hall' turn at the last from the
prospect of a voluptuous life in the far-away Lotos-
land; the distance beckons him to better things: to
the 'crescent promise' of a braver life among his own
people. The contest of 'The Two Voices' of faith
and doubt leaves the poet with a hidden hope for
consolation. Even The Vision of Sin' ends in a
dream of hope, where
'On the glimmering limit far withdrawn
God made Himself an awful rose of dawn.'
It was a poetry of faith and hope, not faithful and
hopeful through an absence of doubt, but rising to
its consummation through its sense of the insufficiency
of doubt to the needs of life. The natural attitude of
the human mind is an attitude of hope; despair is the
surest sign of disease. But the hope that is born of
despair is the strongest, because the most human;
86
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
and it is in this very arguing down of doubt that
the power and the permanence of Tennyson's poetry
lies. The greatest of his poems have ever been
those in which he has manifested this comfortable
creed.
(
Locksley Hall' has been called the poem of a
boy's passion, and treated as a piece of sentiment
which strikes a false note to the ear of maturer
judgment. There is some truth in the criticism :
we all love 'Locksley Hall' best at the period of
our first impulsive love. There is something over-
ecstatic, something that protests too much for the
stronger passion of manhood. But the nature that
can return upon itself, and live in the past, will never
read the poem without a pang. It brings us to boy-
hood again, to the hour when the small things of life
seemed so great, and the loss that was really a bless-
ing appeared to be a curse. And it is well to live in
the past sometimes.
One little bibliographical note is, perhaps, worth
preservation. Mr. Edmund Gosse has in his posses-
sion a copy of the first edition of the 1842 poems
which belonged to B. W. Procter (Barry Cornwall).
The former owner has inserted in manuscript between
the nineteenth and twentieth couplets of 'Locksley
Hall' (vol. ii. p. 96) the following lines :-
'In the hall there hangs a painting, Amy's arms are round iny neck,
Happy children in a sunbeam, sitting on the ribs of wreck.
In my life there is a picture: she that clasped my neck is flown,
I am left within the shadow, sitting on the wreck alone,'
continuing, 'O my cousin, shallow-hearted.'
EARLY YEARS IN LONDON
87
(
Now, these lines reappeared in 1886, in 'Locksley
Hall Sixty Years After,' with two slight alterations.
In the later version the first line runs Amy's arms
about my neck,' while in the second couplet the verbs
are in the past tense. Apparently they stood in the
first draft of 'Locksley Hall,' and were cancelled
when the manuscript went to press, eventually form-
ing the germ from which the second poem grew.
The point is not without interest as an indication
of the way in which a poem is born and developed.
6
But beside, and very little below his greatest, the
volumes contained other poems of strength and
beauty. The Gardener's Daughter' and 'Dora' are
calm, picturesque idylls of the countryside, showing
that sympathy with the world's humblest, which is
one of the surest proofs of greatness. The 'Con-
clusion' to the 'May Queen' sounded the final note of
hope and resignation which, while it was characteristic
of the author, brought the poem at the same time, to
a more artistic completion. And perhaps the finest
poem in the two volumes, and certainly the most
interesting from subsequent association, was 'Morte
D'Arthur,' afterwards incorporated, without the pro-
logue and epilogue, with their charming air of
personality, into The Passing of Arthur,' where
it may be more fittingly considered in its relation
to the rest of the 'Idylls.' But it is interesting to
notice in this context a poem written by Tennyson in
a private album, and written without a date, which
contains one thought which he afterwards conveyed
bodily into the 'Morte d'Arthur.' The album lines
are as follows:-
88
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
'Over the bleak world flies the wind
And clatters in the sapless trees.
From cloud to cloud through darkness blind
Swift stars scud over sounding seas.
I look; the showery skirts unbind ;
Mars by the lonely Pleiades
Burns overhead; with brows declined
I muse-I wander from my peace,
Dividing still the rapid mind
This way, and that, in search of ease.'
The reader will recall the picture of Bedivere,
with Excalibur in his hand, hesitating for a moment
to cast it into the mere-
'This way and that dividing the swift mind.'
The effect of the new volume was instantaneous.
From a graceful singer, stringing together with ease
and elegance a series of harmonious melodies, Tenny-
son became a poet with a message to mankind.
From the uncertain position of a satellite in the
'milky-way of Keats' he grew into a star of the first
magnitude. Among many proofs of the estimation
which the volume brought him stands a very calm.
and critical analysis of his position, which appeared
in 1844 in Richard Hengist Horne's A New Spirit
of the Age. The second volume, which had for
frontispiece a copy of Lawrence's portrait of Tenny-
son, the first portrait ever drawn, opens with a
detailed discussion of the new poet's performance.
Horne blows a trumpet of no uncertain sound in
praise of Tennyson. He claims for him a position
'as a true poet of the highest order,' and considers.
his reputation to be thoroughly established.' He
notices the gradual development of Tennyson from
(
EARLY YEARS IN LONDON
89
Keats, and distinguishes between natural develop-
ment and unnatural imitation. Tennyson, he finds,
has a voice of his own. In music and colour he
was equalled by Shelley; but in form he stands
unrivalled.' Finally, though he believes Tennyson
'may do greater things than he has done,' he does
not expect it. And he ends: 'If he do no more, he
has already done enough to deserve the lasting love
and admiration of posterity.'
In the same year Elizabeth Barrett, hurling off
'Lady Geraldine's Courtship' at the top of her pace,
to fill an empty sheet in the two-volume edition of
her poems (itself designed in rivalry to Tennyson's
own), classed with the most attractive literature of the
day 'Tennyson's enchanted reverie.'
It was towards the end of 1843 that Elizabeth
Barrett was first introduced to Tennyson, and the
introduction was effected strangely enough. An
American friend of the poetess sent her a critique of
the 1842 volumes, with the request that she would
forward it to Tennyson. As she had never met him,
and as, moreover, the notice was not unreservedly
genial, she felt some compunction; but at last she
took courage. The result was in every way gratify-
ing. Tennyson wrote her a most amiable letter, and
from this time her interest in him increased. Indeed,
when R. H. Horne was occupied on A New Spirit
of the Age, Elizabeth Barrett assisted him in his
work, and showed especial interest in writing him
her estimate of Tennyson. Her admiration was so
sincere that she found it difficult to analyse him, and
summed up her opinion in the decision that he was 'a
90
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
divine poet.'
She had but one reservation: she
preferred Leigh Hunt's 'Godiva' to Tennyson's.
Another little picture rises to the mind's eye in
connection with the rapid appreciation of Tennyson's
work, the scene of the luncheon-party in Cranford
where Mr. Holbrook, the old bachelor, entertains Miss
Matty, Miss Pole, and Mary at Woodley. In the
afternoon the host proposes a walk, and 'as some
tree or cloud, or glimpse of distant upland pastures
struck him, he quoted poetry to himself, saying it out
loud in a grand, sonorous voice, with just the emphasis
that true feeling and appreciation give. We came
upon an old cedar-tree, which stood at one end of the
house:
The cedar spreads his dark green layers of shade.'
'Capital term-layers. Wonderful man!' muttered
Mr. Holbrook to himself. And he adds that, when
he read the review of Tennyson in Blackwood, he
walked seven miles to order a copy of the poems. The
old man's love for nature is caught by the poet's
observation, which had seen that ash-buds are
black in March, a fact that would escape many
a gardener's notice.
Tennyson had, indeed, a message for every sort
and condition of man.
In the year following the appearance of the
Poems Southey died, and the Laureateship was
vacant. There was never any serious notion that
Tennyson would be selected as Southey's successor;
but the increase in his reputation is attested by the
fact that he appears among the possible candidates
EARLY YEARS IN LONDON
91
in the
the humorous competition recounted in Sir
Theodore Martin and Professor Aytoun's 'Bon
Gaultier Ballads.' The parodists equip him with a
poem in his own favour which catches a happy echo
of his manner :-
'Who would not be
The Laureate bold,
With his butt of sherry
To keep him merry,
And nothing to do but to pocket his gold?
'Tis I would be the Laureate bold.'
And there is yet another occasion interesting for its
early connection of two names which the later years
drew together into very close communion. In the
year following the appearance of the Poems, an
Oxford Debating Society called 'The Decade
discussed in Oriel common room the proposition
that 'Alfred Tennyson is the greatest English poet
of the age.' The society included at the time much
of the most promising talent in the University; and
the claim of Wordsworth to a position higher than
that of his subsequent successor was vigorously
pleaded by Arthur Hugh Clough, who two years
before had been elected to an Oriel fellowship.
Clough seems to have found in Tennyson a fault—
which was fairly attributable to some of his earlier
work-a certain conscious straining after effect, a
sensuous inclination to melody, and a neglect of
matter in the cultivation of manner. But in Words-
worth he recognised, together with an occasional
tendency to prose, a spontaneous utterance of good
things without consciousness of their goodness.
The two rivals of The Decade' debate met, it
92
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
is not without interest to note, in the same year,
at the house of Moxon the publisher. Tennyson's
opinion of the Poet Laureate is not recorded; but
Wordsworth, in a letter to Professor Reid of Phil-
adelphia, expresses his thorough recognition of the
younger man's genius, generously declaring him 'de-
cidedly the first of our living poets.'
6
The admiration of Oxford was even surpassed
by the affection of Chelsea. Mrs. Carlyle, sending
Tennyson's autograph, together with those of Dickens
and Lord Lytton, to Miss Welsh, declared Tennyson
to be the greatest genius of the three,' and begged
her friend to read Ulysses,'' Dora,' and 'The Vision
of Sin,' when she would find that he was not over-
rated. He is a very handsome man, besides!' she
adds, womanlike, and a noble-hearted one, with
something of the gipsy in his appearance, which for
me is perfectly charming!'
(
Carlyle's own description of his soul's 'Brother,
as he called him, is even more vivid, sketched in with
his crude, powerful touch :
A great shock of rough, dusty-dark hair; bright, laugh-
ing, hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive yet
most delicate; of sallow brown complexion, almost Indian-
looking; clothes cynically loose, free and easy; smokes
infinite tobacco. His voice is musically metallic-fit for
loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie be-
tween; speech and speculation free and plenteous; I do not
meet, in these late decades, such company over a pipe.'
The verdict of his Cambridge friends was becom-
ing the verdict of the wider world beyond; and the
days of Tennyson's uncertainty were over.
CHAPTER V
THE BEGINNINGS OF FAME
LITERARY Success always requires two elements for
its composition: there must be genius in the author,
and there must be opportunity. A writer born after
his due time, however unquestionable his power,
escapes notice altogether: or at the best receives
the faint praise bestowed upon an old-fashioned
product, which has only the merit of curiosity to
commend it. A writer born before his time is
attacked as a revolutionist, or ridiculed as a madman ;
it is not till the next generation that his work is
understood and appreciated. Hence it comes that
so much reputation is posthumous; the author lacked
opportunity; his time was not yet come. Every now
and again a revolution in popular sentiment works
a revolution in literature: the air is full of new
thoughts and new ideals, and there is need of a
man to give utterance to the aspirations of the new
era. This is the opportunity: this is the moment
when the true poet and the inspired novelist show the
nation its natural face in the glass of literature.
this opportunity, and this faculty of seizing the right
moment, that make the man an artist, and his work
the voice of an epoch.
It is
3853
93
94
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
For ten years the genius of Tennyson had lacked
acknowledgment, when in 1842 he burst into sudden
fame; and the increase in his reputation surpassed
the improvement in his workmanship. The ten years
silence had strengthened and matured his talents, it
is true; but many of the poems, which were on every
one's lips in 1842, had been sneered at as effeminate
and unintelligible ten years before. What was
the reason of this sudden change of front, this in-
stantaneous admiration for what had hitherto been
neglected? The reason is near at hand; the ten
years that intervened had brought the opportunity.
At the moment in which Tennyson published his two
volumes in 1842 a new era was opening to literature;
and he, who in 1832 had been ten years before his
time, was now discovered to be speaking with the
tongue of the angel of the age. He had found the
ripe moment, and had seized upon it. The French
Revolution had been followed by the outburst of
fierce, unrestrained licence, which animated the poetry
of Byron and Shelley. The reaction followed. The
Lake School of poetry slipped to the other extreme,
to an unimpassioned simplicity and pure innocence
which proved, in their turn, weak and unsatisfying.
The mind of the age was nauseated by a somewhat
colourless propriety; Miss Edgeworth and Miss Jane
Austen were being elbowed from their bookshelves
by Dickens, Thackeray, and Bulwer Lytton. There
was need for a new poet, too. The time was ripe
for a literature that should fuse together the charac-
teristics of the last two epochs, should temper Shelley
with Wordsworth, and dilute Byron with Rogers. It
THE BEGINNINGS OF FAME
95
wanted a poetry, too, which, while it worked the old
elements into combination, should take to itself the
spirit and sentiment of the moment. The hour was
an hour of struggle, of contest between doubt and
faith, an hour of religious controversy and scepticism.
But the prevailing note was faith, faith rising like
a phoenix out of the ashes of doubt, and soaring
heavenward. This was the spirit of the hour it was
also the spirit of Tennyson's poetry.
It is interesting to notice how the field was clear-
ing for him. In 1822 Wordsworth issued the 'Eccle-
siastical Sonnets,' but after that date 'Yarrow Re-
visited,' in 1835, was his only important publication.
In 1834 Coleridge died after nine years' silence; and
Crabbe, the minute photographer of poetry, had then
been dead two years. Samuel Rogers's last great
work, Italy,' was published in 1828, and Southey
was devoting himself exclusively to prose at the time
of Tennyson's appearance. The same was true of
Thomas Campbell, and also of Moore, who in 1842
had published no poetry for nearly twenty years.
Sir Walter Scott had died in 1832, and two slighter,
but extremely popular writers, Mrs. Hemans and
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L.E.L.), in 1835 and 1832
respectively. The opportunity had come for the new
poetry. It was to be idyllic with Wordsworth, and
dramatic with Byron; but it was to be something
more than either of these. It was to be powerfully,
mercilessly psychological, probing to the heart of the
thought, with its finger upon the pulse of the passion.
It was to be dramatically introspective, laying bare
the souls of the characters it studied. The oppor-
96
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
tunity had come, and the poets came with it.
'Pauline,' which appeared in 1833, was one evidence
of the new spirit; 'The Drama of Exile,' published
in 1844, was another; and a third was the two-
volume collection of Poems by Alfred Tennyson,
issued in 1842. Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett,
and Alfred Tennyson were the voices of the new
era; and the clearest and most direct utterance was
that of Tennyson. The age recognised him first as
its prophet; and, as soon as it knew him, it welcomed
him.
6
The unique position of Tennyson, as an influence
drawing together the poetry of the earlier and the
later years of the century, is not, perhaps, sufficiently
recognised. No poet has so singularly combined the
attributes of the old and the new.
Without in any
case borrowing from his predecessors, he softened
and broadened their manner into a tone which pre-
pared poetry for its later development, a development
to which he continually gave the first, half-latent
impulse. The domestic idyll of Crabbe assumed a
less rigid form in Dora'; the wild, graphic dreams.
of Coleridge smote themselves into the second move-
ment of 'The Vision of Sin.' In · Edward Gray' the
poet caught and mellowed the accent of the domes-
tic ballad, whose best example may be found in
'Barbara Allan.' Requiescat' is
Requiescat' is pure Wordsworth :
what is not Shelley in 'The Lover's Tale' is Keats.
Meanwhile the new poetry was foretold in many
suggestive instances. St. Simeon Stylites' was
the first of those dramatic monologues to which
Robert Browning subsequently lent the vigour and
THE BEGINNINGS OF FAME
97
(
unfettered strength of his imagination. The Sisters'
spoke with the tongue of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and
Mr. William Morris: 'Fatima' was the mother of
'Dolores' and 'Faustine.' But nowhere are the
vivid pictures of the pre-Raphaelite school more
brilliantly forecast than in that extraordinary lyric,
The Lady of Shalott.' This singular poem is re-
ferred to in more than one context in the present
study, but its consideration here may help us to a
clearer understanding of Tennyson's intermediary
position. The mirror into which the Lady gazes is,
in the first place, of course, the mirror which always
stood behind the tapestry, whose face was turned to
the glass, so that the worker could see the effect of
her stitches without moving from her seat. But it
has another use. Every view which the earlier part
of the poem presents is cast upon the mirror. Scene
follows scene as in a camera lucida, vivid, detailed,
delicate. This is the exact attitude of the pre-
Raphaelites. The clear microcosm, reflected in the
mirror, is the earth as it appears to them, every tiny
part of the picture standing out in crisp, individual
relief. A stranger prophecy of a phenomenon to come
is nowhere to be found in poetry. And directly the
mirror cracks, the whole spirit of the poem changes.
Suddenly we are in the open air with the Lady: the
breeze is in our faces, we are out upon the stream.
The pictures are no longer the pictures of the mirror;
they are the sounds and sights of living, moving
nature. And with the end comes again the pre-
Raphaelite touch, the subtle art of sinking which lent
such a charm to their manner :
G
98
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
'He said: "She has a lovely face."
It is word for word as Rossetti would have said it.
It is the same with 'Sir Galahad.' The rich,
sensuous side of the Catholic ritual is portrayed with
a wealth of luxurious colour:
'When down the stormy crescent goes,
A light before me swims,
Between dark stems the forest glows,
I hear a noise of hymns:
Then by some secret shrine I ride
I hear a voice, but none are there ;
The stalls are void, the doors are wide,
The tapers burning fair.
Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth,
The silver vessels sparkle clean,
The shrill bell rings, the censer swings,
And solemn chaunts resound between.'
But
To hold together the threads of two poetic periods,
to draw the one into harmony with the other, is to
prove one's-self a poet of poets. An imitator can excel
in a single style; a genius alone can be consummate
in all. At the moment, Tennyson's position could not,
in the nature of things, be wholly understood.
this singular birth of a new power from the old could
not fail to amaze. His critics could not analyse at
once like Elizabeth Barrett, they stood in silence to
wonder; or, with the horde of the less enlightened,
waited a moment to mock. But friendly or unfriendly,
they felt the novelty of the influence, and acknow-
ledged the coming of a poetry which was unlike any-
thing they had seen before. And so, with but few to
question him, the poet passed into fame.
His sudden rise into greatness, however, brought
with it for Tennyson none of the dangers of a reputa-
tion eagerly thrust upon him. The natural tempera-
ment of the man resisted the temptations of fame.
THE BEGINNINGS OF FAME
99
The old shyness, the old relapses into long silence,
were still the complaint of his friends. Moreover, he
was seriously unwell, and his condition caused grave
anxiety to his well-wishers. 'If anything were to
happen to Tennyson,' wrote Elizabeth Barrett, 'the
world should go into mourning.' He was obliged to
undergo a course of hydropathy, which was thoroughly
distasteful to him. Bíos äßtos he called it: and it left
him even less eager for society than before. Hydro-
pathy,' said FitzGerald, 'has done its worst: he writes
the names of his friends in water!' At the same
time he is reported as 'in very good looks'; and
Lawrence was anxious to paint a portrait of the rising
poet. Many men would have been carried away by
the pride of admiration; but Tennyson preferred to
reap the harvest of his fame in the society of the
friends he loved. Foremost among these were the
Carlyles, and with the Chelsea philosopher he spent
many evenings, smoking 'the strongest and most
stinking tobacco out of a small clay pipe,' which was
between his teeth, ‘on an average, nine hours a day.'
One night in especial lived in Carlyle's memory.
Tennyson stayed late, forgot his stick, and the
Carlyles dismissed him by singing 'Macpherson's
Farewell,' a 'tune,' said Carlyle, 'rough as hemp, but
strong as a lion':
'Farewell, ye dungeons dark and strong,
The wretch's destinie!
Macpherson's time will not be long
On yonder gallows-tree.
Sae rantingly, sae wantonly,
Sae dauntingly gaed he :
He played a spring and danced it round,
Below the gallows-tree.'
Vor M
100
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
6
And the rude tune and stirring words moved Tenny-
son so much that his 'face grew darker' and his
lips quivered.
Carlyle's appreciation of Tennyson was a thing
of growth, as affection for a reserved character is
wont to be. There is a well-known story that tells
of Sir John Simeon's introduction to the young poet
by Carlyle at Bath House, when the philosopher,
pointing Tennyson out to his friend, remarked,
There he sits upon a dung-heap, surrounded by
innumerable dead dogs'; the poet's inclination for
classical subjects suggesting the indecorous simile.
But when once they knew each other, Carlyle was
the first to acknowledge his mistake.-Eh! that
wasn't a very luminous description of you,' he said,
with a laugh.
The beginnings of fame came to Tennyson very
quietly; and all the while he was busy on 'In
Memoriam.' FitzGerald, always a little fearful for
the future, always looking back with regret to the
early lyrics with their melody and love of colour,
heard of the project with some perturbation. 'Don't
you think,' he wrote to W. B. Donne, 'the world
wants other notes than elegiac now? "Lycidas'
is the utmost length an elegiac should reach. But
Spedding praises: and I suppose the elegiacs will
see daylight, public daylight, one day.'
""
The work was done, now in London, now at the
sea by Beachy Head; or again at Cheltenham, in a
nasty house in Bellevue Place,' as the poet himself
wrote. Hither Mrs. Tennyson had moved, after a
three years' sojourn at Boxley near Maidstone, in 1844.
MoU
THE BEGINNINGS OF FAME
ΙΟΙ
The mental occupation left Tennyson restless and un-
certain, at one time half-decided to start for Cornwall,
at another for Switzerland, and finally hesitating,
whether he should go anywhere at all. When he
went into society, which he did but seldom, he mixed
as little as possible with the surroundings. At some
theatricals, got up by Dickens and Forster, he was
met by Mrs. Carlyle, who found him in a long, dim
passage, leaning against the wall, apparently attempt-
ing to fall asleep. To her enthusiastic greeting he
gave a characteristic response. 'I should like to
know who you are,' he said; I know that I know
you, but I cannot tell your name.' But when once
the ice was broken, he was genial enough; and the
following Sunday he appeared at Chelsea in a cab,
bent upon spending the evening alone with Mrs.
Carlyle, a little project that was frustrated by the
presence of visitors. However, he stayed till
eleven.'
(
But his retiring modesty could not keep him
altogether in the background. He was frequently
to be found with Rogers, 'the dean of poets,' as
Crabb Robinson called him; and at his house on
January 31st, 1845, he met Moxon, Kenny the dramatic
poet, Lushington, Spedding, and Crabb Robinson
himself, at dinner. It was an interesting party of
eight,' and Tennyson and Robinson had a long talk
over Goethe. One lady, who was asked especially to
meet Tennyson, arrived late; and after a little
mystery proved to be the Hon. Mrs. Norton, about
this time the centre of much social discussion. Robin-
son found her graceful and accomplished, though she
102
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
'stepped a little near his prejudices by a harsh
sentence about Goethe.' At Rogers's too, Tennyson
met at different times, Leigh Hunt, Landor, Tom
Moore, and Mr. W. E. Gladstone.
So, by degrees, Tennyson dropped into society of
the most prominent Englishmen of the day, and his
distinction was so generally recognised, and the value
of his work so widely appreciated, that a circle of his
friends conceived a scheme which should free him
from pecuniary embarrassment, and enable him to
devote himself to literature without the obligation of
earning enough to procure him the bare necessities.
of life. It was proposed to obtain for him a
pension, which should be sufficient to keep him in
moderate competence; and, mainly through the
energy of Milnes, Sir Robert Peel, then Prime
Minister, was approached upon the subject. The
outset must have been a little discouraging to the
young enthusiasts, for Sir Robert (it is a well-known
story) had never heard of the poet at all. Milnes,
quite undaunted, sent the Prime Minister a copy of
the 1842 volumes, with 'Locksley Hall' and 'Ulysses
marked. There was a rival in the field in the person
of Sheridan Knowles, with whom Peel was equally
unfamiliar; and Milnes in a letter accompanying the
poems strongly advocated the gift of the pension to
Tennyson, pointing out that it was in the interest of
English literature that his faculties should not be
'diverted from their proper use by the sordid anxiety
of a struggle for existence.' His efforts were re-
warded, and a pension of £200 a year was bestowed
upon the author of 'Ulysses,' a poem, the high
THE BEGINNINGS OF FAME
103
qualities of which the Prime Minister immediately
recognised.
A beneficence of this kind, however, could
scarcely pass without some unfavourable comment;
and in the autumn of 1845 an anonymous poem,
entitled 'The New Timon; a Romance of London,'
satirised with an almost venomous candour the
'quartering on the public purse' of a young man
without either wife or family. The poem was gener-
ally known to be the work of Edward Lytton Bulwer,
afterwards Lord Lytton; and that it was sufficiently
severe may be gathered from the following brief
extract:
'Let schoolmiss Alfred vent her chaste delight
In darling little rooms so warm and bright,
Chant "I'm a-weary" in infectious strain,
And catch "the blue fly singing i' the pane."
Tho' praised by critics and admired by Blues,
Tho' Peel with pudding plump the puling Muse,
Tho' Theban taste the Saxon purse controls,
And pensions Tennyson while starves a Knowles .
It was an ungenerous attack, perhaps; and Tenny-
son unfortunately allowed himself to reply in a set of
verses which appeared over the signature 'Alcibiades'
in Punch of the 28th of February 1846. 'The
New Timon and the Poets,' as Tennyson called his
reply, certainly hit back from the shoulder with a
will:
'But you, sir, you are hard to please,
You never look but half content,
Nor like a gentleman at ease,
With moral breadth of temperament.
And what with spite, and what with fears,
You cannot let a body be,
It's always singing in your ears,
<<
'They call this man as great as me!"
104
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
What profits how to understand
The merits of a spotless shirt-
A dapper boot—a little hand—
If half the little soul is dirt?'
Keen fighting!
But the whole thing is too un-
dignified, and one turns with pleasure to the Tenny-
son of a week after, who in the same paper sang his
palinode Afterthought,' which is now included in his
poems under the title 'Literary Squabbles.'
6
'And I, too, talk and lose the touch
I talk of. Surely, after all,
The noblest answer unto such
Is perfect stillness when they brawl.'
It is the poet who speaks there :
'Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn';
and it is pleasant to remember that the dissentients
forgot their early quarrel, and were afterwards ready
to say the handsomest things of one another.
(
CHAPTER VI
FROM THE PRINCESS TO IN MEMORIAM
(
DURING the year which saw this little passage of
arms the Poems ran into a fourth edition, in which
'The Golden Year' was first added; and the follow-
ing year witnessed the appearance of another of
Tennyson's most notable poems, The Princess,' pub-
lished by Edward Moxon in 1847. It is generally
considered that the germ of 'The Princess' is to
be found in Dr. Johnson's 'Rasselas,' the following
quotation pointing to the probability of its inspiration:
The Princess thought that of all sublunary things
knowledge was the best. She desired first to learn
all sciences, and then proposed to found a college of
learned women, in which she would preside.' Other
suggestions have attributed to Defoe and Margaret
Cavendish's 'Female Academy' the inspiration which
does not actually require an original. It is simple
and natural enough to stand alone. The
The germ, what-
ever it may have been, developed by degrees. No
poem of Tennyson's has been so much corrected, or
so often re-edited as this. The first edition was
followed by a second in the next year, the new issue
being dedicated to Henry Lushington, with whom
the poet was staying in September 1847. The
105
106
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
corrections so far were but few, and these merely
verbal; but with the third edition, issued in 1850, the
work underwent radical changes. The songs were
added, and the Prologue and Conclusion remodelled.
In the following year a fourth edition found the
second stanza of the first song omitted, the fourth
song altered, and the passages alluding to the Prince's
weird seizures' introduced. A fifth reprint in 1853
received a further addition of fifteen lines, forming
the fourth paragraph of the prologue.
Two of Tennyson's friends are connected with
'The Princess.' The scene of the introduction is the
garden at Swainston, the seat of the late Sir John
Simeon, in the Isle of Wight, and the host, Sir Walter
Vivian, is Sir John Simeon himself. The dedication
to Henry Lushington is also interesting, since it was
probably the outcome of the poet's visit to his friend at
the time when he was reconsidering the poem for its
second edition. The friendship between the two was
already of some six years' standing, and Tennyson
appears to have had a very high opinion of Lushing-
ton's taste. Indeed, he has been known to declare
that of all the criticism he received from his friends,
Lushington's was the most suggestive. It must have
been sympathetic also, since Lushington is reported
to have known almost the whole of his friend's work
by heart.
(
That The Princess' was well liked' we learn
from FitzGerald, who, however, could find no good
word for it himself. 'I am considered,' he wrote to
the poet's brother Frederick, a great heretic for
abusing it; it seems to me a wretched waste of power
'a

IN THE GARDEN AT SWAINSTON.
At p. 106
FROM THE PRINCESS TO IN MEMORIAM
107
at a time of life when a man ought to be doing his
best; and I almost feel hopeless about Alfred now.
I mean about his doing what he was born to do.'
FitzGerald's view of what Tennyson was born to
do is discovered to be a little capricious, however.
About the same time we find him waking from a
study of Thucydides to yearn for the spectacle of 'old
Hallam' standing to his gun at a Martello tower,
while Alfred shared his peril and his enthusiasm. ‘A
more heroic figure to lead the defenders of his
country could not be.' The notion seems a little
strained to our estimate of the poet, who, at the same
time, was not uninterested in public events and the
life of the world of action. Mr. Aubrey de Vere found
him, at this very moment, 'very indignant at the
events in France, crying, "Let us not see a French
soldier land on the English shore, or I will tear him
limb from limb." Which,' says the lesser poet, 'is a
very wholesome feeling.' And in the same letter we
get a characteristic avowal of Tennyson's politics
from his own lips. Aubrey de Vere asked him
whether he were a Conservative. ·I believe in pro-
gress,' said Tennyson, and I would conserve the
hopes of man.' It is the very keynote of his poetry.
C
It is the keynote, too, of 'The Princess.' Through
all emendations and additions, chiefly interesting to
the bibliographer, the spirit and intention of the
poem remain unchanged. While it served, on the
one hand, as a piece to be staged with all the
refinement of the poet's taste, backed by richly-
coloured and harmonious scenery, it carried at its
heart the poet's invariable creed. The means by
108
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
which the creed is enforced are new; there are a
vein of humour and a line of satire running through
the poem.
But in the new setting the old note is the
keynote; the old note of gradual development, of
steady progress, 'conserving the hopes of man.'
social revolution, no impetuous crusade for woman's
rights, can effect the good that must come by degrees.
The emancipated woman is no heroine to the poet;
he knows a better :
'Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants,
No Angel, but a dearer being, all dipt
In Angel instincts, breathing Paradise,
Interpreter between the Gods and men,
Who look'd all native to her place.
Happy he
With such a mother! Faith in womankind
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high
Comes easy to him, and tho' he trip and fall
He shall not blind his soul with clay.'
No
It is through the love of such a woman that a man
accomplishes his manhood. The affections cannot be
repressed without love life is unfinished.
Apart from this underlying motive, which rises to
the surface only with the end of the poem, 'The
Princess' is little but a dreamy story to read in a
garden on a summer afternoon, full of music, and
fuller still of rich and suggestive imagery. The
insertion of the songs, delicate and beautiful in them-
selves, serves only to accentuate the artificiality of
the whole work. Tennyson's detractors are ready to
accuse him of over-refinement; of an eye too prone
to colour, and an ear too sensitive to melody, losing
in their rapture the sights and sounds of the real,
eternal truth. If such an accusation were to be
FROM THE PRINCESS TO IN MEMORIAM
109
urged, it could, perhaps, be best urged from an
analysis of The Princess.' For here Tennyson is in
his dreamiest and his least virile mood; here he in-
dulges his senses to the waste of his thought. There
is a time for everything; and 'The Princess' is not
without its special charm. It is not Tennyson's
highest work, neither is it his lowest; it merely
requires a sympathetic temperament in the reader
to appear satisfying. It needs a temperament of
momentary laziness, apt to languor and inclined to a
light satire, which shall not busy itself to wound too
deeply. With this mind we shall find 'The Princess'
a storehouse of good things, a midsummer day's
dream with a spell and fantasy that hold us to the
end.
The story might be translated from the Arabian
Nights, so picturesque and improbable are the in-
cidents. The cold, white Ida in love with study, the
adventurous Hilarion and his imprudent companions,
Lady Blanche ambitious and visionary, Psyche tender
and womanly-they are characters from a fairy tale.
And mixed with the quaint old-world flavour of the
whole are curious memories of Cambridge life, making
the poem half a burlesque of university rule. There
are the statutes :
'Not for three years to correspond with home ;
Not for three years to cross the liberties;
Not for three years to speak with any men.'
And again there is the clearer memory:
'Scarce had I ceased when from a tamarisk near
Two Proctors leapt upon us, crying, “Names :"
He, standing still, was clutch'd; but I began
To thrid the musky-circled mazes, wind
IIO
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
And double in and out the boles, and race
By all the fountains; fleet I was of foot:
Before me shower'd the rose in flakes; behind
I heard the puff'd pursuer.'
There is a reminiscence of Cambridge here, and a
vivid one. And, breaking through the veil of the
story ever and again, come perfect little pictures
of the company, which lend an elfin beauty to the
fanciful tale.
'Many a little hand
Glanced like a touch of sunshine on the rocks
Many a light foot shone like a jewel set
In the dark crag: and then we turn'd, we wound
About the cliffs, the copses, out and in,
Hammering and clinking, chattering stony names
Of shale and hornblende, rag and trap and tuff,
Amygdaloid and trachyte, till the Sun
Grew broader towards his death and fell, and all
The rosy heights came out above the lawns.'
Truly, it is the dream of a midsummer afternoon, a
story of infinite imagination and enchantment.
'
It is strange that FitzGerald, with his affection
for the 'champagne flavour' of the early lyrics, should
have missed the sparkle and the bouquet of 'The
Princess.' He even called the poem which he could
not understand accursed.' It was not 'a very
luminous description'; the truer critic would have
seen the merits, even where he failed to catch the
temperament. FitzGerald's criticism, however, was
wont to lack illumination.
A facsimile of the MS. of the songs, complete,
except for the omission of 'Sweet and Low,' was
published by Professor Theodore Rand some years
ago in the M'Master University Monthly, showing
some interesting variations between the reading of
FROM THE PRINCESS TO IN MEMORIAM
III
the Ms. and the songs as they now stand. In the
first song, 'As through the land at eve we went,' the
fourth and thirteenth lines,
and
'O we fell out, I know not why,'
'O there above the little grave,'
are omitted. In 'The splendour falls on castle walls'
the refrain
'Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer echoes, dying, dying, dying,'
is not found, but the word ('Chorus'), inserted in a
different ink, seems to suggest that a refrain was to
follow. The fourth song opens in the ms.
'When all among the thundering drums
Thy soldier in the battle stands,'
and ends,
'Strike him dead for them and thee.
Tara ta tantara !'
The fifth song has received only one verbal altera-
tion,-'watching' for 'whispering' in the second line,
and in Ask me no more,' two slight corrections alone
disturb the perfection of its original form.
The MS.
reads With fold on fold,' which has since been
altered to 'With fold to fold'; while 'I strove against
the stream, and all in vain,' was originally written, ‘I
strive against the stream, but all in vain.'
Mr. Percy M. Wallace, in his thoughtful study of
'The Princess,' argues with some ingenuity that the
songs fall readily into the scheme of the whole work;
all six centring round the affections, while four have
special reference to the beauty of married love. The
I 12
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
suggestion, if somewhat too academic and methodical,
is at least worthy of consideration.
(
Between the editions of The Princess,' Tennyson
found time to hurry to Valentia to 'inhale Atlantic
breezes and listen to the divine sea': he also saw a
single-volume edition of his poems through the press
in 1848. It was of this visit to Valentia that he used
to say, as Professor Stanford has recounted: 'I
looked out over the ocean with all the revolutions in
Europe behind me.' During the next year he printed
little; the verses 'To
'You might have won the Poet's name,'
which appeared in The Examiner on March 24th,
being his only publication. He was busy on 'In
Memoriam,' which absorbed all his energy. Fitz-
Gerald saw him often, and found him the same
noble and droll fellow he used to be,' and they dis-
cussed Pendennis' together. Alfred thought it
(
'quite delicious,' and 'so mature,' and delivered the
criticism over the fire, spreading his great hand out.'
At this time he was in chambers in Lincoln's Inn
Fields, at number 58, and spent such time as was
not given to work in visits to the Lushingtons, and
dinners with FitzGerald, Frederick Denison Maurice,
and other friends. Among these others was Mr.
Coventry Patmore, who first met Tennyson at the
Procters' in 1846. The author of 'The Angel in the
House' had been inspired to a fresh enthusiasm for
poetry, which he had neglected since his boyhood for
a study of the Exact Sciences, by the appearance of
From that time he was most
the Poems in 1842.

EXTERIOR VIEW OF SHIPLAKE CHURCH
At p. 112
FROM THE PRINCESS TO IN MEMORIAM
113
(
anxious to meet Tennyson: and, when they met, they
found each other sympathetic, and were continually to-
gether. Their names are connected by one of the most
engrossing anecdotes which Tennyson's life affords,
and one which, I believe, has not yet been told in print.
About the time that The Princess' was engaging
the attention of London, Tennyson left the city for a
visit to the country. One morning, Mr. Coventry
Patmore, then occupied at the British Museum, re-
ceived a letter from his friend, saying that he had left,
in the drawer of his lodging-house dressing-table, the
entire and only manuscript of 'In Memoriam,' begging
Patmore, moreover, to rescue it for him. Patmore
hurried to the lodgings, to find the room in the posses-
sion of a new tenant, and the landlady very unwilling to
have cupboards and drawers ransacked. Itwas notwith-
out much persuasion that Patmore was admitted to the
room, where he found the manuscript still untouched.
This identical copy was afterwards given by
Tennyson to Sir John Simeon, and is—at the
moment at which these words are written-still in
Lady Simeon's possession.
The мs. of
Tennyson's carelessness with regard to his manu-
script seems to have grown into a habit. Two similar
instances are recorded by Dr. Japp.
Poems, chiefly Lyrical was, we are told, lost and re-
produced from memory; while section xxxix. of ‘In
Memoriam,' 'Old warder of these buried bones,'
having slipped into the back of a writing desk, was
not included in its proper context until the issue of
Messrs. Strahan's pocket-volume edition in 1870.
But to return to 1849. It was a quiet year—a
H

114
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
time of rest before a period of movement: for the year
after was to be full of interest. In 1850 he published
'In Memoriam,' married, and became Poet Laureate.
This year also saw a sixth edition of the Poems,
and a third of The Princess.' It was the most
noteworthy year of his life.
INTERIOR OF SHIPLAKE CHURCH.
In the early months he was in his chambers at
Lincoln's Inn, busy on the songs for The Princess':
his friend's letters contain no allusion to the prospect
of his marriage. They found him unchanged, full
of his dear old stories and many new ones,' but a
little aged. 'I wish I could take twenty years off
Alfred's shoulders,' said FitzGerald, and set him up
But FitzGerald was
again in his youthful glory!'
FROM THE PRINCESS TO IN MEMORIAM
115
always recurring to those youthful performances, and
the best years of Tennyson's work were yet to
come.
Early in 1850 Moxon published In Memoriam,'
at which the poet had been at work for a long while.
The venture was viewed by his friends with some
apprehension. Five years before FitzGerald had
deprecated the idea, believing that 'Lycidas' was as
long as an elegiac poem should be, and that the public
preferred other notes. Spedding had praised the poem,
however; and though within a few months of its ap-
pearance Tennyson seems to have intended to print
it for private circulation only, he decided eventually to
give it full publicity. It was issued anonymously as a
volume of 210 pages, with seven pages of introductory
matter, and the second and third edition differed only
from the first in their correction of two actual mis-
prints. The poem was scarcely before the public
when Wordsworth died, on the twenty-third of April,
and the literary world began to discuss the succession
to the Laureateship. There were several candidates
in the field. Samuel Rogers was approached upon
the subject, but was unwilling to accept the position:
Barry Cornwall, too, preferred to stand aloof. Leigh
Hunt and Dr. C. Mackay were each considered to have
a chance, and Browning's name was also mentioned.
Leigh Hunt, when the final choice fell on Tennyson,
confessed that, though he believed the selection a wise
one, he was a little disappointed that his own claim
had proved insufficient. The Athenæum suggested
that, as a woman was on the throne, a woman might
fitly be Laureate, and on this ground advocated the
appointment of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

116
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
The wonder and babble of the discussion were in
full swing when on the thirteenth of June Tennyson
was married. His wife was Miss Emily Sellwood,
niece of Sir John Franklin, and daughter of a solicitor
at Horncastle, where she and the poet had met during
his Lincolnshire days. She was the eldest of three
daughters, the youngest of whom married Tennyson's
brother Charles. Her mother had died at the early
age of twenty-eight, when Tennyson was but seven
T
SHIPLAKE RECTORY.*
years old. Alfred and his wife were married at Ship-
lake Church, a picturesque building, rich in carved
oak and stained glass, not far from Caversham; the
bride's father, some of the Lushingtons, and two or
three other friends, being the only guests. Miss
Mary Russell Mitford gives the following picturesque
*The letter T marks the room occupied by Tennyson during the days
immediately preceding his marriage.

FROM THE PRINCESS TO IN MEMORIAM
117
description of the church: The Tower, half clothed
with ivy, stands with its charming vicarage and pretty
vicarage garden on a high eminence overhanging one
of the finest bends of the great river. A woody lane
leads from the church to the bottom of the chalk cliff,
one side of which stands out from the road below like
a promontory, surmounted by the laurel hedges and
flowery arbours of the vicarage garden, and crested
by a noble cedar of Lebanon.'
After their marriage the Tennysons settled at
Twickenham, at Chapel House, standing at the corner
of Montpelier Row, which runs from the Thames to
the Richmond Road. It is characteristic of the poet
that when Milnes offered, on the occasion of the
wedding, to place at his disposal for life a wing of his
house at Fryston, Tennyson did not accept the offer.
One almost wonders that Milnes should have been so
far carried away by friendly enthusiasm as to suggest it.
Among the earliest of Tennyson's friends who
met his wife was Spedding; and he was charmed
with her. But the old circle complained that Alfred
now withdrew more than ever into himself. • You
know,' said FitzGerald, 'he never writes, nor indeed
cares a halfpenny about one.' The same critic was
sadly discontent with In Memoriam,' too, for though
he found it full of the finest things, he thought it
monotonous, with 'the sense of being evolved by a
poetic machine of the highest order.'
(
Tennyson was not keeping altogether to himself,
however; he and his bride were moving about
among
his friends, and in the November of the same
year Carlyle met them both at Trent Lodge in Cum-
118
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
berland. Then this notable year closed with honour;
for in the early winter the questionings of the spring
were silenced, and Tennyson was finally appointed
Laureate, the warrant being dated November 19th.
His formal installation took place on the 6th of March
1851; and his first appearance at Court was made in
Rogers's Court-dress, borrowed for the occasion.
Wordsworth, it is said, had worn the same suit,
and both poets had dressed at Rogers's house before
the ceremony.
The appointment of Tennyson to the Laureate-
ship was viewed at the time with approbation; indeed,
during the discussion of the preceding months the
Press had very generally agreed that his genius
singled him out as the man most fitted to the post.
In the light of later knowledge this opinion seems
inevitable; but we have to remember that in 1850
Tennyson's work was represented by but two volumes
of poems and 'The Princess.' Almost the whole of
his most characteristic work was written after his ac-
ceptance of the Laureateship, and in the very moment
of his promotion he published a poem which established
his position upon a new and permanent basis.
In Memoriam,' the poem upon which Tennyson
had been occupied for some ten years or more, may
be divided for purposes of analysis into five parts,
but the whole poem is continuous and connected.
The connection is, in places, a little difficult to trace,
and the course of thought obscure, but-though the
mind breaks, with each new division, into a new field
of reflection, turning, as it were, abruptly into a fresh
channel, the course from point to point is actually

between us, [
of us,
1860. Marriage solemnized as arch Church
No.
When Married.
Juxe 13
38
Name and Surname.
Sarish
in the
of Thiplak
in the Count of xford
Age.
Condition.
Rank or Profession.
Residence at the Time of Marriage.
Father's Name and Sarname.
Egon fullare Batchelin Exquis
Emily Sarah Fellewood Spinstin
Married in the Parish Church
This Marriage
was
solemnized
between us,
Alped Tennyson
full expe
according to the Rites and Ceremonies of the
Emily Sarah Sellwood.
in the
Presence
of us,
Shiplake
Shiplake
Excellished Church.
Rank or Profession of
Father.
George Clayton Tennyson, Click
Henry Fellwood, Espumi
Wille Lubergston
Edmund Law Lushingtre
Catherine Ann Rerwout
by me,
& Raconoley Mar-
Ann. Reconsley R.Weld
JMM: Sellwork.
>
Mesenbach
THE MARRIAGE REGISTER.
JUNE 13, 1850.
At p. 118
FROM THE PRINCESS TO IN MEMORIAM
119
unbroken. A brief review of the poem will serve to
show the development and direction of the argument.
The poet, at the opening, recalls a creed which
he had held for law-that out of the troubles of life
men may rise to something better than they were
before the day of trouble came. But now he finds the
creed hard to hold: it is so difficult to return to
comfort after loss. He compares his life to a yew-
tree among the graves, which, though spring may
return for it, as for the whole of nature, presents
the same gloomy spectacle with every season. So
Sorrow, surveying his life, can find for him no second
spring. For now Sorrow is always with him, the
'Priestess in the vaults of Death' round which his
memory hovers, never leaving him for a moment.
And when he cries out to her, his cry seems a sin;
for
any words he can utter fall short of the intensity
of his suffering. Yet he must cry out, for the effort
seems to deaden the pain. To cry out, indeed, is his
only comfort; for the common-place expressions of
consolation are empty and barren,
'Vacant chaff well meant for grain'
But at times even this comfort fails him; he must
feed his sorrow by the actual sight of the places where
he used to meet his friend-by forcing on himself the
truth of his loss. So he goes to the house where
Hallam used to live, and here the loneliness of it all
breaks in upon him with renewed force. The whole
scene is melancholy.
'He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
- And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.'
120
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Standing desolate, he compares himself to a lover
who has hastened to his love's home to find her
away. And from the absence his mind glides to the
home-coming; he pictures the ship that is bringing
Arthur's body to England.
He fancies the course
of its passage, and himself watching for the first
sight of it. Then he remembers that Arthur is
returning, but only as a memory.
He must fix that
fact upon his brain, only as a memory. But the
He feels that, if Arthur
thought will not take root.
were to step ashore alive, he should not be surprised.
'If one should bring me this report,
That thou hadst touched the land to-day,
And I went down unto the quay,
And found thee lying in the port ;
And if along with these should come
The man I held as half-divine;
Should strike a sudden hand in mine,
And ask a thousand things of home;
I should not feel it to be strange.'
Suddenly a storm rises; and he begins to wonder
whether his sorrow is like the sea in a tempest,
taking different aspects, now calm, now wild : changed
upon the surface, but the same in its silent depth.
As the storm passes, he sees the ship near the landing :
it arrives with its precious freight, and the burial
follows. Then he knows that Arthur is really gone
from him for ever. As his grief breaks out afresh
with the thought, friends press round him, reproving
him; but he feels that they never knew his friend as
he did. They cannot understand. He recalls the
FROM THE PRINCESS TO IN MEMORIAM
121
years of their friendship: he remembers, too, that
there were sorrows to overcloud it.
'If all was good and fair we met,
This earth had been the Paradise
It never look'd to human eyes
Since our first Sun arose and set.'
But with all its troubles, it was a life worth living : and
for the sake of what has been, and for a proof of the
strength of their love, he will find it worth living still.
He has the memory to live with :
"Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.'
With this the first division of the poem ends: and
the scene changes to a view of the life which he has
determined to live out alone. It is Christmas Eve,
the year of Hallam's death; and the family are at
Somersby. They feel the pain of keeping Christmas
without Arthur-a Christmas
'Which brings no more a welcome guest
To enrich the threshold of the night
With shower'd largess of delight
In dance and song and game and jest.'
نا
And the poet wonders what his friend is doing now,
and chafes to think how little his sympathy can
picture the life beyond the grave. Lazarus returned
from death; but there is no record of the four days
spent in the unseen world. 'How is it, then? Is
there a life beyond?' Even if there is not, we have
Love with us now. Let us at least cherish that.
Then the Muse of Heaven speaks to him 'with
darken'd brow,' upbraiding him for prating of things
he cannot understand; and the poet's Muse pleads
122
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
with her for pardon, if she has ventured too far upon
holy ground.
Then the New Year breaks, full of weariness.
He recurs again to the image of the Yew: as its
Spring is but one touch of colour 'at the tips,' so his
life sinks back into gloom. And perhaps, he reflects,
while his life is sinking back, Arthur's is advancing :
so that if they were to meet, he would find something
strange in his friend. But he banishes the thought.
'I vex my heart with fancies dim:
He still outstript me in the race;
It was but unity of place
That made me dream I rank'd with him.'
So, when they meet again, the old love, he assures
himself, will return. They will have remembered all
the while. And yet-
'How fares it with the happy dead?'
Do they forget old associations and old loves? It
may be so for a time; but, when the veil is swept
away, they will remember again.
'There no shade can last
In that deep dawn behind the tomb,
But clear from marge to marge shall bloom
The eternal landscape of the past.'
This, at least, one must hold, whatever school of
thought, whatever creed, one follows; for all creeds
and schools are only shadows of the Truth.
And so
the poet cries to his friend to be near him, as he
passes through these shadows of doubt and argument,
pointing him always to the light of eternity.
But yet he hesitates.
FROM THE PRINCESS TO IN MEMORIAM
123
'Do we indeed desire the dead
Should still be near us at our side?
Is there no baseness we would hide?
No inner vileness that we dread?'
If he were to meet Arthur, would not his friend
find things in him that distressed him? We cannot
tell: we can only hope and stretch out 'lame hands of
faith.' Meanwhile, all Nature seems to waste itself:
the riddle of the struggle for existence is beyond man's
understanding.
And here the second division ends on a note of
doubt and extreme discomfort.
From this point he strives to teach his trial
patience. Sorrow shall be to him a wedded wife, to
be loved calmly and evenly, not with the feverish
passion of a lover for his mistress.
And yet Arthur, now tutored to the lore of eternal
life, must think his friend but a low and puny thing,
as he cries after him in the silence. If that be so, let
Arthur forget him.
'Then be my love an idle tale,
And fading legend of the past.'
And again he wonders:
'Does my old friend remember me?
Love cannot
It cannot be otherwise, he reflects.
forget. The certainty of this remembrance comforts
him : and in the night he pictures the tablet to Arthur
in Clevedon Church, with the moonlight upon it, and
so falls asleep to dream of his friend. When he
wakes, it is the anniversary of Hallam's death, and the
morning is wild with a storm. The memory of his
loss floods in upon him anew, but with a comforting

124
reflection.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
There are so many worlds, so much to
do,' that perhaps Arthur was needed elsewhere to
fulfil God's order.
It might well be so, he thinks, for
Arthur was worthy of the call.
ANTHER WEY HALLAN
BALTS OF MICER ST
JULIA MARIA RALLAM.
YA CORTO ZAPLETO
AN AND HOP
mer und
RXXX VITE MEWESTY
HENRY HALLAM THE RISTORIAN.
*** UTS, MEN JARIK
THE GTLY SHOWXZY BACAKA
DEAN cor
THE HALLAM MEMORIAL TABLET.
With this thought the third division of the poem
closes.
The fourth part opens with another Christmas
Eve, and this time the gathering is less gloomy:
As in the winters left behind
Again our ancient games had place,
The mimic picture's breathing grace,
And dance and song and hoodman-blind.'
And the poet, looking on the glad scene, asks whether
FROM THE PRINCESS TO IN MEMORIAM
125
the regret for Arthur's death has died out, and answers.
that it is not dead, since he is always remembering
him. He reflects that a longer life was needed to
such a love:
'More years had made me love thee more.
And then, with an invocation to the New Year, the
poet pictures what the new years would have brought
had Arthur lived. His fancy conjures up the possible
events of such a time, until he suddenly recalls the
fact of his loss. Then, leaving such vain dreams,
he goes back into the past, recalls the life at Cam-
bridge and at Somersby: and, remembering every-
thing, assures himself that Arthur would be welcome
could he return. But he never can return: the poet
will never see him again. It needs a strength and
purity beyond man's power to live once more with
the dead.
'How pure at heart and sound in head,
With what divine affections bold,
Should be the man whose thought would hold
An hour's communion with the dead.'
They can never meet except in memory and so his
mind travels back to Somersby again, and thence to
Vienna, where Arthur died. Every corner in the
house reminds him of his friend, but even the house
must be left. The day has come for giving up
Somersby.
'We leave the well-beloved place.
Where first we gazed upon the sky.'
But before he goes, he walks in the garden with two
spirits, who speak with him. One represents the
early boyish love of home: the other, the later love of
126
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
home illumined by his love for Arthur (this definition
of the spirits is the poet's own). Then he goes away:
and in a strange place he hears the Christmas bells,
and with the old year leaves the old life behind.
bells that ring in the new year, ring in faith and hope
and consolation.
'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.'
The
The fifth and last part begins with Arthur's birthday,
an anniversary which recalls to him the character and
life of his friend, at home and at Cambridge. And,
as he thinks of his friend's virtues, the Spring breaks,
and the season reminds him of the new birth and
growth of these virtues in the new life beyond. And
so, with resignation at his heart, he returns to the
house where his friend had lived, and the view is no
longer gloomy.
'I hear a chirp of birds; I see
Betwixt the black fronts long withdrawn
A light-blue lane of early dawn,
And think of early days and thee,
And bless thee.'
The doubt is over, and his soul is at ease.
'Not in vain,
Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death.'
And in his final resignation he knows that, though he
die himself, he will not lose his friend; that their love
is eternal, through the eternity of
'Faith that comes of self-control,
The truths that never can be proved
Until we close with all we loved,
And all we flow from, soul in soul.'
FROM THE PRINCESS TO IN MEMORIAM
127
Such is a naked outline of the poem, which may,
perhaps, serve to show the general line of the thought,
and the gradual struggle of doubt and faith. It takes
no account of the prefatory poem and the epilogue,
since they stand outside the scheme of the work.
The first is a confession of faith, excusing the doubt:
the second is a marriage ode written for the wedding
of his sister Cecilia to Edmund Law Lushington. It
has but little connection with In Memoriam.'
The main work is rich in beauties. A more
logical and sustained effort of mental analysis has
seldom enriched poetry; the complete progress of
sorrow into consolation is followed with a faithfulness
which is actually merciless. The poet spares to show
no phase of his passion: every new sensation is ex-
posed, questioned, and criticised. And the analysis is
conveyed through the medium of a metre exactly
adapted to the subject: a metre, the even cadence of
whose course rises and falls like the sighing of a
melancholy wind among the branches. The language
is polished and chaste: the expression, even in the
most passionate utterances, is refined and subdued.
The result is a poem of unusual beauty, of a sustained
literary excellence of the first class, which fails on but
one note the note of emotion.
No poem of Tennyson's is so apt for quotation,
none is so rich in phrases that have long since become
household words. But it will probably be always
read and remembered for special passages rather than
for the strength and unity of its argument. It is
natural it should be so: for In Memoriam' is much
too long for its subject. The thought that animates
128
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
it, while it progresses and develops systematically, is
diffused and weakened by repetition, and the struggle
between doubt and faith is extended over too large an
area. The poem suffers also from another misfortune,
which is common to all work of this kind: there is
everywhere a suggestion of artificiality. The failing
was inevitable. When sorrow tries to fix its record
upon paper it becomes analytic, introspective; it
begins to criticise itself, and so ceases to be sorrow.
There are emotions which literature cannot stereo-
type: directly the attempt is made, the emotion
passes into self-analysis. This is a misfortune which
'In Memoriam' must share even with 'Lycidas' and
'Adonais' pure emotion of the strongest and most
human elements can never be recorded. It spends
itself in the abandonment to the passion of the
moment: when it begins to record its sensation, it has
lost the keenness and sting of its agony. It becomes,
then, the luxury of a mind living in the past: it has
ceased to live in the present. And being reflective
and analytic, it is the result of an effort, the exercise
of an energy in other words, an artificial product.
The more beautiful its finish, the more obvious its
artificiality: and every step it takes towards Art is a
step further from Nature. The more we borrow from
the brain the less we owe to the heart.
CHAPTER VII
MAUD
(
His elevation to the Laureateship gave a natural im-
petus to the sale of Tennyson's work, and in 1851 no
less than three new issues appeared. The Poems
ran into a seventh edition, which was enriched by
four new pieces,- To the Queen,' Edwin Morris,'
'The Eagle,' and the lines Come not when I am
dead.' A fourth edition of 'The Princess' was also
needed, and in this issue the incident of the Prince's
'weird seizures' made its first appearance: there
were also alterations in the first and fourth songs.
'In Memoriam,' too, was printed in a fourth edition
of five thousand copies (three editions having been
exhausted within the first year), and the section 'O
sorrow, wilt thou live with me' (LIX.), was added for
the first time. During the same year Tennyson
published the stanzas, 'What time I wasted youthful
hours,' in Miss Power's Keepsake, in which annual the
lines Come not when I am dead' were also included.
The first of these is eminently above the level
of Keepsake verse, and invites quotation :
'What time I wasted youthful hours,
One of the shining winged powers
Show'd me vast cliffs, with crowns of towers.'
This is like an echo from Timbuctoo'; but the
spiritual city which now burst into view was fairer
I
130
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
than the hidden region of Africa. It was a city
peopled by the spirits of just men made perfect,
whose gates are open to the fearless.
'He said, "The labour is not small :
Yet winds the pathway free to all :-
Take care thou dost not fear to fall.” '
This poem, it is to be hoped, will eventually be
reprinted with the rest of Tennyson's work.
His one other literary performance this year was
dedicated to a grateful occasion. In February a
farewell banquet was given to W. C. Macready, the
famous actor, and at this dinner John Forster re-
cited Tennyson's sonnet to the guest of the evening.
The lines were printed in The Household Narrative
of Current Events, in The People's Journal, and in
most of the current newspapers. They have since
been included in his collected works.
brought so many gains
Tennyson and his wife,'
But the year which
brought its loss as well.
Carlyle wrote to Emerson, ‘are in Italy. Their baby
died.' It was this journey that Tennyson recounted so
tenderly in 'The Daisy. But before that was written,
the loss had been repaired by their son Hallam's birth.
↑
'So dear a life your arms enfold,
Whose crying is a cry for gold.'
While abroad they visited Cogoletto, Florence,
Reggio, Parma, Milan, and Como. The Brownings
caught a glimpse of them at the Louvre, but only from
a distance. This was in the autumn, and by Christ-
Inas the poet and his wife had returned to London,
where FitzGerald found him looking 'pretty well.'
The journey to Italy is connected with one amusing

HON. HALLAM AND LIONEL TENNYSON.
After the picture by G. F. Watts, R.A.
At p. 130
MAUD
131
incident. Lord John Russell gave a large reception,
to which the Tennysons were invited; and during
the evening the Prime Minister, moving from guest
to guest, encountered the Laureate. They imme-
diately broke into conversation, Lord John asking
Tennyson how he had enjoyed his visit to Venice.
As the poet did not appear communicative, his host
pressed him further, when he confessed that he had
not liked Venice.
'And why not, pray, Mr. Tennyson?'
'I couldn't get any English tobacco there for
love or money,' replied the poet.
The Tennysons were now at Twickenham, rapidly
making new friends. Sir Henry Taylor, who was
quartered at Mortlake, was particularly pleased with
his neighbour, whom he regarded as 'a singular
compound of manliness and helplessness, manly in
his simplicity.' He admired the work no less than
the man I should think he is the only really
popular poet since Byron, except Wordsworth, for
some ten years of his life.' But Henry Taylor seems
to have shared the view of Horne, that Tennyson's
future work was unlikely to prove much stronger
than his actual achievement. I do not anticipate,'
he wrote to Sir Edmund Head, that he will take
any such place in poetry as is filled by Coleridge or
Wordsworth; but I think that his poetry will be felt
to be admirable in its kind.’
In 1852 the poet's attention was chiefly confined
to national and political subjects, the four poems.
which he printed being all of a public character.
The Examiner for January 31st contained, ‘Britons,
132
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
guard your own,' and in the next month he published
'The Third of February 1852,'-an outcome of Louis
Napoleon's move towards an absolute government,
and 'Hands all Round,' which appeared together on
February 7th. All these poems were printed anony-
mously, over the signature 'Merlin'; and have
since been acknowledged his. On the fourteenth of
February, however, over the signature 'Taliessin'
there was presented a copy of verses opening,
'How much I love this writer's manly style,'
the authorship of which has not been generally known.
FitzGerald's papers contained them in Tennyson's MS.,
together with another poem, 'Where is he, the simple
Fool,' which was printed in a newspaper at the time,
but never included in Tennyson's collected works.
During the early spring he was at Malvern with
his wife, in daily communication with the Carlyles and
Sydney Dobell (the founder of the Spasmodic School
of Poetry, and author of 'The Roman,' and 'Balder'),
who spent the greater part of his life in business in
Gloucestershire. In August, Hallam Tennyson was
born; and on September 29 we find Frederick Denison
Maurice writing to Charles Kingsley:
I hope to be in London on Tuesday: Alfred Tennyson
has done me the high honour of asking me to be the god-
father to his child, who is to be baptized on that day. I
accept the office with thankfulness and fear.'
The offer was made with gratitude and esteem.
Tennyson wished his son to be able to say, in the
years to come, 'My father asked Mr. Maurice to
be my godfather, because he was the truest Christian
MAUD
133
he knew in the world.' Thackeray was also present
at the christening.
The closing months of 1852 are rendered memor-
able to students of Tennyson by the death of the
Duke of Wellington and the publication of the
Laureate's Ode. The first draft, which was probably
thrown off in necessary haste, appeared as a sixteen-
page pamphlet bearing the imprint of Edward Moxon.
The Press was very ill contented with the Ode; and,
when a second edition appeared in the next year, it
had been considerably emended. The main altera-
tions, which distinguish the poem in its present stage
from the first edition, are the addition of a few
lines to stanzas 1. and II., and of the passages about
Lisbon in the sixth stanza. The seventh has been
considerably corrected and amplified, the additions
including the whole passage from
to
'On God and Godlike men we build our trust'
'Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.'
The Forster Library contains a copy of the first
edition with the corrections made in the second,
written in in Forster's own handwriting. The Ode
occasioned a pleasant interchange of courtesies be-
tween Sir Henry Taylor and the poet. 'I have read
your Ode,' wrote the former, 'and I feel that many
thousands in future times will feel about it as I do,
or with a yet stronger and deeper feeling. . . . It
has a greatness worthy of its theme, and an absolute
simplicity and truth, with all the poetic passion of
your nature moving beneath.' To which Tennyson
replied in his downright, genuine strain :
134
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
1
Thanks! Thanks! In the all but universal
depreciation of my Ode by the Press, the prompt
and hearty approval of it by a man as true as the
Duke himself is doubly grateful.'
One hesitates, however, to share Henry Taylor's
honest enthusiasm. The Ode has a grand, solemn
movement, advancing, as it were, to the tolling of the
funeral bell, and sweeping on to the swell of the
organ. But it is ornate rather than inspired, with
more study than sincerity to commend it.
in it which are deathless, lines such as
The lines
'Not once or twice in our rough island-story
The path of duty was the way to glory,'
or
‘This is England's greatest son,
He that gained a hundred fights,
Nor ever lost an English gun,'
are overweighted by the mass of rhetoric which
encumbers them. There is everywhere too much
decoration, too little simplicity. In his public odes
Tennyson is never easy; he always appears to pose,
to assume a sentiment foreign to him, and to feel
himself that it is alien. The most enduring poetry is
never written to order.
The next year, the last at Twickenham, saw an
eighth edition of the Poems with but a few new
pieces added. The Lines' to 'E. L.' (Edward
Lear), referring to that author's Journals of Tours in
Central and South Italy and Albania, were new, the
poem 'To the Queen' had been emended, and 'A
Dream of Fair Women' had now received the poet's
finishing touches. This poem was, perhaps, as much
touched and retouched as any Tennyson ever wrote,
MAUD
135
and the corrections are almost without exception
improvements. The 'Dream,' in its original shape,
has a few crudities and unpolished corners which are
strangely foreign to Tennyson's genius: in its finished
form it is so delicately elaborated as to be in parts
even obtrusively artificial. But the over-elaboration
is atoned for by the proportion and concentration of
the whole.
Meanwhile the making of new friends did not
imply forgetfulness of the old. FitzGerald was with
the Tennysons during their last days at Twickenham:
and in the quiet of their later home in the Isle of
Wight, whither they moved in 1853, they were
mindful of old acquaintances for whom life was more
eventful. Frederick Denison Maurice, having been
expelled from King's College, offered during the first
weeks of 1854 to resign his position as Chaplain of
Lincoln's Inn,-a delicate step which the Benchers
begged him to reconsider. And among the many
letters of sympathy which he received none was more
tender and genial than the Laureate's, in which he
pressed him to forget his trouble for the moment
in a visit to his old friends and his new godson.
Whewell considered the poem the most perfect of its
kind which he had ever encountered.
'Should all our churchmen foam in spite
At you, so careful of the right,
Yet one lay-hearth would give you welcome
(Take it and come) to the Isle of Wight;
Come, Maurice, come: the lawn as yet
Is hoar with rime, or spongy-wet ;
But when the wreath of March has blossom'd,
Crocus, anemone, violet,

136
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Or later, pay one visit here,
For those are few we hold as dear;
Nor pay but one, but come for many,
Many and many a happy year.'
It was the same dislike of disagreement in tenet
and doctrine that moved Tennyson to write a warm
letter of welcome to Bishop Colenso, at the time when
the narrower minds among the clergy were fuming
against him,—a letter in which he begged the Bishop
to come and stay with him as long as he liked. The
FARRINGFORD.
9
poet's faith was strong enough and high enough to
despise controversy over detail, and difference in
degree. The breadth of his intellect admitted a
breadth of sympathy. Once, in a letter to Mr.
Bosworth Smith, written on December 12, 1885, he
expressed a vigorous disapproval of Disestablishment.
'I believe,' he said, 'that the disestablishment and
MAUD
137
disendowment of the Church would prelude the down-
fall of much that is greatest and best in England.'
But he had always some sympathy for minds at
variance with his own. 'I am no Chartist,' he wrote
to Mr. Ernest Jones, but I heartily sympathise
with your sufferings in a cause which you have
deemed good, notwithstanding.'
For politics Tennyson had little inclination.
When, in 1880, he was offered the Lord Rectorship
of Glasgow University, he declined the honour on
learning that he was put forward as the candidate of
the Conservative party. He was unwilling, he said,
to stand as the representative of any single school of
politics. Everything human was congenial to him:
he had no heart for dissension. Indeed, with his
disposition to retirement, Tennyson combined a most.
sympathetic faculty of passing out of himself into the
interests and achievements of others. The affections
of his own home-life never actually estranged him, as
FitzGerald hinted, from the consideration of his friends:
the concentration upon his own work never blinded
him to merit in another's. On the contrary, his
appreciation of the literary work of his time was so
keen as sometimes to overleap his critical judgment.
During 1853 the world of letters was stirred by the
performances of a poet, now little remembered, named
Alexander Smith, a pattern-designer in a Glasgow
factory, who published several volumes of poetry
which had an unusually popular vogue. Imitating,
perhaps unconsciously, Keats and Tennyson himself,
he achieved a conspicuous facility for melodious and
graceful verse, so fluent and self-contained that it is
138
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
only on a careful examination that the reader dis-
covers, despite occasional brilliance, the want of real
power and individuality which deprives the work of
permanent value. The music and grace of Smith's
verse took London by storm. Charles Kingsley, even,
was so blinded by the brilliance of his coming, as to
write a paper in Fraser's Magazine, in which, while he
pleaded for a less critical enthusiasm for a writer who
was not without limitation, he still granted that Smith
was a greater poet than Keats. And in 1853, when
'A Life Drama,' Smith's principal poem, appeared,
Tennyson in his turn wrote to the author, ex-
pressing his enjoyment and admiration of the work.
There was a pathetic melody in his verse; and, in
certain poems, such as his 'Glasgow,' a sincerity that
naturally appealed to sympathy. But his best work
was done in prose; and in the pages of the Athenæum
a very careful student of poetry, afterwards known to
be William Allingham, attacked the poet with the
charge of plagiarism. The sequel was an oblivion
which was, it may be, an excess in reaction. For with
his melody, his colour, and his borrowed distinction,
Alexander Smith had perhaps greater claims to at-
tention than some popular poets of our own more
critical generation.
Another contemporary poet of whom Tennyson
expressed approval was Thomas Lovell Beddoes.
During the Laureate's honeymoon, when he was stay-
ing in the Lake-country, Miss Zoë King lent him a
copy of the posthumous Death's Jest-Book, and
wrote in high delight, when Tennyson returned the
volume with a few lines in which he rated the work
(
MAUD
139
highly.' He had even higher praise for FitzGerald's
'Euphranor,' a Platonic dialogue dealing with Cam-
bridge life, which was published in 1851. The con-
cluding passage, which describes a night of the May
races, was declared by Tennyson to be the finest piece
of modern prose he had ever read. After a stirring
scene recounting the boat-race, which is scarcely more
vivid, however, than a similar description in Tom
Brown at Oxford,' the book closes with these words:
'We walked home across the meadows that lie
between the river and the town, whither the dusky
troops of gownsmen were evaporating, while twilight
gathered over all, and the nightingale began to be
heard among the flowering chestnuts of Jesus.'
It is pictorial prose enough: but in no way singular.
The sentiment and the association of the scene, no
doubt, endeared the passage to Tennyson, who, in his
impulsive, generous fashion, said rather more in its
praise than he wished even his friends to understand.
Enthusiasm and the patriotic spirit of University life
cannot be taken too seriously.
At the end of 1853 the Tennysons left Twicken-
ham for the Isle of Wight; and in the following year
was born Lionel, their second son, who afterwards
married a daughter of Mr. Frederick Locker-Lampson
(subsequently Mrs. Augustine Birrell). The same
year found another Tennyson among the poets,
Frederick, Alfred's elder brother, publishing in 1854
his first volume of verse, Days and Hours.
The move to a pleasanter climate and more com-
fortable quarters seems to have impressed Tennyson's
friends with an appreciation of his worldly comforts.
140
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
are all
And
'Our poets,' wrote Procter to J. T. Fields,
going to the poorhouse-except Tennyson.'
while the Tennysons were moving southward to their
secluded island home, the poet's memory was receiving
a strange tribute in the north. The Arctic explorers,
sighting at sea a tapering pillar standing with its
natural pedestal to a height of over seven hundred feet,
put in to shore to take note of it, and Dr. Kane, one
of their number, suggested that they should christen
it 'Tennyson's Pillar.' And so it has been named ever
since.
The doctor's impression of the scene may be
given in his own words:
'I was still more struck with another (rock) of the same
sort, in the immediate neighbourhood of my halting-ground
beyond Sunny Gorge, to the north of latitude 79°. A single
cliff of greenstone, marked by the slaty limestone that once
encased it, rears itself from a crumbled base of sandstones, like
the boldly-chiselled rampart of an ancient city. At its northern
extremity, on the brink of a deep ravine which has worn its.
way among the ruins, there stands a solitary column or
minaret-tower, as sharply finished as if it had been cast for
the Place Vendôme. Yet the length of the shaft alone is
four hundred and eighty feet; and it rises on a plinth or
pedestal itself two hundred and eighty feet high. I remem-
ber well the emotions of my party as it first broke upon our
view. Cold and sick as I was, I brought back a sketch of
it, which may have interest for the reader, though it scarcely
suggests the imposing dignity of this magnificent landmark.
Those who are happily familiar with the writings of Tennyson,
and have communed with his spirit in the solitudes of a
wilderness, will apprehend the impulse that inscribed the
scene with his name.'
Army and Navy were to remember the Laureate,
MAUD
141
and the name that was not forgotten among the ice-floes
was to inspire the hard-pressed forces in the trenches of
the Crimea. It was during 1854 that 'The Charge of
the Light Brigade' appeared in The Examiner for
Saturday, December the 9th: and in the following
August a thousand copies of it were printed on a
quarto sheet to be distributed among the troops before
Sebastopol. The poem has become almost too popular
for discussion; it is the one stirring, galloping piece of
energy which all shades of mind and sympathy seem
to admire alike. There is a sound of horses' hoofs
and a clatter of accoutrements in the melody that
brings its own reply to the critics who find Tennyson a
dilettante and a dreamer alone.
The present year (1855) has, however, more
important claims to our attention than the song of the
battle-field, in that it saw the publication of 'Maud,'
the greater part of which was written in Sir John
Simeon's garden at Swainston. The poet used to sit
at work under the shade of a spreading cedar on the
lawn, and the view which peeped through its branches.
doubtless suggested many of the touches in the garden
scene of ‘Maud.'
The history of Maud' is singular. No poem of
Tennyson's evoked more heated discussion at its first
appearance; none has lived down depreciation with
such full effect and dignity.
The volume, which took its name from the prin-
cipal poem, contained also The Brook, The Letters,
The Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington,
The Daisy, Lines to F. D. Maurice, Will, and The
Charge of the Light Brigade.
142
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Several of the shorter poems in the volume have
already been discussed; among the others the most
noteworthy are 'The Brook' and 'The Daisy.' 'The
Letters' is a very simple little story, told in polished,
but not very animated verse. 'Will' is a trifle
didactic, and at the same time incomplete. But The
Brook' may rank with 'Dora' and 'The Gardener's
Daughter' as a fresh, scented idyll of the country-side,
through which sings and quivers the voice of the stream
as it babbles over its stones. The trembling music of
its flow is echoed to perfection in the melody of the
verse: nothing more delicately natural is to be found
in poetry. 'The Daisy,' already referred to in another
context, is a tender dream of the poet, musing in a
murky street in Edinburgh over a daisy picked on the
snowy Splugen,' and gives him opportunity for many
varied sketches of Southern life, full of colour and
spirit and movement. It is a little picture-gallery of
foreign views.
But it was 'Maud' that gave the character to
the volume. The poem grew, as every one knows,
out of Sir John Simeon's remark that the lines 'O that
'twere possible' required some concomitant interest to
explain their force. The verses, long set aside in the
miscellany where they first appeared, were read to Sir
John Simeon by the author during the early days of
their friendship, after the Tennysons' removal to
Farringford. Doubtless his friend begged of the poet
the recital of some of his less-remembered verses,
and was struck at once by the pity of their oblivion.
At any rate, on his suggestion Tennyson founded
'Maud,' and its appearance was followed by a storm

Meisenbach
THE CEDAR UNDER WHICH MAUD' WAS WRITTEN.
At p. 142
MAUD
143
The
of controversy. Blackwood's Magazine and The
National Review both noticed the poem unfavourably,
and The Edinburgh Review published a long rigmarole
of dissatisfaction. The writer of the last article
compared ‘Maud' to 'St. Simeon Stylites,' consider-
ing that both have the serious defect of leaving the
reader in a painful state of confusion as to the limits
of the sane and the insane; complaining, too, of a
want of distinct conception in the whole work.
critique is an instructive one, because a careful study
of it reveals the fact that the writer was conscious of
something wanting in Maud,' but was unable to
define the need. He seems all through his review to
be half an admirer in spite of himself, to be staggered
by the lawlessness of the metre and the audacity of
the subject. The truth was that the public wanted
other notes' from Tennyson. People could not under-
stand this outburst of passion, this strange melancholy
and morbidity: above all, they failed to grasp the
dramatic character of the poem. Sentiments which
the poet had put into the mouth of his principal actor
were interpreted as his own; and the final passages of
the work, especially-those, namely, referring to the
Crimean War-caused the gravest offence to the less
intelligent section of his readers.
An anonymous
poet ('A Poet of the People' he dubbed himself)
published through an obscure house in Holles Street,
Cavendish Square, a vulgar little travesty entitled
' Anti-Maud,' which destroyed by the grossness of
its taste a certain merit which it manifested in its
assumption of the Laureate's style. In this strain he
assailed the concluding passages:
144
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Who is it clamours for War? Is it one who is ready to fight?
Is it one who will grasp the sword, and rush on the foe with a shout?
Far from it :-'tis one of the musing mind who merely intends to write-
He sits at home by his own snug hearth, and hears the storm howl
without.'
Nor was this the only enemy in the gate. A volume
called Modern Manicheism, Labour's Utopia, and
other Poems, contained a set of verses 'Vindiciae
Pacis,' addressed to Tennyson with a like expostula-
tion:
'What though you are jesting-shall this your childish perverseness
excuse?
Rather all the more insult it is for your vexed and recalcitrant muse,
And she all the less calmly endures that you bid her your ravings
dispense,
That simply because they are yours, there are blockheads who take
them for sense.'
The author of this book, who voluminously described
himself on the title page as-
'A Poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not,'
is generally supposed to have been Mr. W. T.
Thornton, of the India Office, who was born about
1830, and wrote a number of books, both poetical
and political, including a translation of the Odes of
Horace.
And then a champion spoke for the poet; a Dr.
Mann wrote a 'Tennyson's "Maud " Vindicated,'—a
thin shilling pamphlet in a brown paper cover, which
was good enough to win a sympathetic word of ap-
proval from the Laureate himself. 'Your commentary,'
MAUD
145
he said, 'is as true as it is full.' Sydney Dobell, too,
was anxious to plead for the excellence of the poem,
and papers were found at his death containing notes
for a reply to the unfriendly criticisms which 'Maud'
had encountered. And yet another voice was raised
on Tennyson's behalf in the little volume of poems
Ionica, published some three years after 'Maud.'
Among the treasures of this unpretentious casket
was a copy of verses written 'after reading "Maud,"
which reasons with Tennyson's critics in a tone of
calm contempt.
'Leave him to us, ye good and sage,
Who stiffen in your middle age.
Ye loved him once, but now forbear;
Yield him to those who hope and dare,
And have not yet to forms consigned
A rigid, ossifying mind.'
(
Still, it is not surprising that 'Maud' should have
puzzled its commentators at first, for both subject and
treatment were bold and unconventional; and it is
apt to be the ordinary only that meets with immediate
recognition. Maud' was anything
was anything rather than
ordinary. Tennyson had dared to choose for him-
self a new type of hero, and one that alarmed the
public taste. The central character of the poem, the
speaker, seemed at first to repel sympathy. He
is a young man of a morbid temperament, early
estranged from the careless banquet of life by the sad
death, or suicide, of his father; and gradually separat-
ing himself from the thought and tenor of his sur-
roundings. The age of peace into which he is born
seems to him an age of falsehood, everything in his
world is out of joint.
K
146
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
‘Peace sitting under her olive, and slurring the days gone by,
When the poor are hovelled and hustled together, each sex, like swine,
When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie;
Peace in her vineyard-yes-but a company forges the wine.'
He is sick of the Hall and the Hill, when suddenly
the family from the big house return, and with them
Maud, the daughter of the home. He falls in love
with her from the first; we know that from the
moment he begins to protest.
is always an attempt at self-deceit.
Love's first emotion
'Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,'
he finds her; but when he takes care to insist on the
wholeness of his heart, we can see the hidden wound.
And so when he meets her, he bows, and thinks her
proud. He is already troubled at her want of notice
for him. He is poor, he knows it, and she is rich;
and he consoles his need of her with a smug reflection.
'Maud, you milkwhite fawn, you are all unmeet for a wife,
You have but fed on the roses and lain in the lilies of life.'
But he hangs about the hall, nevertheless, and when
he hears her sing, he is aflame. Her exquisite face
and wild voice claim him altogether; he can keep his
secret from himself no longer. He meets her, and
she makes him
'Divine amends
For a courtesy not return'd.'
Now he is given over to his passion; but he cherishes
it chiefly for its delicious melancholy. It is a comfort
to him to nurse his solitude and be sorry for his
weakness.
'Ah! What shall I be at fifty,
Should Nature keep me alive,
If I find the world so bitter
When I am but twenty-five?'
MAUD
147
And yet, if she could love him, he thinks, her smile
might make the bitter sweet. This is the very
ecstasy of love: an unhealthy, effeminate passion, re-
joicing in the analysis of its morbidity. It only needs
jealousy to complete its misery; and jealousy comes
to its aid. He sees her with another-
'A lord, a captain, a padded shape,
A bought commission, a waxen face,
A rabbit mouth that is ever agape.'
And the pain gathers at his heart.
But in his most
contemptible moment he feels that he is to be de-
spised.
'Ah for a man to arise in me,'
he cries,
'That the man I am may cease to be!'
Suddenly his jealousy seems ungrounded.
He meets
her he kisses her hand: he is happy for one moment.
The next he is despondent; her brother has scorned
him, cut him
'With a stony British stare,'
and the sensitive temperament glows with indigna-
tion. There follows a reaction, for he tells her of
his love. She encourages him, and his world is May.
'Go not, happy day,
From the shining fields,
Go not, happy day,
Till the maiden yields.
Rosy is the West,
Rosy is the South,
Roses are her lips,
And a rose her mouth.'
Then, like a blight on their love, the brother returns
to the hall and finds Maud and her lover in the
garden. There is a heated discussion, and the
148
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
brother strikes him before the other man, the lord
of whose suit he was afraid. A duel follows, and the
brother falls with the generous cry, The fault was
mine.' The lover rushes to the Breton coast to feed
his sorrow with memory. Remembrance eats into
his brain; and that way madness lies.
In impo-
tent frenzy he cries out to the world around him;
everything human is hateful to him. But with the
end the morbid spirit passes. He becomes manlike
again. Like the hero of 'Locksley Hall' he turns
once more to the life of action, to the interests of his
country, the glory of prowess, and
'The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire
The weird storm and stress of the ravings are dramatic
beyond anything that Tennyson has clothed in more
dramatic form. It is strange that a writer, who could
throw himself so prodigally into the unrestrained
emotion of his character, should not have succeeded
more fully in his attempts towards stage-drama. The
ghastly horror of the lines that follow can scarcely be
matched :
'O me, why have they not buried me deep enough?
Is it kind to have made me a grave so rough,
Me, that never was a quiet sleeper?
Maybe still I am but half dead;
Then I cannot be wholly dumb ;
I will cry to the steps above my head,
And somebody, surely, some kind heart will come
To bury me, bury me
Deeper, ever so little deeper.'
They are only the Philistine and the dilettante who
complain that such a subject is unfit for art.
Art
claims for her own every subject that she can illumine:
MAUD
149
the work only fails in art when it is content with a
sordid photography, or a smug, puritanical conceal-
ment that only serves to express what it would hide.
It is here that realism fails, on the one side; and on
the other, the pseudo-idealism, which is nothing but
a slavery to the conventional. No phase of life is
denied to art, if she bestows upon it her perfect work;
and the hand that would tear' Maud' from literature
can scarcely avoid the emasculation of 'King Lear.'
Another school of criticism, busying itself with
Maud,' has taken the poem to task for its uneven-
ness and its want of scheme; but blame like this
is grievously blind in its effort to be critical. For
the unevenness and the want of scheme in 'Maud'
are the very elements which constitute its dramatic
quality; the poem is uneven and restless because the
mind it pourtrays is restless. The sudden, un-
explained transitions from sentiment to sentiment
form the exact analysis of the morbid, uneasy mind,
groping after its own content. The critical foot-rule
cannot measure 'Maud,' finding so many cubits to be
added to its stature before it can attain artistic unity.
For it does attain artistic unity in its fearless present-
ment of unrest, in its perfect appreciation of the life
creeping on broken wing towards the cells of madness
and fear.
As an example of a very general estimate of 'Maud,'
it is interesting to observe the attitude adopted by Mr.
Edmund Clarence Stedman, in his appreciative review
of Tennyson's work in Victorian Poets.
He says:
"Maud," with its strength and weakness, has divided
public opinion more than any other of the author's
150
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
works. I think that his judicious students will not
demur to my opinion that it is quite below his other
sustained productions; rather, that it is not sustained
at all, but, while replete with beauties, weak and un-
even as a whole, and that this is due to the poet's
having gone outside his own nature, and to his
surrender of the joy of art, in an effort to produce
something that should at once catch the favour of the
multitude. 'Maud' is scanty in theme, thin in treat-
ment, poor in thought; but has musical episodes,
with much fine scenery and diction. It is a greater
medley than The Princess,' shifting from vague
speculations to passionate outbreaks, and glorying
in one famous and beautiful nocturne,--but all inter-
mixed with cheap satire, and conspicuous for affecta-
tions unworthy of the poet.'
<
The whole criticism, to our view, seems based on a
misconception of the character and aim of the poem.
The unevenness is the result of the dramatic study of
mental reaction, following the moods and caprices of
the subject. The poet has, indeed, 'gone outside his
own nature,' not in order to catch the favour of the
multitude, but to adopt with a singular fidelity the
instincts and emotion of a character altogether foreign
to his own. To compare Maud' with 'The Princess
is surely to miss the sense of proportion: the one is a
simple fairy tale, the other a study in morbid passion.
Mr. Stedman even seems to expect in such a study
the classic regularity and unbroken outline of some
calm elegy of resignation. Calmness, evenness,
sustained effort are not the excellences of 'Maud'; but
there are strength, intensity, and dramatic fervour to
MAUD
151
6
fill their place. And it is through these qualities that
'Maud' triumphs. But it has other beauties, too. The
study gives the artist his opportunity as well. He can
play not only the analyst, but the musician. Nocturne
and spring-song, dance and death-march follow one
another in swift procession. There is an alternation
of key for every change of temperament. It is this
harmony of matter and manner, and this dramatic
grasp on the subject that give Maud' its unique
position among Tennyson's works; for the poet here
takes a subject altogether unsympathetic, and by the
force of his art compels our sympathy. The hope and
the doubt, the pang and the passion, become personal
sensations as we read; we forget the unhealthy at-
mosphere in which the speaker moves, for we are
moving with him, living his life out by his side. To
compel the reader to this sympathy is to prove one's-
self a dramatist, and to be truly dramatic is to be a
true artist.
So viewed, 'Maud' rentains one of the most vivid
and artistic poems in the language.
It was always a favourite with the author, who
read it to Sir Frederick Pollock at Farringford, and to
the Brownings at Dorset Street, during the year of its
publication, and has since read many extracts from it
on different occasions.
The party at Dorset Street to whom Tennyson
read Maud on the 27th of September 1855 was com-
posed of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browng,
and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. While Tennyson was
reading, Rossetti made a pen-and-ink sketch of him,
which he subsequently re-copied. The original fell
152
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
into the hands of Robert Browning; the copy is still
preserved by Mr. Cosmo Monkhouse. The picture,
above which is written the first line of Maud,'
'I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood,'
represents Tennyson seated on a sofa, in a loose coat
and waistcoat, showing a plentiful shirt-front and a
black tie. His left hand grasps his foot, which is
curiously curled up; in his right he holds a very
small Maud.' The figure throws a heavy shadow on
the wall and the sofa.
(
A story is told of yet another reading of 'Maud,'
when Tennyson turned to a lady at his elbow in the
midst of the passage-
Birds in the high Hall-garden
When twilight was falling.
Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud,
They were crying and calling'-
<
with the question, 'What birds were calling?' The
lady, willing to justify her taste for poetry, replied:
'Nightingales, I imagine.' Ugh!' said the poet with
a shiver; 'what a cockney you are! Do nightingales
cry "Maud"? Certainly not. But rooks do: "Caw,
caw, caw, caw." It's very like it, at any rate.'
These rough little speeches were thoroughly charac-
teristic of the man; and within the same year Henry
Taylor recounts to his wife a very similar crudity.
They were discussing at Lady Harriet Ashburton's
the constancy of her friendship, the conversation
resulting from the attention that lady was bestowing
upon Tennyson. Sir Henry Taylor recalled a friend
(Professor Goldwin Smith) who, a year ago, had been
MAUD
153
the lion of her admiration, and wondered whether she
would forget the poet, as she seemed to have forgotten
her old friend. The discussion was growing warm,
when Tennyson interrupted it. By what you say
yourself,' he said, 'it appears that you don't show me
any particular favours."
(
But rougher than all these was his reputed reply to
the wife of a Richmond clergyman, who wrote him,
no doubt, an exasperating letter, begging him to
explain a certain passage in one of his poems, which
she had failed to understand. The answer came, brief
and brusque-
‘DEAR MADAM,
I merely supply poetry to the English
people—not brains.'
But his friends always understood that the rough
manner concealed a genuine geniality.
It was in the summer of the year of 'Maud' that
the University of Oxford conferred on Tennyson the
degree of D.C.L., and there is a story that tells how,
when the Laureate, with his rough, unkempt hair,
moved up the Sheldonian, an undergraduate from the
gallery asked him, with impressive earnestness, ‘Did
they wake and call you too early this morning?' And
Tennyson probably enjoyed the jest as much as any
one.
After the momentary outburst of dramatic passion
in Maud' Tennyson began to occupy himself with
calmer themes. He was already busy upon 'Idylls of
the King.' In 1857 he printed, for private circulation
only, Enid and Nimue,' which must have been one
6
154
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
of the first of the series, and presumably dissatisfied
its author. At any rate it was never issued to the
public, and during that year he published nothing.
His work, meanwhile, was pleasantly interrupted by
occasional visits from authors anxious to find in his
conversation some reflection of his work.
Bayard Taylor, 'who walked with him to the
Needles on a June afternoon in 1857, left the poet
with a lasting impression of the variety and spon-
taneity of his knowledge. Nathaniel Hawthorne
also encountered Tennyson, in company with Mr.
Woolner, at the Manchester Exhibition, the date of
their meeting being the 30th of July. Hawthorne,
with the true native touch of the American, was glad
to find the poet 'as un-English as possible.
softer, sweeter, broader, more simple than' an
American. Bayard Taylor carried from Farringford
a keen impression of his host's appearance. 'Tall and
broad-shouldered,' he found him, 'as a son of Anak,
with hair, beard, and eyes of Southern darkness.'
Prince Albert was an occasional visitor at Far-
ringford also, and on one occasion a new servant,
who opened the door to the Prince Consort when the
Tennysons were out, and had asked the visitor's
name, was horribly awed at finding that she was
quietly standing face to face with royalty!
Tennyson was very busy, however; and the friends
who came to see him brought the only interruption
he allowed to his work. The country people, says
Dobell, watching him from an admiring distance,
were 'amused at his bad hat,' but impressed with the
certainty that he was writing his poetry all the while
MAUD
155
he crossed and recrossed his lawn with the mowing-
machine. It was so, too, that the little boy of the
well-known anecdote pictured him, walking about
'making poets for the Queen,' under the stars.
So the next two years passed in the preparation
of the 'Idylls,' 1858 eliciting but one contribution
from his pen-an addition of two stanzas to the
'National Anthem' on the occasion of the marriage
of the Princess-Royal. The poet was busy on his
masterpiece. On June 22, 1858, he read to Arthur
Hugh Clough certain passages in 'Guinevere,' which
was now approaching completion. I hear,' wrote
FitzGerald to Professor E. B. Cowell, 'that Tenny-
son goes on with "King Arthur," but I have not
seen or heard of him for a long time.' In the follow-
ing year, however, his friends were to hear of him to
the fullest and most gratifying advantage. For in
1859 he published the 'Idylls of the King.'
CHAPTER VIII
IDYLLS OF THE KING
THE 'Idylls of the King,' the most characteristic and
perhaps the most permanent of Tennyson's contribu-
tions to English literature, have developed gradually,
as it were, from the smallest seed to the full flower of
poetry. The great English story, the unique romantic
charm of which had crossed the path of Dryden to be
intercepted by Sir Richard Blackmore, accompanied
Tennyson with its fascinations from his earliest youth.
'The Lady of Shalott,' published in the 1832 volume,
showed the poet's mind gradually stretching towards
its subject, on which it closed with a stronger hold
ten years later in Sir Galahad' and 'Morte d'Arthur.'
'The Lady of Shalott,' a lyric full of tone and colour,
as Tennyson's early lyrics were apt to be, gains
especial interest from the faint echo of the later epic
which it catches and preserves to us, like the first
essay of a mind in a dream as yet unrealised.
hopeless love of the Lady herself, the river journey
to towered Camelot, the loveless musing of Lancelot
over the body of the maiden dead for love of him—
all these things foreshadow the spirit and the mild
melancholy which characterise the Idylls' them-
selves. 'Sir Galahad,' with its rich and sumptuous
156
The
IDYLLS OF THE KING
157
decoration, its subtle variations of onomatopoeia, and
its mediæval atmosphere of Catholicism, suggested
a more accurate treatment than the theme finally
received. 'Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere'
contained another development of the subject, and
the Morte d'Arthur' carried the final plan past its
starting-point. Here the mind of the poet seems to
have fixed upon the subject and the manner of treat-
ment, and to have perceived the possibilities and
capacities of the Arthurian legend. It is a fragment-
a broken piece of that epic-'some twelve books'.
which his Everard had burned; but it is something
more than a faint Homeric echo, for in it the poet's
blank verse has assumed its individual manner, its
half-melancholy languor, its even, dreamy cadence,
and its haunting music. The germ of the 'Idylls'
has ripened into something tangible and definite.
(
The epic, as we have it, however, took time in its
growth. The original Idylls,' which appeared in
1859, were but four in number, 'Enid,' 'Vivien,'
'Elaine,' and Guinevere.' Three years later the
dedication was added, and in 1869 'The Coming of
Arthur,' 'The Holy Grail,' 'Pelleas and Etarre,' and
The Passing of Arthur.' In 1871 The Last
Tournament' appeared in The Contemporary Review,
and in 1885 Balin and Balan' was added to 'The
Round Table.' Subsequently 'Geraint and Enid'
was split into two parts, the first part being entitled
'The Marriage of Geraint,' the second, which begins
with the passage
(
'O purblind race of miserable men,'
retaining the old name of 'Geraint and Enid.'
158
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
This epic, although a gradual work, is best treated
as a single poem without respect to the date of its
component parts. For the gradual fusion of the
different divisions into a whole has given it its
essentially epic character, and welded the isolated
stories into a connected and progressive narrative,
moving from a definite starting-point to a clear and
distinct goal. It has lent to the history a sense of
unity and completeness so thoroughly defined that it
is impossible to treat any portion of the poem apart
from the rest, without missing its exact significance
and its place in the scheme. The 'Idylls' must be
studied in their entirety, if their intention is to be
properly understood.
The story of Arthur, as told in Tennyson's epic,
moves from the brightness of a spring morning,
through the burden and heat of the day, into the
pale twilight of a failure that is still illumined by
success.
The epic opens with the triumphant coming of
the King, and his marriage in the May morning,
when all the fields were bright with spring.
'The sacred altar blossomed white with May,
The Sun of May descended on their King.'
The air is full of the song of the feast, the clang of
battleaxe, and the clash of brand; the world is bright
with the hope of the fair beginners of a noble time,
for whom the older order changeth, yielding place to
new.'
(
The story then follows the fortunes and loves of
Arthur's best, the wooing of haughty Lynette, and
the victory of timid Enid-set over against each
IDYLLS OF THE KING
159
other as a clear and tender contrast; and the first
note of discord is struck in the tale of the harlot
Vivien and her poisoned whisperings, that left not
Lancelot brave, nor Galahad clean.' The sugges-
tion of sin ripens in the story of Elaine; where
Lancelot's guilty love for his Queen blinds him to
the pure self-effacing passion of the lily maid of
Astolat; and the final breaking up of the order is
traced from the quest of the Grail and the sin of
Lancelot to the last weird battle in the west, where
Arthur falls.
(
The first three books-The Coming of Arthur,'
'Gareth and Lynette,' and 'Geraint and Enid,' are
concerned with the rise and flower of the Round
Table, the remainder with its decadence. 'The
Coming of Arthur' stands as a prologue, as the
Passing' serves as an epilogue, to the whole epic,
which thus opens with the victorious march of Arthur,
his defeat of the Kings, and his marriage with Leodo-
gran's daughter Guinevere, whom he had loved from
the moment that he first saw her watching him from
the castle walls, though she had missed him.
In his manner of tracing the growth of Arthur's
prowess, and his hold upon his knights, Tennyson
differs so often from Sir Thomas Malory, that it
would be tedious to follow the separation step by
step. One characteristic change, however, claims
our attention. The proof of kingship, the drawing
of the sword from the anvil, which in the earlier
writer lends the main interest to The Book of
Merlin,' is discarded by Tennyson, who seeks with
characteristic taste a more picturesque and elfin
160
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
scene. For him there is a greater charm in the
Excalibur that rises from the bosom of the lake,
across which Arthur rows to take the mystic
sword, and read the twin legends 'Take me,' and
'Cast me away.' The element of mystery which
clothes the coming and the passing of Arthur makes
a special appeal to the imagination of the poet.
Merlin and the Lady of the Lake—
'Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,'
are there, and Merlin is ready with his riddling
rhyme-
'From the great deep to the great deep he goes.'
From this point the mystic side of the story melts
away there is pageantry and music, battleaxe and
brand, and the love-fortunes of the knights to follow.
Only as the realm breaks up in the quest of the Grail,
the world beyond, the world of mists and shadows,
closes about the Round Table anew. The touch is
delightfully the poet's own, and to this strange
half-seen environment, this entertainment of spirits
unawares, The Idylls' owe a great share of their
beauty and their power. But what is gain on one
side is loss on another. The dreamy mystery, which
enriches ‘The Idylls' as a poem, impoverishes them as
a history. The story of Arthur becomes an epic, but
a visionary epic: it ceases to be national, as it begins
to be world-wide.
There were two courses before the poet. On the
one hand, it was open to him to lend himself to
archæology, to burthen his shoulder with facts, and
give us, as nearly as might be, a faithful picture
IDYLLS OF THE KING
161
of
of the age he depicted :—an age of rapine and
ravishment, of lust and brute power, an iron age, with
selfishness and greed for its gods. The poem would
still have been an epic, and a national epic, but the
picture would have been repellent. Tennyson chose
the other course. He idealised the time, and deified
the man he gave us a blameless king in an age
chivalry, ruling a court, faulty in act, but pure in aim,
-a court set out of the world, yet vexed with the
trouble and sin from which no seclusion could insure
it. He chose the poem, and let the history go; and
it were hard to say that the result has not justified his
choice. There were dangers in the way, however,
-some scarcely to be avoided. The most serious.
danger was that affecting the character of the King
and his relation to his chivalry. Faultlessness, or all
but faultlessness, is in its very nature so greatly
wanting in warmth and colour, that it is traced less.
easily in its own manifestation than in its effect upon
its surroundings. In losing outline it loses strength,
And it is so with Tennyson's Arthur. His influence
and the influence of his oath are felt throughout the
poem; but the real, tangible presence of the King is
too little with us. We learn of him through the
things that others say of him, rather than through
the things he says himself. Once or twice he speaks,
but the words are cold and rhetorical. With a
saddened half-rebuke he stands by Elaine's bier, and
turns to Lancelot :
'After heaven, on our dull side of death,
What should be best, if not so pure a love
Clothed in so pure a loveliness?'
L
162
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
And to the knights, returned from the quest of the
Grail, his mind full of the mystery, his eyes half-
seeing things unseen, he speaks at length, telling them
that the King's part is not to follow wandering fires,
but to stay at home about his kingdom's business-
business in which he, too, has visions
In moments when he feels he cannot die,
And knows himself no vision to himself,
Nor the high God a vision, nor that One
Who rose again.'
Our nearest touch to Tennyson's Arthur, our
clearest sight of the integrity and god-like strength of
the King, however, are in the moments of his greatest
trouble his parting with Guinevere, and his passing
from his realm. The cold, white purity of the King,
who was ever virgin but for her, takes no passionate
farewell of the golden hair and imperial moulded
form: he stands above her like a recording angel
forced to bear witness against her to his pain.
Like
an icy rain of hail his words sweep down upon her, as
she lies at his feet :
'Liest thou here so low? ...
Well is it that no child is born of thee.
The children born of thee are sword and fire,
Red ruin and the breaking up of laws.
Better the King's waste hearth and aching heart
Than thou reseated in thy place of light,
The mockery of my people and their bane.'
It is all too pure, too rigid, too divine for the weak
womanhood of Guinevere: it is only when he pauses
that she can creep one pace nearer to him. And at
the end the King gives her her gleam of hope to
share with him :
IDYLLS OF THE KING
163
'Let no man dream but that I love thee still.
Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul,
And so thou lean on our fair father Christ,
Hereafter in that world where all are pure
We two may meet before high God, and thou
Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, and know
I am thine husband-not a smaller soul,
Nor Lancelot, nor another.'
So does the blameless king show most godlike when
most intensely man.
His last utterance, from the gloomy barge, as he
lies in the arms of the three queens, is instinct with
the prophecy of death, and is less a revelation of his
character than a hint of the future. The King has
done his work; the night of visions has come, and
he is no more a vision to himself. The old order,
which he changed at his coming, changes again with
his passing the change is natural and ordained, one
good custom must not, by the law of God, corrupt the
world:
'The whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.'
Bedivere, more manlike than his King, cries out for
the loss of the old order, for the barren board and
the scattered chivalry; but Arthur looks beyond
across the ages, and sees that all is good. And
even as his vessel grows to a speck upon the deep,
the new sun rises bringing the new year.
This is Tennyson's Arthur, not quite a king of
dreams and shadows, nor altogether a king of war
and conquest. There is something in him of the
manlike, much that claims his kinship to the gods.
He stands as a great, luminous background to the
story of his knights; as a wide, bright sky that shows
164
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
up against the breadth and brilliance of its purity the
darker shadows that move before it.
Of these the nearest to the spirit of the times, as
one may picture them, the wildest and the roughest,
is Geraint. He knows the weakness of womankind,
and is ready from the first breath of suspicion to
doubt the queen.
And doubting her, he fears for his
own Enid, lest the evil influence of the court should
overtake her too; and so he whips her off into soli-
tude, a prey to jealousy and fear. In him we get the
rude, uncultured mind, prone to suspect, unable to
fathom innocence, catching at every pretext for a
doubt. In him, too, we get the rough, wild spirit
that leaps to vengeance at the moment. He waits
in silence till Enid has reached the last strait of resist-
ance, and then he springs upon Earl Doorm and
shows no mercy. Once assured, he is as ready to
believe as before he was to doubt; henceforward he
will die rather than doubt. The man is an admirable
type of the mind that wants stability in itself; that
cannot live by faith, that must be given certainty by
sight, and, when once he has seen, believes.
Side by side with him, and in vivid contrast,
stands Gareth, the young knight eager to give up
rank and reputation for the quest of the right. His
modesty does not rebel against the humility of the
kitchen rather than be apart from Arthur he will
be a scullion in his service. Never was knight more
tried than Gareth throughout his ride with Lynette :
every doughty deed he does for her is met with scorn,
every service he shows her is repelled. And all the
while his courage is never shaken, nor his strength
IDYLLS OF THE KING
165
His is the
abated, till Death himself is overthrown.
enthusiasm of youth, and the modesty of greatness;
of all the knights of Arthur's court he shows the
fairest character. Galahad is divine, but more than
man; Lancelot is manlike, but less than knight;
Gareth has the enthusiasm of Pelleas without his
headstrong madness, the strength of Geraint without
his impatient jealousy. He stands at the beginning
of the 'Idylls' as a fair ensample of Arthur's knight-
hood at its best, before the evil days came or the
hours drew nigh in which his court could confess that
it took no pleasure in purity, and had lost the savour
of things lovely and of good report.
In solitude, apart, through the midst of the motley
crowd of good and bad, looking neither to the right
hand nor to the left, his eyes fixed on the lode-star
beyond him, Galahad moves across the epic, through
an atmosphere of mystery and simple holiness:
'And one there was among us, ever moved
Among us in white armour, Galahad.'
Begotten by enchantment, said some, living a life of
enchantment towards a mystic end, Galahad was with
the Round Table, but not of it. He seems to stand
surrounded by a halo of light from the moment when
first he sits in Merlin's chair, and the roof is riven,
and the beam of light breaks into the hall with the
Holy Grail stealing down it, to the last wild scene,
when the last far bridge springs into fire; and, amid
the shouts of all the sons of God, he passes like Elijah
into the beyond. There is no book of the 'Idylls'
so perfect in its scheme, so brilliant and retentive
in its imagery, as The Holy Grail.' There is no
166
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
passage in modern poetry, perhaps, more complete
in itself, more mystically vivid, than the scene of
Galahad's final passage into life. It is one of those
scenes that illustration would ruin, because it stands.
almost beyond the possibilities of pictorial art. It
reminds the reader of scenes in the Revelation, scenes
that the eye can picture in the air, but the hand cannot
fix upon the page. It is through the events that
surround him that Galahad lives to us; it is as though
the God he served flashed His glory around him, to
give the world an evidence of things hoped for, but
unseen. The simplest purity never reveals itself to
the eye; we learn what we know of it by stray
glimpses, which only tell us how little we under-
stand it after all. So it is with Galahad: he is an
influence rather than a life, a sentiment rather than
a revelation.
But at the end, when the rest return unsatisfied,
his absence brings with it a sense of something
achieved; for though his chair may desire him in
vain, they know that, beyond the limits of their ken,
they crown him otherwhere.'
<
At the opposite pole is Tristram, the embodiment
of a passion that is nearer to lust than to love.
He and his Isolt have drunk the love-potion, and are
henceforward lost to life and honour; they live only
for their passion. The Last Tournament' gives
final glimpse of the court before Guinevere's flight;
and the heart of Arthur's chivalry is mildewed. The
Tournament of the Dead Innocence is a travesty, a
poor mockery of the old honourable jousts. The King
is not there; but in his seat Lancelot, the false friend,
IDYLLS OF THE KING
167
sighs wearily, and sees the rules of the tourney broken,
and the custom of knighthood overset, while the meed
purity falls to Tristram, himself the falsest of them
of
all.
Then, in that sympathy of nature with the
event which Tennyson is so fond of exercising, the
thick rain falls, as the day closes in upon a scene of
discontent.
'Our one white day of Innocence hath past,
Though somewhat draggled at the skirt.'
Tristram passes from his triumph to his love; and
the scene between Tristram and Isolt is the nearest
approach to passion in the 'Idylls.' The love of
Lancelot and the Queen, usually hinted at rather than
expressed, glows into evidence in the farewell scene
in 'Guinevere'; but the fulness of the ruin of the
court is nowhere shown so clearly as in 'The Last
Tournament.' It is said that Tennyson changed the
wording in one passage in deference to the criticism
of his friends, who thought the passion too pro-
nounced; but the strength and suggestion of the
scene remain. Tristram's love is at love's lowest;
even in the presence of his Queen, with her hand in
his, he can put her far enough from him to imagine
her lost to him altogether, when once she has lost
the charm of her womanhood.
'May God be with thee, sweet, when old and gray,
And past desire !'
he says, and rightly enough Isolt answers that
Lancelot would have scorned to utter anything so
gross, even to the swineherd's malkin.
Such a scene
is well reserved for the final note in the descending
168
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
scale.
Almost unconsciously we compare the picture
of Tristram throwing the circlet about Isolt's neck—
'Thine Order, O my Queen ! . . .'
with that other picture of Percivale's sister girding the
sword-belt of her hair round Galahad's waist-
The
'I, maiden, round thee, maiden, bind my belt.'
Idylls' live through these contrasts, and
through them stand as a mirror of the knighthood of
every age.
In Pelleas we find another type. He is the
young enthusiast, who starts upon life believing it
full of beauty, and at the first sight of sin, at the first
experience of faithlessness, is maddened into unbelief
of everything. With a boyish eagerness worthy of
his name, 'Sir Baby,' he confides his hopes and fears
to Gawain, who under promise to win his lady for
the boy, succeeds in winning her for himself. And
Pelleas, who had believed him true and Ettarre pure,
is goaded into madness, into 'wrath and shame, and
hate and evil fame.'
Gawain, the reckless man of his world, is only a
note in the story: a note of irreverent selfishness-
that cares for nothing but its own pleasure, that
spends itself unprofitably, with a laugh at the vanity
of human wishes. Among the lesser figures that
complete the picture a few stand out in relief. Sir
Bors, the reverent knight whose thoughts lie too
deep for words, recedes within himself as the others
clamour of their quest of the Grail, and blesses him-
self with silence.
IDYLLS OF THE KING
169
""Ask me not, for I may not speak of it:
I saw it ;" and the tears were in his eyes.'
Modred, with the foxy face, is felt through the whole
story as an evil influence is felt, with a half perception
that ripens into certainty at the end. Bedivere, like a
faithful watch-dog, stands at the ingress and egress
of the poem, a type of the antique service that no
unfaithfulness in others can estrange. The first of
Arthur's knights, he is the last to leave him. His
very hesitation to cast away Excalibur has root in
the desire to preserve some memory of the King
that may keep his fame alive.
But the figure that holds the eye and attracts the
attention most keenly throughout the epic is the
figure of Lancelot. From the first he is the knight
that Arthur loves the best; it is he that is sent to
bring Guinevere to the King. From the first he is the
knight that strikes the fancy of the Queen herself; it is
he whom she notices in all the throng, and marks for
the goodliest. And throughout the history he
proves
himself the goodliest in prowess and in courtesy ; there
is never a word of his recorded that stands as a blot
upon his chivalry. In all but the one great failure
of his life he is a 'knight peerless'; and even that
failure cannot altogether separate him from sympathy.
Lancelot's failure is mainly the misfortune of cir-
cumstance. He is sent to bring the Queen to Arthur;
the Queen has already been attracted to him.
first impression produced upon her is accentuated by
contrast with the King; she cannot breathe in the
cold, white light of his purity: she wants warmth and
colour, which she finds in Lancelot. The way lies
The
170
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
so simply before him: and, from the first moment
of their understanding, their love becomes at once
the glory and the disgrace of Lancelot's life. It
nerves him to deeds of prowess, through all of which
he remains modest and unassuming.
he says,
'In me!'
'there dwells
No greatness save it be some far-off touch
Of greatness to know well I am not great.'
But it keeps him, too, from a truer and a purer love,
which was made to make him happy: it separates
him from Elaine. It keeps him from the Grail: it
grows into his life till it strangles every other ambi-
tion and every other yearning. The quest is not for
him. And at the end it sets him in battle against the
King. To trace Lancelot's life is to find him set,
much as the hero of a Greek drama, in the toils of
the gods who are too strong for him: a man, with
the noblest aims and aspirations, dragged by the
force of circumstance into acts entirely alien to his
nature. Ever and again the good spirit breaks out
in him : at Elaine's death, at the regathering of the
knights from the quest of the Grail—in a word, after
the two great proofs of his failure-he knows himself
for what he is, and loathes his baser nature. But
temptation is there: Guinevere is still beside him :
he cannot turn back. Fate and a woman hold him,
and wreck his life between them.
The women of the 'Idylls' claim less attention
than the men: but they, too, have diversity and
character. Lynette, haughty and imperious; Enid,
meek and lovable; Elaine, tender to weakness;
IDYLLS OF THE KING
171
Ettarre, the obdurate, self-conscious beauty; Isolt,
fiery and passionate each is a type and an example.
Two stand out more conspicuously-Guinevere and
Vivien.
The odds against the Queen are overwhelming :
her life is warped from its beginning. She is a
woman made for love, with a warmth of passion in
her veins, which must be satisfied. Mated to Lance-
lot she would have been constant, and would have
passed for pure: wedded to the King she is starved
for lack of love, and her womanhood forces her to
seek satisfaction outside the limits of her honour.
She never understands Arthur: his thoughts and
ways are inaccessible to her she moves upon a lower
level of aim and intellect. There are thousands
now-such women:' the marriage of ill-assorted
minds has no better illustration than in the life of
Camelot. She only needed to be shown the King's
love she could not take it on faith. When at last
he proves to her the depth and strength of it, and she
knows that after all her faithlessness he still loves her,
she is satisfied. She has seen his love: it has been
proved she understands him now.
'Ah my God,
What might not I have made of thy fair world,
Had I but loved thy highest creature here?
It was my duty to have loved the highest :
It surely was my profit had I known:
It would have been my pleasure had I seen.
We needs must love the highest when we see it,
Not Lancelot, nor another.'
Of Vivien it is hard to speak; for the poet,
striving to keep his subject within limits, has outlined
172
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
rather than expressed her.
And the character is
better outlined: it scarcely repays study. She stands,
of course, at the lowest point that womanhood can
reach, not only wanton, but revelling in her wanton-
ness; not only unclean, but unwilling to leave any
name cleaner than her own. The picture of the
court would have been incomplete without her, and
the poet has sketched her with unquestionable taste
and reticence. She strikes, too, the first note of
unfaith: scandal is ever dearest to those with whom
scandal is most concerned. Even Arthur is not
spared, her defaming and defacing leave
'Not even Lancelot brave, nor Galahad clean.'
But to consider the characters employed in the
'Idylls' is to make a very insufficient survey of the
subject. The interaction of character on character,
and the general conduct and progress of the epic,
might be profitably treated in a volume of itself.
Such things as can be said here must be said
concisely and in brief.
The story rests its epic unity on its confinement
within the limits of the fortunes of Arthur. It starts
upon the morning on which he takes up his kingdom,
and ends with the night on which he lays it down.
The early chapters of the story describe the rise, the
later chapters the fall, of the Round Table. But the
poet has been attracted very little to the period of
ascendency a few lines in 'The Coming of Arthur,'
and a stray allusion here and there in the following
poems, are all that he gives to the beginnings of the
Kingdom; he is mainly interested in its ruin. And
IDYLLS OF THE KING
173
his treatment of the subject is at once interesting and
characteristic.
In Tennyson's narrative the failure of Arthur is
traced to two very diverse passions which enter the
court and destroy its chivalry,-a religious passion,
which spends itself in the quest of the Grail, and a
physical passion, which starts with the love of
Lancelot and Guinevere, and ends in the prevalence
of that loathsome opposite' of the purity and
innocence which the King had imagined to be the
heart and soul of his knighthood.
These two
(
passions, standing at the antipodes of motive, work
together to the same end, and unite in the destruction
of Arthur's scheme. The quest of the Grail has
been so generally regarded as the purest, most
single-minded outcome of the age, that Tennyson's
use of it is the more singular and the more acute.
The light in which he regards the quest is essentially
the light in which he himself walks; his attitude
towards it is the attitude most characteristic of the
man. The spirit of Tennyson's poetry is a spirit of
calm, reasoning progress,-as fully averse, on the
one hand, to a lifeless stagnation, as, on the
other, to an untimely assertion of right. The
happy life appears to him to lie in the calm
pursuit of the
'One far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves ;'
the order of the universe is an order slowly broad-
ening down
'From precedent to precedent.'
Uor M
174
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Μηδὲν ἄγαν might be set as a motto upon his
title-page.
It is this spirit that prompts Tennyson to trace
the downfall of Arthur's court from the moment
when it seeks excess; and excess is sought at its
poles. At the one limit stands the religious ecstasy,
at the other the sensual; each an excess, and each.
equally fatal. Arthur's knights, as Tennyson pictures
them, were straining after something outside the
bounds of their knighthood in the pursuit of their
visionary Grail: they were losing the substance of
their life in following its shadow. The excess of
ecstasy which religion brought them was as unfitted
to their even purity and simple rectitude, as the most
sensuous excess of ecstasy which could weaken them
through love.
The more eager they became, the
greater was their failure. For it was not the fiery
Lancelot, spurring on after the vision, who saw the
Grail in a perfect revelation; but Galahad, whose
whole quest was calm and unimpassioned, who
set aside all fever of desire, and sought the sign
with the easy confidence of virtue. The other
knights were not made for visions, nor apt for
heavenly revelation ; their lives were lives of
knightly deeds, which religious ecstasy could only
warp from their straight course. It was this taking
of too much upon themselves that helped to ruin
their kingdom; this tendency to presumption and
prematurity, which was rooted in an unwarranted
self-confidence.
On the other side was the physical excess-the
IDYLLS OF THE KING
175
growth of impure love; and the two excesses com-
bine naturally and with ease. A discontent with his
environment, an unsettled yearning towards some-
thing undefined, a curiosity to learn all the secrets
that life has to tell these emotions, moving together,
throw the man into either extreme,―at one moment
into an unhealthy religious enthusiasm, at the other
into a passionate outburst of sensuality.
The two
extremes have root in the same emotion, and are
approached by the same series of desires. But the
one is apt to pass for virtue, the other for vice. In
fact, both are vices; both throw the mind off its
balance, and turn its course from that middle way
which is the safest. On occasion the two ecstasies
combine, and Lancelot, seeking the Grail and re-
membering Guinevere the while, is at his wildest,
most unmanageable moment. The two passions
struggle in him, and make his mind a hell. The
preservation of the healthy mind in the healthy body
is Tennyson's creed, no less in the 'Idylls' than
elsewhere. Whatever tends to throw the mind into
an extreme is unhealthy, and so unmanly. The
King himself, the strongest and truest of them all,
was not of the Quest. He saw that his duty held
him at home, and he continued in the ordinary round
of his life, while his knights were following the false
fires. The visions of his life were stronger-and not
less beautiful because they were free of passion.
For Tennyson's true knight and happy warrior is
the man who, not being passion's slave, lives on the
highest level of striving manhood, moving onward
176
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
to a spiritual city, which is only to be won by the
endurance of a man and the purity of a God.
'For a man is not as God,
But then most godlike, being most a man.'
Thy promise, King' & Arthur glancing at him
Go, theyne ! & act hearers were amazed
But on the damseli fricheed, shame, bude, wheth
Slew the may-white.

Vis
FACSIMILE OF Ms. from GARETH And lynetTE.'
CHAPTER IX
FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS
THE first four Idylls, 'Enid,' 'Vivien,' 'Elaine,' and
'Guinevere,' which appeared in 1859, were considered
at the time rather as four distinct studies of female
character than as the portion of an incomplete epic.
Taken by themselves, the character-study would
naturally seem to be the most emphatic reason for
their existence; it is only as they fall into their places
in the entire work that the women sink into the
background, and the history of the Round Table
grows into prominence. But this growth was needed
to lend the epic its full importance, and the 'Idylls,'
as they first appeared, bore a less urgent claim to
recognition than their completion has earned them.
They stood as four separate, and in part unconnected,
poems, circling round four diverse women. That
their period and environment were the same was no
evidence of unity in the work: they were no more
parts of a whole than were Adeline,' 'Margaret,'
'Isabel,' and 'Lilian.' This incompletion explains a
lack of enthusiasm in their reception. It is easy to
be wise when the event has passed, and to insist that
the critic should have seen the significance of the
movement, and understood that these first poems
M
<
178
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
6
were only the germ of a full and proportioned epic.
But the gift of foresight is rare; and the 'Idylls'
met with no very expectant reception. FitzGerald
turned from them to look back nearly twenty years
with the retrospect of regret, and bewail to W. H.
Thompson the loss of some of Tennyson's earlier
work which had been destroyed in the London days
-no doubt, during the process of selection which in-
sured the 1842 volumes from failure. 'I wish,' he said,
I had secured more leaves from that old "Butcher's
Book," torn up in old Spedding's rooms in 1842, when
the press went to work with, I think, the last of old
Alfred's best.' It required time and completion to
prove that it was only with the appearance of the
'Idylls' that 'Alfred's best' had matured; and the
momentary dissatisfaction was also due in part to a
change in the poet's attitude and utterance. The
public mind likes to fix upon some obvious trait or
mannerism in an author, to establish that trait as his
characteristic, and to test every new work in search
of it. If the trait is present, the work is worthy of
the author; if there is a change, he is declining.
This popular estimate is, of course, founded upon
an absolute fallacy. It presupposes in every author
the faculty of finding at the outset the medium in
which he works most successfully, and the subjects
most congenial to his talent-a faculty which is
scarcely ever present to the young writer. It is
only through the experience which is built of less
successes that the author passes to his own peculiar
triumph. To regard the smaller achievements as
measures for the larger is to lose all sense of per-
spective and proportion. It fared so with Tennyson.
FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS
179
His mellifluous lyrics and tender ballads had led the
public to expect of him a charm of sound that disre-
garded sense; a voice, as it were, of a singer heard
in the distance across a summer lawn, the words lost
amid the space of flowers and fruit that lay between.
'In Memoriam' struck a new note, deeper, and with
a longer resonance; but the true chord was not found
yet. 'Maud' burst out into a fresh melody, and
assumed a dramatic movement; the poet was nearer
his own element by now. In the 'Idylls' the true
harmony was developed. There was dramatic force
and dramatic progress, together with a thoroughly
keen insight into character, and the story was
told in a metre which was essentially the poet's own.
Tennyson's blank verse, gradually growing in depth
and roundness, attained in the 'Idylls' a deep-
mouthed music which is even Homeric. With an
unbroken melody it combines a masculine strength,
which peculiarly fits it for the medium in which an
epic should unfold itself. It has music without
effeminacy, strength without harshness; and, above all,
it never grows monotonous. It is the metre in which
Tennyson has done his best and most individual
work, and the failure of his imitators to catch his
characteristic melody is a proof that he has brought
into literature a music which is all his own. But it
was not the music his critics expected of him, and
the appreciation was not immediate. Later, in their
complete form, the 'Idylls' were to be recognised
as Tennyson's most characteristic work. And in this
connection it is pleasant to recall the story of the
old Breton landlady, who, when the poet was ending
his stay under her roof, refused to tender him any
180
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
bill, or to accept any gratuity, since he was the man
who sang so beautifully of 'Our King Arthur.'
Two slighter poems appeared in the same year
as the 'Idylls.' In The Times for May 9th, 1859,
over the signature T.,' Tennyson printed a copy
of verses called 'The War,' written as an inspiration
to the Volunteer movement. It is a bluff, blustering
bit of stormy music.
'There is a sound of thunder afar,
Storm in the South that darkens the day,
Storm of battle and thunder of war,
Well, if it will not roll our way.
Storm! Storm! Riflemen, form!
Ready, be ready to meet the storm!
Riflemen, Riflemen, Riflemen, form !
Form, be ready to do or die!
Form in Freedom's name and the Queen's!
True, that we have a faithful ally,
But only the Devil knows what he means.
Form! Form! Riflemen, form!
Ready, be ready to meet the storm!
Riflemen, Riflemen, Riflemen, form!'
(
His other contribution was 'The Grandmother's
Apology,' afterwards renamed 'The Grandmother,
which appeared in Once a Week, with an illustration
by Sir J. E. Millais. The Grandmother' has the
quiet religious charm which gives distinction to so
many of Tennyson's character sketches; it is resigned
without being didactic, enjoying all the easy faith of
the simple-minded. The old grandmother, as her
memory travels back, feels her dead sons about her in
the kitchen, loses all sense of time and loss, and looks
out towards her own end with restful expectation. It
is a peaceful monotone in the twilight of life, beautiful
with the beauty of a calm work perfected. Sir J. E.
FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS
181
Millais' design illustrated the subject satisfactorily.
Before an open window, with flowers beyond, stands a
plain table, on which lies an open Bible. The old
lady sits to the right of the picture, her head pillowed
in an arm-chair. Annie is at her feet, with her left
hand between the old lady's; a cat laps milk in a corner.
It is a domestic picture of unbroken tranquillity.
The 'Idylls' were scarcely published when Tenny-
son was out of England, travelling in Portugal with
Mr. F. T. Palgrave, afterwards Professor of Poetry
at Oxford. They visited Vigo, Lisbon, and Cintra,
and spent some time at the monastery of da Cortica.
They also took a natural and especial pleasure in
wandering about Joao de Castro's garden of the
Perrha Verde, and in sitting by the fountain which
marks the spot where Camoens read the first cantos of
his 'Lusiad' to the king. It was a hurried visit, but
it left pleasant memories, some of which were grace-
fully collected into a short paper, written by Mr. F.
T. Palgrave for a periodical called Under the Crown.
His account makes further mention of a bull-fight, at
which the travellers were present: a bloodless one
by-the-bye-the poets were indisposed to brutality.
It was intended, we are informed by Professor
Palgrave himself, that the journey should be continued
to Cadiz ; but at Lisbon Tennyson was taken ill; and
the travellers, therefore, returned to England.
As
some recompense for the disappointment, Tennyson
took his friend to Cambridge and showed him round
the Colleges.
In the autumn of the same year, while the Tenny-
şons were entertaining Dean Stanley in the Isle of
182
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Wight, a curious little controversy was stirring at
Cambridge around the Laureate's reputation. A
bust of Tennyson had been executed by Mr. Woolner
and presented to Trinity College; and a question
arose as to the position in which it might most fitly
be placed. Tennyson's warmest admirers wished
it set in the Library, a room hitherto devoted
exclusively to portraits and busts of men whose
reputation was finally assured. This was declared
by an opposing party to be too high an honour for
any living head, and these dissentients eventually
carried the question. The bust was placed in the
vestibule, whence it was subsequently removed into
the Library at a date when Tennyson's position
seemed irrevocably secure. FitzGerald had his
customary comment on the situation.
'I read, or
was told,' he wrote to W. H. Thompson, 'they
wouldn't let old Alfred's bust into your Trinity.
They are right, I think, to let no one in there (as it
should be in Westminster Abbey) till a hundred
years are past; when, after too much admiration
(perhaps), and then a reaction of undue dis-esteem,
men have settled into some steady opinion on the
subject; supposing always that the hero survives so
long, which of itself goes far to decide the question.
No doubt Alfred Tennyson will do that.' There is
a ring of sincerity in the last words which goes far to
condone many little instances of distrust and discon-
tent which mar FitzGerald's admiration for his friend.
Meanwhile Tennyson's genius was trying a new
and not altogether sympathetic field. He seems
to have distrusted his achievement in the Idylls,'
FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS
183
and so to have made a sudden descent from chivalry
to the cares and problems of nineteenth century life.
The reaction was indeed complete; for, from his
study of the highly nurtured circle, wearing fine
raiment in kings' houses, he swung out into the
contemplation of humble mercantile life, contending
with petty difficulties and harassed by inconsequent
trials. The next few years found him busy upon
Sea Dreams,' 'Enoch Arden,' and 'The Northern
Farmer'; and—with a change of view which was
not actually a change of spirit-upon 'Aylmer's
Field.' These poems argue a curious restlessness in
the taste of the writer: he seems uncertain still of
the subjects most congenial to him, and the change
is not an improvement. The true spirit of Tennyson
was not framed of such slight elements as 'Sea
Dreams' and 'Enoch Arden.' His delicate touch
and his sensibility were squandered and ill-spent
among the sordid seaside lodgings, or the low
fishermen's huts upon the beach. Tennyson has
lacked the delicate art of M. François Coppée, when-
ever he has approached subjects which lack beauty
in themselves. In trying to adorn the scene he has
obliterated its characteristic features. He has had no
keen dramatic insight into a sordid situation: his art
is thrown away on such coarse canvases. He felt this
himself after a few attempts, and returned to his
chivalry again. But for fully five years from the
appearance of the first four 'Idylls' Tennyson passed
through an interesting period of unsettlement, which
requires at least a passing survey.
The first of these poems of the reaction was 'Sea
184
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Dreams,' which appeared in Macmillan's Magazine
for January 1860. As is the wont of the first step in
a change, it sprang at once to the antipodes of its
predecessors. In none of the succeeding poems of
this period was Tennyson occupied with such a
narrow and uninspiring theme. 'Sea Dreams' is the
story of a city clerk, who, trusting the word of a
man more influential than himself, throws all his
savings into a single venture, and is ruined. The
whole poem is occupied by a midnight conversation
between him and his wife, in which she pleads, at
first unsuccessfully, but at last to his persuasion, for
his forgiveness of the man who has ruined them.
The two have dreamed in the early night, and the
recital of their two dreams forms the theme round
which the question of forgiveness groups itself. It
is little lesson in long-suffering, simple and un-
affected as its surroundings, but in its very simplicity
undramatic. The poet has not lost himself in his
characters both alike talk with an equal fluency
of phrase. The clerk recounts his dream with a
picturesque precision; his wife tells hers with the same.
warmth and proportion of colour. The poet is speak-
ing all the while: we never forget that. But at the
same time he speaks to such purpose: the poem is rich
in phrases which have become a part of our literature.
'And silenced by that silence lay the wife,
Remembering her dear Lord who died for all,
And musing on the little lives of men,
And how they mar this little by their feuds.'
Or again :
'Trusted him with all,
All my poor scrapings from a dozen years
Of dust and deskwork.'
FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS
185
Or even more notably, the lines quoted in a leading
case in 1872 by the Attorney-General:-
'I stood like one that had received a blow:
I found a hard friend in his loose accounts,
A loose one in the hard grip of his hand,
A curse in his God bless you.
Read rascal in the motions of his back,
And scoundrel in his supple-sliding knee.'
It is full of gems, this little poem, full of perfect
phrases and flawless descriptions: but there is too
much art for the subject. The humble theme is too
delicately decorated: Tennyson is not occupied with
a perfectly sympathetic theme.
He had returned much more nearly to his own in
'Tithonus,' a poem which Thackeray won from him
for The Cornhill Magazine of February 1860. It was
a great pride to the editor, his own daughter tells us,
to have secured this poem, and he might indeed be
proud of publishing a masterpiece so exquisitely
fashioned and polished. 'Tithonus,' which in the
original opened a little differently—
'Ay me! Ay me! the woods decay and fall,'
મ
is not only touched with Tennyson's richest colour, it
has also a distinct place in his work as an utterance
of his favourite creed. Μηδὲν ἄγαν is once more its
motto. The immortality which Tithonus desired
turns to ashes in his mouth: he is sick of life, who
cannot die.
But
'The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts,'
and the boon he craved of them turns to a curse.
He had taken too much upon himself: Time brought
186
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
in its revenge. It is in the middle way of life and
death that true happiness must lie.
(
In 1861 Tennyson was silent, except for a copy of
verses, The Sailor Boy,' published in Miss Emily
Faithfull's Victoria Regia at Christmas. It reads as
though it had been written at sea; indeed it probably
was, for in the early autumn of that year Tennyson and
his wife were travelling on the Continent.
In July
Arthur Hugh Clough started, a dying man, to seek a
new lease of life among the Pyrenees, and here he
met the Laureate and Mrs. Tennyson. It was during
this journey that Tennyson wrote In the Valley of
Cauteretz.' For here, thirty-two years before, he and
Arthur Hallam had passed in their exciting expedi-
tion to the revolutionists; and here, during that time,
he had conceived the notion of 'Enone.' It was the
sight of the Pyrenees and their scenery that suggested
the description of Ida. At this second visit with
Clough he recalled the first journey with a painful
pleasure, and talked freely with his friend upon the
subject. In Clough's diary for September 7th, he
recounts how he had walked with Tennyson to 'a
sort of island between two waterfalls, with pines on
it, of which he retained a recollection.' It had, more-
over, furnished him with a simile in 'The Princess.'
The old days came back to the poet and the old sen-
sations revived, as they will under the influence of
scenery which has been forgotten in the interval.
'All along the valley, while I walked to-day,
The two and thirty years were a mist that rolled away;
For all along the valley, down thy rocky bed,
The living voice to me was as the voice of the dead,
And all along the valley, by rock and cave and tree,
The voice of the dead was a living voice to me.
FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS
187
This was in September, and two months later Arthur
Hugh Clough died at Florence. The valley of Cau-
teretz must, from that day, have had a dual message
for Tennyson.
6
Towards the end of 1861 Helen's Tower' was
privately printed by Lord Dufferin. The thin quarto
pamphlet, in which it first appeared, bears on the
title-page a steel engraving of the tower, and the
next page has the following statement, printed in
illuminated characters :-
xx day of November MDCCCLX
This day at 3 of ye clock did I, Catherine Hamilton,
christen this Tower by ye name, style, and title of
HELEN'S TOWER.
CATHERINE HAMILTON.
Whereof are we ye witnesses :
GEORGINA DE Ros.
CAROLINE ELIZ. A. Bateson.
A. M. DE LA CHEROIS CROMMELIN.
FRANCES C. FITZGERALD DE ROS.
BLANCHE A. G. FITZGERALD DE ROS.
HELEN SELINA DUFFERIN.
ARCHIBALD HAMILTON.
THOMAS VERNER.
S. D. CROMMELIN.
THOS. BATESON.
DE ROS.
DUFFERIN AND CLANEBOYNE.
RICHARD KER.
The book contains two poems, both unsigned. The
first is entitled, 'To my dear Son, on his twenty-first
birthday, with a Silver Lamp,' and is headed by the
quotation Fiat Lux,' and dated June 21, 1847. The
second is Tennyson's Helen's Tower.' On the last
page, again illuminated, is another little manifesto.
On Wednesday, October 23, 1861,
Helen's Tower was finished, and the flag hoisted by us.
HELEN M'Donnell.
HARRIOT HAMILTON.
188
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
The copy of the pamphlet in the British Museum has
in manuscript on the pink paper cover: 'Given to me
by Lord Dufferin. R. S. TURNER.'
In the following year the 'Idylls' appeared in
a new edition, prefaced by the dedication to the
Memory of the Prince Consort: and on the first of
May the 'Ode' sung at the opening of the Inter-
national Exhibition was printed, and incorrectly
printed, in most of the newspapers. A month later
Fraser's Magazine published an emended copy.
The next year-the year in which Milnes was
created Lord Houghton, was equally uneventful.
'The welcome to Alexandra' and the 'Attempts at
Classic Metres in Quantity' were the Laureate's only
publications in 1863. The 'Welcome' was originally
printed as a four-page sheet, and sold in the crowd on
the seventh of March, the day on which the Princess
landed in England. It bore the imprint of Edward
Moxon, and is now, in its original form, an extremely
rare acquisition. The first draft is without five of the
most spirited lines; the passage
'Rush to the roof, sudden rocket, and higher
Melt into stars for the land's desire!
Roll and rejoice, jubilant voice,
Roll as a ground swell dash'd on the strand,
Roar as the sea when he welcomes the land,'
being a later addition. Thackeray gave a humorous
picture of the poet, welcoming the Princess, in The
Cornhill Magazine' for 1853. 'I would respectfully
liken his Highness,' he said, 'to a giant showing a
beacon torch on a windy headland. His flaring torch
is a pine-tree, to be sure, which nobody can wield but
FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS
189
himself. He waves it: and four times in the mid-
night he shouts mightily, "Alexandra!" and the Pontic
pine is whirled into the ocean, and Enceladus goes
home.' It is a graphic caricature.
(
The Attempts at Classic Metre,' skilful but not
very interesting successes, appeared in The Cornhill
Magazine in December.
The following year is much more noteworthy.
Tennyson's work in 1864 began with his Epitaph
on the Duchess of Kent, which is inscribed on
Theed's statue at Frogmore.
'Long as the heart beats life within her breast
Thy child will bless thee, guardian mother mild,
And far away thy memory will be blest
By children of the children of thy child.'
These lines were also printed in the Court Journal
for March 19, 1864, and are, perhaps, inferior to but
one of his epitaphs, the lines on Sir John Franklin.
But it is the 'Enoch Arden' volume which renders
the year considerable. Besides The Grandmother,'
'Sea Dreams,''The Sailor Boy,' and the 'Attempts
at Classic Metre,' the book, dedicated, in a tender
poem, to his wife, contained three new and important
pieces-Enoch Arden,' 'Aylmer's Field,' and the
'Northern Farmer' (old style). This was the chief
and last achievement of the Laureate's reactionary
period, and the poems showed a return, gradual but
evident, to his natural manner. For while 'Sea
Dreams' stand almost in a class by itself, Aylmer's
Field' recurs rather obviously to the manner of 'Dora'
and the early Idylls, and 'Enoch Arden' separates
itself still further from the uninviting life of a city
190
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
clerkship. It draws nearer to the world of adven-
ture, of 'moving accidents by flood and field,' of
shipwreck and desolation. It possesses, too, one
strange gleam of mystery which frees the poem from
a bondage to the obvious. It is a return to nature
and to art. But neither this poem, nor 'Aylmer's
Field,' are really representative of Tennyson's work.
Both have one failing in common: they set them-
selves to tell a story, without having a sufficiently
strong story to tell. Aylmer's Field' is the history
of a thwarted love, warped by the pride of parents,
and turned at last into a disastrous issue. Neither
the characters nor the plot have novelty. The one
bold effort of the poem is the recital in verse of a
funeral sermon, based on the text, 'Your house is left
unto you desolate.' This is a strong and unaccus-
tomed experiment, which finds vent in a vigorous
piece of denunciatory rhetoric. It is effective as a
tour de force, but its length sets it somewhat out of
proportion to the rest of the story. The conclusion is
overweighted by the massiveness of its oratory. The
story of 'Aylmer's Field' was supplied to Tennyson
by Mr. Woolner, and it is characteristic of his manner
of work that he refused to be satisfied with a bare
outline, but demanded from his friend a lengthy
relation of all the incidents.
The story of Enoch Arden' is equally simple.
Two fisher-lads love the same girl: Enoch wins her,
Philip remains solitary. Enoch goes to sea, and his
vessel is lost; after a while, Annie, his wife, marries
Philip. Then Enoch returns, and, learning the
truth, keeps his identity a secret till he finds he is

LADY TENNYSON,
After the picture by G. F. Watts, R.A,
Hoddock
Al p. 190
FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS
191
dying. The poem has been dramatised, but it can
scarcely have made a strong play; the situations
throughout are too inevitable. But in many respects
it makes a fine poem. It is overcrowded with detail:
every little domestic movement in the fishing-huts is
recounted with painful precision, every little step in
Annie's acceptance of Philip is traced with tender
solicitude. But it is animated by three strongly
drawn characters-Enoch, the rough uncultured
fisherman, amiable but not over sympathetic; Philip,
true, enduring, and a little insipid; Annie, a type
of simple, uninspired womanhood, incapable of
genuine passion and lasting faithfulness-leading
the life of a quiet, domestic animal, without spirit or
intellect. Each character is admirably drawn; and
the three move through a series of richly elaborated
scenes. The descriptive passages are in Tennyson's
happiest mood; here is a perfect picture of the little
village, contrasted with a stretch of tropic scenery on
Enoch's desolate island:
'Long lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm ;
And in the chasm are foam and yellow sands;
Beyond, red roofs about a narrow wharf
In cluster, then a moulder'd church; and higher
A long street climbs to one tall-tower'd mill;
And high in heaven beyond it a gray down
With Danish barrows; and a hazel-wood
By autumn nutters haunted, flourishes
Green in a cuplike hollow of the down.'
And then the contrast:
No sail from day to day, but every day
The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts
Among the palms and ferns and precipices;
The blaze upon the waters to the east ;
The blaze upon his island overhead ;
192
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
The blaze upon the waters to the west;
Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven;
The hollower-bellowing Ocean, and again
The scarlet shafts of sunrise, but no sail.'
And lastly there is the one little mystic touch,
curiously introduced into so ordinary a relation, by
which Annie is made to seek for an omen of Enoch's
presence by opening her Bible at random. She puts
her finger upon a text, and reads, 'Under the palm-
tree.'
dead.
Then she dreams of him, and believes him
It was the moment of Enoch's darkest hour
on the desert-island, the hour before his rescue. This
little touch-artificial, perhaps, but artistic-is pre-
cisely the touch of Tennyson; and it has more than
an artistic interest. It has its origin in a peculiar
action of the poet's own mind, which may best be
described in his own words. On the 7th of May 1874
he wrote as follows:
'I have never had any revelations through anæsthetics,
but a kind of waking trance (this for lack of a better name)
I have frequently had quite up from my boyhood, when
I have been all alone. This has often come to me through
repeating my own name to myself silently, till, all at once,
as it were, out of the intensity of the consciousness of
individuality, the individuality itself seemed to resolve and
fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused
state, but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the
surest, utterly beyond words, where death was an almost
laughable impossibility. The loss of personality (if so it
were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life. . . . I
am ashamed of my feeble description. Have I not said the
state is utterly beyond words? '
One of these trances Tennyson describes in In
Memoriam' (xcv.), a passage the significance of which
FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS
193
is generally missed.
Here he recounts a vision of
the old home-life in the evening, when Arthur seems
to return to him, and commune with him.
'The living soul was flash'd on mine.'
He alludes to the sensation, too, in The Ancient
Sage,' in the lines beginning-
'More than once when I
Sat all alone.'
6
This tendency to trance is also the wellspring of
Tennyson's affection for mysticism; and his return to
the supernatural side of nature, in Enoch Arden,'
proved that he was releasing himself from his fetters.
The time was indeed come for a change of spirit.
For though something of Tennyson's domestic epoch
may have been due to his own misgivings, much
must have been inspired by the tendency of the
moment. The most individual author must be
influenced by the literary atmosphere in which he
finds himself; and at this time Tennyson was sur-
rounded by a very depressing fog of prejudice and
convention. Poetry had sunk to the most sordid and
valueless themes, to the loves of the curate and the
governess, and the inconsiderable annals of the pro-
vincial market-town. A pitiful prudery found every
strong and vital subject indiscreet, drooping its eye-
lids and raising its hands at a love which was not
blessed by the approval of parents, and sanctified by
the smile of the family breakfast-table.
It was
impossible to write in such an atmosphere without
contamination; and Tennyson's work suffered in the
natural course of suffering. It became, for the
moment, rigid, strait-laced, finical.
N
It never lost its
194
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
beauty of form or its perfection of finish; but it lost
momentarily the sense of the subjects worthiest itself
and the art it followed. Mr. Swinburne, replying a
little later to the attacks of his critics, summed up
the situation in a few vigorous phrases. 'With
English versifiers,' he said, 'the idyllic form is alone
in fashion. The one great and prosperous poet of
the time has given out the tune, and the hoarser
choir takes it up. His highest lyrical work remains
unimitated, being in the main inimitable. But the
trick which suits an idyll is easier to assume; and
the note has been struck so often that the shrillest
songsters can affect to catch it up. We have idylls
good and bad, ugly and pretty; idylls of the farm and
the mills; idylls of the dining-room and the deanery;
idylls of the gutter and the gibbet. If the Muse of
the minute will not feast with "gig-men" and their
wives, she must mourn with costermongers and their
trulls.' But the phase was only momentary.
revolution was in store for poetry. The sudden
and extraordinary success of Poems and Ballads in
1866 gave an impetus to the pre-Raphaelite school.
Swinburne and Rossetti hurried poetry breathless to
the opposite pole, to the fevered couch of Dolores
and the amorous arms of 'Faustine.' Once more the
excitement of emancipation leapt to extremes; once
more Tennyson stood in the middle way. But the
movement influenced him. After 'Sea Dreams' and
'Enoch Arden' he wrote 'Lucretius' and 'The Last
Tournament.' The bacchanalian frenzy and passion of
the pre-Raphaelites was softened by the natural calm
of Tennyson's own temperament; but there came to
A
FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS
195
(
him, too, an access of warmth and colour. And, with
the new spirit, he returned to his old self once more.
The other noteworthy poem in the 'Enoch
Arden' volume, The Northern Farmer,' is interest-
ing as an example of Tennyson's dramatic habit in
its most developed form. His poems in dialect are
as faultless and convincing as the late Mr. William
Barnes's verses in the Dorsetshire tongue, and in veri-
similitude they are more remarkable even than these,
since Mr. Barnes wrote only the language of a people
among whom he moved in daily intercourse. The
forerunner of 'To-morrow,' 'Owd Roä,' The North-
ern Cobbler,' and 'The Spinster's Sweet-'Arts,' can-
not be passed over without recognition. Trench was
particularly pleased with this first of the series.
Have you read,' he wrote to the Bishop of Oxford,
"The Northern Farmer," in Tennyson's last volume?
Every clergyman ought to study it. It is a wonderful
revelation of the heathenism still in the land, and
quite the most valuable thing in the book.' Not quite
the most valuable thing, perhaps; but certainly the
most human, the most vigorous, the most dramatic.
The first proofs of the volume went to press with
the title, 'Idylls of the Hearth,' a name which was
probably cancelled as being too closely allied to
'Idylls of the King.' These proofs, which are now in
the possession of Mr. J. Dykes Campbell, are full of
corrections in Tennyson's handwriting, 'The Northern
Farmer' having an unusually large number of emenda-
tions. Whole verses are interpolated, long passages cut
away. The final correction of the name must have
been reserved for the last revise, and the original title
196
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
has a particular interest from its indication of the tone
of Tennyson's mind at the moment. His muse was
seated by the hearth, dozing, as it were, in the genial
warmth of the fire. The awaking was to follow.
During this period Tennyson was very quiet, and
we learn but little of him from his associates. It is
only here and there that an incident breaks through
the monotony of his life. On the 12th of February
1864 we find him in the midst of a circle of congenial
friends. On that day Robert Browning signed his
will in the presence of Tennyson and Mr. F. T.
Palgrave; and in the evening there was a dinner-party
at Mr. Palgrave's house at York Gate, Regent's Park.
Tennyson and Browning were there, Mr. Gladstone
and Sir John Simeon, Mr. Woolner and Mr. Reginald
Palgrave, Monsignor Patterson and Mr. John Ogle,
Francis H. Doyle, Mr. F. T. Palgrave himself, and
his brother, W. Gifford Palgrave.
For the last named Tennyson had a great respect.
'I think,' he once said to Professor F. T. Palgrave,
'your brother is the cleverest man I ever saw'; and it
is he whom the Laureate addresses as Ulysses in the
'Demeter' volume. He had, indeed, earned the title,
having been Consul in 1866 at Soukhoum Kale, in
1867 at Trebizond, in 1873 at St. Thomas, in 1876
at Manilla, and in 1878 Consul-General in Bulgaria.
To these he added in 1879 the consulship at Bangkok,
and in 1884 he was Consul-General of the Republic of
Uruguay, a position which he still held at his death.
He and Tennyson, however, met but seldom. At
the dinner above mentioned they merely encountered
each other; in September 1887 they spent an after-
noon together.

FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS
197
It was in this same year (1864), on the 8th of
April, that Garibaldi paid the visit to Tennyson to
which the Laureate refers in the poem 'To Ulysses,'
to which allusion has been made above. Garibaldi
was much struck by the profusion of foliage in the
Farringford garden, the 'cedar green,' the 'giant ilex,'
and the 'yucca which no winter quells.' 'I wish I
had your trees,' he said. And, before he left, he
added another the number, a Wellingtonia
planted in the grounds as a
The little act of courtesy was
gigantea, which he
souvenir of his visit.
happily remembered by the poet, as he told his

'THE QUARRIED DOWNS OF WIGHT.'
Ulysses how he loved to walk amid the riches of his
garden by 'the quarried downs of Wight':
'Or watch the waving pine which here
The warrior of Caprera set,
A name that earth will not forget
Till earth has rolled her latest year.'
198
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
It was in 1864 or 1865 that Tennyson first made
the acquaintance of Mr. Frederick Locker, to whom
the present writer is much indebted for the following
facts relating to a friendship which his correspondent
describes as one of the greatest pleasures of his life.'
Shortly after meeting Mr. Frederick and Lady Char-
lotte Locker, Lord Tennyson was their host at
Grayshot Hall, near Haslemere; and the Lockers
were frequently with the poet at Farringford and
Aldworth. Tennyson, on his side, was not seldom
Mr. Locker's guest in Chesham Street, at Rowfant, or
New Haven Court, Cromer. About 1870 when Mr.
Locker was living at 91 Victoria Street, Lord Tenny-
son secured a pied-à-terre at Albert Mansions, opposite
his friends, in order to be near them. They saw
much of each other at this time, often taking a morning
walk together in the Park. Lord Tennyson occasion-
ally rented a furnished house for a month or two,
generally in the Belgravian district. He was present
at Rowfant, Sussex, in 1874, at Mr. Locker's second
marriage to Jane, daughter of Sir Curtis Lampson,
Bart., whose name Mr. Locker added to his own.
Lord and Lady Tennyson, too, were present at
Westminster Abbey, in February 1878, when their
second son, Lionel, was married to Eleanor, the only
daughter of Mr. Frederick and Lady Charlotte
Locker. Tennyson and Mr. Locker-Lampson
travelled upon the Continent together on three occa-
sions, visiting Paris in 1868, Paris and Switzerland
in 1869, and St. Moritz, Engadine, about 1872.
In 1865 Tennyson was elected a member of the
Royal Society; but the year is chiefly marked by a
FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS
199
sorrow.
On February 21, 1865, he lost his mother,
who died at Well Walk, Hampstead, in her eighty-fifth
year. She was buried at Highgate. The loss of her
tender and unselfish love helped the Laureate towards
a temporary seclusion, and increased his dislike of ob-
servation, which had already become almost morbid.
He began to threaten to leave Freshwater, fright-
ened away,' as FitzGerald told Frederick Tennyson,
'by hero-worshippers.' The old hatred of the digito
monstrari, which Charles Knight had noticed in
him, was growing upon him more and more; and
the threat took form in 1869, in the removal of
the family to the new house, Aldworth, which he
had built for himself on a remote terrace, under
the crest of Blackdown, near Haslemere. Hence-
forth this spot shared with Farringford the associa-
tions of the Laureate's home. The building of Ald-
worth, however, was not due to a desire of seclusion
alone. The air of Farringford proved scarcely
bracing enough for Mrs. Tennyson, and it was in her
interest that Tennyson first visited Blackdown in the
autumn of 1866, with a view to fixing a site for his
new house.
A consultation was held with Mrs.
Gilchrist, at Brookbank, and, after several spots had
been inspected, the site on which Aldworth now
stands was chosen. Without doubt its seclusion com-
mended it; and the distress at publicity was further
proved, in the year of his mother's death, by Tenny-
son's refusal of a baronetcy. This step was as popular
at the time as his subsequent acceptance of a peerage
was unpopular, and in both cases we feel now that
the sentiment was strained. There was no real room
200
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
for congratulation or regret in either case; the ques-
tion was
too trivial, or too strictly personal, for
serious discussion.
The popularity inspired by this refusal was almost
forfeited, however, by an action much worthier con-
sideration. The reader may perhaps recall the name
of a little boy who, entering Louth Grammar School
after the Tennysons had left, was fired with admira-
tion by the story of their literary prowess. The years
that intervened had destined the boy to a life of
action, and the names of Tennyson and Eyre re-
connect themselves under strange circumstances.
A revolution of the blacks in Jamaica had demanded
a violent suppression, and Eyre had acted with
singular valour and readiness in discomfiting the
insurgents. A rather ill-advised and over-energetic
body of persons, sympathising with the revolutionists,
prosecuted Eyre for cruelty, and the case created
some commotion. On such occasions the emotional
portion of the community is wont to lose its discretion
in enthusiasm; and the present was an excellent
opportunity for a sentimentalism which, perhaps,
infected both parties. There was too much protesta-
tion all round. On the one side were ranged John
Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer, Professors Huxley,
Freeman, and Goldwin Smith, while Carlyle, Kings-
ley, Tennyson, and Mr. Ruskin were among a body
of subscribers who originated an Eyre Defence Fund.
Tennyson supported his contribution by a vigorous
letter, in which he deprecated the unreasonableness of
this controversial hysteria. 'I send my small sub-
scription,' he said, 'as a tribute to the nobleness of the
FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS
201
man, and as a protest against the spirit in which a
servant of the State, who has saved to us one of the
islands of the Empire, and many English lives, seems
to be hunted down.' The letter was characteristic of
Tennyson, who always refused to be influenced by
party cries and sectarian malice.
It caused grave
offence, however, to many ponderous and narrow-
minded persons, who read into the discussion aims
and sentiments altogether alien to the disputants.
6
Between 1864 and 1867 Tennyson made but one
publication, a selection from his works in square
duodecimo. This volume, issued in 1865, contained
six new poems, 'The Captain,' 'On a Mourner,'
Three Sonnets to a Coquette,' and a song, 'Home
they brought him slain with spears,' an altered version
of the song in The Princess,' rewritten for musical
use. The new rendering has a charm of its own,
from a certain allusiveness and a vagueness of sugges-
tion which are more artistic than the fullest detail.
The removal of the face-cloth and the strategy of the
nurse are unrecorded. Only the child plays with
his father's lance and shield, and in his game reminds
her of her loss. Then with an outburst of grief she
reproves him:
'O hush, my joy, my sorrow!'
There is a suddenness of pathos here which is irre-
sistible. This version was many years afterwards.
published with a musical setting by Lady Tennyson.
The other additions are scarcely noteworthy.
'The Captain,' which is the most considerable of the
five, is virile and spirited, but not noticeably Tenny-
sonian.
202
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
(
But in 1867 Tennyson printed privately, at the
press of Sir Ivor Bertie Guest at Canford Manor,
Wimborne, an eminently graceful poem, The
Window; or the Loves of the Wrens,' a little cantata,
which he wrote, German-fashion,' for Sir-then
Mr. Arthur Sullivan's music. The original edition.
contained this dedication—
(
'These little songs, whose almost sole merit
—at least till they are wedded to music-
is that they are so excellently printed,
I dedicate to the printer.'
It was a new experiment, and Tennyson's friends had
fears. Is there a tune?' asked FitzGerald of the
music, or originally melodious phrase in any of it?'
And he adds, rather naïvely: that is what I always
missed in Mendelssohn.' FitzGerald did not invari-
ably doubt, however. He wrote to Sir W. F. Pollock
in a very different strain. 'You might suggest,' he
said, 'to Mr. Sullivan or some competent musician to
adapt the Epilogue part of Tennyson's "King Arthur,"
beginning
down to
"And so to bed, where yet in sleep I seem`d
To sail with Arthur,"
"And war shall be no more,"
—to adapt this, I say, to the music of that grand last
scene in “Fidelio," beginning dreamily, and increasing,
crescendo, up to where the Poet begins to feel the
truth and stir of day, till Beethoven's pompous march
should begin, and the chorus, with "Arthur is come.
Apparently Sir Arthur Sullivan was not competent,
to FitzGerald's taste, for original writing. But what-
ever the musical critic may have thought of his
FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS
203
setting of 'The Window,' there can be little question
of the suitability of the lyrics to their object. They
are melodious and varied, affording the composer
infinite opportunity. Take, on the one hand, the
sweep and whistle of the wind on the hill:
'Follow, follow the chase!
And my thoughts are as quick and as quick, ever on, on, on.
O lights, are you flying over her sweet little face?
And my heart is there before you are come, and gone,
When the winds are up in the morning!'
Contrast this with the cold, eager crispness of the
description of winter:
'Bite, frost, bite!
The woods are all the searer,
The fuel is all the dearer,
The fires are all the clearer,
My spring is all the nearer,
You have bitten into the heart of the earth,
But not into mine.'
There is variety here, and to spare; but there is more
to follow:
'The wind and the wet, the wind and the wet!
Wet west wind, how you blow, you blow!
And never a line from my lady yet!
Is it ay or no? is it ay or no?
Blow then, blow, and when I am gone,
The wet west wind and the world may go on.'
And again, as the love glows into life:
'Over the thorns and briers,
Over the meadows and stiles,
Over the world to the end of it,
Flash for a million miles.'
It is a medley of melody and it would go hard with
the composer who could not find a tune or an
‘a
originally melodious phrase' to match such music.
The Canford Press issued, in the same year,
another of the Laureate's works, 'The Victim,' which
204
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
made its public appearance a few months later in
Good Words for January 1868.
There was another and a far stronger poem,
finished at this time, but published later—' Lucretius.'
Here was the direct outcome of the Swinburnian
movement, the emancipation of poetry from the
shackles of prudery. It portrays, dramatically and
with a breathless violence, the ravings of the
maddened Lucretius, for whom his wife has mixed a
love-philtre. He raves against love and the Gods;
he lashes himself into a frenzy, which at last draws
the dagger against his life. At one moment he curses
the animal passion, the next he revels in it:
'How the sun delights
To glance and shift about her slippery sides,
And rosy knees and supple roundedness
And budded bosom-peaks.'
This is that abandonment to physical beauty which
swayed the Pre-Raphaelite school, and shocked and
delighted the public who rushed to read Poems and
Ballads. It shocked the publishers likewise. The
proof-sheets of 'Lucretius' were sent out to America
to secure simultaneous publication; and, when the
poem appeared on May 2, 1868, in Every Saturday,
in New York, the lines quoted above stood in the
place they have subsequently filled. But meanwhile
the prudery of the English publishers had emended
the revise; and the poem was printed in Macmillan's
Magazine without the risky suggestion of realism.
It is an amusing evidence of the tenor of the time;
for this shyness was not confined to the publishers.
'Lucretius' seemed, to his friends, also, too free for
FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS
205
6
Tennyson. Lucretius' Death,' said FitzGerald, 'is
thought to be too free-spoken for publication, I
believe: not so much in a religious as in an amatory
point of view. I should have believed Lucretius
more likely to have expedited his departure because
of weariness of life and despair of the system, than
because of any love-philtre.' No doubt. But Tenny-
son was only recurring to history in this, or, at any
rate, to the account given by the Eusebian Chronicle.
The story may have been invented to spite the
Epicureans, but it remains the most direct report of
the poet's death. 'Once get a name in England,'
complained the same critic of the same poem, ‘and you
may do anything.' It is very unenlightened, all this
criticism it shows a complete want of appreciation
for the circumstances. The true poet must catch the
tenor of the time, and draw it to himself: he must
broaden down slowly with precedent. It was the
impulse of the moment to be frankly realistic:
Tennyson was carried with the stream. In his
course he reflected the surrounding life; and to reflect
is not to imitate. His claim to individuality was
attracting new attention; at this very moment
Tennyson's reputation was spreading beyond his
own countrymen. He was penetrating into the
chateaux of France and the palaces of Italy. Octave
Feuillet, describing in 'M. de Camors,' published in
1867, the daily life of a French country family, and
describing it with a delicate faithfulness, pictured the
household around the fire in the evening reading a
new poem 'de Victor Hugo ou de Tennyson.' This
was no making of a name in England alone; nor was
206
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
such a reputation one with which the writer could 'do
anything.'
In July 1867 Tennyson was host to a grateful
company, one of whom left a pleasant account of his
visit. The Duke of Argyll, the Gladstones, and Lord
Houghton, were of the party, and the latter wrote
of his visit as follows:
Our expedition to Tennyson's was a moral success, but
a physical failure; for we had so bad a pair of posters that
we regularly knocked up seven miles from the house, and
should have had to walk there in the moonlight, if we had not
met with a London cab. The bard was very agreeable, and
his wife and son delightful. He has built himself a very
handsome and commodious house in a most inaccessible
site, with every comfort he can require, and every discomfort
to all who approach him. What can be more poetical?'
Every new visitor seems to have shown the same
enthusiasm; and in the following year Longfellow
journeyed to Farringford, to pay, as he gracefully
puts it, 'homage to the mastery, which is thine.' The
impression of the meeting remains in 'Wapentake':
'Not of the howling dervishes of song,
Who maze their brain with the delirious dance,
Art thou, O sweet historian of the heart!
Therefore to thee the laurel-leaves belong,
To thee our love and our allegiance,
For thy allegiance to the poet's art.'
Tennyson's published work in 1868 was not consider-
able. The Victim,' a poem which almost suggests the
touch of his American visitor, appeared in Good
Words in January, with an illustration by A.
Houghton; and in the same month Once a Week
printed 'The Spiteful Letter.' In February, 'Wages'
was issued in Macmillan's Magazine; and a poem
FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS
207
(
<
6
named 1865-1866,' since suppressed, in Good Words
for March. Two months later Lucretius' made a
tardy appearance in Macmillan's Magazine. The lust
of identification has found a vent in several sugges-
tions with reference to the original of The Spiteful
Letter.' But the author's own authority establishes
the certainty that no individual letter was intended.
On December 24th, 1867, he wrote to Once a Week:
'It is no particular letter that I meant. I have had
dozens of them from one quarter or another.'
(
The poem which appeared in Good Words—‘1865-
1866,'—is a strange voice of solitude, akin to ‘Break,
break, break,' and the earlier No More.' It is full of
the lonely sentiment of midnight, as it cries to the
storm with the inarticulate cry of discomfort.
'I stood on a tower in the wet,
And New Year and Old Year met,
And winds were roaring and blowing :
And I said, "O years, that meet in tears,
Have ye aught that is worth the knowing?""
Only
But there is no answer, nor any to regard.
through the silence come the wailing of the waves and
the moaning of the wind,
'Old Year roaring and blowing,
And New Year blowing and roaring.'
The poem is printed in a decorative frame, designed
by John Leighton. Above, a watchman sits between
two winged bells, backed by telegraph wires. Below,
Boreas blows and roars ore rotundo. There is a picture,
too the poet, in a loose cloak and soft hat, stands on
a rampart with a stormy sea below. It is a very bad
picture indeed.
In February Tennyson paid a visit to Cambridge,
208
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
the second recorded since his undergraduate days.
He stayed at Trinity, at the Lodge, and one evening
dined, in the room which is now the guest-room, with
Mr. W. G. Clark; the party including the Master of
Trinity, Mr. W. Aldis Wright, and Mr. Pritchard, now
Professor at Oxford, himself a neighbour of the
Tennysons at Freshwater.
The next year saw the Tennysons thoroughly
established at Aldworth; where in December 1869
Sir Frederick Pollock stayed with them, and heard the
poet read the Holy Grail,' which was published at
the close of the year, the volume including The
Victim,' 'Wages,' and 'Lucretius.' At the same time
'Pelleas and Ettarre,' 'The Coming of Arthur,' and
'The Passing of Arthur' were added to the 'Idylls.'
With this publication the poet returned to his own
again. The Holy Grail' has been already discussed
in its relation to the rest of the Idylls,' and little
remains to be said in its praise. It will live as the
purest, the most imaginative, and richly finished of the
series, a poem full of the deepest inspiration, and the
most refined and lofty thought. It has passages
which, for mystic fancy and power, are unsurpassed
in the language.
(
<
Its appearance was followed by a little controversy.
The Rev. Robert Stephen Hawker, Vicar of Morwen-
stowe, had already published in 1864 a poem called
'The Quest of the Sangreal,' which was itself no
unworthy contribution to literature. The earlier
author expressed some chagrin that Tennyson should
have treated the same subject, fancying that he had
the claim to consideration which belongs of right to

ALDWORTH, SURREY.
At p. 208
FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS
209
(
the first in the field. It was generally felt, how-
ever, that the precedence lay with the other poet.
Tennyson's Idylls' had been written and published
long before Mr. Hawker's 'Sangreal'; and, in taking
up his subject anew, Tennyson, it was held, was fairly
continuing a scheme which he had himself originated.
The discussion has little interest, save as an indication
of the slight ground upon which a suspicion of plagiar-
ism may be based.
The Tennyson of this time must have been much
as the Tennyson of old. Even when, on occasional
visits to London, he could be persuaded to dine in
society, he would insist after dinner on retiring to
smoke; and amusing stories are current of his being
invaded, in the solitude of an upper room, or even
a garret, by bands of ladies who were determined
to chat with him. He was always at his best over
his pipe. It was thus that Mrs. Thackeray Ritchie
found him, in a top room in Eaton Square. 'There
sat my friend,' she said, 'as I had first seen him
years
ago-in the clouds.' There was but little change from
the Tennyson of thirty years before, whom William
Howitt had sketched so clearly. You may come
across him,' he had said, 'in a country inn, with a
foot on each hob of the fireplace, a volume of Greek
in one hand, his meerschaum in the other,—so far
advanced towards the seventh heaven that he would
not thank you to call him back into this nether
world.' The old hour, and the old port wine still
claimed him. 'I have the great honour,' wrote
Lord Houghton to his aunts on the 27th of March
1870, of entertaining Tennyson at dinner to-morrow.
O
(
210
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
He insists on dining at seven, and on having some.
old port. I have brought some from Fryston, which
my father called "The Alderman," which is, I suppose,
from the year when that horse won the St. Leger.'
The poet was always conservative in his taste, as in
his sentiments.
In 1870 Tennyson lost an old friend: Sir John
Simeon died at Fribourg in Switzerland. The body
was brought home to be buried; and a week elapsed
between the time of its home-bringing and the day of
the funeral. It was during this interval that Tennyson,
walking in the garden at Swainston,' composed the
exquisite lyric which bears that title. The sense of
desolation within brought a feeling of loss without.
'The Prince of Courtesy' was dead.
'Two dead men have I known
In courtesy like to thee:
Two dead men have I loved
With a love that ever will be:
Three dead men have I loved, and thou art last of the three.'
This poem was first included in a cabinet edition
of Tennyson's works, published by Messrs. H. S.
King and Co., in 1874, a collection which was also
enriched by the first appearance of 'The Voice and
the Peak,' and 'England and America in 1872.' An
addition of about 150 words to 'Merlin and Vivien '
was now made for the first time.
The next year (1871) saw the publication of 'The
Last Tournament,' a poem which caught, more
closely even than 'Lucretius,' the spirit of the new
poetry. The novelty was still unfamiliar. The
public prudery, which had caused the correction in
FROM THE IDYLLS TO THE DRAMAS
211
Lucretius,' led to another very similar alteration in
'The Last Tournament.
The lines
'He rose, he turn'd, then, flinging round her neck,
Claspt it, and cried, “Thine order, O my Queen !”
But while he bow'd to kiss the jewell'd throat,
Out of the dark,' etc.
stood in the original version, printed in The Con-
temporary Review, as follows:
He rose, he turn'd, then, flinging round her neck,
Claspt it, but while he bow'd himself to lay
Warm kisses in the hollow of her throat,' etc.
This was thought too realistic; and yet, here again,
the old was better. Even FitzGerald yielded to the
dramatic power and energy of 'The Last Tournament.'
'He never ceases to be noble and pure,' he said.
In 1872 Messrs. Strahan and Co. published a six-
volume library edition of the Laureate's poems. In this
collection several of the 'Juvenilia' were restored, and
the two sonnets Alexander' and 'The Bridesmaid'
took their place among his approved work. 'The
Third of February 1852' was also added, this being
the first acknowledgment of its authorship; and
Literary Squabbles'-the original 'Afterthought' in
Punch-was now reprinted. The opening verses of
Idylls of the King,' which are addressed To the
Queen,' made a first appearance in the same edition.
Meanwhile 'Gareth and Lynette' was undergoing
its finishing touches: and in November Tennyson read
it to Robert Browning and to Mr. Knowles. It was
published in the following year, and highly praised
by The Spectator and The Athenæum. In the
autumn which preceded its appearance Tennyson
was travelling in Norway, and left a vivid impression
212
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
upon those who met him. The year after his visit,
the late Professor Ludwig K. Daa, the distinguished
Norwegian journalist and politician, himself a great
lover of all things English, told Mr. Edmund Gosse
that he had had the pleasure of showing the points
of interest in Christiania to Tennyson; but that his
extreme near sight had prevented him from under-
taking a journey into the interior, which would have
had to be made by karjol. Professor Daa recorded,
with patriotic satisfaction, the profound impression
produced on the English poet by the voyage up the
romantic harbour of Christiania.
(
With Gareth and Lynette' the period of the
'Idylls' closed, to be re-opened, for one moment only,
thirteen years later, with the publication of 'Balin and
Balan.' In 1874 'A Welcome to Marie Alexan-
drovna' was printed, first on a single sheet, and
subsequently in The Times.
The poem caused some discontent, for reasons
which it is difficult to revive; and The Examiner
printed an exceedingly uncourteous comment on 'A
Welcome to Alexandrovna.' The anonymous poet
addressed Her Majesty to this effect :
'Victoria, mother of the English race,
I, Tennyson, thy poet, one thing lack.
Long since I owed my pension to thy grace;
Give me its ancient comrade now, The Sack.'
The discontent and its cause are forgotten now; the
verses remain as a memento of 'the spites and the
follies.' The little discussion lived out its nine days'
life, and then Tennyson entered upon a new phase of
work. For the next few years he was to be principally
occupied upon Drama.
CHAPTER X
QUEEN MARY AND HAROLD
THAT Tennyson should have determined to give his
attention to Drama can scarcely occasion surprise.
Step by step, as this study has attempted to show,
his work had been advancing towards dramatic art.
The literary movement which he represented was
essentially dramatic; it always aimed at passing out
of itself into the sufferings and achievements of
others. It was so with 'Aurora Leigh,' it was so
with 'Men and Women,' and it was equally so with
'Maud' and 'Idylls of the King.' But the dramatic
talent has two distinct issues, the one physiological,
the other psychological. To write a strong and
successful drama the author must possess the power
of identifying himself with motives and sensations
alien to himself; he must hold the faculty of living
the life he represents. This faculty is bestowed by
the psychological side of the dramatic talent. But
there is the other side, which (for want of a more
distinctive title) may be called the physiological: the
sense of action, of situation, of movement. Without
these two elements a sound drama cannot be
produced; the sense of action and situation, standing
alone, prompts to melodrama; the sense of analysis
213
214
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
standing alone, works out a psychological study-
intense, but undramatic.
(
The poets of the new movement, which was
opening in 1842, had enough and to spare of the
psychological side of dramatic art. For a proof of
this the reader needs only to turn to Bianca among
the Nightingales,' and 'A Year's Spinning' in the
one case, and to 'Mr. Sludge the Medium,' and
'Bishop Blougram's Apology' in the other. With
Tennyson he has always' Maud' and 'The Northern
Farmer' to refer to. Here was an infinite psychology;
but the sense of action and situation was scarcely a
strong characteristic of the new school. There is move-
ment and incident in Strafford,' but there is a want
of unity in the conception; the events leap out of
the poet's store pêle mêle: the sense of situation is
lacking. 'In a Balcony' has much more vigour and
concentration, but 'In a Balcony' is not a drama.
It is merely a broken scene, as it were, from a play
of vast possibility. The psychological element in
the Brownings and in Tennyson overpowered the
physiological, and it was this tendency to mental
analysis that prevented Tennyson from realising the
expectations of his admirers, when he turned his
attention to pure drama. The period of the dramas,
extending over ten years, is a period of brilliant
intellectual success, of artistic and dramatic failure.
The workmanship of the dramas stands above all
question. There are passages of nervous but virile
energy, such as are scarcely to be found elsewhere
in his work there are evidences of a grasp on
character that becomes at intervals Shakespearian.
:
QUEEN MARY AND HAROLD
215
But the faculty that made Shakespeare a dramatist
is usually lacking to Tennyson; he misses the
necessity of progress and the obligation of action.
In two instances he combined both elements; but
three out of his five plays are sketches of character,
psychological analyses, studies in motive. Without
action, and without the technical sense of construction,
they can never be dramas.
Queen Mary,' the first of the series, is also the
longest. The first glance at the list of dramatis
persona is bewildering; there are forty-five characters,
without the supernumeraries. The other plays are
less encumbered: Harold' has twenty-three, and
'Becket' twenty-five personæ. 'The Falcon,' 'The
Cup,' and 'The Promise of May,' have comparatively
small casts. But of the forty-five characters in
'Queen Mary' very few play important parts in the
drama; not more than a dozen of the figures are
intimately concerned with the action of the play. A
brief survey of the drama will give some idea of its
development.
The play opens with Queen Mary's coronation,
and immediately transfers its interest to Cranmer,
who stands in immediate danger, since his name is
among those who signed the Letters Patent con-
ferring the crown on Lady Jane Grey. Cranmer, in
contradiction to the advice of Peter Martyr, refuses
to fly. The scene then changes to St. Paul's Cross,
where Father Bourne is preaching; while Noailles,
the French Ambassador, moves about the crowd,
whispering of the curse of Papacy, and advocating
the claim of Elizabeth to the Crown. The fourth
216
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
scene transfers the action to the palace. Courtenay,
Earl of Devon, being ambitious for the Crown, is
uncertain whether to win Mary or to league with
Noailles, Suffolk, Carew, and Wyatt, in an attempt
to make the Spanish marriage an excuse for over-
throwing Mary and setting Elizabeth on the throne.
He is approaching Elizabeth, when Mary interrupts
them, and, suspecting her sister's faith, orders her
into comparative exile at Ashridge. Another change
of scene brings us to Mary's room in the Palace,
where she muses amorously over Philip's miniature.
Her love for him is fixed; and the entreaties and
expostulations of Gardiner and Noailles have no
influence with her. Simon Renard, the Spanish
ambassador, is next introduced. He whispers his
distrust of Elizabeth, and assures Mary of Philip's
love. His assurance is fortified by the sudden arrival
of Philip's letter, offering his hand to Mary. The
Queen passes into the Council Chamber to declare
her decision, and a few minutes later staggers back,
half swooning, with the cry-
'My Philip is all mine!'
The second act opens with the hint of insurrection.
Sir Thomas Wyatt, absorbed upon his father's sonnets
at Alington Castle, is upbraided by Antony Knyvett
for indolence at a moment of peril. The new comer
brings Wyatt a letter in Courtenay's cipher, an-
nouncing the flight of Carew and the expected
capture of the Duke. The bad news is lightened by
the assurance that Courtenay is still with the in-
surgents. This letter stirs Wyatt to a show of energy,
QUEEN MARY AND HAROLD
217
and from his window he addresses a fiery speech to
the mob, urging them to resist the advances of Spain.
In this way mischief is set afoot, and the second scene
gives Mary's account of the rising, delivered to the
Lord Mayor and Aldermen assembled. The Queen
reiterates to them her determination to marry Philip,
inviting their confidence in the surety that, unless she
knew that this step were best for the State, she would
not entertain the proposal. The scene closes on a
general oath of allegiance, and a note of distrust from
Sir Ralph Bagenhall. A short scene on London
Bridge shows Wyatt in full rebellion, with an hundred
pounds offered for his arrest. A fourth change
transfers the action to Westminster Palace, whither
news comes of the successful advance of the insur-
gents. Courtenay advises the Queen's flight, when a
messenger announces that the tide of the struggle has
turned, and the insurrection is crushed. A further
report declares Courtenay and the Princess Elizabeth
to be parties to the rising, and the Queen orders
both to the Tower. Even for her sister she knows
no mercy.
she says:
'She shall die,'
'My foes are at my feet, and Philip King.'
The third act opens at the conduit in Gracechurch,
where a conversation between Sir Ralph Bagenhall
and Sir Thomas Stafford gives opportunity to the
former to describe the marriage of Philip and Mary.
The procession then passes, Gardiner urging the mob
the while to shout Philip and Mary,' in approval of
the union. The play then stands still for some time
218
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
while Bagenhall recounts the execution of Lady Jane
Grey. In the scene that follows in Whitehall we
learn the downfall of Cranmer. The scene concludes
with the hopeful intimation that Queen Mary has con-
ceived a child. In the Great Hall in Whitehall on
St. Andrew's Day the Peers are next assembled;
and Gardiner pleads with Rome for pardon for the
nation's schism and separation from the Church.
Cardinal Pole replies, and pronounces absolution, the
whole assembly falling on its knees. Bagenhall alone
refuses to bow down, and is committed to the Tower.
The fourth scene, also laid in the Palace, spends itself
in a long discussion of religious tolerance between
Mary, Gardiner, Pole, Paget, and Bonner, ending in
the condemnation of Cranmer, Hooper, Ridley,
Latimer, Rogers, and Ferrar. The next move is to
Woodstock, where Elizabeth is banished: and the
early part of the scene is occupied with a milkmaid's
song and the Princess's comments. A command is
brought to Elizabeth from Mary, ordering her to
repair to town to wed Prince Philibert of Savoy, and
after some reluctance she determines to obey. In the
next scene, in the Palace, we learn from Philip that
Elizabeth is indisposed to the match, but that he him-
self is determined to see it effected. Simon Renard
begs him to show a more amenable temper to his
Queen, as it is a matter of public comment that her
barrenness wearies him. Philip then prepares to bid
farewell to Mary, as he is summoned to his father at
Brussels; but Mary entreats him so eagerly to stay
another day that he finally accedes, with an absolutely
loveless frigidity.
QUEEN MARY AND HAROLD
219
}
At the commencement of the fourth act Cardinal
Pole brings the Queen a petition begging her to spare
Cranmer; and she is presently waited on by a
further deputation, consisting of Thirlby, Paget, and
Lord William Howard. Mary declines, however, to
show any mercy,
any mercy, and orders the writ to be made out
that night. The next scene takes us to Oxford, where
Cranmer lies in prison. He has determined to recant,
with a fearful yearning for life, when he learns from
Thirlby that he is still to die. In a powerful speech
he curses the right hand that has wronged him, and
dooms it to the first flame at the stake. The act
closes before St. Mary's Church at Oxford, whence
Cranmer, after some of the finest eloquence in the
drama, is led away to death. His end is recounted
by Peters; and the act closes with Paget's epitaph on
the Bishop-
'Come out, my Lord, it is a world of fools.'
The last act finds Philip once more in the act of
parting from Mary. He desires her to declare war
with France, and to proclaim Elizabeth heir, since she
stands between Mary and the Queen of Scots. Mary
consents and begs Philip to remain; but he is ob-
durate. Weary of the childless love of his wife, he
reflects that Elizabeth would make him a more accept-
able queen; and he decides that, for this reason, he
will prevent the marriage he had contemplated be-
tween her and Philibert of Savoy. The scene ends
with the news that war has been declared against
France, owing to her encouragement of a petty insur-
rection by Stafford, who has landed at Scarborough.
220
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
In the second scene Pole receives a summons to Rome
to reply to an accusation of heresy. Then follows
news of loss upon the Continent, and Mary prays that
Calais may at least be spared her. At this juncture
Feria arrives from Philip. The King has heard with
pleasure that the Queen expects the birth of a child,
and promises that he will soon be with her. Then
the wrath of the Queen is stirred; and she knows that
Philip is avoiding her. In the next scene Feria ap-
proaches Elizabeth, to suggest the possibility of her
marriage with Philip. He mentions the Queen's
serious illness; and Elizabeth at once refuses to listen
to him till she has hurried to her sister. There fol-
lows a suggestive picture of the outside of the Palace,
with the voices of the night passing and re-passing
with news of the Queen's danger. In the last and
most dramatic scene of all, Mary lies dying, heart-
broken. She sighs that on her death two names
will be found graven on her heart, 'Philip and Calais';
while on Philip's (if, indeed, he have a heart), the
name of 'Philip' will stand alone. In the frenzy of
death she springs from her couch to slash his face
from the portrait above her, and so is borne out to
die. The word of her death is brought by Elizabeth,
who is at once hailed Queen, and the play ends with
a sombre voice of omen-
Bagenhall. God save the Crown! the Papacy is no more.
Paget (aside). Are we so sure of that?
Acclamation. God save the Queen!'
It is the misfortune of so naked an outline as this
that it must show the drama at its worst. But a fuller
QUEEN MARY AND HAROLD
221
account could not serve to hide the principal de-
ficiency in construction. The story itself is not of the
elements which go to make a great play. The interest
is diffused through two periods of mental tension: the
first during the time in which Mary is aspiring to
secure Philip; the second, while she is hoping against
hope for the birth of a child. Now, the motive of a
prolonged mental tension is not a dramatic motive.
The strain of the situation cannot be portrayed vividly
and with animation; the drama wastes away in an
atmosphere of hope deferred. The motive which,
duly developed, might have given life and spirit to
the play—the gradual weariness of Philip for his wife
-is slurred over within the limit of one short scene.
Everything centres round the childlessness of the
Queen; and the situation is not only unpleasant, but
radically undramatic. The multiplication of unimpor-
tant incidents hinders the development of character;
Mary stands out conspicuously; but Philip sinks into
the shade. Tennyson gives us, indeed, a very real
Mary sensuous, obstinate, passionate, suspicious.
She is traced, with a vigorous touch, through her two
great periods of longing,-breaking out into a trium-
phant cry when the insurgents are beaten back, and
Philip is secured to her; sinking into an almost
inspired hysteria when she first believes that she is to
bear a child. For him every power is to be pro-
pitious:
'His sceptre shall go forth from Ind to Ind!
His sword shall hew the heretic peoples down!
His faith shall clothe the world that will be his,
Like universal air and sunshine! Open,
Ye everlasting gates! The King is here!
My star, my son !'
222
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
And again her dying passion leaps into fire, as the
face of Philip mocks her deathbed from his portrait :
'This Philip shall not
Stare in upon me in my haggardness;
Old, miserable, diseased,
Incapable of children. Come thou down.
Lie there. O God, I have kill'd my Philip!'
The cold, unscrupulous Spaniard was not worth such
a passion as this. An unsympathetic schemer, with
no care for her, and no love for the country of his
adoption, he repels interest from the outset. And
during the entire drama it is rather his influence that
moves in the background than his
than his presence that
vitalises the story.
Cranmer has one grand scene, clothed, with a
singular fidelity, in language almost identical with his
recorded words. Simon Renard is allowed little
prominence Pole has a quiet faith in himself that
the distrust of Rome cannot destroy.
'I have done my best, and as a faithful son,
That all day long hath wrought his father's work,
When back he comes at evening hath the door
Shut on him by the father whom he loved,
His early follies cast into his teeth,
And the poor son turn'd out into the street
To sleep, to die—I shall die of it, cousin.'
Elizabeth is colourless.
The play was produced in a condensed form,
the year after its publication, when Mr. Irving
gave it a trial at the Lyceum. It was first played
on the 18th of April 1876, Miss Bateman (Mrs.
Crowe) representing Queen Mary, while Mr. Henry
Irving appeared as Philip. It was not to be ex-
pected that it would succeed, and the critical organs
QUEEN MARY AND HAROLD
223
The Era found it
of the day said their worst for it.
'an unsatisfactory play, wanting in stamina, and
altogether deficient in interest.' Interest of a sort
it could not lack for the dialogue is strong and, on
occasion, intensely dramatic. It would be impossible,
indeed, for Tennyson to write anything that was
'altogether deficient in interest.' But it did lack
motive, and it was innocent, moreover, of dramatic
construction. Scene followed scene, to lead the
history forward without promoting the direct pro-
gress of the play; the whole drama was a painful
tension long drawn out. History rarely lends itself
to drama. Had he to stand or fall by the reputation
of Richard the Second' and 'Henry the Eighth,'
Shakespeare himself would fare little better than
Tennyson with 'Queen Mary.'
C
The early years of the dramatic period were
undisturbed by event. Mrs. Procter relates how
Tennyson would drop in upon her at Beach House,
Freshwater, about eleven in the morning, and sit
gossiping for an hour or two, at which time they
would take a walk together. FitzGerald, too, gives
a delightful description of a visit from the Laureate,
the first for many years. He found little enough
change in his friend. There seemed not a day's inter-
val between. He looked very well and very happy,
having with him his eldest son, a very nice fellow.
One evening during his stay, Tennyson was much
distressed by a newspaper paragraph, which com-
mented ungraciously on the poet's refusal to allow
Longfellow to quote from his poems. He sat down
on the spot and wrote a letter of explanation.
'So,'
224
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
added FitzGerald, my house is so far become a
palace, being the place of a dispatch from one poet
to another, all over that Atlantic.' While he was at
Woodbridge, Tennyson hinted to his host that he was
writing another drama: but FitzGerald discouraged
him. He should rest on his oars, or ship them for
good now, I think'; and then he recurs to the 1842
volume, and the old creed. His attitude was certainly
consistent.
In the same year Tennyson wrote to Archbishop
Trench, thanking him genially for his present of a
copy of Sacred Latin Poetry, for which he expresses
extreme admiration; alluding, too, to a Latin chorus
of his own, which was never published. And in 1876
the names of Browning and Tennyson, so many times
connected in this little study, are united by a warm
tribute of affection. Browning, publishing a selection
from his work in two volumes, dedicated it to the
Laureate in hearty terms:
'TO
ALFRED TENNYSON
In Poetry-illustrious and consummate,
In Friendship-noble and sincere.'
During the early days of the next year Tennyson
took a house in town for three months, where Lord
Houghton found him invariably the same. On
March 28th Tennyson dined with his old friend to
meet Mr. Gladstone, at the same hour as of old.
He will only dine out at seven; and all society has
to submit to the idiosyncrasy of the poetic digestion.'
6

FARRINGFORD.
At p. 224
QUEEN MARY AND HAROLD
225
"
In 1877 the new drama appeared; and it is in-
teresting to note that it was sympathetically reviewed
in The Academy by Mr. John Addington Symonds.
The same paper had, two years before, intrusted the
consideration of Queen Mary' to Mr. Andrew Lang.
The last-named critic had noticed in the Tudor
tragedy an evidence of 'powers unguessed at, and
as yet scarcely appreciated'; and this half-hidden
talent had, in the interval, opened into vitality.
From every possible point of view 'Harold' was a
singular advance upon 'Queen Mary.' The dialogue
was more vivid and vigorous; the characters were
sketched with keener confidence and with bolder
touches; and the construction was quite unexpectedly
improved. The play no longer dallied through long
passages of dialogue without advancing the. story;
every scene, as Mr. Symonds pointed out at the time,
leads the plot 'by successive stages to the final
catastrophe.' And the poet had found, too, a theme
which was full of tragic pathos and dramatic situation:
a theme which gave opportunity to the psychologist,
without robbing the dramatist of his opportunity.
Harold' is, in fact, a great drama. And yet, in the
strange contrariety of events, 'Harold' has never
been seen on the stage.
A review of the incidents will show how powerful
is the physique of the play.
The tragedy opens at the palace in London, where
Aldwyth, widow of Griffyth, King of Wales, Gamel,
a Northumbrian Thane, and a circle of courtiers are
watching from the window a great comet which hangs
over the castle. The air is full of superstition, and it
Р
226
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
is whispered that ill is boded by the portent. Then
Harold joins them. He is sick of the sedentary life,
-'work-wan, flesh-fallen,'-he longs to go abroad to
hawk and hunt. He has no sympathy with the fears
and apprehensions of the Court: he knows the comet
is a natural element. He shows his character at once
-strong, manly, vigorous; with a sense of the obliga-
tion of truth and honour. 'Better die than lie,' he
says. His energy and strength contrast pleasantly
with the moody, dreamful superstition of Edward the
Confessor, who is next introduced to the scene. The
King is full of visionary qualms and mysticism: for
him 'heaven and earth are threads of the same loom,
every earthly sign has its counterpart in heavenly
import. But his absorption into mystery does not
prevent him from taking an interest in the affairs of
State; and when Harold begs for leave to go to
Normandy to hunt and hawk, the King denies him
with determination, and at last gives but a reluctant
permission. There follows a suggestion of treachery
in the North,-a suggestion which raises the wrath of
Tostig, Earl of Northumbria and brother to Harold.
He is the spoilt child of Godwin; and, in his pettish
outburst, he swears that Harold shall never be king,
if he can help it. The scene ends with a significant
passage between Aldwyth and Gamel. He loves
Griffyth's widow, and she encourages his hope; hold-
ing out the condition that he shall secure Tostig's
downfall.
The second scene is laid in the garden of the
King's house near London, where Edith, Edward's
ward, is singing to the sunset. There follows a pas-
QUEEN MARY AND HAROLD
227
sionate love-scene between her and Harold. Ald-
wyth, anxious to separate them, has urged Edith to
the convent life; but Harold silences the suggestion
with a kiss:
'Thou art my nun, thy cloister in mine arms.'
Edith is full of fears for Harold, for his visit to
Flanders and the enmity of Tostig; but, as she tries
to insist on the significance of her dreams, Harold
once more puts the superstition by. It is a fresh,
virile love-scene, with a strong ending, where Harold
glancing in fancy from the bells of his hawk, suggests
'Other bells on earth, which yet are heaven's ;
Guess what they be.
Edith.
Farewell, my king.
He cannot guess who knows.
Harold. Not yet, but then-my queen.'
As the lovers pass, Aldwyth, like a shadow, slips
from the thicket. In a jealous outburst she reveals
that, as she hated Griffyth, she loves Harold, that she
merely plays on Gamel to her own end. Suddenly
Morcar of Mercia joins her. He is eaten up with
ambition and she promises him that, if he will flash
the report about Northumbria that Harold loves her,
she will help him to an earldom. Morcar, in joy at
the thought that to be an earl is to be a step nearer
the throne, closes the unholy compact.
The second act opens on the sea-shore of Ponthieu,
where Harold and his crew are wrecked, and haled
before Guy, Count of Ponthieu. The latter sends
Harold to William of Normandy, whose prisoner we
find him in the next scene-at Bayeux. William
228
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
is bent on ruling England, and he sees that the trusty
spirit of Harold may help him to his desire. In these
words he condenses his project :
'I want his voice in England for the crown,
I want thy voice with him to bring him round;
And being brave he must be subtly cow'd,
And being truthful wrought upon to swear
Vows that he dare not break. England our own
Thro' Harold's help, he shall be my dear friend.'
This is strong enough, and determined enough; but
the weak, inconsistent side of William is shown at the
very moment of his protestation, in the ease with
which he yields to the baby demand of the young
Rufus. There is no stability in this deep-mouthed
Norman, who compares but feebly with the rough
English energy of Harold. He, cooped like a lark
in a cage, sighs for 'Free air! free field!' and William
promises him his return, on certain conditions.
Harold shies at the word, but Malet urges him to
yield. 'But what,' says Harold, if they be dis-
honourable?' 'Seem to obey him,' answers Malet :
and again comes the firm, unhesitating answer,
'Better die than lie.' On a sudden comes news from
England. The North is in rebellion; Tostig has
murdered Gamel.
'My God!' cried Harold, 'I should be there,
I'll hack my way to the sea.'
But he is faced by another false friend, Wulfnoth, his
brother. This spiritless little craven urges him to
accede to William's wish; but Harold, after a
moment's weakness, repulses the suggestion. The
further persuasion of William proves too much, how-
ever, and Harold promises, knowing that he lies, to
QUEEN 229
QUEE
MARY AND HAROLD
{
advance the Norman's claim to the English crown.
The moment he is alone he hates himself; and tries
to argue that he may break his word:
“Is “ay” an oath? is "ay" strong as an oath ?
Or is it the same sin to break my word
As break mine oath ?’
The doubt is decided for him. The great doors open
and discover William enthroned. Then Harold, with
his hand upon the ark which holds the bones of the
holy saints of Normandy, is forced to give the oath:
'I swear to help thee to the crown of England.'
The word is sworn now, and Harold is miserable:
'Am I Harold, Harold, son of our great Godwin?
I am utter craven.'
The third act opens in London, where, in the
Palace, Edward is found lying on a couch sick. His
Queen, Harold, Aldwyth and Edith are with him.
Harold is still saddened by the memory of his lie;
the comfort of his friends and the absolution of the
bishop cannot persuade him but that he is forsworn.
Leofwin argues,
"Of all the lies that men have ever lied,
Thine is the pardonablest.'
But Harold's answer is without conviction:
'I think it so, I think I am a fool
To think it can be otherwise than so.'
Suddenly Edward, always visionary, wakes from a
dream which has foretold to him the doom of England.
He bursts into a frenzy of religious hysteria, at the
end of which he sinks back into reason, to appoint
Harold his successor. But he has one condition-
230
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Harold must remain unwed: he must not marry
Edith. It is the old superstition that virginity alone
is pure, but Harold's view is wider. He refuses to
comply, and Edward curses them. Aldwyth, subtly
cunning, wishes Harold had sworn, since it would
have comforted the King; but Harold sums the
situation into three words. 'We so loved,' he says;
and the argument is sound.
Their discussion is ended by one last cry of the
King's. He wakes from his last vision, his eyes
filled with the prophetic scene of Harold's death:
'Sanguelac! Sanguelac! the arrow ! the arrow !'
With a cry he falls back dead; and the scene changes
to the garden, where Harold and Edith plight their
eternal troth.
The fourth act moves the action to Northumbria,
where Harold is with his forces quelling an insur-
rection. The scheme of Morcar has prospered and
Aldwyth gains her end. For England's sake Harold
offers her a loveless union, and she is content. 'The
day is won,' she whispers, as the army moves forward
to Stamford Bridge.
After one short scene between Tostig and Harold,
in which the latter strives to turn his brother's mind,
the play passes to a banquet after the battle of Stam-
ford Bridge, full of the mirth of feasting. But the
shadows are closing round Harold now. He who
scorned superstition is becoming nervous and moody
at the end. Tostig's hand seems to pass across his
cup as he raises it to drink: his soul is heavy with
sorrow for the brother who has fallen. And just as
QUEEN MARY AND HAROLD
231
the health of Harold and Aldwyth is passing round
the board, a Thane from Pevensey staggers into the
hall with the word that William of Normandy has
landed. So with sudden haste and confusion the
banquet is broken up, and the act closes on Harold's
order to horse.
At the opening of the last act Harold is discovered
seated in his tent, with the field of Senlac in the
distance. The Monk Margot has come to urge him
to yield to Rome, who has given encouragement to
the claim of William. But Harold repudiates Rome's
authority. Enraged, he cries:
'Back to that juggler,
Tell him the Saints are nobler than he dreams,
Tell him that God is nobler than the Saints,
And tell him we stand arm'd on Senlac Hill,
And bide the doom of God.'
Left alone, he falls asleep; and the ghosts of Edward,
Wulfroth, Tostig, and the Norman Saints move
across his dream to foretell his death.
'Sanguelac! Sanguelac! the arrow! the arrow!
As he springs from his couch, maddened by the
vision, Edith is with him. Before they can take
farewell, Aldwyth endeavours to part them; but
Harold is true to the old love at last. In a tenderly
pathetic scene they say their last good-bye, and
Harold passes to his death with the words:
'Look, I will bear thy blessing into the battle,
And front the doom of God.'
Then the progress of the fight is reported by the
bystanders, while their voices of hope and fear mingle
232
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
with the weird chanting of the canons.
The battle
sways and varies, till the last bitter moment.
Edith
looks across the hill for Harold, but the Archbishop
calls her to turn her eyes.
'Sanguelac! Sanguelac! the arrow, the arrow! away!'
The tragedy closes at night on the field of the dead.
Edith and Aldwyth have come to look for Harold's
body, and Edith is maddened now. She raves in-
coherently of her love and marriage, and desperately
draws the ring from the finger of the dead, to wed
herself to him :
'And thou,-
Thy wife am I for ever and evermore.'
So she dies with him; and William, who even by
his foe's dead body, can find no good word to say of
him, turns to Aldwyth and promises her a kindly
treatment. She, the crafty schemer, is left alone :
all her plans have miscarried, all her hopes are belied.
It is too heavy for her:
'My punishment is more than I can bear.'
(
It is impossible to show in a bare analysis how
completely 'Harold' satisfies the requisities of tragedy;
but this rapid glance will prove that every scene is
intimately connected with the theme, the gradual
rise and fall of the fortunes of Harold.' Until his
marriage with Aldwyth his star is rising, from that
point it begins a rapid and fatal decline. The turning-
point in his life, however, is the moment of his first
lie. From that time he has lost his trust in himself,
and begins to weaken into superstition. Had he
been true to himself, false sentiment had never made
QUEEN MARY AND HAROLD
233
Before that, all his life is built of
him false to Edith.
truth and honesty :
'In mine earldom
A man may hang gold bracelets on a bush,
And leave them for a year, and coming back
Find them again.'
And again the hot English blood boils up within
him, when William tortures a subject who had abused
his rule :
'In mine own land I should have scorned the man,
Or lash'd his rascal back, and let him go.'
He is above
The wide-minded spirit of chivalry chafes, too, at the
thousand little exigencies of doctrine.
priestcraft:
'Oh God! I cannot help it, but at times
They seem to me too narrow, all the faiths
Of this grown world of ours, whose baby eye
Saw them sufficient.'
This is Harold: open, chivalrous, wide-minded, yield-
ing but once to temptation, and ruined for life by a
lie. From that moment petty fears and false senti-
ments get hold of him; only at the last he triumphs.
Before he goes out to die, he recognises the faithful-
ness and the desert of Edith. And in their death
they are not divided.
as
Aldwyth, cunning and ambitious, with one redeem-
ing feature-her passion for Harold,—serves
the evil influence of the drama. She is not inhumanly
evil it is only in her treatment of Edith that she
becomes hateful. And even there, her love for her
dead king covers, or at any rate excuses, a multitude
of abuses.
Edith is saved from the position of a merely
234
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
tender, uninfluential girl by the final stress of her
love. The wild woman fighting for the body of
Harold is a strange development of the simple, trust-
ful maid, singing of love and hope in the garden.
Her character is perhaps the most dramatic in the
play; she changes during its course from girlhood to
womanhood, from meekness to strength.
William of Normandy has no redeeming feature.
He is brutal and unscrupulous, cloaking his treachery
with an assumption of friendship; he is unchivalrous,
even to the insult of his foe's dead body. In arous-
ing our sympathy for Harold, Tennyson is careful to
excite our contempt for his successor.
These four characters carry the drama between
them. Tostig and Wulfroth have some importance,
but their characters are not subtle. Tostig is the
spoiled boy grown man, wayward and uncertain;
selfish, -even to an aspiration towards the kingdom.
Wulfroth is a coward pure and simple, without life
or spirit.
The play is as rich in character as in action. It
is to be hoped that it may yet be seen upon the
London stage.
CHAPTER XI
THE FALCON AND THE CUP
(
THE publication of Harold' was followed by two
years of comparative silence. During 1877 and 1878
Tennyson's work was confined to contributions to
The Nineteenth Century, the first number of which,
edited by Mr. J. T. Knowles, the friend upon whose
plans Aldworth was built, appeared in March 1877.
It bore as a prelude the Laureate's introductory
sonnet, and during the same year the new review
was enriched by the sonnets 'Montenegro' and 'To
Victor Hugo,' and the lines translated from the
eighteenth Iliad, 'Achilles over the Trench.' But
the thirteenth number (March 1878) contained a far
more notable poem, 'Sir Richard Grenville: a Ballad
of the Fleet,' subsequently re-named 'The Revenge.'
This poem stands in a class alone, side by side with
'The Charge of the Light Brigade,' 'The Voyage of
Maeldune,' 'The Defence of Lucknow,' and 'The
Charge of the Heavy Brigade.' These five pieces
bear witness to us of a Tennyson too little realised,
a man with the soul of action and 'the heart of fire.'
To read them seems to give reason to FitzGerald's
early vision of the poet, standing, by Henry Hallam's
shoulder, to the guns on the Martello Tower. None
235
236
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
of them is so breathlessly violent, so eager, so man
fully English as 'The Revenge,' which owes certain
of its details to Sir Walter Raleigh's 'Report of the
Truth of the Fight about the Isles of the Azores this
last summer betwixt The Revenge and an Armada of
the King of Spain.' It sounds like a war-song on
one of Kingsley's themes, set to the roaring music of
the blast of that 'chivalrous and cheery horn' which
stirs the spirit of Mr. Andrew Lang. It has no less
vigour than 'Hervé Riel,' over which, perhaps, it
triumphs by a clearer enunciation. There is nothing
more virile in literature than Sir Richard Grenville's
cry to death:
'We have fought such a fight for a day and a night
As may never be fought again!
We have won great glory, my men !
And a day less or more
At sea or ashore,
We die-does it matter when?
Sink me the ship, Master Gunner, sink her, split her in twain !
Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain !'
'Eh! he has got the grip of it!' cried Carlyle. It
is the grip that was meant to write the war-songs of
a nation; and we cannot but regret that Tennyson
has sung so little to this strain.
(
A year later, in April 1879, he recaptured the
breathless spirit of adventure in another contribution
to The Nineteenth Century. The Defence of Luck-
now' is eager, nervous, and rapid. The excitement
never dies down, the strain of energy holds to the
last line. Browning, it is said, was once asked
whether he did not consider that 'The Revenge'
owed something of its inspiration to his own Hervé
THE FALCON AND THE CUP
237
(
Riel,' but he set the suggestion aside at once.
Tennyson's inspiration,' he said, 'is his own.' Still
the poems are, as it were, twin brothers, alike in
form and disposition.
In the spring of 1879, on the 25th of April,
Charles Tennyson Turner died at Cheltenham. 'I
was writing only yesterday,' wrote FitzGerald, on the
18th of May, 'to persuade Spedding to insist on
Macmillan publishing a complete edition of Charles's
sonnets: graceful, tender, beautiful, and quite original
little things.' The collection appeared in the follow-
ing year, published, however, by Mr. Kegan Paul.
It was introduced by Spedding, and prefaced by the
Laureate's poem, 'At Midnight, June 30, 1879,' to
which reference has already been made. The little
volume is a delightful union of the old and the young
generation. It contains Samuel Taylor Coleridge's
comments, written by him in his own earlier copy of
the sonnets, and the whole is edited by the Laureate's
son, Mr. Hallam Tennyson. Several copies of the
earlier volume claim to be Coleridge's original, but
errors in transcription put two, at least, out of court.
The copy in the British Museum was long believed
to be the genuine one; but Mr. J. Dykes Campbell
has proved the notes to be written in another hand
than Coleridge's.
Charles Tennyson's life was a very peaceful one,
centred in the interest of his parish at Grasby.
There he left behind him an affectionate regard, and
other permanent records of his care. He not only
rebuilt the vicarage, but restored the church and
schools. He published three volumes of poems-
238
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
'Sonnets and Fugitive Pieces' in 1830, 'Sonnets' in
1864, and ‘Sonnets, Lyrics, and Translations' in 1873.
His wife survived him but a single month.
During the present year (1879), Alfred Tennyson's
muse was not unfruitful. The Lover's Tale,' treated
earlier in this study, was now first published in its
complete form, making a thin volume of ninety-five
pages. American piracy, reproducing the poem with
innumerable errors, induced Tennyson to print it in a
correct and final shape. This was merely a revival :
the poet's heart of hearts was still absorbed in drama.
'Becket' was already in contemplation; and towards
the end of the year another and much slighter piece
was introduced to the public. On December 18, 1879,
Messrs. Hare and Kendal produced 'The Falcon' at
the St. James's Theatre.
<
'The Falcon' is by far the least ambitious of
Tennyson's plays; it is, indeed, a mere lever de
rideau. The argument is borrowed from Boccaccio,
where it serves as the ninth novel of the fifth day of
the Decameron,' the story told by Dioneo. The
Count Federigo degli Alberighi, an impoverished
nobleman, is in love with a wealthy and beautiful
widow, the Lady Giovanna. He loved her before
her first marriage, and has now spent all his resources
in the purchase of a diamond necklace as a gift for
her. But she has a rival,-his favourite falcon. The
Count has a strange affection for this bird, to which he
prattles by the hour of love and life. Sometimes he
almost feels that the bird is as dear to him as his
mistress. Now, the Lady Giovanna's son is sick to
death, and in his moody melancholy he yearns for the
THE FALCON AND THE CUP
239
Count's falcon. It seems as if this toy alone could
turn the course of his ill-health. So the Lady Giovanna
calls upon the Count, at the luncheon hour, to beg
the falcon of him. The scanty provision in the larder
is insufficient for the meal; and the Count secretly
orders his foster-brother, Filippo, to kill the falcon
and have it cooked for Giovanna. While the meal is
in preparation, the Count sings, and reminds Giovanna
of the earlier years of their love. But, when the
lunch is spread, the Lady cannot eat. She is filled
with anxiety for her request; and when she proffers
it, she learns that her lover has striven so hard to
entertain her that he has killed his favourite for her
sake. Then her love holds back no longer, and their
happiness is secure.
There are but four characters in the piece-Eliza-
betta the Count's nurse, Filippo his foster-brother, an
echo of the Shakespearian clown, and the Count and
Lady themselves. The length of the piece (it could
scarcely play for more than an hour) prevents any
delicate sketch of character: nor is such analysis de-
manded in so slight an essay. But where there is
little character there must be action and motive.
Action, as a survey of the argument will show,
there is practically none; and the motive is insufficient.
As a story to while away an afternoon, the tale has a
charm and a romantic interest: but these pale of
necessity when the argument is set out in dramatic
form. Then the story must depend on motive, and
on motive alone. Now, the interest and attraction of
an extinct form of field-sport is not a sufficient ground-
work for drama. The Count's affection for his
240
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
favourite falcon, intelligible enough to the ladies of
Florence, has not depth and strength enough to con-
vince an English audience. The sacrifice would be
affecting as an incident; it is not strong enough to
form the main motive of a play. The Falcon' was
respectfully and kindly received, but there was no
enthusiasm. The piece was perfectly acted, with a
delicate taste and a full appreciation of the beauty of
the dialogue, and its success was chiefly due to its
performance. The customary call of compliment for
the author was answered by Mr. Hare, who informed
the audience that Mr. Alfred Tennyson was not
present, but that his son, Mr. Hallam Tennyson,
would convey to his father their kindly appreciation
of his play. But 'The Falcon's' wings were not
broad enough nor strong enough to carry it into
<
success.
•
(
The next year, however, saw the publication of a
volume which was to succeed where The Falcon
failed. The book of Ballads,' issued in 1880, con-
tains between cover and cover the most dramatic of
all Tennyson's poems. The monologue, first suggested
in St. Simeon Stylites,' is brought to perfection in
The First Quarrel,'' Rizpah,' 'Sir John Oldcastle,'
'Lord Cobham,' and 'Columbus.' The poems in
dialect have no better examples than 'The Northern
Cobbler' and 'The Village Wife.' 'The Revenge,'
'The Defence of Lucknow,' and the 'Voyage of
Maeldune' are among the finest, most spirited poems
of action in the language. The Sisters' and 'In
the Children's Hospital' stand midway between the
idyll and the dramatic monologue, catching some of
THE FALCON AND THE CUP
241
<
'De
the most characteristic traits of either form.
Profundis,' which appeared first in The Nineteenth
Century for May 1880, stands side by side with The
Higher Pantheism,' as a calm, philosophical declara-
tion of faith in the goodness of a God who does all
things well. The other contents of the volume were
the prefatory sonnet to The Nineteenth Century,
the sonnets to W. H. Brookfield, Montenegro, and to
Victor Hugo, the translations The Battle of Brunan-
burgh' and 'Achilles over the Trench,' the poem
To the Princess Frederica of Hanover on her
Marriage,' the lines for Sir John Franklin's ceno-
taph, and 'To Dante.' There was also a dedica-
tory prelude to his grandson:
(
'Golden-hair'd Ally, whose name is one with mine.'
The 'Ballads' are particularly interesting in their
relation to the rest of Tennyson's work, and for their
place in the very centre of the dramatic period. They
represent, as it were, a moulding of the old material
into more dramatic form, the immediate result of
the concentration of the poet's mind upon drama.
He turns to the old subjects and the old scenes;
but, almost unconsciously, he treats them in a new
spirit. His touch becomes more vivid, and less per-
sonal; his characters speak with their own tongues,
and not with the voice of the poet. "The First
Quarrel' is an idyll of the hearth inspired with life:
Nelly and Harry are life-like in the very respect
in which Annie and Philip, in 'Enoch Arden,' are
idealised. They speak the rough, genuine language
of the fisher-folk.
Q
242
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
""I had sooner be cursed than kiss'd,”'
she says. And again:
'You were keeping with her,
When I was loving you all along, an' the same as before.'
Then hear Annie speak: Annie, with the same
bringing-up, the same surroundings :
'If Enoch comes-but Enoch will not come-
Yet wait a year, a year is not so long:
Surely I shall be wiser in a year:
O wait a little !'
The one treatment is dramatic, the other idyllic.
'Rizpah' is even more dramatic. A mother,
whose boy has been hung for robbing the mail, is
dying: and on her deathbed she tells, with all the
horror of circumstance, how she stole his bones and
gave them Christian burial under the churchyard
wall. And now she is going to her boy-she cares
not whither.
6
'Election, Election and Reprobation—it's all very well.
But I go to-night to my boy, and I shall not find him in Hell.
And if he be lost-but to save my soul, that is all your desire:
Do you think that I care for my soul if my boy be gone to the fire?
I have been with God in the dark-go, go, you may leave me alone--
You never have borne a child—you are just as hard as a stone.'
<
The Northern Cobbler,' the story of the salvation of
a drunkard, and 'The Village Wife,' the garrulous
gossip of an old countrywoman-both written in
dialect, Sir John Oldcastle' and 'Columbus,' are
all of the very essence of dramatic monologue. The
Voyage of the Maeldune' is written in a combination
of two styles. There is a wealth of description in
the account of the different isles at which the
wanderers touch, which suggests the colour of 'The
THE FALCON AND THE CUP
243
Lotos Eaters' and 'The Voyage. On the other
hand, there is a rapid movement, as of the plunging
of the vessel through the foam, which hurries the
poem on from picture to picture.
And we roll'd upon capes of crocus and vaunted our kith and our kin,
And we wallow'd in beds of lilies, and chanted the triumph of Finn,
Till each like a golden image was pollen'd from head to feet,
And each was as dry as a cricket, with a thirst in the middle-day
heat.
Blossom and blossom, and promise of blossom, but never a fruit!
And we hated the Flowering Isle, as we hated the isle that was
mute,
And we tore up the flowers by the million and flung them in bight
and bay,
And we left but a naked rock, and in anger we sail'd away.'
The same wild excitement, now holding its breath in
hope and fear, overwhelms the spirit of The Defence
of Lucknow.' The shadow of death hangs over the
poem, as we listen to the beating of men's hearts.
failing them for fear.
'Quiet, ah! quiet-wait till the point of the pickaxe be thro' !
Click with the pick, coming nearer and nearer again than before—
Now let it speak, and you fire, and the dark pioneer is no more ;
And ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England blew.'
This is the true spirit of drama, keen, eager, with a
sense of action and a grasp of situation. There is
nothing like this in Tennyson's plays,-not even in
'Harold.'
It is, perhaps, scarcely worth mentioning, but the
fact remains that, some years after the appearance of
'Columbus,' a pamphlet was printed claiming to trace
a connection between the Laureate's poem and a piece.
of verse by an obscure writer called 'Columbus at
Seville.' The attempt, in itself ignoble, was con-
244
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
ducted in a spirit which frees it from the necessity
of serious consideration; its only interest lies in its
exposure of the fallacy and worthlessness of the
average accusation of plagiarism. No cause is easier
to argue none is less deserving of argument.
(
In the year of the Ballads' (1880), in February,
two child songs, 'The City Child' and 'Minnie and
Winnie,' appeared in an American periodical, St.
Nicholas. These have since been reprinted in
Tennyson's collected works. They are melodious
nursery-rhymes: a singular contrast to the work
which was occupying Tennyson's inclination at the
moment. For at that time he was finishing The
Cup.'
Towards the end of the year Mr. Irving an-
nounced the production of Tennyson's new play at
the Lyceum; and on Monday, January 3, 1881, it
was presented to one of the most distinguished
audiences which were ever gathered into a theatre
for a first night. Report had been busy with the
play beforehand, and the critical had prophesied
failure. Neither Queen Mary' nor 'The Falcon'
had succeeded; and Mr. Irving was considered to
have shown some temerity in venturing on another
of the Laureate's dramas. But his boldness was
justified. The Cup' was a genuine success. The
play was staged with liberal magnificence, and acted
with sympathy and power. Everything that art and
artifice could do to secure success was done, and the
result belied the fears which even Tennyson's best
friends had been unable to put aside altogether. The
following was the original cast of
THE FALCON AND THE CUP
245
Synorix,
Sinnatus,
Attendant,
·
Boy,
Maid,
Camma,
Antonius,
•
Publius,
Nobleman,.
Herald,
THE CUP
GALATIANS
•
•
MR. IRVING.
MR. TERRISS.
MR. HARWOOD.
MISS BROWN.
MISS PAUNCEFORT.
MISS ELLEN TERRY.
ROMANS
•
MR. TYARS.
MR. HUDSON.
MR. MATTHISON.
MR. ARCHER.
The story of the tragedy, which is borrowed from
Plutarch's De Claris Mulieribus, and had already
been used by Montanelli, may be told in a few words.
Sinnatus, tetrarch of Galatia, is suspected of in-
fidelity to the Roman rule. Antonius, a Roman
general, is sent to investigate his honour, and is
accompanied on the quest by Synorix, ex-tetrarch of
the same province. Three years before, when he
held the tetrarchy, Synorix had conceived a passion
for a Galatian girl, Camma, who has since married
Sinnatus. He is a crude voluptuary, who has never
yet found a woman he could not 'force or wheedle to
his will,' and he spies opportunity, in the present
case, for winning from Camma all he wishes. As a
first claim on her attention he sends her a golden cup,
embossed with the figure of Artemis, and then, by
a lucky chance, he falls in with Sinnatus and his
companions hunting, and joins them. At the end of
the day's sport, Sinnatus invites Synorix to his house;
and the traitor plays on Camma's wifely fear by
246
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
swearing that Antonius knows her husband to be
false to Rome, and will have him tortured, and,
perhaps, killed in punishment. He suggests that
Camma shall, on the following morning, repair to
the camp, and beg Antonius for mercy for her
husband; and, as their conversation ends, the mob,
without learning who Synorix is, begin to clamour
for his blood. Sinnatus, however, helps him to
escape; and at the appointed hour next day Camma
comes to the camp. Instead of Antonius she finds
Synorix; and, drawing her dagger against him, is
disarmed. Then Sinnatus rushes to the rescue, and
Synorix stabs him with Camma's dagger. She flies
to the temple of Artemis for safety.
In the second act she is found installed priestess
of the temple, and Synorix, who has now been ap-
pointed Prince of Galatia, is still besieging her with
entreaties for her hand. At last she accepts him, and
crowns herself Queen of Galatia. The marriage rites
are to be solemnised in the temple, and Antonius
comes with Synorix to the festival. Then Camma
asks Antonius what punishment he would have
inflicted on Sinnatus had he been found untrue to
Rome. The general hints at a reprimand; and
Camma learns how treacherously Synorix has de-
ceived her. Still she carries on the semblance of
her marriage. Poisoning the libation in the cup
Synorix had given her, she hands it him, and drinks
of it herself; and she and her would-be betrayer die
together.
The Cup' is a powerful little tragedy, rich in
action, condensed into a singularly brief space.
The
THE FALCON AND THE CUP
247
story is actually concerned with but four characters,
and of these, three only are intimately connected with
the interest. Each of the three is endowed with
vitality and strength. Camma is especially distinct
and human. Her soul is bound up in her love for
her husband. After the revelations of Synorix and
his hint of the danger in which Sinnatus is involved,
she sinks from the strain of the moment into a tender
remembrance of the past. Standing at the window,
she sees afar off the vine-bower where Sinnatus told
her of his love.
'You kiss'd me there
For the first time. Sinnatus, kiss me now.'
This is pure womanly.
The sense of danger
draws him nearer to her: she needs the assurance of
his presence in the feeling of his arms about her and
his lips to hers. And then she sets sentiment aside,
and goes out to danger in the hope of saving him.
Such love as this cannot die with his death. It
nerves her to something stronger, when his help is
taken from her. For the satisfaction of revenge she
endures the indignation of her fellow-priestess, Phœbe,
at the prospect of her marriage to Synorix. In the
keenness of the moment she seems to throw modesty
aside, as she throws away her fear. Phoebe reminds
her of the shyness with which she faced her first
marriage; and she replies-
'I have no fears at this my second marriage.
See here I stretch my hand out-hold it there.
How steady it is!'
She endures it all, that she may pass to Sinnatus on
248
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
the other side of death, and tell him that he is
avenged.
'Row to the blessed Isles ! the blessed Isles !-
Sinnatus ! . .,
There-league on league of ever-shining shore
Beneath an ever-rising sun-I see him-
Camma, Camma! Sinnatus, Sinnatus!'
The husband, for whom she ventures all things,
appears, in the short while he is before us, as a brave,
chivalrous soldier. He saves the life of Synorix, to
whom Galatia owed nothing but revenge, and in
return he pays for his clemency with his life. For
the rest he is a keen hunter and a hot-blooded
antagonist.
Synorix is a libertine: selfish, as is the wont of his
kind sacrificing every honourable scruple to the
satisfaction of his lust. He is false even to Rome;
he lies to Camma of Rome's intention in order to
frighten her into compliance with his will. At the
end, even, he is false to himself.
he says,
""Tell the Senate !"
"I have been most true to Rome-would have been true
To her-if-if"
>>>
Synorix, false at the moment of his death to the
country which he served, could never have been true
to a woman.
6
But the strength and vigour of The Cup' does
not consist merely in the portraiture of this vivid trio
of characters; the tragedy has especial merit in the
swift, eager sequence of its incidents. It has sufficient
motive to have excused its prolongation to twice its
THE FALCON AND THE CUP
249
present length; but its concise, nervous movement
lends it a strength which an elaboration of detail
would inevitably weaken. In singular contrast to
Queen Mary,' it has not a scene or a passage of
dialogue which could be omitted without harm to the
whole; and the technical stage-craft is an advance
upon the advance of Harold.' The scene between
Camma, Synorix, and Sinnatus is a piece of breathless
rapidity which is full of dramatic energy, and the
act-drop falls upon a strong and impressive situation.
The dialogue is more direct and incisive than in the
earlier dramas; speech cuts into speech with that
sharp stroke which carries the play along with it.
And during the last act the gradual atmosphere of
tragedy gathers round the characters with a sombre
progress which is the evidence of true genius in the
writer. The strange, uncomfortable words of sugges-
tion which Camma throws out from time to time form
themselves by degrees into a sense of coming horror.
The thunder rolls above the marriage hymn, as though
Artemis were answering Camma from the cloud.
And at the altar of the goddess, whose sanctuary he
wished to violate, Synorix pays the penalty of his
lust. The Cup' is a tragedy in little; but it is a
tragedy that may well stand as an example of the
most vivid dramatic literature which any English
author has produced during the last quarter of a
century.
Mr. William Archer, who gives 'The Cup' a very
full consideration in his interesting volume English
Dramatists of To-day, has two main faults to find with
it. He complains, in the first place, that the play
250
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
should not open till after the death of Sinnatus; and,
in the second place, he insists that, as Synorix kills
Sinnatus in self-defence, Camma's revenge is robbed
of half its justification. An affection for Montanelli's
play has, perhaps, led the critic a little further than
his calmer judgment would follow. For to say that
the play should begin with Camma's revenge is
merely to argue that the story should be told from a
different standpoint. Tennyson's object is to show
the course of Synorix's unholy love, which is quite
willing to satisfy itself without bloodshed. Were the
story to begin after the death of Sinnatus, the
dramatic exposition of this love would, perhaps, suffer
in justification from the fact that Synorix killed her
husband in defending his own life. But, as Tenny-
son's play stands, Camma's thirst for revenge is fully
justified by the double wrong that Synorix has done
her. He has sought to seduce her, and, to gain his
end, had lied to her as to Rome's intention. Had
that lie remained untold, she would never have gone
to Antonius, and so led her husband to his death. It
is difficult to imagine a stronger motive for revenge
than that which animates the Camma of The Cup.'
Not only has her husband fallen by the hand of
Synorix, but the circumstances of his death have
been rendered possible by an unholy love for herself.
Without that love, there had been no lie; without the
lie, Sinnatus would never have run into danger.
Another fault which Mr. Archer finds with The
Cup' is more reasonable: he complains of the rapidity
of the action. He argues that the true psychological
motive, the growth of Camma's thirst for revenge, and
THE FALCON AND THE CUP
251
the religious enthusiasm which justifies it, are slurred
over in the Laureate's version of the story. There is
truth in this: The Cup,' as we said before, might be
prolonged to twice its length without loss. But it was
more than probable that, in Tennyson's hands, the
psychological motive, once insisted upon, would have
increased in importance until it overbalanced the
action of the play. A second act, which should trace
Camma's revenge in its growth, would have lent itself
to that 'tendency without drama' which Mr. Archer
has always been the first to condemn. The vivid,
eager movement of the plot would have been stayed:
the interest would inevitably have hung fire. Doubt-
less Tennyson foresaw this, and hurried the action
forward to its tragic close. As it now stands, 'The
Cup' is unimpeded by psychology: it is a drama, not
a study. And in freeing himself from the temptation
to be analytic, Tennyson has broken a custom which,
both before and after 'The Cup,' led him to dramatic
failure. To treat a subject in a different spirit is not
necessarily to treat it better. 'What is writ is writ';
and it is written with a strength and energy which
the popular dramatists of the day may well envy the
Laureate.
CHAPTER XII
THE PROMISE OF MAY AND BECKET
Ar the moment when the Lyceum Theatre was
attracting London to its sumptuous version of The
Cup,' another of the Laureate's old friends left him.
In 1881 James Spedding died. The Cambridge circle
was gradually narrowing: Arthur Hallam, Charles
Tennyson, and Frederick Denison Maurice were
gone: FitzGerald survived Spedding for no more
than three years. The breaking up of the old order
filled those who were left with saddened memories.
FitzGerald's letters during 1881 contain more than
one reference to the loss of Spedding. He recalls
gratefully the visit of Tennyson and himself to the
Speddings in 1835, when the poet was busy upon
'Morte d'Arthur,' and the 'daffodils were out in a
field before the house.' He adds with a yearning for
sympathy: 'Does Alfred Tennyson remember them?'
As the circle narrows, those who are left draw
closer to one another.
Meanwhile the dramatic movement still carried
Tennyson with it. In November 1881 he printed in
The Nineteenth Century another vivid monologue,
'Despair,' which in intensity and horror is scarcely
to be rivalled. It was to be ridiculed, however. A
252
THE PROMISE OF MAY AND BECKET
253
(
month later Mr. Swinburne published in The Fort-
nightly Review a clever, if somewhat savage, travesty,
'Disgust,' in which the circumstances and sentiment
of Tennyson's story were burlesqued into a coarse
chirurgical operation. But Mr. Swinburne's genuine
admiration for Tennyson's work prevented his paro-
dies from becoming gross: and, in the year preceding
Disgust,' he had travestied him with genuine felicity.
'The Heptalogia: or the Seven against Sense,' imita-
tions of the characteristic manner and matter of the
seven leading poets of the day, was published in 1880
anonymously; but its authorship was immediately
ascribed to Mr. Swinburne, who actually parodies him-
self in a poem that is a little too clearly a caricature.
The style of Robert Browning is much more fortunately
caught, and Mrs. Browning is skilfully echoed in 'The
Poet and the Woodlouse.' The travesty of Tennyson
is entitled The Higher Pantheism in a Nutshell': it
is keen, but admirable.
'God, whom we see not, is; and God, who is not, we see ;
Fiddle, we know, is diddle; and diddle we take it, is dee.'
There is, perhaps, but one parody of Tennyson's
manner which can stand on an equality with The
Higher Pantheism in a Nutshell,' and this rival is
seven years older. In 1873 General Hamley, to
whom The Charge of the Heavy Brigade' is
dedicated, contributed to Blackwood's Magazine 'Sir
Tray: an Arthurian Legend,' as excellent a piece of
fooling as ever was penned. It tells, with strangely
Tennysonian touch, the story of Mother Hubbard and
her dog--a favourite groundwork for parody. Mother
254
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Hubbard's return from the baker's is recounted with
graphic solemnity. Tray lies dead:
'The carcase mov'd
All over wooden like a piece of wood.'
And again, could anything be more Tennysonian than
the following version of the lines.
'She went to the hatter's to get her a hat,
And when she came back he was feeding the cat'?
This is how General Hamley describes the scene:
'Then up she rose, and to the Hatter's went,-
"Hat me," quoth she, "your very newest hat.”
And so they hatted her, and she return'd,
Home thro' the darksome wold, and rais'd the latch,
And marked, full lighted by the ingle-glow,
Sir Tray, with spoon in hand, and cat on knee,
Spattering the mess about the chaps of Puss.'
Such travesty has root in a very real appreciation of
the characteristics of the original.
But to return to 'Despair.' Tennyson's dramatic
poems have often proved a stumbling-block to the
less astute of his readers, and there were many people
who found 'Despair' unquieting. The treatment of
atheism was considered dangerous, if not positively
immoral. An eminent socialist discussed the poem
in a controversial tract, and a Mr. Thomas Walker
delivered a lecture on its religious significance. In a
few pregnant words he represented the attitude of
the public to the poem.
'Culture,' he said, 'could no more accept than
disown it, and sulked. Society was vexed that its
conventional decorum had been set at nought, and
muttered “indiscretion" and "scandal." The religious
world groaned as if under a benumbing torpedo shock.
THE PROMISE OF MAY AND BECKET
255
And had the far-seeing poet braved so much hostility,
and provoked all this dislike for nothing? For an
enterprise so perilous was there not a reason and a
compensation?'
It was the old story: the public treated a dramatic
utterance as an expression of the poet's own senti-
ment; it began to fear that the Tennyson of 'In
Memoriam' had gone down before the flowing tide
of disbelief. The fear seems incredible, but it is none
the less a matter of history.
'Despair' has a special interest as the forerunner
of The Promise of May.' The problem of the
struggle of doubt and faith had at intervals suggested
itself to Tennyson: it found voice in In Memoriam,'
in The Higher Pantheism,' in 'Two Voices.' It
was now, in Tennyson's most dramatic period, to
issue in a dramatic exposition-to be represented, not
subjectively, but objectively. And the representation
in the new form was to draw the lesson of the old, the
doctrine of the necessity and immortality of Faith,
without which the man is dead to all the virtues and
aspirations of life. Only the least intellectual student
could find a note of doubt in Tennyson.
But there are always those who misunderstand:
and another anecdote of this period is worth re-
telling in the present connection. It is a fitting
companion to the debate over 'Despair,' and the
story of the Eyre rebellion. In March 1882, at a
concert at St. James's Hall, Mr. Santley sang Hands
all round,' to a setting by Mrs. Tennyson. It will be
remembered that the song has a hearty refrain :
'To this great cause of Freedom, drink, my friends.'
256
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
and, naturally, in the musical version, the word
'Drink' was repeated to a stirring melody. The
Committee of Good Templars were up in arms at
once, and the poet received a letter of expostulation
for his encouragement of drunkenness! Of a certain
class and their conscientiousness there is no end.
It was not so that the costermonger in Covent
Garden regarded the poet! The story is no new one,
but it has its interest here. 'You are Mr. Tennyson,'
said the man. 'Look here, sir, I've been drunk six
days out of seven; but, if you 'll shake hands with me,
I'm damned if I'll ever be drunk again.'
During the early months of 1882 Tennyson was
occupied upon another drama, which, after some delay,
was produced on November 11, 1882. Mrs. Bernard
Beere, the one tragic actress of the moment, had
taken the Globe Theatre for a spell of manage-
ment, and she was attracted by the Laureate's new
play. The financial success of 'The Cup' stood also
as a precedent of good fortune, and with the following
cast she re-opened the theatre with
Farmer Dobson,
Philip Edgar,
THE PROMISE OF MAY
•
MR. CHARLES KELLY.
MR. HERMANN VEZIN.
MR. H. CAMERON.
Farmer Steer,
Mr. Wilson,
James,
Dan Smith,
Higgins,
MR. E. T. MARCH.
MR. H. HALLEY.
MR. C. MEDWIN.
MR. A. PHILIPS.
Jackson,
Allen,
Dora Steer,
Eva Steer,
Sally,
Milly,
MR. G. STEVENS.
MR. H. E. RUSSELL.
MRS. BERNARD BEERE.
MISS EMMELINE ORMSBY.
MISS ALEXES LEIGHTON.
MISS MAGGIE HUNT.
THE PROMISE OF MAY AND BECKET
257
The rumour of the drama had preceded it, and a
distinguished and expectant audience filled the theatre
on the first night. It was known that the play was
to touch on agnosticism, but, though some of the
spectators may have come ready to disapprove any
atheistic sentiment, there was no suggestion of any
united attempt to condemn the drama unheard. On
the contrary, its opening passages were delivered into
an atmosphere of respectful and eager attention. The
new manager had done all she could to secure success.
The pastoral scenery was artistically painted; the
company was a strong one. The programme is a
delicate little souvenir. On a buff-card, folded, the
song, 'O joy for the Promise of May!' is printed on
either side of the cast of characters. The front cover
bears a pink may-tree in full bloom with golden
leaves; another may-tree adorns the back. Care
and thought had been bestowed upon every detail of
the production. But before the end of the first act
the fate of the play was decided. The first murmurs
of disapproval grew into loud and continued derision,
and the principal actor could with difficulty carry his
part to an end. When the curtain fell, The Promise
of May' was irretrievably ruined.
(
The failure of the play has been traced to two
main motives of irritation, which are supposed to
have wrought the audience to the pitch at which
endurance becomes impossible. On the one hand, it
has been pointed out that the hero is a sensual
agnostic, whose very portrayal on the stage was pro-
vocation enough for an outburst of protest. And, on
the other hand, it is agreed that the one motive, and
R
258
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
the one situation, the outcome of that motive, which
are the vertebræ of the play, are so unpalatable in
tone and sentiment as to alienate the interest and
sympathy of the best-disposed audience. The
shortest consideration of the drama will help to an
estimate of this criticism.
'The Promise of May' opens before Farmer
Steer's house, on his eightieth birthday. His labourers
and farm-servants are keeping holiday; and, as if to
crown the festival, his daughter Dora, who has been
from home nursing a relation, returns to join in their
pleasure. Eva, Steer's other daughter, has, we learn,
a lover, Philip Edgar, a wealthy gentleman, who has
seduced her under a promise of marriage. And in
the course of the act he persuades her to elope with
him. He is an amateur philosopher, full of catch-
words and Hedonistic axioms. Content to seek his
own pleasure, he has said in his heart that there is no
God; and, the religious sanction being removed, it
follows that there is little enough obligation to be
moral. He is a strange lover for the simple farmer's
daughter.
The first act takes us no further than this in the
story, and then five years elapse. With the second
act we find Farmer Dobson, a stolid country bumpkin,
who, in the opening of the play, was in love with
Dora, still seeking for her promise unsuccessfully.
Their conversation reveals the fact that five years ago
Eva had run away, leaving a letter to hint that she
would drown herself. At the news of her disgrace
the old father had worked himself into a fury which
subsided into paralysis, from which he emerged
THE PROMISE OF MAY AND BECKET
259
blind. To this result of his selfish sin Edgar
returns, under the name of Harold. Time and
travel have bronzed him, and he wears a beard:
so changed, he passes unrecognised. Dobson alone
suspects him, but Edgar shows the simple farmer a
newspaper notice of his father's death, which, from an
identity in names, he easily passes off as his own.
Edgar at once makes love to Dora, who is readily
won, when news reaches them of an accident in a
neighbouring lane, where a lady has been run over.
With this the second act closes.
In Act III. we find Eva, the unknown lady who
was hurt in the accident, nursed by Dora, who is
keeping her sister's identity a secret from their father.
Eva, however, in the yearning for his forgiveness,
consents at last to tell him; but the old man is too
much troubled by his disease to understand her.
Then Edgar and Eva meet; and Dora learns who
her lover really is. Eva, at the horror of the meet-
ing, drops dead: and, over her sister's dead body,
Dora curses the man who hoped to make amends'
by a marriage that seems, to her sentiment, little
less than incestuous. And so the curtain falls on the
two face to face, understanding each other at last.
The character of Philip Edgar is, on the face of it,
repulsive; but the stage has long been accustomed to
the portayal of repulsive characters. A drama that
should occupy itself with soberness and chastity alone
could never attain to strength and vitality. There
is, without doubt, something peculiarly repellent in
Edgar's idea that a marriage with Dora could make
amends for Eva's seduction; but the notion is never
260
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
submitted to us as other than repellent. It is a course of
thought sufficiently natural to a mind whose sentiment
is sensation, whose love is lust. It is absurd to quarrel
with a dramatist for drawing an unpleasant picture.
The question of the critic is not-Is the picture
pretty ?—but—Is it real? is it in accordance with
nature, without transgressing the limit of art? Now,
it can hardly be held that the character of Edgar is
too unlovely for art. Its restless inconsistency, its
brutal estimate of womanhood, its low level of life, are
all parts of that strange unsettled state of mind, born
of an unconsidered study of philosophy.
'A surface man of theories, true to none,'
Philip Edgar has no real philosophy. If he is nearer
to one school than another, it is to the doctrine of the
Egoistic Hedonist.
he says,
""And if my pleasure breed another's pain,”
(6
'Well,—is not that the course of Nature, too?";
And again :
'One time's vice may be
The virtue of another; and Vice and Virtue
Are but two masks of self.'
He has no trust for woman; to his creed trust is
impossible. He can think of Eva so lowly, as to
believe her infamous.
She who gave herself to me so easily
Will give herself as easily to another.'
The character was repellent, and the situation which
the character made for itself was repellent; but this
THE PROMISE OF MAY AND BECKET
261
repulsiveness was not a reason for the condemnation
of the play.
The gallery has hissed at blacker
villains without hooting at the author. And yet some
part of the failure of The Promise of May' was to
be ascribed to the character of Edgar. And the
reason was as follows. It had been rumoured, before
the play began, that it would deal with agnosticism.
Many of the audience had come under the impression
that the principal character was to be a typical
agnostic. There must have been many men and
women in the house who themselves embraced
agnosticism; and, when they found an inconsistent,
bestial Hedonist represented as their type, they rose
to condemn the play which belied their creed. On
the fourth night one of their number rose, not only
in spirit, but in person. An eye-witness of the scene
>
which astonished the audience at the Globe Theatre
on November 14th, 1882, has given the present
writer a description of the circumstance. Early in
the first act, while Mr. Hermann Vezin was speak-
ing, a gentleman leapt excitedly to his feet from one
of the stalls, and cried, 'I beg to protest: I beg-
A murmur for silence interrupted him, and he sat
down, saying, 'I beg your pardon: I will wait till the
end of the act.' As soon as the curtain had fallen,
he again sprang up, exclaiming, I am an agnostic,
and I protest against Mr. Tennyson's gross caricature
of our creed.' There was an excited movement of the
spectators to the foyer, and every one was asking
from whom the protest had come. The general
impression decided that the speaker was a distin-
guished socialistic orator and littérateur. But it was
262
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
known by the next day that the interruption had been
made by the Marquis of Queensberry.
The protest was based on an error. Tennyson
had no intention of representing in Philip Edgar an
average agnostic. Edgar is a man of no definite
creed, a philosopher of no fixed school. He is a
restless, unsatisfied sensualist, whose mind has been
filled with half-formed theories, gathered from a
desultory and unsystematic study of various philo-
sophies. There is no school to which he could give
offence; save, perhaps, to that sect of prudery to
which the representation of any life which pierces
beyond the limit of the village-green is impure and
impious. The whole of the discontent was due to a
mistaken view of the poet's purpose.
(
It remains to consider what was the actual germ of
failure in The Promise of May'; and beyond doubt
it is to be traced to the ineffective, inartistic construc-
tion of the drama. To compare the technique of 'The
Promise of May' with that of Harold' or 'The
Cup' is to find in the new play a strange and un-
expected decline in skill. The first act is hampered
by soliloquy (a device which is far too frequently
employed throughout the play), and is prolonged,
after the final situation, by an unnecessary dialogue
and dance. The second act is less fortunate still.
Edgar is introduced to his old surroundings under
circumstances which would inevitably have prompted
him to keep away. The thin disguise of a beard
helps every one to forget him, and Dobson, whose
suspicions are aroused, is convinced by the thinnest
artifice. From this point the characters vie with

My dear for
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not write my thanks for your
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enough
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У жена спял here. Ктура Ker печетел вале вит
taton for an `ridinary freethinker.
The British must be in a low state indude
If, as certain thamatic critics have lately
told we, home of the great meral & social

of the time
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qushions ought to be trucked upon in a
modern play
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Shall Care Sy mous
At р. 263
THE PROMISE OF MAY AND BECKET
263
one another in their eagerness to be hoodwinked.
Twice in the last act Edgar all but betrays him-
self; but Dora, who would surely feel some inter-
est in her lover's past life, fails to follow up her
questions. Edgar himself is even more complaisant.
He knows that there is an invalid in the house, and
that she is being kept in the background; but he
never troubles himself to ask who she is. Dora, who
has all along closed her eyes to what is bad in him,
leaps in the moment to the other extreme-without
pity or pardon. Over the body of the dead, in the
very moment of death, the dramatist introduces a
coarse struggle between the rival lovers, which has
neither motive nor justification. The play is, in effect,
invertebrate. The leading idea is not new the
treatment is unskilful. The Promise of May' is the
only work of Tennyson, perhaps, which his admirers
would be glad to forget. It will always remain the
weapon with which his depreciators will work their
worst. But in spite of 'The Promise of May,' the
spirit of the dramatist is alive in the author of 'Maud'
and Harold.'
་
By the kindness of his friend, Mr. Hall Caine, the
writer is enabled to print in this context a facsimile
letter from Tennyson, referring to the virulent criticism
vented by the Daily Press upon 'The Promise of May.'
Its critical interest needs no further comment. The
violence of the attack upon the play was, as is usual in
such cases, disfigured by a variety of bad taste; and
the result was a period of silence with the Laureate.
In March 1883, 'Frater, Ave atque Vale' appeared
in The Nineteenth Century; but no considerable
264
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
work of Tennyson's was published during that year.
The press was to have a further opportunity to
attack him in another field.
During the autumn of 1883 Mr. Gladstone and
Tennyson started for a yachting tour in North-West
Europe. On their outward way, they were presented
with the freedom of the burgh of Kirkwall; and Mr.
Gladstone took the opportunity of the presentation to
make a speech full of generous admiration of the
Laureate and his work. He said: 'We public men-
who play a part which places us much in view of our
countrymen-we are subject to the danger of being
momentarily intoxicated by the kindness, the undue
homage of kindness, we may receive. It is our
business to speak, but the words which we speak
have wings, and fly away and disappear. The work
of Mr. Tennyson is of a higher order. I anticipate
for him the immortality for which England and Scot-
land have supplied, in the course of their long national
life, many claims. Your record to-day of the additions
which have been made to your municipal body may
happen to be examined in distant times, and some
may ask with regard to the Prime Minister, "Who
was he, and what did he do? We know nothing
about him." But the Poet Laureate has written his
own song on the hearts of his countrymen that can
never die.'
Arrived at Copenhagen, they were entertained
by the King of Denmark, meeting the Czar and
Czarina, the King of Greece, and the Princess of
Wales. On the following day the Royal party
lunched on the visitors' yacht, and in the afternoon


ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.
Meisenbach
At p. 264
THE PROMISE OF MAY AND BECKET
265
Tennyson read his guests extracts from his poetry.
It was generally understood that it was during this
tour that Mr. Gladstone suggested to Tennyson an
offer which, a month or two later, the Laureate accepted.
Be that as it may, Tennyson had not long returned to
England when it was reported that he was about to
be created a Peer. In December the rumour was
authenticated, and on the 18th of January 1884 he
was gazetted Baron Tennyson of Aldworth and Far-
ringford. It was a ripe opportunity for the comment
of cheap journalism, and these opportunities are not
neglected. It is only as they pass and are forgotten
that their eager and importunate insistence shows its
feeble and ephemeral nature to full disadvantage.
Lord Tennyson's attendances in the House were
very few; his vote was only registered on two
occasions. He voted in support of the bill for ex-
tending the County Franchise, and paired in favour of
the bill which advocated the legalisation of marriage
with a deceased wife's sister.
This year made a further gap in the circle of
Tennyson's friends; in June 1883 Edward FitzGerald
died. Just before his friend's death, as a later volume
of poems tells us, Mr. Hallam Tennyson found, among
some old manuscript in his father's handwriting, the
dramatic monologue Tiresias,' which the Laureate
hastened to send to FitzGerald, with a hearty prelude
which laughed at his friend's vegetarian diet, and
recalled with tenderness these
' gracious times
When, in our younger London days,
You found some merit in my rhymes,
And I more pleasure in your praise.`
266
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
But FitzGerald's friendly criticism was not to touch
'Tiresias.'
'And while I fancied that my friend
For this brief idyll would require
A less diffuse and opulent end,
And would defend his judgment well,
If I should deem it overnice-
The tolling of his funeral bell
Broke on my Pagan Paradise.'
'So many dead, and him the last.'
FitzGerald's
death was to render the life of the Master of Trinity
the last tie that bound Tennyson to the old Cambridge
memories. For FitzGerald had been one of the first
to prophesy great and goodly things for his friend, with
an enthusiasm that was disappointed by the event.
But, though his criticism lost sympathy, his friendship
for Tennyson never faltered; when he failed to
understand the poet, he never missed his hold upon
the man.
The year that followed was uneventful, save for the
publication of 'The Cup' and 'The Falcon,' and the
one entirely new work, 'Becket,' which appeared in
November. But in March 1884 an interesting occa-
sion elicited a poem from Tennyson. A Shakespearian
exhibition was organised at the Albert Hall, in support
of the Chelsea Hospital for Women. In connection
with this a small pamphlet was published, including
poems by Robert Browning and Tennyson. The
latter's contribution was written fifty years before, and
found its way into the daily papers before the little
book was issued. It ran as follows:-
'Not he that breaks the dams, but he
That thro' the channels of the State
Convoys the people's wish, is great;
His name is pure, his fame is free.'
THE PROMISE OF MAY AND BECKET
267
In the same year he accepted the Presidency of the
Incorporated Society of Authors.
Tennyson also contributed, during the year, a set
of introductory verses to 'Rosa Rosarum,' a little
book upon roses, by E. V. B. (The Hon. Mrs. Boyle),
in which the poet pictured Love flying across the
night to wake the rose into bloom.
In the same year, in Macmillan's Magazine for
December, he printed the stirring lines, 'Freedom.'
This poem is a kind of forecast of the second
'Locksley Hall,' a protest against 'the lawless crowd,'
whose wild cry for progress is so violently opposed to
the poet's calm faith in the gradual development of
man, and his distrust of
'Raw Haste, half-sister to Delay.'
In
But these were lesser efforts of his genius.
November 1884 he published one of his most con-
siderable works, which bore, for the first time, the
imprint of Messrs. Macmillan, to whom the Laureate's
copyright was now transferred, and who henceforward
remained his publishers until his death. The life
of 'Becket' had been under treatment for a long
while; and it is probable that, when the play was
begun, it was intended for the stage. Experiences
which intervened, however, turned the course of
the poet's intention, and when 'Becket' was finally
printed it contained a disclaimer of any hope that
it would, 'in its present form, meet the exigencies
of our modern theatre.' It is, therefore, necessary
to treat 'Becket' from a standpoint different from
that at which the other dramas have been surveyed.
268
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
It must be approached, not as a stage-play, but as
a dramatic poem: as a study of character and life
rather than as an effort of movement and action.
But, in fact, it has a fine dramatic motive-the struggle
between the interests of Church and State, influenced
by the struggle between a legitimate and an unlawful
love. Even as the play stands, were it not to set
one's self against the author's expressed desire, it would
be interesting to point out a number of situations
eminently adapted to the necessities of stage-produc-
tion. In a condensed form ' Becket' would make a
strong play : in its present shape it is a noble study of
a prolonged and bitter struggle. Henry, weak and
short-sighted, owes everything to his Chancellor.
Becket helps him to his love, protects Rosamund,
spends the vast sums decreed to him to procure the
glory and reputation of his King. But upon his
appointment to the Archbishopric the struggle between
Church and State begins. He lays aside the seal of
his office as Lord Chancellor, and offends the King
by his resignation. He refuses to study Henry's
wishes, when they seem to him to run counter to the
welfare of the Church. 'This mitred Hercules' is
adamant in his devotion to his spiritual office. He
estranges the King by these differences: he excites
the enmity of his fellow-bishops by his scruples: he
attracts to himself the aversion of Fitzurse and Tracy
by his protection of Rosamund. And for the same
reason he makes a foe of the Queen. The two women,
who move in the background, influencing the lives of
Henry and Becket, are vividly contrasted. Eleanor
is passionate and jealous, Rosamund is tender and
THE PROMISE OF MAY AND BECKET
269
yearning—a caged bird, ill at ease in the prison of her
bower. It is Becket who saves her from the dagger
and cup of the Queen; and from that moment his
keenest foe is a woman. And when she tells the King
that Rosamund has, at Becket's instigation, passed
from his love unto Godstow Nunnery, the prelate has
his world against him. From that moment he has but
the one weak woman he has helped for friend, and
she is left to pray over his dead body in the cathedral.
Where history has been set aside, the dramatic
situation has been strengthened. The end of the
play is full of action and excitement.
'Becket' has one point in common with 'Queen
Mary' it is the story of a prolonged tension. But
whereas in 'Queen Mary' the tension never relaxes
into movement, in 'Becket' it is the tension of a
struggle, as of a rope stretched between two contend-
ing parties, quivering with the energy of either, giv-
ing now on this side, now on that. In this, 'Becket'
is dramatic; there is a sense of struggle, and a sound
of the panting breath of fight. There are passages
in
the play of consummate eloquence. Such are the
speech of Becket, in which he describes his dream,
when God sealed him as elect; the words of Henry
in condemnation of Becket in the third scene of the
first act; and the scene between Henry and Rosamund
at the opening of Act II. The play contains also two
of the most melodious of all Tennyson's songs-'The
Reign of the Roses,' and the song at Rosamund's
bower-
'Is it the wind of the dawn that I hear in the pine overhead?'
'The Cup' has the merits of condensation and con-
270
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
tinuous movement to commend it, but it lacks, it may
be, completion. It is strange and unfortunate that, of
the two great dramas of Tennyson, one has never
been acted, while the other has been rendered by a
certain over-elaboration partially unfitted to the stage.
It may yet be that the one, with a few alterations,
may be worthily produced; and the other, with a
more liberal reconstruction, may be found deserving
of a great actor's consideration. There is, at the
moment at which these words go to press, a hope of
the latter possibility ripening into fact. And it is to
be trusted that both may yet be realised. For both
'Harold' and 'Becket' have a strong dramatic motive,
and scenes of unusual strength. Even as they are, they
are rich additions to a dramatic literature which is
unrivalled by that of any other country,
CHAPTER XIII
FROM TIRESIAS TO DEMETER
A PLEASANT Sympathy and appreciation, which fre-
quently issued in graceful word and act, seem to have
drawn the poets of America to Tennyson. Edgar
Allan Poe, Emerson, and Longfellow had all their
tribute of admiration to offer, and in 1885 Whittier
joined the chorus of esteem. On January 26th Gordon
had fallen at Khartoum, and some two months later
the Quaker poet wrote to the Laureate, asking him
for a set of verses designed for the hero's cenotaph.
In answer, Tennyson sent the well-known quartette,
'Warrior of God, man's friend,' which has received a
later correction to fit it for a motto for the Boys'
National Memorial Home at Woking. The lines
have less concentrated strength than the epitaph on
Sir John Franklin, where inspiration may have been
aided by a tie of relationship, but they are inferior to
no other of the poet's memorial verses. The terse
and direct utterance expresses much thought in a
little room.
Three years later Tennyson received yet another
tribute from America, in the homage of Walt Whitman,
to whom he replied with the geniality which he had
always ready for a kindred spirit. 'Dear Walt
271
272
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Whitman,' he wrote, 'I thank you for your kind
thought of me. I value the photograph much, and
I wish that I could see not only this sun-picture,
excellent as I am told it is, but also the living
original. May he still live and flourish for many
years to be.'
Mr. J. T. Fields, too, paid a visit to the poet, and
walked with him on the downs in the moonlight.
Suddenly he saw Tennyson drop on his knees in
the grass. 'Violets, man, violets!' he cried: 'smell
them, and you'll sleep the better.'
'll sleep the better.' His keen sense of
smell had detected the flowers as he walked.
(
It was
to Mr. Fields that Tennyson gave the naïve invitation,
Come and let me read you "Maud." You'll never
forget it.
The open, direct speech of the poet was
always an exact indication of his thought.
In the November of 1885 Tennyson published
another volume of poems-'Tiresias,'-and the
tribute which Robert Browning had paid to his friend
was returned in a hearty dedication—
TO MY GOOD FRIEND
ROBERT BROWNING
WHOSE GENIUS AND GENIALITY
WILL BEST APPRECIATE WHAT MAY BE BEST
AND MAKE MOST ALLOWANCE FOR WHAT MAY BE WORST
THIS VOLUME
IS
AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.
It is characteristic of a certain shyness in Tennyson
that he never told Browning of the dedication, and it
was not till the book was in the hands of the public
that the latter learned the circumstance from a friend.
FROM TIRESIAS TO DEMETER
273
J
The collection was, as it were, an aftermath of the
poetic harvest,-a re-gathering of many diverse
elements into a single sheaf. 'Tiresias,' with its
dedication and epilogue to FitzGerald, was accom-
panied by 'The Wreck,' 'Despair,' 'The Ancient
Sage,' 'The Flight,' 'To-morrow,' and 'The Spinster's
Sweet-Arts.' A new idyll,
A new idyll, 'Balin and Balan,' fol-
lowed. The patriotic poems were enriched by the
addition of ‘The Charge of the Heavy Brigade'; and
the volume also contained 'To Virgil,' originally
printed in the Nineteenth Century in November 1882,
'The Dead Prophet,' 'Early Spring,' the 'Prefatory
Poem to my Brother's Sonnets,' 'Frater, Ave atque
Vale,' another contribution to the Nineteenth Century
(March 1883), 'Helen's Tower,' the Epitaphs on
Lord Stratford de Redclyffe, General Gordon, and
Caxton, 'To the Duke of Argyll,' 'Hands all Round,'
'Freedom,' 'To H.R.H. Princess Beatrice,' and the
lines, 'Old poets foster'd under kindlier skies,' which
were subsequently re-named 'Poets and their Biblio-
graphies.' It was an extremely interesting collection
from the variety and wealth of its contents; but,
while almost every one of the poems illustrated a
different phase in the poet's development, none of
them was perhaps representative of the very best
work of the period which it suggested. 'Tiresias,'
written many years before its publication, shares the
characteristics of 'Ulysses' and 'Tithonus,' missing
the strong dramatic vigour of the one and the jewelled
imagery of the other poem. 'The Wreck' and 'The
Flight' belong to the directly dramatic period, and
the first of the two has an intense and rugged pathos of
S
274
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
its own.
The Flight,' on the other hand, assumes
a simplicity which, at moments, scarcely escapes the
commonplace. 'Despair' is an unrivalled example
of Tennyson's most dramatic mood. 'To-morrow'
and ‘The Spinster's Sweet-'Arts' are notable additions
to the collection of poems in dialect, falling but little,
if at all, below the level of 'The Northern Farmer.'
'The Charge of the Heavy Brigade,' on the other
hand, is far less stirring and irresistible than the
earlier story of Balaclava. 'The Ancient Sage' is
another declaration of Tennyson's faith, and of his
strong, unfaltering doubt of doubt. It is vain, he
holds again, to question; the eye of faith must look
beyond the shadows and mists of the moment.
'Look higher, then-perchance-thou mayest-beyond
A hundred ever-rising mountain lines,
And past the range of Night and Shadow-see
The high-heaven dawn of more than mortal day
Strike on the Mount of Vision! So, farewell.'
Early Spring,' which appeared in 1884 in an American
periodical, The Youth's Companion, is a return to
the Nature of the earlier lyrics, full of the tints and
rustling voices of the coming summer.
'Opens a door in Heaven;
From skies of glass
A Jacob's ladder falls
On greening grass,
And o'er the mountain-walls
Young angels pass.
Till at thy chuckled note,
Thou twinkling bird,
The fairy fancies range,
And, lightly stirr'd,
Ring little bells of change
From word to word.'
FROM TIRESIAS TO DEMETER
275
FitzGerald, we feel, would have waked into eulogy at
this strain, a melody that swings back like an echo
from Herrick.
In 'The Dead Prophet' the poet protests, once
again, and this time in an allegory, against the post-
mortem analysis of the great. The Beldam, who
comes to the dead body of the prophet, to tear his
heart out for men to see, is called 'Reverence' among
men; but in heaven she is recognised as a curse.
There is an unsparing realism in the grim picture of
her sacrilege :
<
'She gabbled, as she groped in the dead,
((
And all the people were pleased;
See, what a little heart,” she said,
"And the liver is half-diseased!"
She tore the Prophet after death,
And the people paid her well.
Lightnings flicker'd along the heath;
One shriek'd "The fires of Hell!"'
The same note is struck, in a calmer cadence, in
Poets and their Bibliographies.' It is an echo of
that early intolerance of criticism which took hold
upon the poet, even in his Cambridge days. Tenny-
son's attitude in these poems is somewhat unworthy
of his strength; it is petulant, and a little unreason-
able. A certain crude, unmannerly curiosity of jour-
nalism is, perhaps, fairly rebuked; but it is altogether
outside the limit of the poet's dignity to chafe against
the quiet, reverent record of bibliography. 'What is
writ, is writ'; it remains as the work of the life that
wrote it; a desire to tabulate and analyse such
work cannot be justly compared to the inarticulate
gabbling of the crone over the heart of the dead
276
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
prophet. To protest too much is to lose the true touch
of art; and in The Dead Prophet' Tennyson can
scarcely escape the suggestion of an over-eagerness
for protestation.
The new idyll, the longest poem in the volume,
seems, if read alone, to lack the interest and incident
of the other Arthurian poems, and to fail for want
of motive. The savage brothers, tamed to fidelity,
suggest in the opening the roughness of Geraint, at
the close the despairing energy of Pelleas. The
pathos of their brotherhood and death is not very
tenderly traced, nor does their story appeal very
closely to the reader's sympathy. But if the poem
be placed in the position which it now fills, and read
in order between Enid' and 'Vivien,' it is at once.
felt to bridge over a gulf, and to bring the Epic into a
closer unity. It connects the periods of the rise and
fall of the Round Table, carries the story of Guinevere's
faithlessness a further step toward discovery, and
introduces, with a touch of picturesque sensuousness,
the coming of Vivien. Her song sounds as a first
voice of impurity, drawing nearer through the alleys
of the wood :
'The fire of Heaven is lord of all things good,
And starve not thou this fire within thy blood,
But follow Vivien thro' the fiery flood!
The fire of Heaven is not the flame of Hell!'
6
This intermediate position of Balin and Balan' ac-
centuates the suggestion already made that the Idylls
must be studied as a whole, not reviewed each as
a separate, disconnected poem. Without the rest,
'Balin and Balan' has but a slight significance; with
FROM TIRESIAS TO DEMETER
277
them, it lends completeness and progress to the
Arthurian legend.
But the strongest poem in the 'Tiresias' volume,
as we have already hinted, was the much-disputed
'Despair.' It combines with singular intensity the
analytic and dramatic faculties of the Tennysonian
mind. A man and his wife, communing together in
a perfect sympathy, come to speak of God, and, esti-
mating Him by the popular standard of a God
of Vengeance, lose faith in Him altogether. Their
despair seeks consolation in suicide; the woman is
drowned, the man rescued by a minister of the
sect he had abandoned.' With merciless sincerity
he tells the story of his doubt. It is no blasphemy
against the God of Mercy: it is merely a protest
against that false God of Vengeance whom the
theology of the earlier years of the nineteenth century
represented as the only Saviour of mankind. It is a cry
against a narrow creed that renders religion a worship
of injustice, that twists the denunciations of the pro-
phets into a denial of the Gospel of the Son of God.
‘Ah yet—I have had some glimmer, at times, in my gloomiest woe,
Of a God behind all—after all—the great God for aught that I know;
But the God of Love and of Hell together they cannot be thought,
If there be such a God, may the Great God curse him and bring him
to nought!
The vigour has passed for blasphemy; but to
judge it so is to misunderstand. It is the voice
of protest against a view of God conceived by
priest-craft a view which shuts out all vision of a
Creator whose name is Love. The protest came late,
perhaps we have learnt to understand our faith to
richer and more divine purpose. But fifty years ago
278
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
it was otherwise. Fifty years ago the horrors of Hell
blinded the eye to the splendours of Heaven; and
the eternal doctrine of eternal punishment led many
minds into atheism. There was room for the voice
of reason, which was also the voice of the new dis-
pensation. And no more reverent, no more faithful
voice could have been found than that of Alfred
Tennyson. For his faith had triumphed through a
recognition of the infallible mercy that works through
ways that at times pass man's understanding.
In the next year (1886) Tennyson had to face
another loss, this time from among the number of
his own family. His younger son, Lionel, who had
been attacked by fever in India, died on April the
twentieth, on shipboard, during his journey home.
The earlier days of his illness had been lightened by
the kindness of Lord Dufferin, in whose company he
was travelling. Lionel Tennyson had entered the
Political and Secret Department of the India Office,
and attracted the notice of Lord Dufferin, for whom
he conceived a very tender regard; and it was at his
invitation that Lionel Tennyson undertook the fatal
journey to India which resulted in the fever, through-
out the course of which his host did for him all that
kindness and solicitude could.
he wrote,
"Unspeakable,"
"Their kindness.""
But no care or affection could save the waning life.
His coffin was buried in the Red Sea-
'Beneath a hard Arabian moon
And alien stars,'
FROM TIRESIAS TO DEMETER
279
and the cenotaph at Freshwater bears the following
inscription:
IN MEMORIAM
LIONEL TENNYSON
FILII, MARITI, PATRIS CARISSIMI,
FORMA, MENTE, MORUM SIMPLICITATE
LAUDEM INTER AEQUALES MATURE ADEPTI
FAMAM QUOQUE IN REPUBLICA, SI VITA SUFFECISSET,
SINE DUBIO ADEPTURI
OBDORMIVIT IN CHRISTO
DIE APR. XX. ANNO CHRISTI MDCCCLXXXVI. AETAT. XXXII.
ET IN MARI APUD PERIN INDORUM
SEPULTUS EST.
The loss affected the Tennysons so keenly that
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who shortly afterwards
visited England, was afraid that any attempt of his
to see the Laureate would be unwelcome. But
Lionel Tennyson's father-in-law, Mr. Frederick
Locker-Lampson, assured him to the contrary and
Mr. Holmes and his daughter were persuaded to visit
Farringford. They met with a most genial reception.
Lady Tennyson, though an invalid at the time,
exerted herself to entertain her guests; and Mrs.
Hallam Tennyson drove Miss Holmes in her pony-
cart to see Alum Bay and the Needles. Dr. Holmes
was much attracted by the scenery of Farringford,
and especially by the richness of the foliage. Tenny-
son himself took great pleasure in pointing out 'the
finest and rarest trees' to his American visitor; and
he had found a sympathetic spirit. I felt,' wrote
Dr. Holmes, as if weary eyes and overtasked brains
might (here) reach their happiest haven of rest.' He
did not hear Tennyson read, however: an omission
280
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
which he afterwards regretted.
'I had rather listen
to a poet reading his own verses than hear the best
elocutionist that ever spouted recite them. He
He may
not have a good voice or enunciation, but he puts
his heart and his interpretative intelligence into every
line, word, and syllable. I should have liked to hear
Tennyson read such a line as
"Laborious orient ivory, sphere in sphere.'
But the visit was a short one, and the pleasure.
was denied.
In the August of 1886 Tennyson paid yet another
visit to Cambridge, accompanied by his son and
daughter-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Hallam Tennyson.
The Laureate had been staying with Mr. Locker-
Lampson at Cromer, and, on his way to Cambridge,
spent his birthday at Ely. From the seventh to the
ninth of August he was at Cambridge. Tennyson
himself was put up in Trinity; the others of the party
stayed at the Bull. On the Saturday and Sunday
they dined in College, the first evening with Mr.
Jenkinson, the second with Mr. W. Aldis Wright;
and the famous 1834 port was brought out in
Tennyson's honour. On the Sunday morning he
walked with Mr. Aldis Wright to Coton Church.
These were months of comparative inaction, but
with the December of 1886 another volume of
Tennyson's work was issued by Messrs. Macmillan,—
a book of 201 pages, 150 of which were devoted to
'The Promise of May,' which, after a four years
oblivion, was now first presented to the reading
public. 'Locksley Hall Sixty Years After,' as the
FROM TIRESIAS TO DEMETER
281
book was named, was dedicated to Lady Tennyson,
and contained, besides the drama and the poem from
which the volume took its title, two slighter pieces,
'The Fleet' and the ode on the 'Opening of the
Indian and Colonial Exhibition by the Queen.' The
first of these, suggested by a speech made by Sir
Graham Berry at the Colonial Institute on the ninth
of November 1886, has already been alluded to in
brief. It is an unusually rough passage of denuncia-
tion, strongly, if uncouthly, patriotic. The Ode for
the Indian Exhibition was suited to its subject, but
not, perhaps, of permanent value. The most memor-
able poem in the new volume was the eponymous
essay in trochaics, which may, indeed, be justly
considered the most important product of the poet's
later years.
A new experiment, made in the winter
of life, is an unusual phenomenon, and 'Locksley
Hall Sixty Years After' possesses the elements of an
almost unique interest. A return to the old scenes
and old memories of boyhood,-made, not in dramatic
fancy alone but in actual fact,—years after the earlier
event, is practically unprecedented in poetry.
requires an irresistible dramatic talent to recall and
rebuke, after such a lapse of time, the emotions and
sensibilities which were, even in the first case, drama-
tically assumed by the poet. The two 'Locksley
Halls,' indeed, regarded side by side, afford one of
the most indisputable evidences of Tennyson's
dramatic energy.
In the first poem the speaker is
an impetuous boy-lover, losing himself in the passion
of a love which has been disdained. His indignation
at his Amy's faithlessness wastes its strength in
It
282
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
unmanly depreciation of his rival, and in boyish
threats of a flight into a far country and a marriage
amid some savage tribe. The speaker in the second
poem is the same, the boy grown old. With exquisite
adroitness Tennyson traces the mental development.
The years have brought reconciliation to the rival,
and a stronger, more reasonable, love for Edith, the
woman whom the speaker has eventually married.
She with all the charm of woman, she with all the breadth of man,
Strong in will and rich in wisdom, Edith, yet so lowly-sweet,
Woman to her inmost heart, and woman to her tender feet.'
But the old passionate ardour is not lost; it has only
shifted its standpoint. It is no longer against a
wealthy rival and the curse of gold that the speaker
inveighs; the time has changed, and the speaker has
changed with it. Now he is occupied with the rise
of the mob; the uneducated, ignorant cry of 'Forward'
maddens him. He sees the blatant orator of the
hustings leading the people to the edge of an abyss
that their inexperience cannot fathom he watches
them straining toward a development which is, in
fact, deformity. The age of aristocracy has given
place to the age of democracy, and the reaction to
extremes is fatal. The fire of boyhood bursts out
again to overwhelm the folly of the moment. He
has gone 'in among the throngs of men,' and has
sympathised with them; but he has no heart for
revolution. As in the first poem he returned upon
himself to rebuke his desire to rebel, so in the second
he cries to the crowd about him not to follow the
wild flickering of the fen-fires, but to guide their
FROM TIRESIAS TO DEMETER
283
calmer journey by the beacon-light of the polestar of
Truth.
'Follow Light, and do the Right, for man can half-control his doom-
Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the vacant tomb.'
C
he marks the more
The dynamite, 'the
With a ruthless detail, too,
unlovely aspects of the age.
villainous centre-bit,' the 'roofs of slated hideousness,'
-all inspire him with a loathing of the grosser
struggle for life. He pierces into the heart of the
city, to the crowded couch of incest in the warrens
of the poor,' to the thousand and one miseries half-
begotten by the overpowering lust for gold.
even in the darkest despair he finds one ray of hope.
A better age may, he feels, be slowly gathering out
of all this wretchedness.
But
'Light the fading gleam of Even? light the glimmer of the dawn?
Aged eyes may take the growing glimmer for the gleam withdrawn.
Far away beyond her myriad coming changes earth will be
Something other than the wildest modern guess of you and me.'
And so he leaves Locksley Hall to its new boy-lord,
and leaves it with a trust in its brighter future.
Much has been said in disapproval of the later
'Locksley Hall'; but the poet, who is not afraid to teach
his people their limitations, cannot rest upon an undis-
puted popularity. The poem had too much vigour,
too much truth, to please the easy-going optimist.
But Truth is the test by which all literature must be
tried; and 'Locksley Hall Sixty Years After' will
be recognised, when the verdict of many more than
another sixty years has been pronounced upon it, to
be one of the clearest, most unsparing pictures of its
284
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
And
age to be found in contemporary literature.
when that recognition ripens round it, Tennyson's
sincerity will not be without its reward.
The two years that followed were comparatively
silent. In May 1889 was published, to secure copy-
right, in an edition ultimately reduced to two copies,
a lyric entitled 'The Throstle'; this is a mere leaflet,
consisting of a title and one page of text.
Later on
this poem was widely circulated in the periodical
press. It was not till the end of 1889 that a new
volume appeared. The Jubilee Ode' of 1887
was scarcely popular; its changeful metre and
rough eloquence seemed to evade criticism. But
in August 1889, on his eightieth birthday, Tenny-
son was the recipient of quite a number of literary
compliments. None was heartier or more sincere
than the letter (it must have been almost the last)
which he received from Robert Browning. ‘Let me
say,' said the brother-poet, 'that I associate myself
with the universal pride of our country in your glory;
and in its hope that for many and many a year we
may have your very self among us,-secure that your
poetry will be a wonder and delight to all those
appointed to come after. And for my own part let me
further say, I have loved you dearly. May God bless
you and yours.' Four months later the kindly spirit
that prompted these lines had passed into the silence.
The birthday was also graced by an exquisite
sonnet from the pen of the Laureate's friend, Mr.
Theodore Watts, who, it may be added, after the
poet's death, wrote for The Athenæum what was,
perhaps, the most graceful and tender of all the
FROM TIRESIAS TO DEMETER
285
tributes to his memory. Mr. Watts has, with kindly
courtesy, permitted the reprint of his sonnet here.
'The Eightieth Birthday
Another birthday breaks: he is with us still.
There thro' the branches of the glittering trees
The birthday sun gilds grass and flower: the breeze
Sends forth, methinks, a thrill-a conscious thrill
That tells yon meadows by the steaming rill—
Where, o'er the clover waiting for the bees,
The mist shines round the cattle to their knees-
"Another birthday breaks: he is with us still!"
For Nature loves him-loves our Tennyson:
I think of heathery Aldworth rich and rife
With greetings of a world his song hath won :
I see him there with loving son and wife,
His fourscore years a golden orb of life:
My proud heart swells to think what he hath done.'
The month which saw Robert Browning's death,
and the publication of his last work, saw, too, a new
book from Tennyson's pen -'Demeter and other
Poems,' issued in December 1889. Of the twenty-
eight poems which composed the volume, six at least
were worthy of Tennyson's ripest prime, while the
whole book must be regarded as a marvellous col-
lection of riches, when we consider that the author
was eighty years old at the time of its publication.
Demeter and Persephone' is with Tithonus' and
'Enone.'
(
'Thou that hast from men,
As Queen of Death, that worship which is Fear,
Henceforth, as having risen from the dead,
Shalt ever send thy life along with mine
From buried grain thro' springing blade, and bless
Their garner'd Autumn also, reap with me,
Earth-mother, in the harvest hymns of Earth
The worship which is Love, and see no more
The Stone, the Wheel, the dimly glimmering lawns
Of that Elysium, all the hateful fires
Of Torment, and the shadowy warrior glide
Along the silent field of Asphodelo.'
286
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
'Vastness,' which appeared in Macmillan's Magazine
some three years before, is full of the sentiment of
the second 'Locksley Hall,'—and, though it puzzled
its critics at first, the more clear-sighted of its
readers recognised its greatness from the outset.
Mr. W. E. Henley has never, perhaps, spoken more
vigorously or persuasively than he did in this relation.
•
'In "Vastness," he said, 'the insight into essentials,
the command of primordial matter, the capacity of
vital suggestion, are gloriously in evidence from the
first to the last. Here is no touch of ingenuity, no
trace of "originality," no sign of cleverness
nothing is antic, peculiar, superfluous; but here in
epic unity and completeness, here is a sublimation
of experience expressed by means of a sublimation
of style. It is unique in English, and, for all that
one can see, it is like to remain unique this good
while yet.'
'Owd Roä' ranges with 'The Northern Farmer,'
and is a strong and pathetic example of its class.
'Forlorn' is more vivid than 'The Flight,' and only a
little less dramatic than Despair.' It is the familiar
story of a seduction, told in a metre of wailing, heart-
rending melancholy :
<
'Murder would not veil your sin,
Marriage will not hide it,
Earth and Hell will brand your name,
Wretch, you must abide it,
In the night, O the night,
Long before the dawning.'
'The Ring' tells a touching tale in dialogue, sym-
pathetic and retentive. 'Happy' is an intense but
somewhat repellent story of a leper's bride, who refuses
FROM TIRESIAS TO DEMETER
287
to be severed by disease from the man she worships.
'Romney's Remorse,' another of the dramatic mono-
logues, is enriched by a love-song, with a yearning
melody:
'Beat upon mine, little heart! beat, beat!
Beat upon mine! You are mine, my sweet!
All mine from your pretty blue eyes to your feet,
My sweet!'
In 'Merlin and the Gleam,' a kind of after-echo
of the Arthurian cycle, the poet treats in allegory
the life that strives calmly onward to the far-off
heavenly goal. It is but one more utterance of the
poet's daily creed. 'The Throstle' is a voluptuous
burst of music, with an assumption of the bird-cry
which is even more faithful than the earlier note of
'The Owl'; while in 'Far, far away' there is another
onomatopoeic echo of exquisite melody:
'What sound was dearest in his native dells?'
The mellow lin-lan-lone of evening bells
Far-far-away.'
And last, yet incomparably first, stands that perfect
poem which is above criticism-composed (it is said)
during the poet's passage across the Solent Crossing
the Bar.' It has been translated into Greek and Latin,
and set to music; but no alien note was needed to
complete the dignified perfection of its harmony.
There is no more beautiful utterance in all the range
of English verse.
CHAPTER XIV
THE CLOSING YEARS
WITH an extraordinary vigour and freshness Lord
Tennyson continued, even after
'The century's three strong eights had met
To drag him down to seventy-nine,'
to produce work of the very highest literary ex-
cellence. The later years of his life were spiritedly
free from any sense of decay, any indication that his
natural force had abated. The work of a poet of
advanced years is wont to prove no more than an
echo of his earlier inspiration. As a rule, there
remains a certain facility of expression, and an
aptitude for melody, while the animating thought
withers, and the poetry lacks grasp and actuality.
Moreover, the old chords are struck with wearisome
fidelity; the search for something new has lost its
charm. But with Tennyson the custom was broken.
It was left for his eighty-third year to lead him
into an entirely new field, and to enrich literature
with a pastoral, fresh with the breath of the meadows,
spangled with elfin fancies, and flashing with the
gossamer of fairy wings. The dreamland of Titania's
palace, which the critic would assign as the home of
the boy-lover, was with Tennyson the mansion of old
288

TENNYSON'S BRIDGE, FARRINGFORD,
At p. 288
THE CLOSING YEARS
289
age. He rested in Sherwood after the burden and
heat of the day.
His surroundings may well have helped him to
his subject. For years his time was chiefly spent in
the country. The home at Farringford was full of
rustic charm, rendered the more emphatic by its
seclusion. The house is so entirely enclosed by
trees as to escape the notice of the passer-by. At
the back of the garden, a bridge, spanning the road
which encircles the estate, opens up a view of Fresh-
water Bay, with the Arch and Stag Rocks in the
foreground. Here the poet was used to stand
evening after evening in the moonlight, looking down
across the thick undergrowth towards the glitter of
the sea.
The dell might, even to a less active
imagination, seem alive with fairies, or peopled by
sleeping foresters. It is a woodland of enchantment,
and amid its inspiration Robin Hood and Maid
Marian' grew into life.
This song
While the play was ripening, little happened to
change the poet's mind, or divert it from its in-
spiration. In the spring of 1891 he was cruising in
the Mediterranean; and in the March of that year
'To Sleep,' a tender lyric, with a touch of sadness
in it,' was printed in The New Review.
afterwards took its place in the new play. Four
introductory lines from the Laureate's pen prefaced
in the same year an edition of Pearl, edited by Mr.
Israel Gollancz. The echoes of the world without
reached him but faintly. When they did come, they
found him ready with his interest. From his dream
of Sherwood Forest he could awake to indignation at
T
290
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
the persecution of the Russian Jews. 'I can only
say,' he wrote, during the autumn of 1891, 'that
Russia has disgraced her church and her nationality.
I once met the Czar. He seemed a kind and good-
natured man. I can scarcely believe that he is fully
aware of the barbarities perpetrated with his apparent
sanction.' The spirit that was stirred into fire by the
Eyre rebellion was still smouldering at Tennyson's
heart.
Meanwhile, his time was divided between Farring-
ford and Haslemere; and it was not till towards the
close of 1891 that the general public learned that Mr.
Augustin Daly had, after his visit to England, taken
back with him to New York the manuscript of a
play by Tennyson, founded on the fortunes of Robin
Hood. Early in the following year rumour became
more active; forecasts and synopses of the action
appeared in various papers, and interest was ener-
getically awakened. On the 17th of March 1892
curiosity was satisfied. Mr. Daly on that day pro-
duced 'The Foresters: Robin Hood and Maid
Marian,' in New York, and on the same morning, at
ten o'clock, Mr. Irving lent his theatre for a copyright
performance of the play by members of his own
company. This early hour was selected in order to
elude the critics, of whom but a single representative,
it is reported, contrived to be present. A copyright
performance is usually a crude entertainment enough,
without rehearsal or embellishment; but on the
present occasion the piece had been frequently played
over beforehand, and the characters were suitably
and tastefully dressed. Mr. Acton Bond appeared
THE CLOSING YEARS
291
as Robin Hood, and Miss Violet Vanbrugh had made
a graceful study of Maid Marian. Lord Tennyson
subsequently sent a copy of his works to every
member of the company employed in the representa-
tion. These trifling facts, however, are of interest
merely as curiosities: the performance in New York
is the actual centre of our attention.
There every-
thing that good taste and liberality could do had
been done; the woodland scenery was elaborated
with artistic picturesqueness, and the principal char-
acters were played by the first dramatic talent of
America. Mr. John Drew was the Robin Hood,
Miss Ada Rehan the Maid Marian. Cablegrams
assured London of the complete success of the
production, and none of the Laureate's plays has
received so general an approval.
Less than a
fortnight later the book was in the hands of
English readers, and critics were expressing their
hope that 'The Foresters' might soon be seen upon
the London stage. But many elements go to the
making of a dramatic success; and to argue that
a play which had charmed an American audience,
would be equally popular in England, was to reckon
without a host of contingencies. The good fortune
of 'The Foresters' as a stage-play was, indeed,
largely due to the circumstances of its production.
The American mind is always attracted to the
romance of chivalry more readily than the English.
The people of the new country miss in themselves
that environment of the past which is a matter
of daily course to the people of the fatherland,
with whom the familiarity of their history has bred a
292
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
6
(
certain carelessness for the relics of antiquity. It
is always the American who hovers about West-
minster Abbey, and spends his morning at the Tower
of London: it is in America that As You Like It'
has received its most artistic interpretation. It was
natural, then, that America should appreciate The
Foresters' to the full. The pastoral charm, the
fresh, breezy atmosphere of woodland life, the fascina-
tion of the brake where every bush concealed its
bowman, the chivalrous love of man and maid held
pure in the freedom of the forest,-all these things
had a peculiar enchantment for the American taste, a
charm which their familiarity denied to the English.
The atmosphere was the secret of success, and the
pastoral triumphed. It is by no means so certain
that it would have succeeded in London. The
English playgoer and the English critic expect, be-
fore all things, technical construction: there must be
progress, continuity, and completion; the situations
must be evolved through recognised methods, and
developed at regulated intervals. The English drama
of the day is constructed upon an uniform scaffold,
and the fashion of its building cannot be altered
with impunity. But Tennyson has always refused
to frame his work to the orthodox pattern, and of
all his plays 'The Foresters' is the least technically
dramatic. To say this is not to depreciate its ex-
ceptional excellences. The Foresters' should, in
fact, be judged from a point of view different from
that which serves for a study of 'Harold' or 'The
Cup.' It should be regarded as a masque, as a
pastoral play for a summer's afternoon in the woods,
THE CLOSING YEARS
293
an echo of medievalism, when thought was free,
and art unfettered. It has no serious purpose; from
beginning to end it is a medley of romance and
dreamland. One critic, ingenious rather than per-
spicacious, has insisted that every play of Tennyson's
involves a great struggle between antagonistic mo-
tives. In 'Queen Mary,' in 'Becket,' in 'Harold'
the struggle is obvious; in 'The Foresters' the critic
discovers the contest to lie between just and unjust
rule, in the persons of Richard and John. But 'The
Foresters' is no story of a struggle: the tension
never strains into seriousness. It is just a wood-
land masque, catching an Elizabethan echo at every
turn. At one moment Marian is with Rosalind in
Arden, at another with Viola in Illyria. Kate and
Little John are Shakespearian to their last word,
and the fairies have floated out of A Midsummer
Night's Dream.' There is no character sketch, no
dramatic analysis, no actual situation. It is all the
life of the wood, outlawed but not lawless, helping
the weak in their distress, eager to put down the
mighty from their seat.
'We leave but happy memories to the forest.
We dealt in the wild justice of the woods.
All those poor serfs whom we have served will bless us,
All those pale mouths which we have fed will praise us—
All widows we have holpen pray for us,
Our Lady's blessed shrines throughout the land
Be all the richer for us.'
This is the life of freedom without licence, a life
that can scarcely thrive outside romance. It was so
that they lived in Arden. Tennyson's new departure
is a return to the fields of our greatest dramatist;
294
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
even the songs, with their infinite melody, remind us.
of Amiens in the forest. It may be, indeed, that this
was the kind of play for which the Laureate's talent
had the strongest inclination. Here his fancy could
find full scope; here there was no need for technical
ingenuity. He could wander through Sherwood free,
and move his puppets to his will. And the result of
this freedom is that, within its limits, The Foresters'
has scarcely a fault. But since it needs the same.
sense of freedom in the actors, the same atmosphere.
of peace under the greenwood tree, the same in-
tangible charm of elf-land, it is perhaps to be hoped.
that it will not be placed upon the London stage.
For by the blaze and roaring bustle of the Strand we
lose the touch of pastoral simplicity without which
'The Foresters' is nothing.
(
As we leave the work one moment and turn to
the man, we find Tennyson, during the later years of
his life, more wedded than ever to that country
solitude from which The Foresters' emerged. The
Tennyson of this time has been tenderly described
by one privileged to be his friend, Mr. Theodore
Watts. His exclusiveness,' he says, 'is entirely
mythical. He was the most hospitable of men.
As deeply as some men feel that language
was given to men to disguise their thoughts, did
Tennyson feel that language was given to him to
declare his thoughts without disguise. He knew of
but one justification for the thing he said, namely,
that it was the thing he thought. Behind this
uncompromising directness was apparent a noble and
a splendid courtesy; for above all things, Tennyson
THE CLOSING YEARS
295
was a great and forthright English gentleman.' The
Tennyson whom his friends knew was ever so; and
Mr. Watts's appreciation is invaluable as an insight
into that private life which was shared by but few
chosen. For life at Farringford was singularly
secluded. Before noon on a fine morning the poet
might be seen walking through Freshwater, sometimes
alone, sometimes at the side of Lady Tennyson's bath-
chair. Otherwise he was little found. The time of
pilgrimages, foretold by Arthur Hallam, had begun :
and it found the Laureate strangely disinclined to
observation. It was natural, for the spirit of the
moment was, as Mr. Watts remarks, over-inquisitive.
To be a public character is not to be public property.
Still a certain amount of enthusiasm defied suppres-
sion; and, during the years we have been surveying,
quite a library of literature had clustered round
Tennyson's home and work. Of this the critical
portion was naturally the most valuable. Of several
short volumes on In Memoriam,' one by the Rev.
A. Gatty, first published in 1881, has received the
Laureate's approval, and several explanatory notes
from his own pen.
The Rev. F. W. Robertson
of Brighton had, nineteen years before this, published
an analysis of the poem which, until it was superseded
by Mr. Gatty's work, stood as the best critical mono-
graph on the subject. In 1882 Mr. S. E. Dawson
issued a very full and valuable study of 'The Prin-
cess,' which was followed ten years later by a
similar work by Mr. Percy M. Wallace, apparently
intended in the first place for the use of an Indian
University. Mr. E. C. Tainsch's Study of the Works
"
296
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
of Alfred Tennyson (1868, 1869, 1870) treated of
the 'Idylls of the King,' in a very full and interest-
ing manner; and Mr. H. J. Van Dyke's Poetry of
Tennyson (1890) included some biographical notes,
chiefly concerned with the earlier years of the poet's
life. Mr. J. Huband Smith, in his Notes and Mar-
ginalia (1873), gathered together a few facts of
interest, but was unfortunate in his method of
arrangement and recital. The fullest and best
biographical sketch appeared in 1884 from the pen
of Mr. H. J. Jennings: it is characterised through-
out by discretion and good taste. Beside these
books, and beside, too, an infinity of slighter works,
several artistic volumes have been concerned with
illustrations of Tennyson's homes and surroundings.
Prominent among these is the Rev. A. J. Church's
In the Laureate's Country (1891), a very tasteful
volume of views, with a brief description in accompani-
ment. Mr. J. Cuming Walters' In Tennyson Land
(1890) was the first of many attempts to identify the
localities in which several of the Laureate's poems are
placed. The work was interesting as the origin of
much criticism of the kind, a criticism, however,
which is apt to prove ingenious rather than reliable.
Several of the statements were corrected by Mr.
Hallam Tennyson in a letter to The Athenæum,
and the credit of the volume was somewhat im-
pugned by the correspondence. In 1892 Mr. George
Napier published a further work-The Homes and
Haunts of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, an artistic and
literary success. And, last of the list, we may
mention that which is perhaps the most valuable—
THE CLOSING YEARS
297
This little
naked facts,
The second
It
Tennysoniana by R. H. Shepherd.
volume contains a rich collection of
and a wealth of bibliographical notes.
edition (1879) is the better and more reliable.
was thus that Tennyson literature multiplied, and
that incrustation of work, which always settles about
a great name, began to gather round the Laureate.
It is safe to say that, within another decade, the
number of such books will have been doubled.
In the months that followed he production of
The Foresters' Tennyson was at Farringford.
The early spring found him ailing, but in June he
was among the Channel Isles, cruising in Colonel
Crozier's yacht Assegai, while Haslemere was being
redecorated for his return in the later summer.
company with his son, Mr. Hallam Tennyson, he
visited, during the third week in June, the principal
places of interest in Guernsey and Jersey, the family
returning to Haslemere on June 30th.
In
The late summer of 1892 was spent at Aldworth,
whither several distinguished visitors found their way
-the Duke of Argyll during July, Dr. Jowett in
September. During the former month the Laureate
paid a hurried visit to London, and within a few
days of his return to Surrey it was whispered that
Mr. Irving intended to produce 'Becket' early in the
following year. The suggestion seemed at first an
improbable one; but any doubt was removed by Mr.
Irving's own announcement of the project on the last
night of his summer season at the Lyceum. A few
weeks later it was reported that Tennyson was cor-
recting the proofs of a new volume, a collection of
298
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
poems to be entitled 'Akbar's Dream.' The end of
his eighty-third year was evidently to find the poet
full of energy and expectation. His brain was astir,
and his interest in passing events was unabated.
The Shelley Centenary, which was celebrated at
Horsham on August 4th, was rendered more notable
by the ornament of his name as President; the
General Election elicited from him a violent but
characteristic utterance, deploring the possibility of
Home Rule. 'I love Mr. Gladstone,' he said, 'but
hate his present Irish policy.' Gladstone and Tenny-
son! The two names fall together with a singular
fitness. Each numbering his eighty years and over;
each endowed with almost unshaken vigour and
mental power, each holding his audience in his age
with an even keener affection, and drawing it into a
still more loyal adherence than he had commanded in
the dawn of his popularity and power. Par nobile
ducum, whom the least sympathetic opponent cannot
but admire.
With the approaching production of 'Becket,'
and the publication of 'Akbar's Dream,' it seemed as
though the winter of 1892 would be a memorable
season in Tennyson's life. But for him the winter
was never to come.
The rumours of these new movements were but
fresh in our midst, when a graver report centered our
attention upon Aldworth. Tennyson was ill. An
attack of influenza had become complicated by gout,
and his condition was considered serious. So
wrapped in peace and secresy was the home at
Haslemere that the Laureate had been ill for five
THE CLOSING YEARS
299
days before the news reached the ears of the neigh-
bouring villagers. On Monday, October the third, it
was known in London that Tennyson was sinking;
and, though he rallied for one night, there was never
any real accession of strength: the end was merely a
question of time. By Wednesday night the doctors
had given up hope; and very peacefully and at ease,
his room bathed in a flood of moonlight, he passed
away about half-past one on the morning of Thursday,
October the sixth. His family were about him at his
death.
It is only after our losses that we come to under-
stand their extent, and it is probably reserved for the
next few years to prove to us all that English litera-
ture has suffered in Tennyson's death.
One thing
we all appreciated with the first whisper of the news:
the greatest national poet that England has produced
in the present century, the sweetest singer, save only
Shelley, that has charmed us for a hundred years, has
passed away. And yet there should be little room
for weak, effeminate lament. He died, as every
creative genius would surely choose to die, in fulness
of years and honour-almost, it seemed, in the re-
crudescence and plenitude of his power. With the
cycle of his fourscore years completed, he could sport
among his foresters in Sherwood with no less spon-
taneity than he lavished on his garden-games with
the Lilian and Rosalind of his boyhood. The
capacity and the variety of his genius remained un-
withered by age, unstaled by custom, rich and
enchanting to the last. Truly one of the great of
the earth.' It was so his friend described him in
300
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
the first blush of his promise; it is so that he appears
to us to-day. And the sincere regret and sympathy
with which England sets his name upon the roll of
her dead immortals must, of a surety, be softened by
a sense of a life lived to its completion, and a work
perfected.
'Twilight, and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell
When I embark.
For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face,
When I have crost the bar.'
Within a fortnight of the impressive ceremony at
Westminster Abbey, Tennyson's new volume, the
proofs of which had received his own correction, was
issued to the public. 'Akbar's Dream' remained one
of the principal riches of the book, which, however,
took its title from The Death of Enone,' a poem
which was almost characteristic of the author's prime.
Rumour whispers that this latest volume is not neces-
sarily the last, that much remains to be printed, if the
late Laureate's literary executor thinks well. But,
whatever may follow, 'The Death of Enone' must
be the last selection to have passed under its author's
THE CLOSING YEARS
301
own review, the last utterance made with his full and
final authority. As such it acquires a tender, personal
value above the worth and merit of its literary per-
formance. It carries with it the sentiment of a legacy,
a gift in whose presence our thanks are hushed, our
criticism silent.
It was not to be expected that there should be any
new note sounded: no new note was desirable. The
surest consolation in loss was the sense of an ideal
unimpaired, a creed unshaken to the end.
It was
best to find the Master, after many days, singing with
the hope and enthusiasm of youth, a little calmed, a
little resigned, but inspired still by the old creed, the
old cry
of 'Onward.' It was good, too, to meet him
with an eye undimmed, with the same clear sight for
beauty, the same unfailing power of fixing the scene
upon his page. The poetry of his youth scarcely
contained a truer picture than that of Enone's deso-
lation. Once more the surroundings harmonise with
the sentiment: once more the detail, vividly condensed,
is given with the old skill and unlaboured fidelity.
'Enone sat within the cave from out
Whose ivy-matted mouth she used to gaze
Down at the Troad; but the goodly view
Was now one blank, and all the serpent vines
Which on the touch of heavenly feet had risen,
And gliding thro' the branches overbower'd
The naked three, were wither'd long ago.
And thro' the sunless winter morning-mist
In silence wept upon the flowerless earth.
And while she stared at those dead cords that ran
Dark thro' the mist, and linking tree to tree,
But once were gayer than a dawning sky
With many a pendent bell and fragrant star,
Her Past became her Present.'
!
302
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Or again, where Paris reappears, every word is a
touch of colour.
'Paris, no longer beauteous as a God,
Struck by a poison'd arrow in the fight,
Lame, crooked, reeling, livid, thro' the mist
Rose, like a wraith of his dead self, and moan'd.'
It would be hard to trace any failure of strength here:
not only is the picture complete, but the full, rich
melody of the metre is still unbroken. It is even
fuller and richer in 'Saint Telemachus.'
'And once a flight of shadowy fighters crost
The disk, and once, he thought, a shape with wings
Came sweeping by him, and pointed to the West,
And at his ear he heard a whisper "Rome"
And in his heart he cried "The call of God!"
And call'd arose, and, slowly plunging down
Thro' that disastrous glory, set his face
By waste and field and town of alien tongue,
Following a hundred sunsets, and the sphere
Of westward-wheeling stars; and every dawn
Struck from him his own shadow on to Rome.'
It is the voice of Tennyson. One critic may complain
that there is little novelty in the volume, another may
fear that it will scarcely add to his fame. But the
one indisputable fact remains: there is no living
singer who could sing as he, even in his last melody.
The haunting echo of the metre, as we end the poem,
and listen to the rhythm surging through our brain,
sweeps back with a desolate 'Never more!' There is
left us but the gratitude that we have so much to
read and re-read over and over again.
The contents of the volume, other than those in
the peculiarly Tennysonian metre, are, perhaps, less
permanent. 'Charity' belongs to the class of which
THE CLOSING YEARS
303
(
'The Flight' is a leading example, and it is even more
homely than its predecessors. Perhaps it was an
earlier work, belonging, as Mr. H. D. Trail has
suggested, to the Enoch Arden' period; a cycle
which can never be a favourite with the Laureate's
admirers. The Bandit's Death' has a more romantic
environment, but it lacks dramatic fire.
There is far
more spirit and eagerness in 'The Dreamer.'
'Moaning your losses, O Earth,
Heart-weary and overdone!
But all's well that ends well,
Whirl, and follow the sun.'
'The Churchwarden and the Curate' is as admir-
able a sketch in dialect as any of the older favourites.
One feels how much Trench would have appreciated
its quality.
'Akbar's Dream' gives prominence to a tendency,
already sufficiently indicated in this study, which
separates the poet from sympathy with outward
ceremonial, and centres his soul upon the perfection
and pursuit of the ideal.
'What are forms?
Fair garments, plain or rich, and fitting close
Or flying looselier, warm'd but by the heart
Within them, moved but by the living limb,
And cast aside, when old, for newer.'
Forms and creeds, he holds, will one day be merged,
like Plato's sciences, in the one ideal truth, the crown
of knowledge and love.
'Neither mourn if human creeds be lower than the heart's desire!
Thro' the gates that bar the distance comes a gleam of what is
higher.
Wait till Death has flung them open, when the man will make
the Maker
Dark no more with human hatreds in the glare of deathless fire!
304
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
It was his first message: it remains his last. Amid
social change and political doubt he continued true to
the old ambition, the slow, steady progress to universal
union.
he cries.
hesitation.
'Call me not so often back,
Silent voices of the dead,'
There is to be no delay, no regret, no
'On, and always on!'
CHAPTER XV
THE VOICE OF THE AGE
THE period we have traversed in following this serene
and unblemished life from the cradle to the grave is
the longest which the biographer of any great English
poet has to encounter. Wordsworth was venerable
in what seemed extreme old age; but Tennyson had
several years of public honour and private happiness
before him when he crossed the limit of the duration
of Wordsworth's life. As Victor Hugo to France, so
Tennyson has been to England in the nineteenth
century the symbol of longevity, the crowning proof
that not all whom the gods love dearly die young.
The long life of a foremost leader of thought gives
stability to literature, and it is to this duration of
Tennyson's existence that we have owed, to no small
measure, the durability of the poetic tradition of our
age. Although it is a commonplace that we live fast
in this nineteenth century of ours, and that men
change their tastes and opinions in it as they change
their clothes, critical judgment and poetic taste have
been singularly, and perhaps unprecedently, stable.
A man born in the early part of Elizabeth's reign,
and living to the age of the late Laureate, would
have seen poetry spring out of barbarism into perfect
U
306
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
form and beauty, would have marked the rising and
setting of Marlowe, of Shakespeare, of Spenser, the
pre-eminence of the drama and its utter decline, would
have experienced a total revolution in style and taste,
and would have listened to the first accents of Dryden
and Butler. Another, born when Pope was sharpen-
ing his fiery arrows, would have died leaving poetry
in the hands of Coleridge and Shelley. No such
radical change takes place when one great and un-
challenged master, productive through his whole
length of years, holds the critics and the public with
an eye that time does not fatigue or dim.
Hence, though poets have been many, and their
inspiration genuine, not one but has in some degree.
acknowledged in his style his allegiance to Tennyson.
If one exception be sought to this sweeping statement,
it may be found in Robert Browning, in whom,
though he owed to Tennyson in some degree the
scheme of his dramatic monologues, it would be
perhaps paradoxical to claim much or anything of the
Tennysonian spirit. But Mrs. Browning met with
the young genius of Tennyson at the outset of her
career, and his masculine accents fascinated and made
her captive. His infinite variety of metre and spon-
taneity of music struck the first haunting echo that
woke into new tones in those songs of unexampled
melody with which Mr. Swinburne assailed the ears of
his contemporaries. His rich sense of colour and his
delicacy of delineation were elaborated in the over-
burdened pictures of the pre-Raphaelites--in Rossetti
and Mr. William Morris. The grand, full march of
his blank verse is heard in the epic movement of
THE VOICE OF THE AGE
307
Matthew Arnold; its softer cadences, in their
luxuriousness and their fluidity, have only too plainly
inspired Sir Edwin Arnold and Mr. Lewis Morris.
The domestic simplicity and impassioned erotic
analysis of Mr. Coventry Patmore take forms that no
predecessor of Tennyson would have employed. His
keen observation of natural phenomena, and his
sympathy with animal life, stirred a tenderness for
'helpless forms of fur and wings,' which was to
develop in the lyrics of Mr. Edmund Gosse. The
more dramatic and vivid of his ballads thunder, with
a new vehemence, under the roll of Mr. Rudyard
Kipling's 'The English Flag.' His polished, jewelled
style has lent itself as a model for the 'crystalline
completeness' of Mr. William Watson's clean-cut
epigrams.
Almost every later poet has, half imperceptibly,
and as a rule unconsciously, breathed in the atmos-
phere of the Tennysonian spirit. The elements of
that spirit, complex in their separate forms, melt into
one another simply and harmoniously. They fall
into three main classes. First, those emotions which
refer outwards to inanimate nature. Second, those
which refer outwards to the poet's fellow-creatures.
Third, those which refer inwards and become intro-
spective. The briefest consideration will give us
some idea of the nature and interrelation of these
component parts of the spirit of Tennyson's verse.
The poet stands in a closer and more intimate
relation to inanimate nature than did any of his
predecessors. Keats had prepared the way for him
by a wealth of colour, and a keen eye ever dwelling
308
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
on the object, apt to observe every detail of the
scene, and to reproduce it with a luxurious fidelity.
Wordsworth had prepared the way by a love of
seclusion, a passion for the solitude of riverside and
wood, and a studious affection for the books which he
could read in the running brooks, the sermons in the
stones. Crabbe had prepared the way by the
harmony with which his domestic idylls were attuned
to their humble surroundings, by his sense of the
fitness of restraint and modulation. But the way was
prepared not by one, but by all: Tennyson took
something from each, and added much of his own.
There were the richness of Keats's imagery in the
early lyrics, the domestic tenderness of Crabbe in
Dora,' the rustic pathos of Wordsworth in 'The
May Queen.' But in all these poems there was
something that was neither of Keats, nor of
Wordsworth, nor of Crabbe. There was a refined
subtlety of touch, an individual turn of expression,
and, above all, an even more sympathetic attitude
towards nature. Often and often in Tennyson the
scene is the man, the surroundings reflect the situa-
tion. It is so with the lonesome melancholy of
'Tears, Idle Tears'; it is so with the Norland wind
that pipes 'Oriana' down the sea; it is pre-eminently
so with the drowsy sensuousness of the 'Lotos land.'
Before the first failure of the order in Merlin and
Vivien'
(
'A storm was coming, but the winds were still.'
The morning of 'The Last Tournament' breaks
'with a wet wind blowing.' The night of Enoch's
death
THE VOICE OF THE AGE
309
'There came so loud a calling of the sea
That all the houses in the haven rang.'
And, as Arthur falls, the whole surroundings har-
monise with the tragedy:
‘And there, that day when the great light of heaven
Burned at its lowest in the rolling year,
On the waste sand by the waste sea they closed.
Nor ever yet had Arthur fought a fight
Like this last, dim, weird battle of the west.
A deathwhite mist slept over sand and sea :
Whereof the chill, to him who breathed it, drew
Down with his blood, till all his heart was cold
With formless fear.'
Instances could be multiplied; but enough has been
said to show the character of the sympathy. Some
of the sentiment is Wordsworth's, but the peculiar
delicacy which fits every mood to its surroundings is
all Tennyson's own. It is one of the most individual
and artistic of his contributions to the development of
poetry.
The second element is that which carries the poet
out of himself into a regard and sympathy for his
fellow-men. Of this, one variety is personal, the
other dramatic. In his own relation to his age
Tennyson has turned but little, to the right hand or
to the left, during the sixty years and more for which
he has moved among his brothers. His attitude
towards politics was the same at the General Election
of 1892 as it was in the earlier struggles of the
Reform Bill. He was for progress, but the progress
by degrees. The intensity of ambition, which became
inarticulate in the poets of the revolution, was har-
monised into a broader enthusiasm, akin to the more
settled temperament of the period. The placid im-
U 2
310
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
mobility, which threatened to stagnate in the verse
of the reaction, was inspired by the impetus of a
spirit of progress. And so, with no violent con-
vulsion, with no immature energy, the old and the
new spirits were merged into one another. And here
was their philosophy:
"Some cry "Quick," and some cry "Slow,"
But while the hills remain,
Up hill "Too-Slow" will need the whip,
Down hill “Too-quick” the chain.'
The dominant sentiment is one of steady develop-
ment, 'conserving the hopes of man.' An un-
enlightened affection for old forms and ceremonies
is felt to be no less fatal to the state than a
maddened yearning
yearning for unconsidered changes.
There must be a development, but a development
by degrees, steady and certain. The unnatural
emancipation of women is satirised in 'The Princess';
careless inactivity is assailed in 'The Fleet'; ignorant
revolution rebuked in 'Freedom' and 'Locksley
Hall Sixty Years After.' His is an ideal of moral
and physical strength, perceived but restrained; his
hero is the man who, being strong, is merciful; who
walks in the middle way,—a law to himself.
'He who only rules by terror,
Doeth grievous wrong,
Deep as Hell I count his error.'
It is the ideal of Wordsworth, who traces the happy
warrior in the man, who is
'By objects, which might force the soul to abate
Her feeling, rendered more compassionate ;
Is placable-because occasions rise
So often that demand such sacrifice.'
THE VOICE OF THE AGE
311
But though the ideal is strength restrained, the
sympathy is wider. It embraces every class of man-
kind, high and low, thinker and worker. It hastens
to take upon itself to try to comprehend-the emo-
tions, the hopes, and fears, and aspirations of every
variety of mind; and in this endeavour the poet
becomes dramatic. Where he assumes not only the
dramatic instinct, but the stage form, he is in the main
Elizabethan. The dialogue of his dramas is essen-
tially Shakespearian; the construction owes its diffi-
culties to the same source. But Tennyson is most
individual, and-by a strange union of genius with
originality actually most dramatic, in the dramatic
utterances which take the form of poems, and are
not strictly drama at all. None of his predecessors
has used the dramatic monologue with his energy
and directness: and it is in this class of poetry that
he is supreme.
This dramatic element merges itself continually
into the introspective element, till at times the two
are with difficulty separable. For this reason the
dramatic touch of Maud' was misunderstood, and
'Despair' bitterly condemned. The two elements,
indeed, are often one. Throwing himself into the
character he is portraying, adopting the emotion and
the habit of thought, the poet then turns upon him-
self and analyses his assumed condition. He is at
once dramatic and psychological. There is a tinge
of Shelley in 'Maud,' for to him is due some of the
lingering love for passion, and the charm of morbid
melancholy. But the most of it is Tennyson's and
it is, perhaps, his most characteristic work. For it
312
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
shows, with a perfection of detail, the union of the
dramatic and the psychological elements of his
nature.
+
And
This short review of the characteristics which go
to make the Tennysonian spirit has helped us, at the
same time, to trace its development from the poetry
of the preceding generation. Born into an age of
reaction, Tennyson woke his world into new life.
Each new impulse caught the spirit of the old, but
the hand was stronger and the touch individual.
so, attuned to the sentiment of the age, the great
surging rhythm of English poetry flows, from Shake-
speare, through Tennyson, to inspire the singers that
shall come hereafter. Tennyson stands, as it were,
midway upon a mountain, catching the echoes from
afar, and passing on the melody to his followers on
the hillside. Every now and again such a poet takes
his stand upon the height, and preserves to us the
spirit of our song, so that the new and the old are
never altogether out of harmony. And it is to these
that we owe the continuity and perfection of the
national literature.
But Tennyson's attitude is not merely preserva-
tive and proleptic: he stands in an even closer rela-
tion to his contemporaries.
In an earlier chapter we have noticed that two
assistant factors go to the making of literary success
-genius and opportunity. To the highest form of
literary triumph another talent is needed,—the talent
that reflects and represents the age in which it lives
and moves. Scarcely any period has proved so sterile
as to lack all share of literary activity; but it frequently
THE VOICE OF THE AGE
313
happens that many years elapse without the sound of
an actually representative voice to find utterance for
the fears and hopes of its generation. The thoroughly
representative voice is stirred into life by some
vigorous and vital movement in its environment: it
is only in an age of change and development that one
man can take upon him the habit of a people. But
when once such a voice has spoken, the truest history
of the age remains in the record of its utterance.
The naked colligation of facts, the elaborate synthesis
of comparison, are but the skeleton of history: the
heart of the age beats in its truly representative poet.
And it is in Tennyson that we find the quintessence
of the aims and aspirations of the second half of the
nineteenth century. In Tennyson's poetry deep calls
out to deep at the meeting of two great waters, the
poetry of the earlier and later periods of the cycle.
But even more distinctly there is heard in Tennyson's
poetry the steady, prolonged undertone of the age
which it reflected, the moving music to which the
history of the era was written.
The multitude of phrases and sentiments culled
from Tennyson for daily quotation proves how in-
timately his philosophy has entered into the life of
the people for whom he sang. Except Shakespeare,
and perhaps Pope, no English poet is so full of
epigrams which stand as laws of life. He has caught
the spirit of the people and crystallised it into
literature, showing the age, in the process, a faith-
ful similitude of its own soul.
The spirit of the age was analytical, psychological,
dramatic. It was an age marked by a struggle be-
314
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
(
tween doubt and faith, from which faith rose con-
queror. Every effort of the contest was recorded in
Tennyson's verse. The Two Voices,' 'The Vision
of Sin,' and 'In Memoriam,' trace an introspective
analysis, seeking after the truth, whose final word is
given to the unquestioning faith of Crossing the
Bar.' The 'one clear call' finds the poet ready and
fearless-
'I hope to see my Pilot face to face,
When I have crost the bar.'
The age was not only introspectively analytic, it was
dramatic. Its spirit found vent, not in thought alone,
but in action; and the active side of the age had its
literary counterpart in 'Maud,' and the more dramatic
'Ballads.'
The task of the poet was to sift and combine the
lesser voices of antagonism, to separate the tithe of
truth from the mass of falsehood, and to fuse the
many elements into one perfect amalgam. When
this combination was effected, the true spirit of the
age was discovered. Therefore it is that Tennyson
is never with the revolutionist, nor yet with the dul-
lard; he is never in the forefront, but always among
the first to enter the stormed citadel. As each bold
theory of science was established by evidence, he
accepted it in a mitigated form. As each new political
change broadened down to the level of calm freedom,
he welcomed it as a wholesome precedent. Never
advancing rashly, he never lagged behind; the crowd
of progress, as it stormed by, found him—not, as
Plato's philosopher, hiding in the shadow of the wall
--but following steadily by its side. Only, while the
THE VOICE OF THE AGE
315
crowd wandered from the highway by devious alleys
to find the true path after many days, he waited to
follow, till it was once more safe upon its journey.
'Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.'
Truth, he knew, lay not in instant acceptation of the
unproven hypothesis, nor in blind adherence to out-
ward form and ceremonial. With a calm strength
and unbiassed judgment he took what good the age
had to give, and threw aside the evil. And having
proved the goodness of it, he proclaimed it from the
housetops. Such was the poet: such too, was the
man. The truest study of his life will be inspired by
a study of his work. No sketch, no outline of facts
and dates can give us the man as he stands pictured
between the familiar green covers of the collected
edition. All the principal characteristics are mirrored
there. The calm energy of will, the troubled but
unbroken faith, the wide-souled sympathy with man-
kind, the scorn of things little and of low repute, the
reticence towards publicity, the love of love,—all these
things were written in Tennyson's poetry. There we
find the record of a life that followed no party-cry,
was seduced by no specious argument from the open
road of loyalty that sided with no theological oppres-
sion, nor sympathised with any narrowness of sect or
school. It was a life that chose to stand apart from
the hue and cry of the age, that walked in fallentis
semita vitæ by paths of seclusion and peace. But the
quiet way was not solitary. It ran, step by step,
316
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
beside the high-road of the century, within hearing of
the struggling multitude. And watching the men, his
'brothers, men the workers,' marking every aspect of
their fight for existence, sympathising with them, cry-
ing to them, now with the fiery energy of a Son of
Thunder, now with the tenderer accents of a Son of
Consolation, Tennyson was a ceaseless influence to
his age.
He showed the toilers what, in the excite-
ment of the burden and heat of the day, they could
not see for themselves, the end for which they
were toiling, and the cause of their momentary
failure. He found comfort for their disappointment,
and sympathy for their success. He was the historian
of their life, and the prophet of their hope.
And in the future, when the poetry of Tennyson
ceases to represent the inspiration of the moment,
when new hopes and new ambitions are firing new
poets with ardour, his voice will not be without
regard. For it is the voice of his age, an age which,
with all its troubles, its doubts, and its possibilities,
found for consolation one only faith, for assurance
one only God. When, beyond these voices, the
history of that age comes to be written, the record
of the surest utterance of its heart of hearts, of the
clearest reflection of its secret soul, will remain
immortal in the poetry of Alfred Tennyson.
INDEX
speech to, 152.
'Athenæum, The,' reviews 'Timbuc-
too,' 27; on the Laureateship, 115;
its praise of 'Gareth and Lynette,'
211; Mr. Hallam Tennyson on 'In
Tennyson Land' in, 296.
ACADEMY, The,' Mr. Edmund Gosse | Arthur, Tennyson's character of, 161.
on 'The Lover's Tale' in, 63; Review Ashburton, Lady Harriet, Tennyson's
of 'Queen Mary' by Mr. Andrew
Langin, 225; Review of 'Harold' by
Mr. John Addington Symonds in, 225.
'Achilles over the Trench,' 235.
Adonais' of Shelley, published in
'Transactions,' 69.
'Afterthought, re-named
Squabbles,' 104.
'Akbar's Dream,' 303.
'Literary Attempts at Classic Metres in Quan-
tity,' in 'Cornhill Magazine,' 189.
Aylmer's Field,' story supplied by
Mr. Woolner, 190; considered, 190.
Aytoun, Professor W. E., parody
quoted, 91.
Albert, Prince, occasional visits of, to
Farringford, 154.
Aldworth, Tennysons go to live at, 199,
207.
Alford, Henry, his opinion of Arthur
Hallam, 24; an early friend of
Tennyson, 25; Tennyson reads
'Hesperides' to, 33.
Allingham, William, on
Alexander
Smith in 'The Athenæum,' 138.
'Anacreontics,' 46.
'Ancient Sage, The,' 193.
Anonymous Club, The, Literary and
Philosophical Club, 76; dinner in-
vitation from Landor to Tennyson
quoted, 77.
Antony to Cleopatra,' 19.
Apostles, The, Literary Club at Trinity,
Cambridge, 25; Tennyson's mention
of in 'In Memoriam,' 25; Tennyson
on 'Ghosts,' 26.
Archer, Mr. William, on 'The Cup' in
his English Dramatists of To-day,'
249.
Argyll, Duke of, his visits to Tennyson,
206, 297.
'Armageddon, The Battle of,' Tenny-
son's poem on, 27.
Arnold, Sir Edwin, Tennyson's in-
fluence on, 307.
Arnold, Matthew, Tennyson's influence
on, 306.
X
<
BALIN AND BALAN' considered, 276.
Ballads,' published 1880, 240; con-
tents, 240; considered, 241.
'Bandit's Death, The,' 303.
Barnes, Rev. William, his verses in the
Dorsetshire tongue, 195.
Barton, Bernard, in 'The Gem,' 46;
FitzGerald's letter to, 75.
Bateman, Miss (Mrs. Crowe), as Queen
Mary, 222.
Becket,' 1884, considered, 267.
Beddoes, Thomas Lovell, Tennyson's
approval of, 138.
Bedivere, character of, 169.
Beere, Mrs. Bernard, 'The Promise of
May' produced at the Globe Theatre
by, 256.
Berry, Sir Graham, 'The Fleet' sug-
gested by speech of, 281.
Blackmore, Sir Richard, his poems on
the Arthurian Legend, 156.
'Blackwood's Magazine,' Christopher
North on 'Poems, chiefly Lyrical,'
42; notice of Poems published 1832,
61; Review on 'Maud,' 143; 'Sir
Tray,' an Arthurian legend by General
Hamley in, 253.
Blakesley, J. W., an early friend of
318
INDEX
Tennyson, 24; his opinion of 'Poems, Campbell, Thomas, 95.
chiefly Lyrical,' 42.
Bond, Mr. Acton, as Robin Hood
in copyright performance of 'The
Foresters,' 290.
Bors, Sir, character of, 168.
Boxley, Tennysons at, 74.
Boyle, Hon. Mrs., Rosa Rosarum,'
by, 267.
Boyle, Miss Mary, 'Progress of Spring,'
dedicated to, 75; Alfred Tennyson's
friendship for, 75.
'Break, Break, Break,' origin of, 6.
'Britons, guard your own,' 132.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, introduc-
tion to Tennyson, 89; her opinion of
Tennyson, 90; voice of the new era,
96; 'The Athenæum' suggested, for
Laureateship, 115; 'The Poet and
the Woodlouse,' parody by Mr. Swin-
burne on, 253; Tennyson's influence
on, 306.
Browning, Robert, voice of the new
era, 96; his name mentioned for the
Laureateship, 115; Tennyson read-
ing 'Maud' to, 151; dinner at Mr.
Palgrave's, 196; reading of 'Gareth
and Lynette' to, by Tennyson, 211;
his dedication to Tennyson, 224;
parodied by Mr. Swinburne, 253; his
contribution to pamphlet in connec-
tion with Shakesperian Exhibition,
266; his letter to Tennyson on his
eightieth birthday, 284; death of, 285. |
"Burial of Love, The,' 41.
Byron, Lord, death of, 15; early influ-
ence on Alfred Tennyson, 19, 20.
CADNEY'S 'Village School,' 10.
Caine, Mr. Hall, Letter of Tennyson
to, 263.
Cambridge, Trinity College, Frederick
Tennyson at, 16; Alfred and Charles
at, 22; Tennyson's visits to, 207, 280.
Camden Town, Tennyson's lodgings
at, 79.
Campbell, J. Dykes, first proofs of
'Enoch Arden' volume in possession |
of, 195;
on Coleridge's copy of
Sonnets by Charles Tennyson Turner,
237.
Captain, The,' 200.
Carlyle, Jane Welsh, opinion on Tenny-
son, 92; an anecdote, IoI.
Carlyle, Thomas, friend of Alfred
Tennyson, 72; member of The
Anonymous Club,' 76; description of
Tennyson, 92; evening spent with,
99; introduction of Sir John Simeon
to Tennyson by, 100; in Cumber-
land, 118; at Malvern, 132; his
action in defence of Eyre, 200;
quoted on 'The Revenge,' 236.
Charge of the Heavy Brigade, The,'
dedicated to General Hamley, 253.
Charge of the Light Brigade, The,'
1000 copies distributed among troops
before Sebastopol, 141; its popu-
larity, 141.
Chanty,' 302.
'Check every outflash,' 47.
Cheltenham, Tennyson at, 100; Charles
Tennyson's death at, 237.
'Children's Hospital, In the,' Emmie
quoted, 7.
C
Christian Signal, The,' 40.
Christopher North, To,' 43.
Church, Rev. A. J., ' In the Laureate's
Country,' by, 296.
'Churchwarden and Curate, The,' 303.
'City Child, The,' in ‘St. Nicholas,' 244.
Clark, Mr. W. G., Tennyson's dinner
with, 207.
Clough, Arthur Hugh, on Tennyson,
91; Tennyson 1eads 'Guinivere' to,
155; his visit to the Pyrenees, 186;
his walk with Tennyson, 186; death
at Florence, 187.
Cock, The, Tavern, 78.
Colenso, Bishop, Tennyson's letter to,
135.
•
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, on 'Poems,
chiefly Lyrical,' 37; his influence on
Tennyson, 96; his copy of sonnets of
Charles Tennyson Turner of 1880,237.
'Columbus,' Controversy on, 243.
Come not when I am dead,' 129.
Coming of Arthur, The,' 156.
Contemporary Review,' 'The Last
Tournament' in, 210.
Coppée, M. François, 183.
INDEX
319
'Cornhill Magazine, The,' Tennyson's
'Tithonus' in, Feb. 1860, 185;
Thackeray on Tennyson's ‘Welcome'
in, 188; Attempts at Classic Metres
C
in Quantity' in, 189.
'Court Journal,' Epitaph on Duchess
of Kent' printed in, 189.
Cowell, Professor E. B., 155.
Crabbe, George, his influence on
Tennyson, 96.
Cranford,' quoted on Tennyson, 90.
"Crossing the Bar,' 287, 314.
A. C. Swinburne in 'The Fortnightly
Review,' 253.
Dobell, Sydney, at Malvern with
Tennyson, 132; in defence of
'Maud,' 145; account of Tennyson at
Farringford, 154.
Donne, W. B., Trench's letter to, on
Tennyson, 27; FitzGerald's letter to,
on In Memoriam,' 100.
'Dora,' 87.
Doyle, Francis H., dinner-party at Mr.
Palgrave's, 196.
Crozier, Colonel, Tennyson in the Dream of Fair Women, A,' 57.
Assegai yatch of, 297.
Cunningham, Allan, 42.
Cup, The,' produced at the Lyceum
by Mr. Irving, 244; considered, 245;
Mr. William Archer in English
Dramatists of To-day' on, 249.
DAA, Professor Ludwig K., description
of Tennyson's visit to Norway, 211.
'Daisy, The,' Tennyson's journey to
Italy recounted in, 130; considered,
142.
'Dreamer, The,' 302.
Drew, Mr. John, as Robin Hood in
'The Foresters, 291.
•
Dryden, John, his meditated ‘Arthur
riad,' 156.
Dufferin, Lord, 'Helen's Tower'
printed privately by, 187; his kind-
ness to Lionel Tennyson, 278.
Dualisms,' 40.
C
Dyke, Mr. H. J. van, 'Poetry of Ten-
nyson,' by, 296.
<
<
Daly, Mr. Augustin, visit to England, EAGLE, The,' 129.
290; 'The Foresters' produced in
New York by, 291.
"Darling Room,' 58.
Edinburgh Review,' on 'Maud,' 143.
'Edwin Morris,' 129.
Dawson, Mr. S. E., study of 'The
Princess' by, 296.
'Dead Prophet, The,' 275.
Decade, The,' an Oxford debating
society, discussion on Tennyson, 91.
'Defence of Lucknow, The,' 236.
Demeter and Persephone,' considered,
285.
'Egypt,' Frederick Tennyson's Greek
Ode, 22.
'1865-1866,' in 'Good Words,' sup-
pressed, printed in decorative frame
by John Leighton, 206.
Emerson, Ralph Waido, his opinion of
Tennyson, 83.
Englishman's Magazine, The,' Arthur
Hallam's Essay on Tennyson, 38;
Tennyson's contribution to, August
1831, 47.
Enid and Nimue,' published for
private circulation, 153.
'Enoch Arden,' volume 1864, 189;
contents, 189; title of first proofs,
195; considered, 190.
'Democratic Review, The,' Edgar
Allan Poe on Tennyson in, 82.
Denmark, King of, Mr. Gladstone and
Tennyson entertained by, 264;
luncheon-party on the yatch, 264.
Despair,' printed in 'The Nineteenth
Century,' 252; Swinbuine's travesty
'Disgust' on, 253; opinions on,
254; Mr. Thomas Walker's lecture
on, 254; considered, 255; con- | 223.
sidered, 277.
Dickens, Charles, admiration for
Tennyson, 82.
Disgust,' travesty, on 'Despair,' by
Epitaph on Duchess of Kent,' 189.
Era, The,' notice of 'Queen Mary' in,
'Every Saturday,' 'Lucretius,' pub-
lished in, 203.
'Examiner, The,' verses ‘To ———,” ‘You
might have won the Poet's name,'
320
INDEX
published in, 112; 'Hands all Round,'
in, 132; uncourteous comment 'On
a Welcome to Alexandrovna,' 211.
Eyre, E. J., at Louth Grammar School,
21; his suppression of the Blacks in
Jamaica, 199; prosecuted for cruelty,
200.
FAITHFULL, Miss Emily, Tennyson's
verse 'The Sailor Boy' in 'Victoria
Regia,' 186.
'Falcon, The,' produced at St. James's
Theatre, Dec. 18, 1879, by Messrs.
Hare and Kendal, 238; considered,
238.
'Far, far away,' 287.
!
210; Tennyson's visit to, 224; his
letter to Spedding about publication
of Charles Tennyson Turner's Son-
nets, 237; his letters with reference
to loss of Spedding, 252; Tennyson's
lines to, on sending of his MS. of
'Tiresias' to, 265; death of, 265.
'Fleet, The,' suggested by speech of
Sir Graham Berry, 281.
'Flight, The,' 274.
'Foresters, The,' reappearance of
'National Song'in, 42; produced in
New York by Mr. Augustin Daly,
290; copyright performance at Ly-
ceum, 290; success in New York,
291; considered, 292.
Farringford, 135, 151, 154, 181, 196, Forlorn,' 286.
205, 272, 289, 297.
'Fatima,' 55, 97.
Ferdinand of Spain, rebellion under, 43.
Ferrier, Miss, 'The Inheritance,' 80.
Feuillet, Octave, in 'M. De Camors,'
Forster, John, member of the Anony-
mous Club, 76; Tennyson's Sonnet
to W. C. Macready recited by, on
occasion of farewell dinner, 130.
'Fortnightly Review, The,' M₁. Swin-
burne's travesty 'Disgust' in, 253.
'Fragment, A,' 47.
'Frater Ave Atque Vale,' published in
"The Nineteenth Century,' 263.
'Freedom,' printed in Macmillan's
Magazine,' 267.
Freeman, Prof. E. A., 200.
Freshwater, Tennysons go to live at, 135.
'Friendship's Offering,' Alfred Tenny-
son contributes Sonnet to, 51.
Fytche, Mrs., Alfred Tennyson's grand-
mother, 13.
Fytche, Miss Mary Anne, Alfred
Tennyson's aunt, 13.
quoted on Tennyson, 205.
Fields, J. T., letter from Procter, 140;
a visit to Tennyson, anecdotes, 272.
'First Quarrel, The,' 241.
FitzGerald, Edward, visit in Cumber-
land with Spedding and Alfred
Tennyson, 70; his opinion of Alfred
Tennyson, 71; letter to Bernard
letter to Bernard
Barton on Alfied Tennyson, 75; with
Tennyson at Leamington, 79; his
opinion on 'The Skipping Rope,' 81;
quoted his fears for 'In Memoriam,'
100; letter to W. B. Donne, 100;
letter to Frederick Tennyson on
'The Princess,' 106; his idea of
what Tennyson was born to do,
107; Tennyson often with, 112;
quoted, 114, 117; his discontent
with In Memoriam,' 117; with
Tennysons at Twickenham and Isle
of Wight, 135; Tennyson's praise
for 'Euphranor,' 139; letter to Pro-Gareth and Lynette,' praise of, by 'The
fessor E. B. Cowell, 155; opinion of
Tennyson's earlier work, 178; his
letter to W. H. Thompson on bust of
Tennyson, 182; his opinion on 'The
Window,' 201; his letter to Sir W.
F. Pollock, 201; on
on Lucretius,'
204; on 'The Last Tournament,'
GALAHAD, character of, 165.
'Galahad, Sir,' relation to 'The Idylls,'
156.
Garden, Francis, letter to R. C. Trench,
66.
Gardener's Daughter, The,' 87.
Spectator' and 'Athenæum,' 211.
Gareth,' character of, 164.
Garibaldi, his visit to Farringford, 197;
referred to in 'To Ulysses,' 197.
Gatty, Rev. A., on 'In Memoriam,'
295.
Gawain, character of, 168.
INDEX
321
'Gem, The,' Tennyson's contributions
to (1831), 46.
Geraint, character of, 164.
Gilchrist, Mrs., consulted upon the
site for Aldworth, 199.
Gladstone, Mr. W. E., Tennyson's
meeting with at Rogers', 102; din-
ner-party at Mr. Palgrave's, 196; his
visit to Tennyson, 206; dinner at
Lord Houghton's, 224; yachting
tour in orth-West Europe with
Tennyson, 264; their presentation of
the freedom of the Burgh of Kirkwall,
264; entertained by the King of
Denmark, 264; Tennyson created
Peer, 265.
Glasgow University offers Tennyson
Lord Rectorship, 137.
Golden Supper, The,' considered with
'The Lover's Tale,' 61.
Gollancz, Mr. Israel, 289.
'Good Words,' 'The Victim' in, Jan.
,
1868, 203; 1865-1866' in, 206.
Gosse, Mr. Edmund, on Tennyson's
reading an anecdote, 34; review of
'The Lover's Tale in The
Academy,' 63; B. W. Procter's
copy of 1842 'Poems ' in possession of,
86; Professor Daa to, on Tennyson,
212; Tennyson's influence on, 307.
'Grandmother's Apology, The,' in
'Once a Week,' 180; Sir J. E. Mil-
lais' picture of, 180; afterwards
called 'The Grandmother,' 180.
Grasby, Charles Tennyson appointed
Vicar of, 74.
Guest, Sir Ivor Bertie, 'The Window '
printed privately at the press of, 200.
Guinevere, character of, 171.
HALLAM, Arthur Henry, at Cambridge
with Tennyson, 23; birth and early
years, 23; his 'Timbuctoo,' 26;
contemplates a volume with Tenny-
son, 32; as Verges in Much Ado,'
33; his volume with Tennyson
abandoned, 35; 'On Poems, chiefly
Lyrical,' 38; attacked by Chris-
topher North,' 43; in Spain with
Conduct of the Independent Party
during the Civil War,' 45; on 'The
Influence of Italian upon English
Literature,' 45; description of Alfred
Tennyson in 1832, 48; takes his
degree and enters Inner Temple,
48; his engagement announced, 48;
letter to Trench, 48; Sonnet to
Emily Tennyson, 49; 'To the Loved
One,' 49; goes to London, 51; re-
joinder to Rossetti's 'Disquisizioni
Sullo Spirito Antipapale,'51; delicate
health, 65; goes to Germany, 65;
death of, 65; love of Alfred Tenny-
son for, 67; 'In Memoriam,' 118.
Hallam, Henry, his objection to Arthur
Hallam and Tennyson's combined
volume, 35; his attitude to his son's
engagement, 45.
Hamley, General, 'The Charge of the
Heavy Brigade' dedicated to, 253;
'Sir Tray: an Arthurian Legend,'
travesty of Tennyson by, 253.
Hands all Round,' sung at St. James's
Hall by Mr. Santley, an anecdote, 255.
Happy,' 286.
Hare and Kendal, Messis., 'The Fal-
con' produced at St. James's Theatre
by, 238.
'Harold,' Review in 'The Academy,'
by Mr. John Addington Symonds, on,
225; considered, 225.
Harrington, II.
Hawker, Rev. Robert Stephen, his
poem The Quest of the Sangreal,'
208; controversy on "The Holy
Grail,' 208.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 154.
Head, Sir Edmund, letter of Henry
Taylor to, 131.
'Helen's Tower,' printed by Lord
Dufferin, 187; copy of the pamphlet
in the British Museum, 188.
Hemans, Felicia, 95.
Henley, Mi. W. E., on Vastness' in
'Views and Reviews,' 286.
'Heptalogia, The; or the Seven against
Sense,' by A. C. Swinburne, 253.
'Hero and Leander,' 41.
Tennyson, 43; engaged to Tenny-Hesperides,' considered, 33.
son's sister, 45; his essay on 'The High Beach, Essex, Tennyson at, 74-
322
INDEX
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, his visit with
his daughter to Farringford, 279;
his description of visit, 279.
'Holy Grail, The,' controversy on, 207.
Holywell Glen, 10.
'Homes and Haunts of Alfred, Loid
Tennyson,' by G. G. Napier, 296.
Horne, Richard Hengist, on Alfred
Tennyson, in 'A New Spirit of the
Age,' 88.
|
129; Rev. A. Gatty on, 295; analy-
sis by Rev. F. W. Robertson, 295.
'In the Garden at Swainston,' 209.
'In the Laureate's Country,' by Rev.
A. J. Church, 296.
'In the Valley of Cauteretz,' 186.
'Ionica,' 145.
Irving, Mr. Henry, as Philip in 'Queen
Mary,' 222; 'The Cup' produced at
Lyceum by, 244.
JACKSON, Mr., publisher of 'Poems
by Two Brothers,' 17.
with, 280.
Jennings, Mr. H. J., his biographical
sketch of Tennyson, 296.
Jones, Mr. Ernest, Tennyson's letter
to, 136.
Houghton, A., illustration of 'The
Victim,' in 'Good Words,' by, 203.
Houghton, Richard Monckton Milnes,
Loid, Tennyson to, quoted, 16; an | Japp, Dr. A. H., quoted, 113.
early friend of Tennyson, 24; Ten-Jenkinson, Mr., The Tennysons' dinner
nyson's first attraction for, 25; his
'Timbuctoo,' 26; his Essay on 'The
Influence of Homer,' 27; as Beatrice
in ‘Much Ado,' 33; he asks Alfred
Tennyson to contribute to 'The Tri-
bute,' 72; his critique on 'Poems,
1842,' 82; pension bestowed on
Tennyson mainly through, 102;
offered to place wing of his house at
disposal of Tennyson, 117; created
Lord Houghton 1863, 188; his visit
to Tennyson, 205; his description of
visit, 206; his letter to his Aunts
on Tennyson coming to dine, 209;
Tennyson's dinner to meet
Gladstone, 224.
Jubilee Ode, 1887,' 284.
KANE, Dr. Elisha Kent, R. N., account
of Tennyson's pillar, 140.
Kate,' 59.
Keats, John, his influence on Tenny-
son, 39, 96.
Keble, John, influence on Tennyson,
74.
Mr.Keepsake' of Miss Power, Tennyson's
stanzas 'What time I wasted youth-
ful hours' in, 129.
How and the Why, The,' 40.
Howitt, Mary, in 'The Gem,' 46.
Howitt, William, on Tennyson, 208.
Hunt, Leigh, reviews Charles and
Alfred Tennyson in 'The Tatler,' 45;
met Tennyson at Rogers', 102; candi-
date for the Laureateship, 115.
Huxley, Professor T. H., 200.
IDYLLS of the Hearth,' 195.
Idylls of the King,' considered, 156;
new edition dedicated to memory of
the Prince Consort, 188.
"In Memoriam,' Tennyson at work on,
100; FitzGerald's fears for, 100;
rescue of MSS. of, an anecdote, 113;
published 1850, 114; divided for pur-
pose of analysis into five parts, 118;
considered, 118; fourth edition, ‘O
sorrow, wilt thou live with me' added,
Kemble, John Mitchell, at Cambridge
with Tennyson, 26; Dogberry in
'Much Ado,' 33; his opinion of
'Poems, chiefly Lyrical,' 42; his
opinion of Charles Tennyson's Son-
nets, 45.
Kennedy, E. R., at Cambridge with
Tennyson, 25.
Kent, Duchess of, Tennyson's Epitaph
on, 189.
King, Messrs. H. S., and Co., cabinet
edition of Tennyson's works, 210.
King, Miss Zoe, lent Tennyson copy of
'Death's Jest-Book,' 138.
Kingsley, Charles, Frederick Denison
Maurice's letter to, 132; paper on
Alexander Smith in 'Fraser's Maga-
zine' by, 137; his action in defence
of Eyre, 200.
INDEX
323
Kipling, Mr. Rudyard, Tennyson's in-
fluence on, 307.
Kirkwall, Mr. Gladstone and Tenny-
son presented with the freedom of
the Burgh of, 264.
Knight, Charles, on Tennyson, 199.
Knowles, Mr. J. T., editor of 'The
Nineteenth Century,' 211; design
for Aldworth, 235; Gareth and
Lynette' read to, 211.
Knowles, Sheridan, rival of Tennyson
for pension, 102.
'LADY CLARE,' 80.
'Lady of Shalott, The,' considered, 53;
Pre-Raphaelite school forecast in,
97 relation to ‘Idylls,' 156.
Lancelot, character of, 169.
Landon, Letitia E., 95.
Landor, Walter Savage, member of the
Anonymous Club, 76; dinner invita-
tion to Tennyson quoted, 77; 'Morte
d'Arthur' read to, 80; at Rogers', 102.
Lang, Mr. Andrew, review of 'Queen |
Mary,' in 'The Academy,' by, 225;
on Kingsley, 236.
'
of, 61; Mr. Edmund Gosse on, in
"The Academy,' 63.
Lucretius,' publication in America,
204; in 'Macmillan's Magazine,' 206.
Lushington, E., at Cambridge with
Tennyson, 25; married Cecilia Ten-
nyson, 127.
Lushington, Henry, 'The Princess'
(second edition) dedicated to, 105;
Tennyson's opinion of, 106; Tenny-
son's frequent visits to, 112.
Lyceum Theatre, 'Queen Mary' pro-
duced at, April 1876, 222;
'The
Cup' produced at, January 3, 1881,
244; copyright performance of 'The
Foresters' at, 290.
Lytton, Lord Bulwer, 'The New Timon:
A Romance of London,' a satirical
attack on Tennyson, 103; Tennyson's
reply, 103.
MABLETHORPE, early visits of the
Tennysons to, 14.
Mackay, Dr. C., candidate for the
Laureateship, 115.
'M'Master University Monthly', fac-
simile of MS. of songs in 'The Prin-
cess' published in, 110.
'Last Tournament, The,' alteration of
lines 'He rose, he turned,' etc., 210;
original version printed in 'Contem-Macmillan's Magazine,' January 1860,
porary Review,' 210.
Leighton, John, decorative frame for
'1865-1866' designed by, 206.
'Lines of E. L.' (Edward Lear), 134.
'Literary Chronicle and Weekly Re-
view, The,' notice of 'Poems by Two
Brothers,' 21.
Locker-Lampson, Mr. Frederick, his
friendship with Tennyson, 197, 198,
279.
Tennyson's 'Sea-Dreams' in, 183;
'Lucretius' in, 206; 'Wages' in,
206; 'Freedom' printed in, 267;
"Vastness' in, 285.
Macmillan & Co., Messis., Transfer of
Tennyson's copyright to, 267.
Macready, W. C., member of the
Anonymous Club, 76; farewell din-
ner to, 130.
Maid of Savoy, The,' 21.
Mann, Dr. J. R., Tennyson's 'Maud'
vindicated, 144.
'Locksley Hall,' considered, 86; B. Malvern, Tennyson and his wife at, 132.
W. Procter's copy of, 86.
'Locksley Hall Sixty Years After,' 87;
considered, 281.
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, his ad-
miration for Tennyson, 206; Tenny- |
son's letter to, 223.
'Lotos Eaters, The,' considered, 53, 55.
Louth Grammar School, 12; the Tenny-
sons at, under M1. Waite, 13.
'Lover's Tale, The,' written at Cam-
bridge, 26; suppressed, 61; analysis
Martin, Sir Theodore, parody quoted, 91.
Mary, Queen,' considered, 215; pro-
duced at the Lyceum, April 1876,
222; opinion of critics on, 223; re-
view in 'The Academy' by Mr.
Andrew Lang, 225.
'Maud,' published 1855, greater part
written in gaiden at Swainston, 141;
contents of volume of, 141; origin of,
324
INDEX
NAPIER, Mr. G. G., 'The Home and
Haunts of Alfred, Lord Tennyson,'
by, 296.
National Anthem, addition to, 155.
'National Review, The,' on 'Maud,' 143.
'National Song, A,' 42.
142; reviews, 143; travesties, 144; | Musset, Alfred de, contrasted with
Anti-Maud, 143; Dr. Mann's 'Tenny- Tennyson, 84.
son's "" Maud" Vindicated,' 144; in
'Ionica,' verses 'After Reading Maud,'
145; considered, 145; E. C. Sted-
man's estimate considered, 149, 150.
Maurice, Frederick Denison, at Cam-
bridge with Tennyson, 24; Tenny-
son's frequent visits to, 112; his letter
to Charles Kingsley, 132; godfather
of Hallam Tennyson, 132; expelled
from King's College, 135; offers to re-
sign position of Chaplain of Lincoln's
Inn, 135; Tennyson's letter to, 135.
'May Queen, The,' 57, 87.
Merivale, Charles, at Cambridge with
Tennyson, 25, 33.
'Merlin and the Gleam,' 287.
Mill, John Stuart, member of the
Anonymous Club, 76; on the Eyre
Defence, 200.
Millais, Sir J. E., illustration of 'The
Grandmother' by, 180.
'Minnie and Winnie,' in 'St. Nicholas,'
244.
་
Mitford, Mary Russell, in 'The Gem,'
46; 'Dora Cresswell,' 80;" descrip-
tion of Shiplake Church by, 117.
Monkhouse, Mr. Cosmo, Rossetti's
sketch, 152.
New Timon and the Poets, The,' 102;
Tennyson's reply to Bulwer Lytton's
The New Timon: a Romance of
London,' 102.
New Review, The,' 'To Sleep' printed
in, 289.
'New Spirit of the Age, A,' R. H.
Horne on Tennyson in, 88.
'Nineteenth Century, The,' first number,
March 1877, 235; Tennyson's Pre-
fatory Sonnets to, 235; Tennyson's
contributions to, 235; 'Despair
printed in, 252; Frater Ave Atque
Vale' published in, 263.
'No More,' 46.
North, Christopher (Prof. John Wilson),
on Poems, chiefly Lyrical,' 42;
Northampton, Lord, editor of
Tennyson's reply, 42.
Tribute,' 72.
>
The
'Northern Farmer, The,' R. C. Trench
on, 195.
Monteith, on ‘Poems, chiefly Lyrical,'37. Norton, Hon. Mrs., in 'The Gem,'
'Montenegro,' in The Nineteenth
Century,' 235.
C
Moore, Thomas, early influence
Alfred Tennyson, 19; at Rogers', 102.
Morris, Mr. Lewis, Tennyson's influ-
ence on, 307.
46; asked to meet Tennyson, 101.
'Notes and Marginalia,' by Mr. J.
Huband Smith, 296.
'ODE on the Death of the Duke of
Wellington,' 132.
Morris, Mr. William, Tennyson's influ- 'Ode on the Opening of the Indian and
ence on, 97, 307.
'Morte d'Arthur,' afterwards incor-
porated into 'The Passing of Arthur,'
87; relation to the 'Idylls,' 156.
Moxon, Edward, 'Poems' by Alfred
Tennyson, 1842, published by, 80;
'The Princess' published by, 1847,
105; *In Memoriam ' published by,
1850, 114; 'Ode on the Death of
the Duke of Wellington' published
by, 133.
'Mr. Sludge the Medium,' Tennyson
on, 10.
Colonial Exhibition by the Queen,'
281.
Enone,' 54, 186.
Enone, The Death of,' 301.
Ogle, Mr. John, dinner-party at Mr.
Palgrave's, 196.
'Oh that 'twere possible,' 73; in 'The
Tribute,' 73; Mr. Swinburne on,
73; Sir John Simeon's remark on,
142; origin of 'Maud,' 142.
'Once a Week,' Tennyson's 'The
Grandmother' in, 180; 'The Spite-
ful Letter' in, 206.
INDEX
325
'Oriana,' 39.
'Owd Roa,' 286.
'Owl, The,' 14, 287.
'PALACE of Art, The,' 55.
Palgrave, F. T., in Portugal with
Tennyson, 181; his account of visit
in 'Under the Crown,' 181; dinner-
party, Feb. 12, 1864, 196.
Palgrave, Reginald, dinner-party at
F. T. Palgrave's, 196.
works, 1874, contents, published by
Messrs. H. S. King and Co., 209.
'Poems,' library edition of Tennyson's
works, six volumes, published by
Messrs. Strahan and Co., 1872,
contents, 210.
Poetry of Tennyson,' 1890, by Mr. H.
J. van Dyke, 296.
Pollock, Sir Frederick, Tennyson's
reading 'Maud' to, 151; Tennyson
reads 'The Holy Grail' to, 207.
Palgrave, W. Gifford, at dinner-party | Power, Miss, Stanzas of Tennyson in
at F. T. Palgrave's, 196; addressed
as Ulysses in 'Demeter' volume,
197.
'Passing of Arthur,' 87, 163, 207.
Patmore, Coventry, first introduction to
Tennyson at the Procters, 112; an
anecdote on MS. of 'In Memoriam,'
113.
Patterson, Monsignor, dinner-party at
F. T. Palgrave's, 196.
Paul, Mr. Kegan, publication of Charles
Tennyson Turner's sonnets by, 237.
Peel, Sir Robert, gives pension to
Tennyson, 102.
Pelleas, character of, 168.
'Pelleas and Etarre,' 207.
Poe, Edgar Allan, on Poems, 1842, 82;
criticism, in an essay on 'The Poetic
Principle,' on Alfred Tennyson, 82;
his admiration for Tennyson, 83.
'Poems by two Brothers,' origin of, 17;
considered and quoted, 18.
'Poems, chiefly Lyrical,' contents, 35;
reviews, 36; considered, 39; Blakes-
ley and Kemble on, 42; 'Christopher
North' on, 42.
'Poems,' volume of, published 1832,
51; contents, 52; considered, 53;
reviews, 60.
|
'Poems,' two volumes published
1842, 80; contents, 80; 1eviews, 81;
considered, 83; fourth edition, 1846,
'The Golden Year' included, 105;
sixth edition, 1850, 113; seventh
edition, four new pieces added,—‘To F
the Queen,'' Edwin Morris,' 'The
Eagle,' 'Come not when I am dead,'
129; eighth edition, 1853, 134.
'Poems,' cabinet edition of Tennyson's
|
|
Keepsake' of, 129.
Praed, Winthrop Mackworth, in 'The
Gem,' 46.
'Prefatory Poem to my brother's son-
nets, 21, 237.
'Princess, The,' 1847, probable germ of,
105; second edition, 1848, dedicated
to Henry Lushington, 105; third
edition, many corrections in, 106;
fourth tion, other changes, 106;
fifth edition, 106; connection of Sir
John Simeon and of Swainston with,
106; keynote of, 107; considered,
107; facsimile of MS. of the Songs,
IIO; variations between them and
the Songs as they now stand, III;
Mr. Percy M. Wallace on the songs
in, 112; study by Mr. S. E. Dawson
on, 295; study by Mr. Percy Wallace
on, 295.
Pritchard, Mr., dinner at Cambridge,
207.
Procter, Bryan Waller (Barry Corn-
wall), his copy of 'Locksley Hall,'
86; candidate for Laureateship, 115;
letter to J. T. Fields, 140.
Procter, Mrs., Tennyson's visits to, 223.
Progress of Spring, The,' afterwards
dedicated to Miss Mary Boyle, 74, 75.
'Promise of May, The,' produced at
the Globe Theatre by Mrs. Bernard
Beere, Nov. 11th, 1882, 256; cast of,
256; its failure, 257; considered,
258; protest on the fourth night by
the Marquis of Queensberry, 261;
treatment by critics of, 263; pub-
lished by Macmillan 1886, 280.
Pyrenees, The Tennysons' visit to the,
186; Arthur Clough's visit to, 186.
326
INDEX
'QUARTERLY REVIEW,' on 'Darling
Room,' 58; notice of Poems published
1832, 60; on 'Poems' of 1842, 81.
'Queen, To the,' 129.
'Queen Mary,' considered, 215.
Queensberry, Marquis of, his protest at
the Globe Theatre on 'The Promise
of May,' 261.
RAND, Professor Theodore, facsimile of
MS. of the songs in The Princess,'
published in 'The M'Master Uni-
versity Monthly' by, 110.
'Rasselas,' Dr. Johnson's, 105.
'St. Nicholas,' 'The City Child,' and
'Minnie and Winnie,' published in,
244.
'St. Simeon Stylites,' 84, 96, 143.
'St. Telemachus,' 302.
'Sailor Boy, The,' in Miss Emily
Faithfull's 'Victoria Regia,' 186.
Santley, M., Hands all Round' sung
by, an anecdote, 255.
Scott, Sir Walter, early influence on
Alfred Tennyson, 9, 19.
Scrivelsby, 11.
'Sea Dreams' in Macmillan's 'Magazine,'
1860, considered, 183.
Rehan, Miss Ada, as Maid Marian in Sellwood, Miss Emily, mariage of, to
'The Foresters,' 291.
'Richard Grenville, Sir: a Ballad of the
Fleet,' afterwards renamed 'The
Revenge,' 235; Carlyle on, 236.
'Ring, The,' 286.
'Rizpah,' 7, 242.
Robertson, Rev. F. W., Analysis of 'In
Memoriam' by, 295.
Tennyson, 116; Spedding's opinion
of, 117; ‘Enoch Arden' dedicated
to, 189; removal to Aldworth in con-
sideration of her health, 198; music
'Home they brought him,' 200;
music to Hands All Round,' 255;
'Locksley Hall Sixty Years After'
dedicated to, 281.
to
Robinson, Rev. E. A., at Somersby, 44. Sellwood, Miss Louisa, marriage of
Robinson, H. Crabb, 101.
Rogers', Samuel, dinner at, IOI; un-
willing to accept position of Poet
Laureate, 115.
'Romney's Remorse,' 287.
'Rosalind,' 59.
'Rosa Rosarum,' by the Hon. Mrs.
Boyle, Tennyson's introductory verses
to, 267.
'Rose, on this terrace fifty years ago,' 75. |
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, Hallam's re-
joinder to 'Disquisizioni Sullo Spirito
Antipapale,' 51; his sketch of Tenny-
son while reading 'Maud' at Brown-
ing's, 151; Tennyson's influence on,
97, 306.
Royal Society, Tennyson member of,
197.
Ruskin, Mr. John, his action in defence
of Eyre, 200.
Russell's, Lord John, reception at, 131.
'ST. AGNES' in 'The Keepsake,' after-
wards altered to 'St. Agnes' Eve,' 73.
St. James' Theatre, 'The Falcon' pro-
duced at, on Dec. 18, 1879, by Messrs.
Hare and Kendal, 238.
Charles Tennyson to, 74.
Shakespeare, William, influence on
Tennyson, 214, 293, 294, 306.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, early influence
on Tennyson, 39, 41, 63, 96; his
'Adonais' published in 'Transac-
tions,' 69.
Shepherd, R. H., ‘Tennysoniana,' by,
296.
Shiplake Church, description of, by
Miss Mary Russell Mitford, 117.
Silent Voices, The,' 304.
Simeon, Sir John, introduction
to
Tennyson by Carlyle, 100; Sir
Walter Vivian, the host in 'The Prin-
cess,' 106; his remark on Oh that
'twere possible,' origin of 'Maud,'
142; dinner-party at Mr. Palgrave's,
196; death of, 210.
'Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere,'
157.
'Skipping Rope, The,' FitzGerald's
opinion on, 81.
Sleep, To,' printed in the New Re-
view,' 289; afterwards appeared in
'The Foresters,' 289.
Smith, Alexander, a pattern-designer
INDEX
327
in a Glasgow factory, his poetry,
137; Charles Kingsley's paper in
'Fraser's Magazine' on, 137 ; ; A
Life Drama' by, 138; William Al-
lingham in the 'Athenæum' attacks
Smith, 138.
Smith, Mr. Bosworth, Tennyson's letter
to, 136.
Smith, Professor Goldwin, 152, 200.
Smith, Mr. J. Huband, 'Notes and
Marginalia' by, 296.
'Snob, The,' Thackeray's Timbuctoo,'
in, 31.
Somersby, Rectory and Village of, 4, 5;
Hallam and Tennyson at, 32; the
Tennysons leave, 74.
Southey, Robert, P.L., his copy of
'Poems, chiefly Lyrical,' 35; his
death, 90.
'Spectator, The' Gareth and Lynette'
praised by, 211.
Spedding, James, at Cambridge with
Tennyson, 25; speech on Political |
Unions, 26; Lines to J. S., 26; pre-
sentation copy of 'Poems, chiefly |
Lyrical,' 35; visit of Alfred Tenny-
son and FitzGerald to, 70; Fitz-
Gerald's letter, on publication of
Charles Tennyson Turner's Sonnets,
237; death of, 252.
Spencer, Mr. Herbert, 200.
Spinster's Sweet - 'Arts, The,' 273,
274.
'Spiteful Letter, The,' 206.
Stanford, Prof. C. V., quoted, 22, 112.
Stanley, Dean, visit to the Tennysons,
181.
Stedman, Edmund Clarence, his estim-
ate of 'Maud,' 149.
'Sterling, The,' formerly 'The Anony-
mous Club,' 76.
Sterling, John, review of 'Timbuctoo,'
27; member of the Anonymous Club,
76.
Stockworth, II.
'Study of the Works of Alfred Tenny-
son,' by Mr. E. C. Tainsch, 295.
Sullivan, Sir Arthur, his music for
Tennyson's 'The Window,' 201.
'Supposed Confession of a Second-rate
Sensitive Mind,' 40.
Swainston, seat of Sir John Simeon,
106; the scene of the introduction in
'The Princess,' 106; Tennyson in
the garden at, 209.
Swinburne, Mr. Algernon Charles,
on 'O that 'twere possible,' 73; his
reply to the attacks of his critics, 194;
his travesty' Disgust' in 'The Fort-
nightly Review,' 253; 'The Hepta-
logia or the Seven against Sense,'
253; his travesty on Tennyson 'The
Higher Pantheism in a Nutshell,'
253; Tennyson's influence on, 97, 306.
Symonds, Mr. John Addington, review
of 'Harold' in 'The Academy' by,
225.
TAINE, M., on Alfred Tennyson, 83.
Tainsch, E. C., Study of the Works
of Alfred Tennyson' by, 295.
'Tatler, The,' Leigh Hunt's review of
the Tennysons in, 45.
Taylor, Bayaid, on Tennyson's reading,
76; his walk with Tennyson, 154.
Taylor, Sir Henry, on Tennyson's read-
ing, 76; letter to Sir Edmund Head,
131; letter to Tennyson on the 'Ode on
the Death of the Duke of Wellington.`
133; Tennyson's reply, 133; an
anecdote of Tennyson, 152.
Tealby. Curacy of Charles Tennyson at,
74.
'Tears, idle Tears,' quoted, II.
Tennyson, Alfred, Baron Aldworth and
Farringford, D.C.L., P.L., Ethics
of a Biography of, I; birth and
parentage, 4; first line of poetry,
7; characteristics in childhood, 8;
first poem, 8; elegy on his grand-
mother, quoted, 9; early attempts
at verse, 9; amusements in boyhood,
10; at Cadney's village school, 10;
early love of nature, II; at Louth
Grammar school, 12; at Mable-
thorpe, 14; 'The Owl,' 14; his re-
collection of Byron's death, 15;
leaves school, 16; origin and publi-
cation of 'Poems by Two Brothers,'
17; goes to Cambridge, 22; his
opinion of Arthur Hallam, 24; a
member of The Apostles,' 24; his
328
INDEX
}
paper on 'Ghosts,' 26; 'The Lover's
Tale,' 26; Timbuctoo,' origin of,
27; Timbuctoo' considered, 28;
contemplates a volume with Hallam,
32; Hesperides,' 33; his reading
described, 34; his volume with
Hallam abandoned, 35; 'Poems,
chiefly Lyrical,' 35; reviews, 36;
'Poems, chiefly Lyrical' considered,
39; attacked by Christopher North,
42; his reply, 43; in Spain with
Hallam, 43; death of his father, 44;
leaves Cambridge, 44; reviewed
by Leigh Hunt in 'The Tatler,' 45;
'No more,' 'Anacreontics,' 46; 'A
Fragment,' 47; 'Check every out-
flash,' 47; characteristics in 1832,
48; at Somersby with Hallam, 49 ;
his impression of the summer of
Hallam's engagement, 50; contri-
butes two sonnets to 'The Yorkshire.
Literary Annual' and 'Friendship's
Offering,' 51; volume of Poems
published 1832, 51; contents, 52;
'The Lady of Shalott,' 53; 'The
Lotos Eaters,' 53; 'Fatima,' 55;
'The Palace of Art,' 56; 'A Dream
of Fair Women,' 57; 'The May
Queen,' 57; 'Darling Room,' 58;
'Rosalind and Kate,' 59; reviews
on Poems, 60; The Lover's Tale'
suppressed, 61; considered, 61;
in town with his sister studying the
Elgin Marbles, 65; death of Arthur
Hallam, 65; grief for his death, 66;
early years in London, 69; Transac-
tions of the Union Society, 69; con-
tents, 69; his friends, 70; visit to
Cumberland with the Speddings, 70;
at work on 1842 volume, 71; Carlyle
added to his friends, 72; letter to
Milnes, 72; promise to write for
'The Tribute,' 73; 'St. Agnes,' 73;
beginning of friendship for Miss
Mary Boyle, 75; member of the
Anonymous Club,' 76; literary
work in London, 77; 'The Cock,'
78; with FitzGerald at Leamington,
79; 'Poems,' two volumes published
1842, 80; contents, 80; 'The
Skipping Rope,' 81; reviews, 81;
appreciation and praise, 82; poems
of 1842 considered, 83; 'St. Simeon
Stylites,' 84; 'The Vision of Sin,'
85; 'Locksley Hall,' 86; 'Dora,'
87; Morte d'Arthur,' 87; intro-
duction to Elizabeth Barrett, 89;
Laureateship vacant, 90; success and
opportunity, 93; the spirit of the
age, 94; Tennyson, the voice of the
new era, 96; Pre-Raphaelite school,
97; effect of fame on, 98; at work
on "In Memoriam,' 100; dinner at
Rogers', 101; pension of £200 a
year, 102; attacked by Bulwer Lytton,
103; 'The New Timon and the
Poets,' his reply, 103; 'After-
thought,' 104; 'The Princess,' 105;
five editions, 106; visit to Henry
Lushington, 106; his opinion of
Henry Lushington, 106; 'The
Princess' considered, 107; fac-
simile of Ms. of the Songs in 'The
Princess' published, 110; goes to
Valentia, 112; verse ‘To ---,'' You
might have won the Poet's name,
112; 'In Memoriam' published
1850, 113; marriage of, to Miss
Emily Sellwood, 115; they go to
live at Twickenham, 117; visiting,
118; made Poet Laureate, 118; ‘In
Memoriam' considered, 118; 'To
the Queen,' 129; Edwin Morris,'
129; The Eagle,' 129; 'Come not
when I am dead,' 129; Stanzas,
"What time I wasted youthful hours,'
129; his sonnet to W. C. Macready,
130; in Italy with his wife, 130;
death of their baby, 130; reception
at Lord Russell's, an anecdote,
131; friends at Twickenham, 131;
C
I
Britons, guard your own,' 132;
The Third of February 1852,'
132; Hands all Round,' 132; at
Malvern, 132; Frederick Denison
Maurice godfather to his child, 132;
'Ode on the Death of the Duke of
Wellington,' 132; Henry Taylor's
letter on the Ode, 133; his reply,
133; visits of his friends, 135; letter
to Frederick Denison Maurice, 135;
his dislike of disagreements in tenet
INDEX
329
and doctrine, 135; his letters to
Bishop Colenso, 135; Mr. Bosworth
Smith, 136; Mr. Ernest Jones,
136; his appreciation of literary
work, 137; letter to Alexander
Smith, 137; his approval of Thomas
Lovell Beddoes, 138; his praise for
FitzGerald's Euphianor,' 139; re-
moval from Twickenham to the Isle
of Wight 1853, 139; birth of Lionel
1854, 139; Tennyson's Pillar, 140;
'The Charge of the Light Brigade,'
141; 'Maud,' 1855, 141; contents
of volume of 'Maud,' 141; reviews
on Maud,' 143; travesties, 144; Dr.
Mann's Tennyson's "Maud" Vindi-
cated,' 144; his reply, 144; 'Maud'
considered, 145; his reading of
'Maud' to the Brownings, 151;
Rossetti's sketch of, 151; an anec-
dote of his reading 'Maud' to a lady,
152;
his talk with Lady Harriet
Ashburton, 152; his reply to a
clergyman's wife, 153; degree of
D.C.L. conferred on, 153; at work
on 'Idylls of the King,' 153; 'Enid
and Nimue' printed for private circu-
lation, 153; Bayaid Taylor and
Prince Albert at Farringford, 154;
addition of two stanzas to the 'Na-
tional Anthem,' 155; 'Idylls of the
King,' 156; 'The War,' 180; The
Grandmother's Apology,' 180; in
Portugal with Mr. F. T. Palgrave,
181; controversy on bust of, pre-
sented to Trinity College, 182; 'Sea
Dreams,' 183; Tithonus,' 185:
'The Sailor Boy,' 186; on the Con-
tinent with his wife, 186; 'In the
Valley of Cauteretz,' 186; 'Helen's
Tower,' 187; 'Attempts at Classic
Meties in Quantity,' 188; epitaph on
the Duchess of Kent, 189; 'Enoch
Arden,' volume 1864, 189; 'Aylmer's
Field,' 190; 'Enoch Arden,' 190; his
tendency to trance and love of
mysticism, 192; his letter of May 7th,
1874, 192; condition of contemporary
poetry and influence on Tennyson's
work, 193; Pre-Raphaelite Schools,
194; 'The Northern Farmer,' 195; din-
ner-party at Mr. Palgrave's, 196; visit
of Garibaldi to, 197; elected Mem-
ber of the Royal Society, 197; death
of his mother, 198; refusal of
baronetcy, 198; his action in de-
fence of Eyre, 199; his letter, 199;
volume of 1865, 200; The Captain,'
200; 'The Window, or the Loves of
the Wrens,' 201''Lucretius,' 203;
his reputation, 204; visit of the Duke
of Argyll, the Gladstones, and Lord
Houghton, to Farringford, 205;
visit of Longfellow to Farringford,
205; 'The Victim,' 206; 'The
Spiteful Letter,' 206; 'Wages,' 206;
'1865-1866, 206; his letter to 'Once
a Week,' 206; his visit to Cam-
bridge, 207; removal to Aldworth,
207; volume of 1869, 207; contro-
versy on the 'Holy Grail,' 207 ; visit
to London, 208; death of Sir John
Simeon, 209; 'In the Garden at
Swainston,' 209; his visit to Nor-
way, 211; 'A Welcome to Marie
Alexandrovna,' 211; 'Queen Mary,'
215; considered, 215; his visit to
FitzGerald's with his eldest son, 223;
letter to Longfellow, 223; letter to
Trench, 224; Browning's dedication
to, 224; dinner at Lord Houghton's,
224; 'Harold' considered, 225;
prefatory sonnet to 'The Nineteenth
Century,' 235; Montenegro,' 235;
'To Victor Hugo,' 'Achilles over
the Trench,''The Revenge, 'The
Defence of Lucknow,' 235; 'Death
of Charles Tennyson Turner,' 237;
'At Midnight, June 30th, 1879,' 237 ;
'The Falcon' produced at St. James's
Theatre, 1879, 238; considered, 238;
his book of Ballads' of 1880, 240;
contents, 240; 'The City Child,'
244; 'Minnie and Winnie,' 244 ;
The Cup,' 245; produced at the
Lyceum, 245; its success, 245; con-
sidered, 245; review by Mr. William
Aicher, 249; death of Spedding, 252;
'Despair,' 252; 'The Higher Pan-
theism in a Nutshell,' travesty by
Mr. Swinburne, 253; General Ham-
ley's travesty, 253; opinions on
330
INDEX
'Despair,' 254; considered, 255;
anecdote on 'Hands all Round,'
255; 'The Promise of May' pro-
duced at the Globe Theatre, 256;
its failure, 257; considered, 258;
protest by the Marquis of Queens-
berry, 261; its treatment by the
press, 263; 'Frater Ave Atque
Vale,' 263; yachting tour with Mr.
Gladstone, 264; their presentation
of the freedom of the Burgh of Kirk- |
wall, 264; entertained by the King
of Denmark, 264; luncheon-party on
the yacht, 264; created peer, 265;
comments by the press, 265; made
President of the Incorporated Society
of Authors, 267; death of FitzGerald,
266; his lines to FitzGerald on
sending of his MS. of 'Tiresias,' 266;
his contribution to pamphlet in con-
nection with the Shakespearian Ex-
hibition, 266; his introductory veises
to 'Rosa Rosarum,' 267; 'Freedom,'
267; 'Becket' considered, 267; his
appreciation of American poets, 271;
'Warrior of God, man's friend,' 271 ;
volume of poems, 'Tiresias,' 272;
dedication to Browning, 272; con-
tents, 273; 'The Ancient Sage,' 274;
'Early Spring,' 274; 'The Dead
Prophet,' 275; 'Balin and Balan'
considered, 276; 'Despair,' con-
sidered, 277; death of Lionel, 278;
visit of Dr. Wendell Holmes and
Miss Holmes to Farringford, 279;
visit to Cambridge with Mr. and
Mrs. Hallam Tennyson, 280; volume
'Locksley Hall Sixty Years After,'
280; contents, 281; 'The Fleet,'
281; Locksley Hall Sixty Years
After' considered, 281; his eightieth
birthday, 284; Browning's letter to,
284; Mr. Theodore Watts's sonnets,
284; death of Browning, 284 ; volume
entitled 'Demeter, and other Poems,'
285; 'Demeter and Persephone,'
285; 'Forlorn,' 286; 'Crossing the
Bar,' 287; yachting on the Medi-
terranean, 289; 'To Sleep,' 289;
The Foresters,' produced in New
York, 290; copyright performance
at Lyceum, 290; its success in New
York, 291; The Foresters' con-
sidered, 291; his later years, 294;
literature on work and home of,
295; ill-health, yachting in the
Mediterranean, 296; proposed pro-
duction of 'Becket,' 297; 'Ak-
bar's Dream,' 297; illness, October
1892, 298; death, 299; 'The Death
of Enone,' 299; his loss to literature,
304; influence of his long life on
poetry, his influence on contemporary
poets, 306; spirit of his verse, 307;
three elements considered, 307; the
epresentative voice of the age, 312.
Tennyson, Cecilia, married Edmund
Law Lushington, 127.
Tennyson, Charles (afterwards Charles
Tennyson Turner), 4; characteristics
in childhood, 9; Alfrea's critic, 10;
at Louth Grammar School, 12; leaves
school, 14; origin and publication of
'Poems by Two Brothers,' 17; goes
to Cambridge, 22; his Bell Scholar-
ship, 32; 'Sonnets,' 1830, 45; re-
viewed by Leigh Hunt, 45; some
verses in Transactions' by, 69; or-
dained, 74; curacy at Teal by, 74;
living of Grasby, 74; marriage to
Miss Louisa Sellwood, 74; death of,
237; volume of his Sonnets published,
237; his life at Grasby, 237.
Tennyson, Emily, Alfred Tennyson's
sister, engaged to Arthur Hallam, 49;
Hallam's sonnet to, 49; Tennyson's
allusion to the engagement, 49;
Hallam's 'To the Loved One,' 49.
Tennyson, Frederick, Alfred Tenny-
son's brother, 4; goes to Trinity
College, Cambridge, 16; 'Egypt '--
Greek Ode, 22; characteristics at
Cambridge, 32; his 'Days and Hours,'
published 1854, 139.
Rev.
Tennyson,
George Clayton,
LL.D., Alfred Tennyson's father,
Rector of Somersby and Bag Enderby,
4; characteristics, 6, 14; death of, 44.
Tennyson, Mrs. George Clayton, Alfred
Tennyson's mother, daughter of Rev.
Stephen, Fytche, 4; characteristics, 6;
at Somersby after her husband's death,
INDEX
331
44; at High Beach, Tunbridge, and
Boxley, 74; death of, 198.
Tennyson, Hallam, born August 1852,
132; Frederick Denison Maurice
godfather to, 132; his visit with his
wife and Tennyson to Cambridge,
280; his letter on 'In Tennyson
Land' in 'The Athenæum,' 296.
Tennyson, Lionel, born 1854, 139;
death of, 278.
'Tennysoniana,' by R. H. Shepherd,296.
'In Tennyson Land' (1890), by Mr. J.
Cuming Walters, 296.
Tennyson's Pillar, 140.
Thackeray, Anne (afterwards Mrs.
Ritchie), quoted, 7, 15; quoted on
Tennyson over his pipe, 208.
Thackeray, William Makepeace, at
Cambridge with Tennyson, 31; his
'Timbuctoo' in 'The Snob,' 31;
member of the Anonymous Club, 76;
at Hallam Tennyson's christening,
132; Tennyson's 'Tithonus,' 185; his
humorous sketch of Tennyson's 'Wel-
come to Alexandra' in 'Cornhill
Magazine,' 188.
Theed, his statue of the Duchess of
Kent at Frogmore, 189.
Thompson, W. H., D.D. (afterwards
Master of Trinity), quoted on Tenny-
son as a freshman, 23; an early friend
of Tennyson, 25; FitzGerald's letter
to, on Tennyson's early work, 178;
FitzGerald's letter to, on Tennyson's
bust, 182.
Thornton, W. T., 144.
'The Third of February 1852,' 132.
The Throstle,' 287.
'Timbuctoo,' Alfred Tennyson's Prize
Poem, 26; considered, 28; Alfred
Tennyson's and Hallam's 'Timbuctoo'
published in 'Transactions,' 69.
'The Times,' Tennyson's verses 'The
War' in, May 1859, 180; ‘A Welcome
to Marie Alexandrovna' in, 211.
Tiresias,' 273.
'Tithonus,' in 'Cornhill Magazine,' Feb.
1860, 185.
Traill, Mr. H. D., 303.
|
ley, 253; published in 'Blackwood's
Magazine,' 253.
'Transactions of the Union Society,'
1834, contents, 69.
Trench, Richard Chevenix (afterwards
Archbishop), an early friend of
Tennyson's, 25; his account of
Tennyson's reading, 34; his in-
terest in the War of Spanish Inde-
pendence, 44; his opinion of Charles-
Tennyson's Sonnets, 45; letter from
Hallam announcing his engagement,
48; letter to Donne on Alfred Tenny-
son, 70; writes for 'The Tribute,' 72;
his letter to Bishop of Oxford on 'The
Northern Farmer,' 195; Tennyson's
letter of thanks for present of copy of
'Sacred Latin Poetry,' 224.
'The Tribute,' edited by Lord North-
ampton, 72.
Tristram, character of, 166.
Trumpington Street, Tennyson's lodg-
ings in, 22.
Tunbridge Wells, Tennysons at, 74.
Twickenham, the Tennysons at, 117.
'The Two Voices,' 80, 85, 313.
VALENTIA, Tennyson at, 112.
Vanbrugh, Miss Violet, as Maid Marian
in copyright performance of The
Foresters,' 291.
'Vastness,' Mr. W. E. Henley upon,
286.
Venables, G. S., at Cambridge with
Tennyson, 25.
6
Vere, Mr. Aubrey de, in 'The Gem,'
46; writes for 'The Tribute,' 72;
quoted on Tennyson's politics, 107.
The Victim,' in 'Good Words,' with
an illustration by A. Houghton,
206.
'Victor Hugo, To,' published in 'Nine-
teenth Century,' 235.
Vision of Sin, The,' 85, 96.
Vivien, character of, 171.
'Voyage of Maeldune, The,' 242.
'WAGES' in 'Macmillan's Magazine,'
206.
'Tray, Sir: an Arthurian Legend,' tia- Waite, Mr., Headmaster of Louth
vesty on Tennyson by General Ham- |
Grammar School, 12.
332
INDEX
Walker, Mr. Thomas, his lecture on Whewell, Williamn, writes for The
6
Despair,' 254.
Wallace, Mr. Percy M., on the songs
in The Princess,' 112; study of
'The Princess,' 296.
Walters, Mr., Conveyancer, Arthur
Hallam working with, 51.
Walters, Mr. J. Cuming, 'In Tenny-
son Land,' by, 296.
'War, The,' in 'The Times,' May 9th,
1859, 180.
Warrior of God, man's friend,' after- |
wards altered for motto for Boys'
National Memorial Home at Woking,
271.
Tribute,' 72; on Tennyson's poem
to F. D. Maurice, 135.
Whitman, Walt, letter to, 271.
Arthur Hallam's
Whittier, J. G., his admiration for
Tennyson, 271.
Wimpole Street,
lodgings in, 51.
'Window, The; or, the Loves of the
Wrens,' 201; Sir Arthur Sullivan's
music to, 201; considered, 202.
Woolner, Thomas, bust of Tennyson
by, 182; story of Aylmer's Field'
supplied by, 190; dinner-party at
Mr. Palgrave's, 196.
Watson, Mr. William, Tennyson's Wordsworth, Christopher, on 'Tim-
influence on, 307.
on
Watts, Mr. Theodore, sonnet
Tennyson's eightieth birthday, 284;
his appreciation of Tennyson, 294.
'Welcome to Alexandra, A,' 188.
buctoo,' 31.
Wordsworth, William, P. L., his meet-
ing with Tennyson, 92; his influence
on Tennyson, 96.
'Wreck, The,' 273.
'Welcome to Marie Alexandrovna, A,' | Wright, W. Aldis, dinner with Tenny-
212.
'Westminster Review, The,' notice of
'Poems, chiefly Lyrical,' 35; ci-
tique on Poems of 1842, by Milnes,
in, 82.
'What time I wasted youthful hours,'
stanzas in Miss Power's 'Keepsake,'
J29.
son, 1868, 207; the Tennysons din-
ner with, 280; his walk with
Tennyson, 280.
'YORKSHIRE Literary Annual, The,'
Tennyson contributed sonnet to, 51.
'Youth's Companion, The,' 'Early
Spring' in, 274.
Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty,
at the Edinburgh University Press.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
A STUDY OF HIS LIFE AND WORK
SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS
The Times. 'It contains evidence of a faithful study of Tennyson's
literary career; it displays an intimacy with Tennyson's poems such as we
should expect from one who aspires to be his biographer; and Mr. Waugh's
discriminating judgments have evidently cost time and thought, and proceed
from a critical faculty of no mean order.'
The Saturday Review.—'We must congratulate Mr. Arthur Waugh
his book is one which can be warmly recommended. It is scholarly and
unhysterical; the narrative part is a remarkably full and careful cento taken
from the journals, memoirs, and correspondence of the age, arranged in
excellent taste; and the criticism is sound and wholesome.
Until the
present Lord Tennyson's life of his father is completed. we do not know
how any one who writes about Tennyson, or desires to test his relation to his age
at any given time, can afford to neglect Mr. Waugh's work.
•
>
•
The Daily Chronicle.-' An interesting and well-written book, the work
of one who has studied Tennyson's poetry with faithful devotion. . . . Mr. Waugh
has told his tale with accuracy and good judgment. Mr. Waugh's analysis
of the "Idylls" is excellent, and his accounts of the various dramas are
interesting.'
•
The Daily Telegraph.-'The author has performed the task he has set
himself with singular propriety and grace. There is always a fascination in
enthusiasm so worthily centred as Mr. Waugh's, and it cannot be doubted that
his book, glowing as it does with love for the work of the Master, will find
readers both numerous and sympathetic.'
The Academy.- Mr. Waugh brings to the writing of biography a delicacy
of feeling not too common among modern biographers. He has that fust
quality of the true biographer, delicacy; he has likewise . . . the gift of
accuracy, and he is able to tell his tale pleasantly. . . . His book tells us admirably
all that is essential about the life.'
The Observer.—‘Mr. Waugh's book is no mere hastily-compiled work to
meet a sudden public demand; it is a very careful and critical survey of Lord
Tennyson's life and work. . The volume is done with loving care and skill.
Mr. Waugh has evidently been long a student of Tennyson.
·
>
The National Observer.-'Sets forth clearly and well whatever is known
of the late Laureate. . . and is certain to be widely read and generally
appreciated.'
Vanity Fair.-'The study is no hasty piece of book-making. . . a careful
and loving work.
>
The World.-' By no means a hasty work, but a careful and conscientious
piece of literature which is well worth reading on its own merits. It seems that
Mr. Waugh has been studying Tennyson a long time, and even for those who
know the poet's writings well, he has much to say that will prove alike instruc-
tive and interesting. The book contains some excellent illustrations, which add
considerably to its value, and may be safely recommended to every class of
leaders.'
The Sunday Sun.-'This book is well and reverently written, and the
narrative is connected and well-knit. Perhaps," says Mi. Waugh, "I may
claim to have searched more patiently and widely than any of my predecessors
for every available record." To have done this is sufficient to entitle M1. Waugh
to our gratitude; and it has certainly enabled him to produce a very readable
and interesting book.'
The Morning Post.-'Will be welcome to very many leaders. The
author's remarks are clear and intelligent.'
The Bristol Times.-'Mr. Waugh's style is clear and always interesting.
A most beautiful book.'
•
Y
SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS
រ
The Scotsman.-'The author may fairly claim that he presents a more
detailed, accurate, and careful account of Tennyson and his poetry than anything
that has hitherto appeared in print. . . . Mr. Waugh records the particulars of
a quiet, but noble and sweetly attuned life; and he does this with good taste
and discretion.
He has produced a well-knit and valuable piece of
biography, and deserves the thanks of the admirers of Tennyson, who, viewed
close at hand, is only the greater as a poet and the more lovable as a man.'
•
The Manchester Guardian.-There can be no doubt that it is far the
fullest and most careful bio-bibliography yet issued with reference to Lord
Tennyson. As biographer and bibliographer, Mr. Waugh deserves very
decided commendation, having discharged these offices with great industry, with
good taste, and with a creditable absence from the trivial and uninteresting
detail in which the life-compiler too often indulges.'
•
St. James' Gazette.-' Mr. Waugh writes with knowledge and taste.
As a compilation of all the leading facts in the poet's career . the book is
both valuable and interesting. Mr. Waugh invites particular attention to
Tennyson as a dramatist, and indeed writes very well and at his best in
criticising the plays.'
Daily Graphic.-' Contains a great deal of interesting matter and deserves
to be widely read.'
Liverpool Mercury.-'The volume betrays no sign of haste, it is
evidently the result of a calm, deep study of the poet's works-a study extending
through years—and for interest, sympathy and comprehensiveness is altogether
admirable, both as a biography and commentary.
The book is one to
encourage for the noblest of purposes the study of the great poet.'
The Star.-'There are just two or three callings that a man can hardly
follow and remain a gentleman. One had latterly been inclined to think that
the calling of the biographer was among these; but Mr. Waugh has reassured
one. A delicate task could hardly have been more delicately performed than in
his interesting and in many ways admirable book. His charming diffidence in
regard to his labour of love, his pleading with certain great terrific shades that
their "Shakespeare's curse on clown and knave who will not let his ashes rest,
fall not on him of intent so gentle and loyal, win one's sympathy from the
beginning.'
>>
Birmingham Daily Gazette. -The book is quickened by a tender and
graceful affection for the poet, and is quite a fascinating work. Its charm is
chiefly literary, developing the career of the poet stage by stage, as progress has
been noted by the kindly cultured mind of appreciative affection.
The
quotations I have taken in a hurried ramble through Mr. Waugh's pages, afford
an inadequate idea of what an entirely charming book it is.'
•
The Queen.-'The book is well illustrated and well written, and deserves
to hold the field for a long time to come. Good taste and judgment are con-
spicuous throughout.'
Black and White.-'An excellent life.'
The Scottish Leader.-' The best extant biography of Tennyson.'
Liverpool Daily Courier.-'May with confidence be received as the
fullest biography yet written of the poet. The volume is pleasant throughout.
Mr. Theodore Watts in The Athenæum.-'A charming monograph.'
•
•
Mr. H. D. Traill in The New Review.-'Taste of two descriptions-by
no means invariably found in company-was required for the production of a
valuable, or even a tolerable, book on this subject: the aesthetic palate of the
connoisseur who can distinguish between the various qualities and degrees of
literary excellence; and the well-bred discretion of the biographer who knows
what to leave in the ink-bottle." Mr. Waugh is the happy possessor of these
two varieties of taste-the latter in perfection, the former in amply sufficient
Mr. Waugh's analyses of the poet's various works are skilfully
and lucidly executed, and his reviews of them are not wanting either in acute-
ness or originality.'
measure.
Telegraphic Address :
Sunlocks, London.
21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
OCTOBER 1892.
A LIST OF
MR WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S
PUBLICATIONS
AND
FORTHCOMING WORKS
The Books mentioned in this List can
be obtained to order by any Book-
seller if not in stock, or will be sent
by the Publisher post free on receipt
of price
4
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON:
A STUDY OF HIS LIFE AND WORK.
BY
ARTHUR WAUGH, B.A. Oxon.
WITH TWENTY-ONE ILLUSTRATIONS.
From Photographs Specially Taken for this Work,
and Two Portraits.
In One Volume, Demy 8vo, Ios. 6d.
CONTENTS :-Lincolnshire-Cambridge-Literary troubles and
Arthur Hallam's Death-Early Years in London-The Beginnings of
Fame-From The Princess to In Memoriam—Maud—Idylls of the
King-From the Idylls to the Dramas-Queen Mary and Harold—The
Falcon and The Cup-The Promise of May and Becket-From Tiresias
to Demeter-The Closing Years-The Voice of the Age.
THE WORKS OF HEINRICH HEINE. Translated
by CHARLES GODFREY LELAND, M.A., F.R.L.S. (Hans Breitmann.)
Crown 8vo, cloth, 5s. per Volume.
I. FLORENTINE NIGHTS, SCHNABELEWOPSKI,
THE RABBI OF BACHARACH, and SHAKE-
SPEARE'S MAIDENS AND WOMEN. [Ready.
Times.-"We can recommend no better medium for making acquaintance
at first hand with the German Aristophanes' than the works of Heinrich
Heine, translated by Charles Godfrey Leland. Mr. Leland manages pretty
successfully to preserve the easy grace of the original."
II., III. PICTURES OF TRAVEL.
Volumes.
1823-1828. In Two
[Ready.
Daily Chronicle.-" Mr. Leland's translation of The Pictures of Travel
is one of the acknowledged literary feats of the age. As a traveller Heine is
delicious beyond description, and a volume which includes the magnificent
Lucca series, the North Sea, the memorable Hartz wanderings, must needs
possess an everlasting charm."
IV. THE BOOK OF SONGS.
V., VI. GERMANY. In Two Volumes.
[In the Press.
[Ready.
Daily Telegraph.-" Mr. Leland has done his translation in able and
scholarly fashion."
VII., VIII. FRENCH AFFAIRS. In Two Volumes.
IX. THE SALON.
[In the Press.
[In preparation.
** Large Paper Edition, limited to 100 Numbered Copies. Particulars on
application.
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST.
5
The Great Educators.
A Series of Volumes by Eminent Writers, presenting in their
entirety "A Biographical History of Education."
The Times.-"A Series of Monographs on 'The Great Educators' should
prove of service to all who concern themselves with the history, theory, and
practice of education."
<
The Speaker.-"There is a promising sound about the title of Mr. Heine-
mann's new series, The Great Educators.' It should help to allay the hunger
and thirst for knowledge and culture of the vast multitude of young men and
maidens which our educational system turns out yearly, provided at least with
an appetite for instruction."
Each subject will form a complete volume, crown 8vo, 5s.
Now ready.
ARISTOTLE, and the Ancient Educational Ideals. By
THOMAS DAVIDSON, M.A., LL.D.
The Times.—“ A very readable sketch of a very interesting subject."
LOYOLA, and the Educational System of the Jesuits. By
Rev. THOMAS HUGHES, S.J.
Saturday Review.-" Full of valuable information.
•
•
If a school-
master would learn how the education of the young can be carried on so as to
confer real dignity on those engaged in it, we recommend him to read Mr.
Hughes' book."
ALCUIN, and the Rise of the Christian Schools. By
Professor Andrew F. West, Ph.D.
[In October.
In preparation.
ABELARD, and the Origin and Early History of Uni-
versities. By JULES GABRIEL COMPAYRE, Professor in the Faculty of
Toulouse.
ROUSSEAU; or, Education according to Nature.
HERBART; or, Modern German Education.
PESTALOZZI; or, the Friend and Student of Children.
FROEBEL. By H. COURTHOPE BOWEN, M.A.
HORACE MANN, and Public Education in the United
States. By NICHOLAS MURRAY Butler, Ph.D.
BELL, LANCASTER, and ARNOLD; or, the English
Education of To-Day. By J. G. FITCH, LL.D., Her Majesty's In-
spector of Schools.
Others to follow.
6
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST.
THE GREAT WAR OF 189-. A Forecast. By REAR-
ADMIRAL COLOMB, COL. MAURICE, R.A., MAJOR HENDERSON, STAFF
COLLEGE, CAPTAIN MAUDE, ARCHIBALD FORBES, CHARLES LOWE,
D. CHRISTIE MURRAY, F. SCUDAMORE, and SIR CHARLES DILKE. In
One Volume, 4to, Illustrated.
[Nearly ready.
In this narrative, which is reprinted from the pages of Black and White,
an attempt is made to forecast the course of events preliminary and incidental
to the Great War which, in the opinion of military and political experts, will
probably occur in the immediate future.
The writers, who are well-known authorities on international politics and
strategy, have striven to derive the conflict from its most likely source, to
conceive the most probable campaigns and acts of policy, and generally to give
to their work the verisimilitude and actuality of real warfare. The work has
been profusely illustrated from sketches by Mr. Frederic Villiers, the well-
known war artist.
THE
GENTLE ART OF MAKING ENEMIES. As
pleasingly exemplified in many instances, wherein the serious ones of this
earth, carefully exasperated, have been prettily spurred on to indiscretions
and unseemliness, while overcome by an undue sense of right. By
J. M'NEIL WHISTLER. A New Edition. Pott 4to, half cloth, 10s. 6d.
[Just ready.
Punch.-"The book in itself, in its binding, print and arrangement, is a
work of art. . . . A work of rare humour, a thing of beauty and a joy for now
and ever.
THE JEW AT HOME.
Impressions of a Summer and
Autumn Spent with Him in Austria and Russia. By JOSEPH PENNELL..
Pennell.
With Illustrations by the Author. 4to, cloth, 5s.
[Just ready.
THE NEW EXODUS. A Study of Israel in Russia. By
HAROLD FREDERIC. Demy 8vo, Illustrated. 165.
[Just ready,
An Historical Biographyst ready.
By
PRINCE BISMARCK.
CHARLES LOWE, M.A. With Portraits. Crown 8vo, 6s.
The Times.-"Is unquestionably the first important work which deals,
fully and with some approach to exhaustiveness, with the career of Bismarck
from both the personal and the historical points of view."
ADDRESSES. By HENRY IRVING. Small
With Portrait by J. M'N, Whistler.
STRAY MEMORIES. By ELLEN TERRY.
Portraits.
crown Svo.
[In the Press.
4to. With
[In preparation.
LITTLE JOHANNES. BY FREDERICK VAN Eeden. Trans-
lated from the Dutch by CLARA BELL. With an Introduction by
ANDREW LANG. Illustrated.
[In preparation.
*** Also a Large Paper Edition.
LIFE OF HEINRICH HEINE. By RICHARD GARNETT,
LL.D. With Portrait. Crown 8vo (uniform with the translation of Heine's
Works).
[In preparation.
By Professor R. L.
[Just ready.
THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS.
GARNER. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d.
Daily Chronicle.-" A real, a remarkable, contribution to our common
knowledge.
Daily Telegraph.-" An entertaining book.'
THE OLD MAIDS' CLUB.
MAIDS' CLUB. By I. ZANGWILL, Author of
"The Bachelors' Club." Illustrated by F. H. Townsend.
TOWNSEND. Crown 8vo,
cloth, 3s. 6d.
National Review.-" Mr. Zangwill has a very bright and a very original
humour, and every page of this closely printed book is full of point and go, and
full, too, of a healthy satire that is really humorously applied common-sense."
Athenæum.-"Most strongly to be recommended to all classes of readers."
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST.
7
WOMAN-THROUGH
A MAN'S EYEGLASS.
By
MALCOLM C. SALAMAN. With Illustrations by DUDLEY HARDY. Crown
8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d.
Daily Graphic.-"A most amusing book."
Daily Telegraph.-"Written with brightness and elegance, and with
touches of both caustic satire and kindly humour.'
Daily Chronicle.-"It is the very thing for a punt cushion or a garden
hammock.
GIRLS AND WOMEN. By E. CHESTER. Pott 8vo, cloth,
2s. 6d., or gilt extra, 3s. 6d.
Literary World.-" We gladly commend this delightful little work."
GOSSIP IN A LIBRARY. By EDMUND GOSSE, Author of
"Northern Studies," &c. Second Edition. Crown 8vo, buckram, gilt top,
7s. 6d.
Athenæum.-"There is a touch of Leigh Hunt in this picture of the book-
lover among his books, and the volume is one that Leigh Hunt would have
delighted in.
>>
***Large Paper Edition, limited to 100 Numbered Copies, 25s. net.
THE LIFE OF HENRIK IBSEN. By HENRIK JÆGER.
Translated by CLARA BELL. With the Verse done into English from the
Norwegian Original by EDMUND GOSSE. Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.
Academy.-"We welcome it heartily. An unqualified boon to the many
English students of Ibsen.'
17
DE QUINCEY MEMORIALS. Being Letters and other
Records here first Published, with Communications from COLERIDGE, The
WORDSWORTHS, HANNAH MORE, PROFESSOR WILSON and others. Edited,
with Introduction, Notes, and Narrative, by ALEXANDER H. JAPP, LL.D.
F.R.S.E. In two volumes, demy 8vo, cloth, with portraits, 30s. net.
Daily Telegraph.-"Few works of greater literary interest have of late years
issued from the press than the two volumes of De Quincey Memorials.
POSTHUMOUS WORKS OF THOMAS DE
THE
QUINCEY
"
Edited with Introduction and Notes from the Author's
Original MSS., by ALEXANDER H. JAPP, LL.D, F.R.S.E., &c. Crown
8vo, cloth, 6s. each.
I. SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS. With other Essays.
Times.-"Here we have De Quincey at his best. Will be welcome to
lovers of De Quincey and good literature.
">
II. CONVERSATION AND COLERIDGE.
Essays.
With other
[In preparation.
THE WORD OF THE LORD UPON THE WATERS.
Sermons read by His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Germany, while
at Sea on his Voyages to the Land of the Midnight Sun. Composed by
Dr. RICHTER, Army Chaplain, and Translated from the German by JOHN
R. MCILRAITH. 4to, cloth, 2s. 6d.
THE HOURS OF RAPHAEL,
IN OUTLINE.
Together with the Ceiling of the Hall where they were originally painted.
By MARY E. WILLIAMS. Folio, cloth, £2 25. net.
THE PASSION PLAY AT OBERAMMERGAU, 1890.
By F. W. FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S., Archdeacon and Canon of Westminster,
&c. &c. 4to, cloth, 2s. 6d.
THE GARDEN'S STORY; or, Pleasures and Trials of an
Amateur Gardener. By G. H. ELLWANGER. With an Introduction by the
Rev. C. WOLLEY DOD. 12mo, cloth, with Illustrations, 5s.
IDLE MUSINGS: Essays in Social Mosaic. By E. CONDER
GRAY, Author of "Wise Words and Loving Deeds," &c. &c. Crown 8vo,
cloth, 6s.
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST.
1
THE COMING TERROR. And other Essays and Letters.
By ROBERT BUCHANAN. Second Edition. Demy 8vo, cloth, 12s. 6d.
ARABIC AUTHORS: A Manual of Arabian History and
Literature. By F. F. ARBUTHNOT, M.R.A.S., Author of "Early Ideas,"
"Persian Portraits," &c. 8vo, cloth, 1os.
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT IN AMERICA. By
RICHARD T. ELY, Ph.D., Associate in Political Economy, Johns Hopkins
University. Crown 8vo, cloth, 5s.
THE LITTLE MANX NATION. (Lectures delivered at
the Royal Institution, 1891.) By HALL CAINE, Author of "The Bond-
man, ""The Scapegoat," &c. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d.; paper, 2s. 6d.
World." Mr. Hall Caine takes us back to the days of old romance, and,
treating tradition and history in the pictorial style of which he is a master, he
gives us a monograph of Man especially acceptable.'
NOTES FOR THE NILE. Together with a Metrical
Rendering of the Hymns of Ancient Egypt and of the Precepts of Ptah-
hotep (the oldest book in the world). By HARDWICKE D. KAWNSLEY, M.A.
16mo, cloth, 5s.
DENMARK: Its History, Topography, Language, Literature,
Fine Arts, Social Life, and Finance. Edited by H. WEITEMEYER. Demy
8vo, cloth, with Map, 12s. 6d.
7
*** Dedicated, by permission, to H.R.H. the Princess of Wales.
IMPERIAL GERMANY. A Critical Study of Fact and
Character. By SIDNEY WHITMAN. New Edition, Revised and Enlarged.
Crown 8vo, cloth 2s. 6d.; paper, 25.
THE CANADIAN GUIDE-BOOK. Part I. The Tourist's
and Sportsman's Guide to Eastern Canada and Newfoundland, including full
descriptions of Routes, Cities, Points of Interest, Summer Resorts, Fishing
Places, &c, in Eastern Ontario, The Muskoka District, The St. Lawrence
Region, The Lake St. John Country, The Maritime Provinces, Prince
Edward Island, and Newfoundland. With an Appendix giving Fish and
Game Laws, and Official Lists of Trout and Salmon Rivers and their
Lessees. By CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS, Professor of English Literature in
King's College, Windsor, N.S. With Maps and many Illustrations.
Crown 8vo, limp cloth, 6s.
Part II. WESTERN CANADA. Including the Peninsula
and Northern Regions of Ontario, the Canadian Shores of the Great
Lakes, the Lake of the Woods Region, Manitoba and "The Great
North-West," The Canadian Rocky Mountains and National Park,
British Columbia, and Vancouver Island. By ERNEST INGERSOLL. With
Maps and many Illustrations. Crown 8vo, limp cloth. [In preparation.
THE
GENESIS OF THE UNITED STATES. A
Narrative of the Movement in England, 1605-1616, which resulted in the
Plantation of North America by Englishmen, disclosing the Contest
between England and Spain for the Possession of the Soil now occupied
by the United States of America; set forth through a series of Historical
Manuscripts now first printed, together with a Re-issue of Rare Contem-
poraneous Tracts, accompanied by Bibliographical Memoranda, Notes,
and Brief Biographies. Collected, Arranged, and Edited by ALEXANDER
BROWN, F.R.H.S. With 100 Portraits, Maps, and Plans. In two volumes.
Roy. 8vo, buckram, £3 13s. 6d.
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST.
9
Fiction.
In Three Volumes.
[Just ready.
THE HEAD OF THE FIRM. By Mrs. RIDDELL, Author
of "George Geith," " Maxwell Drewett," &c.
CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO.
Author of "The Old Maids' Club," &c.
THE TOWER OF TADDEO.
By I. ZANGWILL,
Just ready.
A Novel. By OUIDA,
Author of "Two Little Wooden Shoes," &c.
KITTY'S FATHER. By FRANK BARRETT.
"Lieutenant Barnabas," &c.
[In October.
Author of
[In November.
THE COUNTESS RADNA. By W. E. NORRIS, Author of
Matrimony," &c.
[In January.
ORIOLE'S DAUGHTER. A Novel. By JESSIE FOTHERGILL,
Author of "The First Violin," &c.
THE LAST SENTENCE.
[In February.
[In March.
By MAXWELL GRAY, Author of
The Silence of Dean Maitland," &c.
In Two Volumes.
WOMAN AND THE MAN. A Love Story. By ROBERT
BUCHANAN, Author of "Come Live with Me and be My Love," "The
Moment After," "The Coming Terror," &c.
[In preparation.
By "TASMA,”
Piper of Piper's
[Just ready.
A
A KNIGHT OF THE WHITE FEATHER.
Author of "The Penance of Portia James," "Uncle
Hill," &c.
A LITTLE MINX. By ADA CAMBRIDGE,
Marked Man," "The Three Miss Kings," &c.
THE NAULAHKA.
In One Volume.
Author of "
A Tale of West and East. By RUDYARD
KIPLING and WOLCOTT BALESTIER. Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s. Second
Edition.
Just ready.
THE SECRET OF NARCISSE. By EDMUND GOSSE.
Crown 8vo.
[In October.
THE AVERAGE WOMAN. By WOLCOTT BALESTIER.
With an Introduction by HENRY JAMES. Small crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.
[Just ready.
THE ATTACK ON THE MILL and Other Sketches
of War. By EMILE ZOLA. With an essay on the short stories of M.
Zola by Edmund Gosse. Small crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.
[Just ready.
DUST. By BJORNSTJERNE BJORNSON. Translated from the
Norwegian. Small crown 8vo.
MADEMOISELLE MISS and Other Stories. By HENRY
HARLAND, Author of "Mea Culpa," &c. Small crown 8vo. [In the Press.
AVENGED ON SOCIETY. By H. F. WOOD. Small
[In the Press.
THE DOMINANT SEVENTH. A Musical Story. By
KATE ELIZABETH CLARKE Crown 8vo, cloth, 5s.
Speaker.-" A very romantic story.'
crown 8vo.
PASSION THE PLAYTHING. A Novel. By R. MURRAY
GILCHRIST. Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.
Athenæum.-"This well-written story must be read to be appreciated."
ΙΟ
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST.
The Crown Copyright Series.
Mr. HEINEMANN has made arrangements with a number of the FIRST and
MOST POPULAR ENGLISH, AMERICAN, and COLONIAL AUTHORS which will
enable him to issue a series of NEW AND ORIGINAL WORKS, to be known as
THE CROWN COPYRIGHT SERIES, complete in One Volume, at a uniform
price of FIVE SHILLINGS EACH. These Novels will not pass through an Ex-
pensive Two or Three Volume Edition, but they will be obtainable at the
CIRCULATING LIBRARIES, as well as at all Booksellers' and Bookstalls
ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN. By AMÉLIE RIVES, Author
of "The Quick or the Dead."
•
•
Scotsman." The literary work is highly artistic.
It has beauty and
brightness, and a kind of fascination which carries the reader on till he has read
to the last page.'
THE
>>
PENANCE OF PORTIA JAMES. By TASMA,
Author of "Uncle Piper of Piper's Hill," &c.
Athenæum.-"A powerful novel."
Daily Chronicle.-" Captivating and yet tantalising, this story is far above
the average."
Vanity Fair.-"A very interesting story, morally sound, and flavoured
throughout with ease of diction and lack of strain.
"
INCONSEQUENT LIVES. A Village Chronicle, shewing
how certain folk set out for El Dorado; what they attempted; and what
they attained. By J. H. PEARCE, Author of "Esther Pentreath," &c.
Saturday Review.-"A vivid picture of the life of Cornish fisher-folk. It
is unquestionably interesting."
•
•
Literary World.-" Powerful and pathetic . . from first to last it i
profoundly interesting. It is long since we read a story revealing power of so
high an order, marked by such evident carefulness of workmanship, such skill in
the powerful and yet temperate presentation of passion, and in the sternly
realistic yet delicate treatment of difficult situations.
"}
A QUESTION OF TASTE. By MAARTEN MAARTENS,
Author of " An Old Maid's Love," &c.
National Observer -"There is more than cleverness; there is onginal
talent, and a good deal of humanity besides."
COME LIVE WITH ME AND BE MY LOVE. By
ROBERT BUCHANAN, Author of "The Moment After," "The Coming
Terror," &c.
Globe.-"Will be found eminently readable.'
Daily Telegraph." We will conclude this brief notice by expressing our
cordial admiration of the skill displayed in its construction, and the genial
humanity that has inspired its author in the shaping and vitalising of the indi-
viduals created by his fertile imagination.'
,,
THE O'CONNORS OF BALLINAHINCH. By Mis.
HUNGERFORD, Author of "Molly Bawn," &c.
[In the Press.
A BATTLE AND A BOY. By BLANCHE WILLIS HOWARD,
Author of "Guenn," &c.
[In preparation
VANITAS.
BY VERNON LEE, Author of "Hauntings," &c.
[In preparation
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST.
ΙΙ
Heinemann's International Library.
EDITED BY EDMUND GOSSE.
New Review." If you have any pernicious remnants of literary chauvinism
I hope it will not survive the series or foreign classics of which Mr. William
Heinemann, aided by Mr. Edmund Gosse, is publishing translations to the great
contentment of all lovers of literature."
Times.-"A venture which deserves encouragement."
Each Volume has an Introduction specially written by the Editor
Price, in paper covers, 2s. 6d. each, or cloth, 35. 6d.
IN GOD'S WAY. From the Norwegian of BJÖRNSTJERNE
BJÖRNSON.
Athenæum. "Without doubt the most important and the most interesting
work published during the twelve months. There are descriptions which
certainly belong to the best and cleverest things our literature has ever produced.
Amongst the many characters, the doctor's wife is unquestionably the first. It
would be difficult to find anything more tender, soft, and refined than this
charming personage.
"
PIERRE AND JEAN. From the French of GUY DE MAU-
PASSANT.
Pall Mall Gazette.-"So fine and faultless, so perfectly balanced, so
steadily progressive, so clear and simple and satisfying. It is admirable from
beginning to end.
Athenæum.-" Ranks amongst the best gems of modern French fiction."
THE CHIEF JUSTICE. From the German of KARL EMIL
FRANZOS, Author of "For the Right," &c.
New Review.--" Few novels of recent times have a more sustained and
vivid human interest.'
""
Christian World.-"A story of wonderful power
thing objectionable as 'The Heart of Midlothian."
•
as free from any-
WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT. From the
Russian of Count LYOF TOLSTOY.
Liverpool Mercury.-" Marked by all the old power of the great Russian
novelist.
"
Manchester Guardian.-"Readable and well translated; full of high and
noble feeling."
FANTASY. From the Italian of MATILDE SERAO.
National Observer.-"The strongest work from the hand of a woman that
has been published for many a day.'
•
•
•
Scottish Leader.-"The book is full of a glowing and living realism.
There is nothing like 'Fantasy' in modern literature.
It is a work of elfish
art, a mosaic of light and love, of right and wrong, of human weakness and
strength, and purity and wantonness, pieced together in deft and witching
precision."
FROTH.
VALDÉS.
From the Spanish of Don ARMANDO PALACIO-
Daily Telegraph.-" Vigorous and powerful in the highest degree. It
abounds in forcible delineation of character, and describes scenes with rare and
graphic strength."
FOOTSTEPS OF FATE. From the Dutch of Louis
Couperus.
Daily Chronicle.-"A powerfully realistic story which has been excellently
translated.
Gentlewoman.-"The consummate art of the writer prevents this tragedy
from sinking to melodrama. Not a single situation is forced or a circumstance
exaggerated."
12
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST.
Heinemann's International Library.
PEPITA JIMÉNEZ. From the Spanish of JUAN VALERA.
New Review (Mr. George Saintsbury):-"There is no doubt at all that
it is one of the best stories that have appeared in any country in Europe for the
last twenty years.'
""
THE COMMODORE'S
Commodore's daughtTERS. From the Nor-
wegian of Jonas Lie.
Athenæum." Everything that Jonas Lie writes is attractive and pleasant;
the plot of deeply human interest, and the art noble.”
THE HERITAGE OF THE KURTS. From the Norwegian
of BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON.
Pall Mall Gazette.-"A most fascinating as well as a powerful book."
National Observer.—“It is a book to read and a book to think about, for,
incontestably, it is the work of a man of genius.'
In the Press.
LOU. From the German of BARON v. ROBERts.
DONA LUZ. From the Spanish of JUAN VAlera.
WITHOUT DOGMA. From the Polish of H. SIENKIEWICZ.
CAPT'N
Popular 3s. 6d. Movels.
DAVY'S HONEYMOON, The Blind Mother,
and The Last Confession. By HALL CAINE, Author of "The Bondman,'
"The Scapegoat," &c.
THE SCAPEGOAT. By HALL CAINE, Author of "The
Bondman," &c.
C
Mr. Gladstone writes :-"I congratulate you upon The Scapegoat' as a
work of art, and especially upon the noble and skilfully drawn character of
Israel.'
rr
Times.-"In our judgment it excels in dramatic force all his previous efforts.
For grace and touching pathos Naomi is a character which any romancist in the
world might be proud to have created."
THE BONDMAN.
Twentieth Thousand.
A New Saga. By HALL CAINE.
Mr. Gladstone.-The Bondman' is a work of which I recognise the
freshness, vigour, and sustained interest no less than its integrity of aim.
Standard." Its argument is grand, and it is sustained with a power that is
almost marvellous."
DESPERATE REMEDIES. By THOMAS HARDY, Author
of "Tess of the D'Urbervilles," &c.
Saturday Review." A remarkable story worked out with abundant skill."
A MARKED MAN: Some Episodes in his Life. By ADA
CAMBRIDGE, Author of "Two Years' Time," "A Mere Chance," &c.
Morning Post.-"A depth of feeling, a knowledge of the human heart, and
an amount of tact that one rarely finds. Should take a prominent place among
the novels of the season."
THE THREE MISS KINGS. BY ADA CAMBRIDGE, Author
of "A Marked Man."
Athenæum.-"A charming study of character. The love stories are ex-
cellent, and the author is happy in tender situations.
NOT ALL IN VAIN. By ADA CAMBRIDGE, Author of "A
Marked Man,' ""The Three Miss Kings," &c.
Guardian." A clever and absorbing story.
"
Queen.-"All that remains to be said is 'read the book.""
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST.
13
Popular 3s. 6d. Movels.
UNCLE PIPER OF PIPER'S HILL. By TASMA. New
UN
Popular Edition.
Guardian.-"Every page of it contains good wholesome food, which demands
and repays digestion. The tale itself is thoroughly charming, and all the
characters are delightfully drawn. We strongly recommend all lovers of whole-
some novels to make acquaintance with it themselves, and are much mistaken if
they do not heartily thank us for the introduction.'
""
IN THE VALLEY. By HAROLD FREDERIC. Author of
"The Lawton Girl," "Seth's Brother's Wife," &c. With Illustrations.
Times.-"The literary value of the book is high; the author's studies of
bygone life presenting a life-like picture.'
PRETTY MISS SMITH. By FLORENCE WARDEN, Author
of "The House on the Marsh," "A Witch of the Hills," &c.
Punch.-" Since Miss Florence Warden's 'House on the Marsh,' I have
not read a more exciting tale."
NOR WIFE, NOR MAID. By Mrs. HUNGERFORD, Author
of "Molly Bawn," &c.
Queen. "It has all the characteristics of the writer's work, and greater
emotional depth than most of its predecessors.
Scotsman.-" Delightful reading, supremely interesting."
MAMMON. A Novel.
A Novel. By Mrs. ALEXANDER, Author of "The
Wooing O't," &c.
Scotsman.-" The present work is not behind any of its predecessors.
"Mammon' is a healthy story, and as it has been thoughtfully written it has the
merit of creating thought in its readers."
DAUGHTERS OF MEN. By HANNAH LYNCH, Author of
"The Prince of the Glades," &c.
Daily Telegraph.-"Singularly clever and fascinating."
Academy." One of the cleverest, if not also the pleasantest, stories that
have appeared for a long time.”
A ROMANCE OF THE CAPE FRONTIER. By BErtram
MITFORD, Author of "Through the Zulu Country," &c.
Observer." This is a rattling tale, genial, healthy, and spirited."
'TWEEN SNOW AND FIRE.
1877. By BERTRAM MITFORD.
A Tale of the Kafir War of
THE MASTER OF THE MAGICIANS. BY ELIZABETH
STUART PHELPS and HERBERT D. WARD.
Athenæum.-"A thrilling story."
LOS CERRITOS. A Romance of the Modern Time. By
GERTRUDE FRANKLIN ATHERTON, Author of "Hermia Suydam," and
"What Dreams may Come.'
,,
Athenæum.-"Full of fresh fancies and suggestions. Told with strength
and delicacy. A decidedly charming romance.'
>>
A MODERN MARRIAGE. By the Marquise CLARA LANZA.
Queen.-"A powerful story, dramatically and consistently carried out."
Black and White.-" A decidedly clever book."
14
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST
Popular Shilling Books.
MADAME VALERIE. By F. C. PHILIPS, Author of "As
in a Looking-Glass," &c.
THE MOMENT AFTER: A Tale of the Unseen. By
ROBERT BUCHANAN.
Athenæum.-"Should be read-in daylight."
Observer.-"A clever tour de force."
Guardian.-" Particularly impressive, graphic, and powerful."
CLUES; or, Leaves from a Chief Constable's Note-Book.
By WILLIAM HENDERSON, Chief Constable of Edinburgh.
Mr. Gladstone.—“ I found the book full of interest."
A VERY
STRANGE FAMILY. By F. W. ROBINSON,
Author of "Grandmother's Money," "Lazarus in London," &c.
Glasgow Herald.—“ An ingeniously devised plot, of which the interest is
kept up to the very last page. A judicious blending of humour and pathos
further helps to make the book delightful reading from start to finish.'
Dramatic Literature.
در
THE PLAYS OF ARTHUR W. PINERO.
With Introductory Notes by MALCOLM C. SALAMAN. 16mo, Paper Covers,
IS. 6d.; or Cloth, 2s. 6d. each.
THE TIMES: A Comedy in Four Acts.
the Author. (Vol. I.)
With a Preface by
Daily Telegraph.—“
"The Times' is the best example yet given of Mr.
Pinero's power as a satirist. So clever is his work that it beats down opposition.
So fascinating is his style that we cannot help listening to him."
Morning Post.-" Mr. Pinero's latest belongs to a high order of dramatic
literature, and the piece will be witnessed again with all the greater zest after the
perusal of such admirable dialogue."
THE PROFLIGATE: A Play in Four Acts.
of the Author, after J. MORDECAI. (Vol. II.)
With Portrait
Pall Mall Gazette.-" Will be welcomed by all who have the true interests.
of the stage at heart.'
"
THE CABINET MINISTER:
(Vol. III.)
A Farce in Four Acts.
Observer." It is as amusing to read as it was when played."
THE HOBBY HORSE: A Comedy in Three Acts.
(Vol. IV.)
St. James's Gazette.-"Mr. Pinero has seldom produced better or more
interesting work than in 'The Hobby Horse.
LADY BOUNTIFUL. A Play in Four Acts. (Vol. V.)
THE MAGISTRATE.
A Farce in Three Acts. (Vol. VI.)
To be followed by Dandy Dick, The Schoolmistress, The Weaker Sex, Lords and
Commons, The Squire, and Sweet Lavender.
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST.
15
Dramatic Literature.
A NEW PLAY. By HENRIK IBSEN.
Norwegian. Small 4to.
Translated from the
[In preparation.
A NEW PLAY. BY BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON.
from the Norwegian.
Translated
[In preparation.
THE PRINCESSE MALEINE: A Drama in Five Acts
(Translated by Gerard Harry), and THE INTRUDER: A Drama in
One Act. By MAURICE MAETERLINCK. With an Introduction by HALL
CAINE, and a Portrait of the Author. Small 4to, cloth, 5s.
Athenæum.—"In the creation of the 'atmosphere' of the play M. Maeter-
linck shows his skill. It is here that he communicates to us the nouveau frisson,
here that he does what no one else has done. In 'The Intruder' the art
consists of the subtle gradations of terror, the slow, creeping progress of the
nightmare of apprehension. Nothing quite like it has been done before-not
even by Poe-not even by Villiers."
THE FRUITS OF ENLIGHTENMENT: A Comedy in
Four Acts. By Count LYOF TOLSTOY. Translated from the Russian by
E. J. DILLON. With Introduction by A. W. PINERO. Small 4to, with
Portrait, 5s.
Pall Mall Gazette.-"The whole effect of the play is distinctly Molièresque;
it has something of the large humanity of the master. Its satire is genial, almost
gay."
HEDDA GABLER: A Drama in Four Acts. By HENRIK
IBSEN. Translated from the Norwegian by EDMUND GOSSE. Small 4to,
cloth, with Portrait, 5s. Vaudeville Edition, paper, Is. Also a Limited
Large Paper Edition, 21s. net.
•
•
Times.-"The language in which this play is couched is a model of brevity,
decision, and pointedness.
Every line tells, and there is not an incident
that does not bear on the action immediate or remote. As a corrective to the
vapid and foolish writing with which the stage is deluged 'Hedda Gabler' is
perhaps entitled to the place of honour."
STRAY MEMORIES. By ELLEN TERRY.
Illustrated.
SOME
INTERESTING FALLACIES
In one volume.
[In preparation.
OF THE
Modern Stage. An Address delivered to the Playgoers' Club at St.
James's Hall, on Sunday, 6th December, 1891. BY HERBERT BEERBOHM
TREE. Crown 8vo, sewed, 6d.
THE LIFE OF HENRIK IBSEN. By HENRIK JÆGER.
Translated by CLARA BELL. With the Verse done into English from the
Norwegian Original by EDMUND GOSSE. Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.
St. James's Gazette.-" Admirably translated. Deserves a cordial and
emphatic welcome."
Guardian." Ibsen's dramas at present enjoy a considerable vogue, and
their admirers will rejoice to find full descriptions and criticisms in Mr. Jæger's
book."
16
MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S LIST.
Poetry.
LOVE SONGS OF ENGLISH POETS, 1500-1800.
With Notes by RALPH H. CAINE. Fcap. 8vo, rough edges, 3s. 6d.
Large Paper Edition, limited to 100 Copies, 10s. 6d. Net.
IVY AND PASSION FLOWER: Poems. By GERARD
BENDALL, Author of " Estelle," &c. &c. 12mo, cloth, 3s. 6d.
Scotsman." Will be read with pleasure."
Musical World.-" The poems are delicate specimens of art, graceful and
polished."
VERSES. By GERTRUDE HALL. 12mo, cloth, 3s. 6d.
Manchester Guardian.-"Will be welcome to every lover of poetry who
takes it up.
MAGONIA: A Poem. By CHARLES GODFREY LELAND (HANS
Leland
BREITMANN). Fcap. 8vo.
IDYLLS OF
OF WOMANHOOD.
Fcap. 8vo, gilt top, 5s.
[In the Press.
By C. AMY DAWSON.
Heinemann's Scientific handbooks.
MANUAL OF BACTERIOLOGY. By A. B. GRIFFITHS,
Ph.D., F.R.S. (Edin.), F.C.S. Crown 8vo, cloth, Illustrated.
75. 6d.
MANUAL OF ASSAYING GOLD, SILVER, COPPER,
and Lead Ores. By WALTER LEE BROWN, B.Sc. Revised, Corrected,
and considerably Enlarged, with a chapter on the Assaying of Fuel, &c.
By A. B. GRIFFITHS, Ph.D., F.R.S. (Edin.), F.C.S. Crown 8vo, cloth,
Illustrated, 7s. 6d.
Colliery Guardian.-" A delightful and fascinating book."
Financial World.-" The most complete and practical manual on everything
which concerns assaying of all which have come before us.'
>>
GEODESY. By J. HOWARD GORE. Crown 8vo, cloth, Illus-
trated, 5s.
St. James's Gazette.-"The book may be safely recommended to those who
desire to acquire an accurate knowledge of Geodesy.'
Science Gossip.-"It is the best we could recommend to all geodetic students.
It is full and clear, thoroughly accurate, and up to date in all matters of earth-
measurements.'
"
THE PHYSICAL
PROPERTIES
OF GASES. By
Crown 8vo,
ARTHUR L. KIMBALL, of the Johns Hopkins University.
cloth, Illustrated, 5s.
Chemical News.-" The man of culture who wishes for a general and accurate
acquaintance with the physical properties of gases, will find in Mr. Kimball's
work just what he requires.'
دو
HEAT AS A FORM OF ENERGY. By Professor R. H.
THURSTON, of Cornell University. Crown 8vo, cloth, Illustrated, 5s.
Manchester Examiner.-" Bears out the character of its predecessors for
careful and correct statement and deduction under the light of the most recen
discoveries."
LONDON:
WILLIAM
HEINEMANN
21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.

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