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 Cbe Victorian Bra Series 
 
 Tennyson
 
 Tennyson 
 
 A Critical Study 
 
 By 
 
 STEPHEN GWYNN 
 
 LONDON 
 
 BLACKIE & SON, LIMITED, 50 OLD BAILEY, E.C. 
 
 GLASGOW AND DUBLIN 
 
 1899
 
 TO MY FATHER 
 
 20O1683
 
 Preface 
 
 For the existence of this book my pub- 
 lishers must be responsible. It seems to me 
 impossible to say anything that is at once 
 new and true about Tennyson. But, having 
 undertaken to write a critical study of him, it 
 seemed to me best to give, as clearly as I 
 could, my own point of view, and for that 
 reason I have abstained from extending my 
 knowledge of the many books which have 
 been written about him by admirable critics. 
 Contemporary criticism of his earlier poems 
 I have studied primarily for its historical 
 interest, and in the process of illustrating 
 it by quotations, I have had to expose my 
 own work to very damaging comparisons. 
 
 There is no more to be said here, but to 
 express my thanks to the Messrs. Macmillan 
 for their courteous permission to me to 
 illustrate my criticism by full quotation; to 
 Mr. Stephen Phillips for leave to reprint his
 
 viii Preface 
 
 beautiful Launcelot and Guinevere, which has 
 hitherto only appeared in the columns of a 
 newspaper; to Mr. St. Loe Strachey for some 
 excellent suggestions; and chiefly to Mr. 
 G. H. Ely, not only for unwearying assistance 
 in the business of proof correction, but for 
 much valuable criticism of details. 
 
 STEPHEN GWYNN. 
 
 February \ 1899,
 
 Contents 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Page 
 
 Biographical .-------/ 
 
 CHAPTER 11 
 Tennyson and Critical Opinion - - - - - 16 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 Tennyson's Treatment of Love - - - - ~ 39 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 Tennyson's Views on Religion - - - - 62 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 Tennyson's Political Opinions 5 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 Tennyson's Outlook upon Nature .... m 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 The Poems 130 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 The Idylls of the King - - . - - - 151 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 Tennyson's Dramatic Works 184 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 Style and Metre 199 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 Conclusion 221 
 
 INDEX 231
 
 Tennyson 
 
 A Critical Study 
 
 Chapter I. 
 Biographical. 
 
 In all cases criticism should bear some relation 
 to biography; in many, the two are inseparable. 
 Sometimes the events and external circumstances 
 of a life intertwine themselves inextricably with a 
 poet's work, as they did with Byron's; sometimes 
 an alien influence can be detected, like a coloured 
 liquid poured into water, traceable at first in its dis- 
 tinct hue, though materially in fusion, then gradu- 
 ally merging into a single but changed whole. So 
 one can watch the first crude appearances of God- 
 win's teaching in Shelley's poetry, and follow the 
 development till there is no separable Godwin, but 
 a new Shelley. Tennyson's is the very opposite of 
 such natures. The most significant thing about 
 his biography is if one can say so without dispar- 
 agement its lack of significance. You find there 
 a most interesting book; you arrive at a picture of 
 the man in his habit as he lived, and not only of 
 him, but of the friends who surrounded him ; but 
 the story of his life is not unfolded, for the excellent 
 reason that there was no story with dramatic epi- 
 sodes or mental turning-points for the biographer 
 to tell.
 
 2 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 You might as well try to write the biography of 
 an oak. It sprang in a good soil, it drew to itself 
 sustenance from the sap of earth and the dew of 
 heaven, it put out leaves and branches, it became 
 a stature in the forest; but there was no point at 
 which you could say, Something has happened. 
 That is a fair image, indeed Tennyson himself has 
 used it in one of the most characteristic among his 
 later poems. If you go to sum up his life, what 
 you find is this: That he was born in 1809, tnat ne 
 was bred as a gentleman should be, that he wrote 
 poems, became laureate, grew rich through his art, 
 was the close and honoured friend of the men most 
 honourable in his time, and after eighty-four years 
 died, beautiful and majestic in his death. The 
 whole is a process of growth, gradual and stately, 
 but of events there are none. The only thing in 
 Tennyson's life which needs to be stated to explain 
 any of his poems is that he had a friend whom he 
 loved and looked up to; that this friend suddenly 
 died young, and that the poet enshrined his mem- 
 ory in perhaps the finest of all his verse. Nor is 
 there any trace distinguishable of any sudden ad- 
 mixture in his mind. He knew Carlyle intimately, 
 but you cannot put your finger on any poem and 
 say, Here Carlyle comes in. Yet there is no man 
 in all English literature more closely in touch with 
 the thought of his times. His mind was an ab- 
 sorbent; essentially a brooding mind, that slowly 
 drew in to itself the vital elements out of the atmo- 
 sphere which it breathed and converted them into 
 a definable shape. In a sense no poet is more 
 personal, more self-created; in a sense none more 
 impersonal, none more devoid of all eccentricities 
 and waywardnesses. He led, but it was always on 
 a path that his countrymen were already prone to 
 follow; he struck off at no abrupt tangents; and 
 whether in matters of religious faith, domestic re-
 
 Biographical. 3 
 
 form, or imperial aspirations, he had the happy 
 skill to formulate the thought that was lying vague 
 and chaotic in the minds of millions, who instantly 
 knew it and appropriated it to themselves. So 
 typically and normally English is his poetry, and 
 so completely was it assimilated by his contempor- 
 aries, that it is difficult to separate cause and effect, 
 and say where he influenced, and where he was 
 influenced by, the general feeling of his country- 
 men. Thus it is all but impossible to mark oft 
 particular moments in his life as important: for he 
 hardly once seems to have come into collision with 
 a popular prejudice or to have felt the even tenor 
 of his way interrupted by any new motive or new 
 impulsion. However, the first thing to be done is 
 to sketch in outline the man himself, his life and 
 his circumstances. 
 
 Alfred Tennyson was born on August 6th, 1809. 
 His father, the Rev. George Clayton Tennyson, 
 was the eldest son of a gentleman who owned a 
 large landed estate, but in consequence of some 
 caprice disinherited him in favour of a younger 
 brother. As a compensation family livings in Lin- 
 colnshire were bestowed on him, and his home was 
 the Rectory of Somersby. Thus Tennyson drew 
 his origin directly from the two great conservative 
 elements in English life: the church and the land. 
 The Radicalism of his younger days was far less 
 fundamentally characteristic of the man's whole 
 nature than his later hostility to change. But 
 whether as Radical or as Tory, he was always 
 essentially an aristocrat. 
 
 There was a large family of them eight sons 
 and four daughters. Alfred Tennyson was the 
 fourth child. He was sent to the neighbouring 
 Grammar School at Louth when he was seven, but 
 left it before he was twelve, and for the rest of his 
 boyhood studied under his father. The education
 
 4 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 was a singularly fortunate one, and consisted mainly 
 in allowing the boy to follow out the bent of his 
 own mind. From his earliest years Alfred Tenny- 
 son had shown the passion for verse-making; when 
 a mere child, his future was already fixed in his 
 own mind; he meant to be famous, and to be 
 famous as a poet. Everything about him tended 
 to encourage rather than to repress this instinctive 
 ambition a circumstance of the utmost importance 
 with a nature so sensitive as his. But the Rectory 
 was in these days, what Johnson called Pembroke 
 College, "a nest of singing birds". The father 
 wrote verse with considerable skill; almost all of 
 the brothers and sisters did the same, and some of 
 them displayed a power that was above mere talent. 
 Thus there was a continual competition among 
 them, such as existed among the young Brontes, 
 and a general interchange of stories and poems. 
 Alfred, however, seems to have been recognized as 
 the leading spirit, for his father is said to have re- 
 marked: " If Alfred die, one of our greatest poets 
 will have gone ". The boy was then only four- 
 teen, but he was already the author of innumerable 
 poems; including "an epic of six thousand lines 
 a la Walter Scott", and a blank -verse drama, of 
 which some curious fragments are published in the 
 Life. These early productions are chiefly interest- 
 ing as showing his taste in poetry; Thomson's 
 verse was one of the earliest models; then came 
 Pope's turn ; Byron was a passion ; and as early as 
 his twelfth year one finds him writing an elaborate 
 criticism of the Samson Agonistes in a letter to his 
 aunt a delightful example of infant precocity with 
 its solemn commendation of the various excellences. 
 Another poem, "The Coach of Death", of the same 
 period shows unmistakable traces of the Ancient 
 Mariner. For the final fruits of this period of 
 discipleship one must look to the Poems by Two
 
 Biographical. 5 
 
 Brothers, which Charles and Alfred induced Jackson 
 of Louth to publish in 1827; Frederick Tennyson, 
 the eldest brother, also contributing. 
 
 Thus it was after a boyhood spent almost entirely 
 at home, and devoted almost exclusively to the pur- 
 suit of poetry, that Tennyson went up to Cambridge 
 in February, 1828, when he and his brother Charles 
 matriculated together at Trinity College. They 
 came up with few acquaintances and no particular 
 academic distinction; but the way was no doubt 
 smoothed for them by Frederick Tennyson, who 
 had been captain of Eton, and was now a Univer- 
 sity prizeman ; and most of all by Alfred Tenny- 
 son's personal appearance. To the extraordinary 
 and impressive beauty of his head was added great 
 dignity of stature and great bodily strength. "I re- 
 member him well," writes FitzGerald, who did not 
 know him till later, " a sort of Hyperion." His life 
 at Cambridge was undoubtedly formative; yet the 
 influence of Cambridge on Tennyson is not nearly 
 so unmistakable as the mark set by Tennyson on 
 Cambridge. He was recognized there at least ten 
 years before he was generally known in London, 
 and he became the object of a cult to the ablest men 
 of his day, who preached his poetry urbi et orbi 
 like a gospel. But Cambridge for him meant not 
 so much the recognized authorities of the place as 
 its stones and trees, it meant especially the personal 
 associates of his own standing. University honours 
 he never sought, and in 1831 he went down without 
 taking a degree. For the Chancellor's prize he 
 only competed under pressure of his friends' exhor- 
 tations, and Timbuctoo was merely an old poem 
 modified to suit the occasion. But he became a 
 part of the brilliant group among whom Spedding, 
 Milnes (Lord Houghton), and Trench were leading 
 figures, and whose natural leader was Arthur Hal- 
 lam, son of the historian. To Tennyson was con-
 
 6 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 ceded a rank apart in the informal Essay Club 
 which they called the Apostles. He appears to 
 have been less of a disputant than the rest, and by 
 common consent was absolved from the duty of 
 writing papers. His presence was taken to be a 
 sufficient contribution, and he went quietly on his 
 own way, absorbing rather than promulgating ideas, 
 but nevertheless looked up to not less than Hallam. 
 Between these two young men, by general consent 
 the most notable figures of a notable group, grew 
 up the closest friendship, which gained a fresh link 
 in 1829 when Hallam became engaged to Miss 
 Emily Tennyson. 
 
 The record of the friendship is written in im- 
 perishable verse, and the biography adds little to 
 our knowledge of it. Tennyson's letters to his 
 friend were destroyed by Henry Hallam after his 
 son's death, and of Hallam's to Tennyson few are 
 printed. Yet these bear out the impression left by 
 the poem that the poet's relation to his friend was 
 one of deference. Hallam was not merely the literary 
 confidant, but also the spiritual counsellor; for at 
 this period Tennyson was much preoccupied with 
 religious doubts, which, in themselves harassing, 
 afflicted him the more as seeming to separate him 
 finally from his own folk, all of whom held to the 
 orthodox faith, and some even to a rigid Calvinism. 
 Hallam shared the doubts, but his nature was 
 sanguine and free from the morbid strain never 
 wholly absent from Tennyson, and dominant in his 
 youth. In the course of his life Tennyson took 
 counsel with many men, but only this one seems 
 to have exercised a moral ascendency over him. 
 
 Hallam, on his part, was among the most fervent 
 in his anticipations of greatness for his friend, who 
 so far outstripped him in the art to which he also 
 aspired. In 1830, when Tennyson was under twenty- 
 two and still an undergraduate, the first volume of 
 
 (M535)
 
 Biographical. 7 
 
 Poems Chiefly Lyrical was published. The strongest 
 eulogy was written by Hallam, who in this matter 
 expressed the voice of Cambridge. Outside of the 
 university little effect was produced by this book, 
 though Christopher North reviewed it half-seriously, 
 half-scoffing, and old Rogers predicted great things. 
 In 1831 Mr. Tennyson, the father, died, and Alfred 
 Tennyson left Cambridge to live at Somersby, where 
 the family remained in occupation of the Rectory, 
 renting it from the new incumbent. But there was 
 no break in the ties with the Cambridge group, 
 which were maintained actively by visits and cor- 
 respondence. In the end of 1832 appeared the 
 second volume of poems, containing The Lady of 
 Shalottj The Lotos Eaters (in its early form), 
 (Enone, and The Palace of Art in short, giving 
 to the world earnest and not mere promise. The 
 poet's name was now of sufficient mark for him 
 to be made the subject of an article in the 
 Quarterly ', written by the bitter pen of Lockhart. 
 But there was plenty of commendation in other 
 reviews, and the Cambridge Union fell to de- 
 bating whether Tennyson or Milton were the 
 greater poet. The value of this enthusiastic back- 
 ing from his own university was inestimable to a 
 poet so acutely sensitive to hostile criticism as it 
 was Tennyson's misfortune to be. But the main 
 support was Hallam's sympathy, and that support 
 was soon to be taken away. The two had been 
 incessantly together, not only in Cambridge, but 
 abroad. In 1831 a wild enterprise took them to 
 Spain to support the Spanish insurgents under 
 General Torrijos against the despotism of Ferdi- 
 nand ; they came back without adventures none, at 
 least, are recorded but with plentiful inspiration 
 from the Pyrenean gorges and torrents in the valley 
 of Cauteretz, where (Enone was in part written. 
 When Tennyson settled down at Somersby 
 
 (M535) B
 
 8 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 Hallam started his career in London, actively at 
 work on magazine articles; but in the following 
 summer he and Tennyson again went abroad, this 
 time to the Rhine. In 1833 Hallam again set out 
 for the Continent in company with his father, and 
 after a final evening in Hallam's rooms the friends 
 parted for the last time. Arthur Hallam died sud- 
 denly at Vienna on September i5th, 1833. The 
 news was communicated to Tennyson, who beyond 
 his own sorrow had the agony of breaking it to his 
 sister. Her long illness which followed helped to 
 blacken the world to her brother, yet her need for 
 comfort gave a purpose to his life, which, for some 
 time at least, " crept on a broken wing". He was 
 haunted by fears of blindness, and actually suffered 
 a great deal from his eyes; the reception of his 
 poems discouraged him ; he thought of writing no 
 more, and even, as it would seem, meditated the 
 question of suicide. His poem The Two Voices 
 reflects the debate that was in him at this period ; 
 the far nobler work Ulysses expresses his reaction 
 against despair. Already stray stanzas and cantos 
 of the In Memoriam had taken shape, but no 
 finished whole was projected. He lived on at 
 Somersby, sharing the daily life of his mother 
 and sisters, much hampered by lack of money, but 
 in close touch with the things that in very large 
 degree constituted his early inspiration the breath- 
 ing nature about him and the rough homeliness ot 
 Lincolnshire folk. 
 
 He was determined to publish no more till he 
 could give the world of his best, and in the ten 
 years between 1832 and 1842 he was assiduously 
 at work pruning and amending his earlier work 
 and composing new. Also about 1837 a new factor 
 entered into his existence. He became engaged, 
 more or less formally, to Miss Emily Sellwood, 
 whom he had first met in 1830, a beautiful girl of
 
 Biographical. 9 
 
 seventeen, sister to the wife of his brother Charles. 
 The engagement and their correspondence lasted 
 till 1840, when it was broken off with no prospect 
 of marriage ever ensuing. The stimulus which 
 would have driven another man to seek employ- 
 ment and money wherever it could be found, even 
 in the merest hack-work, did not turn Tennyson 
 from his purpose. He was even unwilling to allow 
 publication of his finished work in magazines, and 
 as for what had been already published, he depre- 
 cated all public criticism of it. Nothing, not even 
 his desire for the woman he had chosen, interfered 
 with what he conceived to be the necessity of his 
 art. So there came a separation between the lovers 
 which lasted over a silence of ten years. In the 
 meantime the household of which Tennyson was 
 now the head had been torn up from its roots in 
 Somersby. In 1837 they left the Rectory and 
 migrated first to Tun bridge Wells, then to Boxley, 
 near Maidstone. This brought the poet nearer to 
 London, and his visits were frequent enough to the 
 friends of his own generation and to those of an 
 older standing, from Rogers to Carlyle. These 
 were the days of tavern dinners, such as are cele- 
 brated in Will Waterproof, and it was at this period 
 that Carlyle etched one of his inimitable portraits in 
 a letter to Emerson. 
 
 "Alfred is one of the few British and foreign figures 
 (a not increasing- number, I think) who are and remain 
 beautiful to me, a true human soul, or some authentic 
 approximation thereto, to whom your own soul can say 
 ' Brother'. However, I doubt he will not come [to see 
 me]; he often skips me, in these brief visits to town; 
 skips everybody, indeed ; being a man solitary and sad, 
 as certain men are, dwelling in an element of gloom, 
 carrying a bit of Chaos about him, in short, which he is 
 manufacturing into Cosmos. . . . He had his breeding at 
 Cambridg-e, as if for the Law or Church ; being master
 
 io Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 of a small annuity on his father's decease, he preferred 
 clubbing with his mother and some sisters, to live un- 
 promoted and write Poems. In this way he lives still, 
 now here, now there ; the family always within reach of 
 London, never in it; he himself making- rare and brief 
 visits, lodging in some old comrade's rooms. I think 
 he must be under forty, not much under it. One of the 
 finest- looking men in the world. A great shock of 
 rough dusky dark hair; bright, laughing, hazel eyes; 
 massive aquiline face, massive yet most delicate; of 
 sallow brown complexion, almost Indian looking, clothes 
 cynically loose, free-and-easy, smokes infinite tobacco. 
 His voice is musical, metallic, fit for loud laughter and 
 piercing wail, and all that may lie between ; speech and 
 speculation free and plenteous; I do not meet in these 
 late decades such company over a pipe! we shall see 
 what he will grow to." 
 
 Carlyle's advice to Tennyson is notable as one 
 of the few positive recommendations laid down by 
 that sage. It was to the effect that he should leave 
 verse and rhyme and apply his genius to prose a 
 singularly unwise exhortation, as the volume pub- 
 lished in 1842 was soon to prove. This contained 
 among the new poems Locksley Hall and the Morte 
 d 1 Arthur \ but the main character of the additions 
 was given by the English Idyls, Dora, The Gar- 
 dener's Daughter, and the rest. His fame may be 
 dated definitely from the publication of this volume. 
 Posterity, someone has said, commences at the 
 frontier; and his work was widely read and criti- 
 cised outside of this country. At home Oxford was 
 now scarcely less enthusiastic than Cambridge, and 
 Carlyle wrote the "true deposition of a volunteer 
 witness ", in a wonderful letter of gratitude. Still 
 there were many harassing circumstances in his 
 existence. All his own private fortune, which had 
 hitherto yielded a small income, and a portion of 
 that belonging to his brothers and sisters, was
 
 Biographical. n 
 
 invested in a manufactory for turning out wood- 
 carvings, and the whole was lost. But his brother- 
 in-law insured the life of Dr. Allen, the company 
 promoter, in Tennyson's interest, and this gentle- 
 man very opportunely died in the following year. 
 Luck now turned. In 1845, at the instance of 
 Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), Peel granted 
 a pension of ^200 a year ; the argument used was, 
 it is said, a reading of Ulysses. In 1847 The Prin- 
 cess appeared, in which Tennyson with his usual 
 tact gave a direction to the thoughts upon woman's 
 position then occupying the popular mind. In 
 1850 came In Memoriam, and the poet at once 
 stepped into the position which became increas- 
 ingly imposed upon him, of religious teacher out- 
 side the pale of dogma. This year marks the 
 turning-point in his life. In the spring he met 
 Miss Sellwood after a separation of ten years; and 
 he felt that his means were now sufficient to offer 
 her a home. They were married on June I3th he 
 aged 41, she 37 and it seems clear that he never 
 said a truer thing than the utterance quoted by his 
 son, "The peace of God came into my life before 
 the altar when I wedded her". In the following 
 November came the offer of the laureateship ; and 
 from this onward the Life is nothing but the un- 
 broken record of a series of successes. 
 
 One misfortune came at the outset : his first child, 
 a boy, was born dead. On Mrs. Tennyson's re- 
 covery they went abroad, travelled in Italy, and 
 met the Brownings. Returning to England in the 
 close of 1851, they found the country in a high 
 fever of anxiety about its defences, and Tennyson 
 wrote the earliest of his national songs Britons 
 guard your own and Hands all round: but his 
 strong feeling for the greatness of his race found 
 a far nobler expression in his Ode on the Death of 
 the Duke of Wellington a magnificent poem which
 
 12 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 by some amazing error in popular judgment was 
 received with almost universal condemnation. It 
 was a new experience and an embittering one to 
 his over-sensitive nature; but, conscious of his 
 developed art, he went straight on his way. His 
 personal concerns were prosperous; two sons were 
 born to him in quick succession, and children 
 always seem to have been to him a source of 
 delight. In 1853 he felt justified in taking a lease 
 of Farringford, the beautiful house in the Isle of 
 Wight, with the option to purchase, and so he 
 settled down into the home, and among the scenes, 
 with which his memory will for ever be associated. 
 
 In December, 1854, The Charge of the Light 
 Brigade was written, and the enthusiasm which it 
 aroused among the soldiers in the Crimea was such 
 a reward as comes to few writers. A thousand 
 copies were printed by Tennyson and circulated 
 among the troops as a mark of his gratitude for 
 their welcome to the verse. In 1855 came Maud, 
 and at this distance of time it is difficult to account 
 for the storm which that poem roused. To the end 
 of his days Tennyson cherished a special affection 
 for it, and for the Funeral Ode, which was probably 
 born in part of the instinct to rise in defence of 
 them. But the man who within five years had 
 published Maud and In Memoriam, had no occa- 
 sion to trouble about critics though he did so. 
 He had reached the climax of his genius; and 
 though he wrote things later on, even up to the very 
 slope of the grave, that may challenge comparison 
 with the glow of his earlier poems, the concentrated 
 force of In Memoriam, or the passion of Maud, his 
 work from this onward began to decline. 
 
 Not that his contemporaries thought so. The 
 first Idylls of the King, Enid, Vivien, Elaine, Guine- 
 vere, appeared in 1858, and were received "with 
 tumult of acclaim ". Whereas before it had often
 
 Biographical. 13 
 
 been the many, the average well-informed critics or 
 reviews, who censured, and the few who applauded, 
 it was now a general chorus of enthusiasm in which 
 the most enthusiastic voices came from men like 
 Thackeray and Gladstone. But at the same time, 
 from certain among the faithful of old days, not- 
 ably from Ruskin and FitzGerald, there came now 
 a half-uttered protest praise tempered with depre- 
 cation of the new departure. I shall have more to 
 say of this later, but this is the place to note that 
 Tennyson, becoming more exclusively a writer of 
 picturesque description, and assuming more and 
 more consciously a didactic purpose, drew further 
 and further away from the real heart of life. From 
 this onward there is really nothing to record. In 
 1873 the offer of a baronetcy was refused. In 1875 
 Tennyson embarked upon a new branch of litera- 
 ture, and published Queen Mary, which was played 
 in the next year. Harold followed in 1877. Becket, 
 though not published till 1884, was written by 1879, 
 in which year The Falcon was produced by Mr. and 
 Mrs. Kendal. Meanwhile the receipts from his 
 poems had made this poet perhaps the richest man 
 who ever earned his money by verse. His beauti- 
 ful house of Aid worth was built (by Mr. James 
 Knowles) on Blackdown among the Surrey Hills, 
 but the Isle of Wight was still the home of his 
 choice. In 1880 appeared the volume of Ballads 
 and other Poems containing Rizpah and The Re- 
 venge, which rank with his best work. In the same 
 year Sir Henry Irving and Miss Terry played in 
 The Cup, and in 1882 Mrs. Bernard Beere brought 
 out The Promise of May. 1883 saw his famous 
 cruise in the Pembroke Castle, when Mr. Gladstone, 
 then at the height of his reputation, scarcely at- 
 tracted more attention than the poet. In the 
 autumn of this year a peerage was offered him, 
 and after some hesitation was accepted. In 1885
 
 14 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 came the volume entitled Tiresias, stamped with 
 that increasing preoccupation in religious subjects 
 which marks his later work. Yet none of the poems 
 in it which concern men's position in the universe, 
 or that belief in the soul's imperishable nature 
 which seemed to Tennyson the most vital of all 
 faiths, are so likely to live as the eulogy of Virgil 
 perhaps his very finest technical achievement 
 which appeared in this volume. In 1886 came a 
 great sorrow, the death of his son Lionel, who suc- 
 cumbed to Indian fever while on his way home- 
 ward, and was buried in the Red Sea. His 
 memory is enshrined in the volume issued in 1887 
 not only in the poem Locksley Hall Sixty Years 
 After, but in the dedication to Lord Dufferin, a 
 noble expression of the dignified grief that does not 
 overpower gratitude. The title poem marks fitly 
 enough all the change that had come in the poet's 
 mental development; but while all the beliefs of 
 youth, all the enthusiasm for progress, had faded 
 into a deeper sense of man's petty station in the 
 universe, and into a less confident historical survey 
 which saw not only the flow but the inevitable ebb 
 in all human effort, yet there was present a more 
 assured conviction, a more nourished hope, that the 
 single human existence was only a beginning or a 
 stage, and in no sense a blank end. In 1888 came 
 the poet's first serious illness ; yet he rallied, and in 
 1889 published still one more volume, containing 
 the poem Crossing the Bar, which his son not un- 
 fitly calls " the crown of his life's work". In 1892 
 his play The Foresters was produced in America; 
 that was among his latest interests. His final ill- 
 ness began early in September, though he had felt 
 the end approaching long before. His great strength 
 kept him living for a month, and death, when it 
 came, was a slow ebbing of life. The actual cir- 
 cumstances of the scene are described with great
 
 Biographical. 15 
 
 tenderness and beauty by his son in a passage that 
 I do not care to mutilate by imperfect quotation. 
 The final words of it may be borrowed : 
 
 "Some friends and the servants came to see him. 
 He looked very grand and peaceful, with the deep 
 furrows of thought almost smoothed away ; and the old 
 clergyman of Lurgashall stood by the bed with his 
 hands raised and said, ' Lord Tennyson, God has taken 
 you, who made you a prince of men! Farewell.'" 1 
 
 That phrase accurately renders the impression 
 made upon one by reading the Life. There is no 
 doubt that a biography written, as are most modern 
 biographies, from the point of view of a -valet de 
 chambre, might have insisted on Tennyson's irrit- 
 able susceptibility to criticism and the frequent 
 brusqueness of his manner to strangers, probably 
 occasioned by sheer absence of mind. But unless 
 nearly all the people who have led the movement of 
 England in the last half-century were mistaken, the 
 great artist was also one of the most lovable among 
 men. I may quote for a final appreciation of him 
 this passage from a paper by Mr. Locker Lampson 
 given in the Life, which gains a special value from 
 the fact that the writer was delightfully alive to the 
 humours of the poet's eccentricities. He was not 
 afraid to laugh at Tennyson, but he was by his 
 own confession still better disposed to laugh with 
 him. 
 
 "Balzac's remark that 'Dans tout homme de g^nie 
 il y a un enfant ' may find its illustration in Tennyson. 
 He is the only grown-up human being that I know of, 
 who habitually thinks aloud. His humour is of the 
 dryest, it is admirable. Did anybody ever make one 
 laugh more heartily than Alfred Tennyson? He tells a 
 story excellently, and has a catching laugh. There are 
 people who laugh because they are shy or disconcerted, 
 
 i Life, vol. ii. p. 439.
 
 r6 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 or for lack of ideas, or to bridge over some conversa- 
 tional gap or obstruction; only a few because they are 
 happy or amused, or perhaps triumphant. Tennyson 
 has an entirely natural and a very kindly laugh. 
 
 " I and mine have a very warm regard for Tennyson. 
 He has been very kind to Mrs. Locker and me. The 
 more we see of him, the more we appreciate his singular 
 charm, which has never deserted him in this world, and 
 which I trust will be secured to him in the next. His 
 friendship has been, and still is, one of the solaces of my 
 life." 1 
 
 Chapter II. 
 Tennyson and Critical Opinion. 
 
 It has been shown that Tennyson's poetic faculty 
 obtained prompt and enthusiastic recognition among 
 a brilliant generation of Cambridge undergraduates. 
 Beyond this circle, however, beyond the range which 
 could be reached by the imposing qualities of his 
 voice and presence, he only won his way slowly, and, 
 after the fashion of genius, excited a good deal of 
 hostility. Critics recognized in him a new thing, 
 and to the average critic the new is always at first 
 sight repellent. If we are to realize how Tennyson 
 struck his contemporaries, we must form some con- 
 ception of the literary standards of that time. In 
 1830 Shelley, Keats, and Byron were dead; Words- 
 worth had long settled down into the mechanical 
 dulness of Ecclesiastical Sonnets, and while he re- 
 tained a surprising share of veneration, produced 
 nothing to stimulate enthusiasm. Coleridge was 
 rhapsodizing at Highgate, the living sepulchre of a 
 "poete mort jeune a gut rhomme survit". Moore 
 was brilliant as ever, but the trickle of his genuine 
 
 *Ufe. ii. p. 80.
 
 Tennyson and Critical Opinion. 17 
 
 though trivial inspiration had run dry; he was 
 merely the successful man of letters, the quick- 
 witted satirist, no longer the national singer. What 
 the popular taste had sunk to in poetry may be 
 inferred from Macaulay's onslaught in 1830, pub- 
 lished in the Edinburgh Review, upon Robert 
 Montgomery. Macaulay dealt widely in charges 
 of puffery, but everybody who has written reviews 
 knows very well that it is perfectly impossible to 
 make the public read and buy anything that they 
 do not honestly like. In default of a better they 
 took Robert Montgomery to their hearts. How 
 blank was the next decade, except for the advent of 
 Tennyson, may be gathered by a study of the liter- 
 ary articles in the great Whig review, which repre- 
 sented probably the best and most temperate critical 
 opinion of the day. In March, 1831, an article was 
 devoted nominally to the poems of Mr. Edmund 
 Reade, which, to judge from the extracts given, 
 would not obtain six lines of notice in any self- 
 respecting paper to-day, but really to a considera- 
 tion of the state of contemporary poetry, and from 
 it I shall quote largely. The article began : 
 
 "Perhaps there has never been a time since the prosaic 
 days of Whitehead and Hay ley in which so little good 
 poetry has been issued from the press, as during the last 
 two years. That some meritorious poems have been 
 published within this period we do not deny, but we 
 think that even they who look with partially indulgent 
 eyes on the efforts of contemporary poets, will scarcely 
 venture to affirm that any poetical works have lately 
 appeared which have made much impression on the 
 public taste, or have the slightest prospect of permanent 
 popularity." 
 
 This, be it remembered, was written nearly a year 
 after the issue of Tennyson's first volume. 
 
 "Yet with the exception of one or two great names,
 
 i8 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 we still possess all those eminent writers who have made 
 the first twenty years of this century as distinguished in 
 the annals of our poetry as the days of Elizabeth and 
 Anne. Scott, Moore, Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, 
 Campbell, Crabbe, Milman, Rogers, Bowles, and others 
 whom the recollection of our readers can easily supply, 
 are still living amongst us, and in the full enjoyment of 
 their poetical powers." 
 
 (It will be seen that Milman, Rogers, and Bowles 
 are classed by implication with Wordsworth and 
 Coleridge.) 
 
 "But they write no poetry; and, what is perhaps 
 stranger, we do not expect it. We are content, even 
 when fresh from the re-perusal of their former poems, 
 to receive from their hands only prose ; and ' prose by 
 a poet', instead of being an object of foolish and dis- 
 trustful wonder, is now almost the one thing sought. 
 Whence, we may ask, does this arise, at a time when 
 the activity of the public press exceeds all that has been 
 known in this or any other country when education is 
 more diffused the thirst for information greater and 
 the means to satisfy it more abundant than perhaps at 
 any former period of our literary history? Various 
 causes may be assigned for this phenomenon. It may 
 be said that an excess of poetry, and an abundance of 
 that which was really excellent, has produced satiety 
 and fastidiousness. The public taste has been cloyed 
 with dainties, and over-excitement is succeeded by in- 
 difference. This may be true to some extent, but there 
 are other causes which have no reference to our recent 
 abundance of poetical treasure. The spirit of the age is 
 not eminently favourable to poetry. We say this not in 
 disparagement either of the spirit of the present age or 
 of poetry. Our observation is strictly compatible with 
 praise of both. The circumstance we have noticed arises 
 from the greater spread of knowledge and thirst for 
 information, and from a more just appreciation of the 
 powers of poetry and the relative place and importance
 
 Tennyson and Critical Opinion. 19 
 
 which it ought to occupy in literature. We now say 
 more generally, as Horace did, 'Non satis est pulchra 
 esse poemata, dulcia sunto'. We regard poetry not as 
 our daily mental food, but as a sweet and costly fruit 
 of which, though we derive from it greater pleasure, we 
 partake more sparingly and less often, than of the 
 homely prose which constitutes the staple aliment of 
 our minds. We more judiciously assign to poetry that 
 which is its peculiar office. We require not so much 
 that it shall instruct as that it shall interest and delight 
 us. We require that it shall appeal to our imagination 
 and our feelings rather than to our judgment." 
 
 In short, for this gentleman grows long-winded, 
 the day for didactic poetry was over. Nobody in 
 1830 would tolerate a poem like Grainger's Sugar 
 Cane, with its minute instructions for the manufac- 
 ture of rum. If a man had facts or theories to state 
 he was expected to state them in prose. 
 
 "Towards mediocrity in poetry the public is becoming 
 every day less tolerant. Few poems have a chance of 
 being much read, unless their merits are of a very high 
 order, or there is something strange, novel, and attrac- 
 tive in their subject. The public taste seems also to 
 have decided that a poem must not be long. The plea- 
 surable excitement which ought to arise from the perusal 
 of poetry is, like that produced by music or painting, 
 necessarily of short duration." 
 
 Now the first thing that strikes me on reading 
 this diagnosis of contemporary taste is, that Tenny- 
 son from the very beginning was in touch with the 
 popular demand. His early poems, whatever else 
 they might be, were dulcia even sugared. They 
 appealed unquestionably to the imagination and 
 feelings rather than to the judgment, and they were 
 admirably short. The Edinburgh Reviewer had 
 probably not heard of them; but the same could 
 not be said after Lockhart had reviewed the 1832
 
 20 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 volume in the Quarterly. There was no explicit 
 mention of it, however, between the buff-and-blue 
 covers, though Mrs. Norton, a very charming 
 woman but a very indifferent writer, was acclaimed 
 as "likely to attain an elevated place in poetry"; 
 though Carlyle was allowed to eulogize Ebenezer 
 Elliott; and though a commendatory notice was 
 bestowed upon that very inoffensive person the 
 Rev. H. F. Lyte. Still, critical opinion was not 
 wholly blind to what was going on, and in January, 
 1836, we find an article which definitely recognizes 
 the existence of a new school of poetry at Cam- 
 bridge. Town, says the reviewer, is no longer the 
 sole authority for the kingdom in matters of taste. 
 
 "Exclusive tribunals of public taste have fallen before 
 the spread of knowledge, and so have exclusive stan- 
 dards. While the lads of almost every public school in 
 England have been setting up their magazine, Cam- 
 bridge, in addition to her critical and philosophical 
 journals, and her periodical Latin and Greek exercises, 
 has lately allowed a volume or more of juvenile English 
 poetry to struggle into daylight from under her maternal 
 wing." 
 
 Yet the new school, he continues, has nothing 
 academic about it; the classics are only one out of 
 many models; and from this point the reviewer 
 proceeds to discuss the models of the new school 
 with considerable judgment ; although in reviewing 
 the early poems of Dean Alford, instead of Alfred 
 Tennyson's, he did undoubtedly, to borrow a 
 phrase from Lord Salisbury, put his money on the 
 wrong horse. 
 
 "A race which has shaken off the traditional yoke 
 of peremptory antiquity, could acknowledge, for some 
 brief interval only (and that unconsciously), a dictator 
 among 1 immediate predecessors. It was natural, never-
 
 Tennyson and Critical Opinion. 21 
 
 theless, that the genius of Byron, which, during an in- 
 terval of this sort, subdued nearly the whole poetical 
 atmosphere of the country to its peculiar colour, should 
 make a powerful impression on the youthful members 
 of his own university. Kirke White came and went too 
 soon to be affected by it. Indeed under any circum- 
 stances his gentleness and devoutness would have By- 
 ronized but ill. This spiritual domination, however, 
 was one of those tyrannies which are now well-nigh 
 overpast. The young poets whose common tastes and 
 sympathies seem lately, at Cambridge, to be forming 
 around them a little school, take as little after Byron as 
 after Pope. They do not destroy the affections in the 
 passions; they do not call on us to curse life, but to 
 bless it altogether. Their light is not a concentrated 
 glare whereby giants are to be shown, in attitudes of 
 distorted greatness, forging thunderbolts which are to 
 be hurled afterwards at their own bosoms. It is rather 
 the gentle and kindly dawn of morning, doing little 
 more than lift up the veil from nature, and spread out 
 the world before us, that looking on it we may love it, 
 and in some degree become like unto it. The poetry of 
 Byron startled, and always must startle, every reader by 
 its singularity and its power; nevertheless it has made 
 mere imitators. It appears to have been too individual 
 to become an element, developing, nourishing, and at 
 last incorporating itself with other minds. It stands 
 therefore by itself, a pyramid of black and dazzling 
 marble proud, monumental, barren ; while all our poets 
 of any really creative character, conscious of possessing, 
 and determined to retain, their poetical identity, seem to 
 be turning elsewhere for those assimilating and pervad- 
 ing qualities which are destined to feed them in their 
 growth. 
 
 " Wordsworth says that he and his friends owe 
 their poetical existence to Percy's Reliques the ardent 
 novices, of whom we are speaking, come apparently of 
 the same descent; only one generation lower. For they 
 derive directly from Cowper, Wordsworth, and Cole- 
 ridge. These are the biddings to which their spirits are 
 attuned, and their whole nature subjected. Singing,
 
 22 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 evidently, as the birds sing, for the very enjoyment of 
 it, with some of them we are at times almost equally at 
 a loss for the mere interpretation of their notes. Early 
 youth appears to take peculiar pleasure in seeing" lan- 
 guage float along- like an exhalation" [that is not a bad 
 description of Tennyson's Juvenilia, Claribel, and the 
 rest], " nor is it at that age the less liked, because in this 
 condition it is a better medium for communicating colours 
 than ideas. This defect has been encouraged by the 
 schoolboy popularity of Shelley, whose language is often 
 too yielding and aerial, of too delicate and gossamer- 
 like a texture, to be the vehicle of so earthly a thing as 
 substantial thought. Doubtless, Shelley always had his 
 meaning; but it was not always as strong and definite 
 a meaning as critics, intrusted with the rights of others, 
 are bound to insist on having. Mr. Tennyson is perhaps 
 at present the most known of any of the younger Cam- 
 bridge poets who have taken wing. He must not set it 
 down to acidity and moroseness if persons of riper years 
 have regretted that his style was not sufficiently impreg- 
 nated with thought; that more mind was not apparent 
 behind his words. Mr. Alford appears to us to choose 
 his subjects from a higher class, to conceive them with 
 greater distinctness, and to have a stronger sense of the 
 necessity of embodying his thoughts in precise expres- 
 sions." 
 
 There is no doubt that the literary affinities of 
 the new school are correctly traced in this interest- 
 ing passage. Byron had exercised his "domina- 
 tion over Tennyson's mind in boyhood; one can 
 trace him on every second page in the Poems by 
 Two Brothers] for instance, in this passage from 
 a poem On Sitblimity, where the discipleship to 
 Childe Harold is obvious : 
 
 I love your voice, ye echoing winds, that sweep 
 Thro' the wide womb of midnight, when the veil 
 
 Of darkness rests upon the mighty deep, 
 The labouring vessel and the shattered sail 
 
 Save when the forked bolts of lightning leap 
 On flashing pinions, and the mariner pale
 
 Tennyson and Critical Opinion. 23 
 
 Raises his eyes to heaven. Oh ! who would sleep 
 
 What time the rushing of the angry gale 
 Is heard upon the waters? Hail, all hail, 
 Tempest and clouds and night and thunder's rending peal ! 
 
 All hail, Sublimity ! thou lofty one, 
 
 For thou dost walk upon the blast, and gird 
 Thy majesty with terrors, and thy throne 
 
 Is on the whirlwind, and thy voice is heard 
 In thunders and in shakings : thy delight 
 
 Is in the secret wood, the blasted heath 
 The ruin'd fortress and the dizzy height, 
 
 The grave, the ghastly charnel house of death, 
 In vaults, in cloisters, and in glowing piles, 
 Long corridors and towers and solitary aisles 
 
 But the real models, or rather influences, for 
 Tennyson found his own style earlier than most 
 poets, were Shelley and Coleridge. One can trace 
 definite resemblances to Coleridge, especially in an 
 early poem called The Coach of Death which is 
 printed in the Life, from which I quote the last 
 stanzas, where there is an unmistakable sugges- 
 tion of The Ancient Mariner. 
 
 They pass'd (an inner spirit fed 
 
 Their ever- burn ing fires) 
 With a solemn burst of thrilling light 
 * And a sound of stringed lyres. 
 
 With a silver sound the wheels went round, 
 
 The wheels of burning flame ; 
 Of beryl and of amethyst 
 
 Was the spiritual frame. 
 
 Their steeds were strong exceedingly, 
 
 And rich was their attire : 
 Before them flow'd a fiery stream ; 
 
 They broke the ground with hoofs of fire. 
 
 They glitter'd with a stedfast light, 
 
 The happy spirits within ; 
 As stars they shone, in raiment white, 
 
 And free from taint of sin. 
 
 (M636) c
 
 24 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 Shelley's mind rather than his manner influenced 
 the young poet; perhaps indeed the affinity was 
 more obvious to that generation than to us. At 
 all events as late as 1839 we find an article in the 
 Edinburgh Review complaining that Shelley's fame 
 suffered from ' ' the unbearable coxcombry of the 
 ' intense ' and mystical versifiers who made him 
 their model including both the Shellites of the old 
 connection and those of the new, or Tennysonites". 
 It will appear from this passage, even more strongly 
 than from the review of Alford, that long before the 
 1842 volume, Tennyson was a perceptible force. 
 Even the austere Review had recognized him, 
 though grudgingly; in its notice of Lord Northamp- 
 ton's miscellany the Tribute, he is thrown into a 
 list between Southey and Joanna Baillie, and pell- 
 mell with Knight and G. P. R. James. The charge 
 of obscurity, brought with touching regularity 
 against any original poet at his appearance, is 
 uppermost in the remarks upon the poem "Oh 
 that 'twere possible " the germ of Maud which 
 Tennyson under compulsion from Monckton Milnes 
 contributed to this volume. 
 
 "We do not profess perfectly to understand", says 
 the reviewer, "the somewhat mysterious contribution 
 of Mr. Alfred Tennyson entitled Stanzas, but amidst 
 some quaintness and some occasional absurdities of 
 expression, it is not difficult to detect the hand of a true 
 poet such as the author of Mariana and the Lines on 
 the Arabian Nights undoubtedly is in those stanzas 
 which describe the appearance of a visionary form by 
 which the writer is supposed to be haunted, amidst the 
 streets of a crowded city." 
 
 It certainly was not difficult; and one would have 
 thought that a critic might have seen that here was 
 poetry worth a hundred Marianas and a wilderness 
 of Haroun Alraschids. Reviewers no doubt were
 
 Tennyson and Critical Opinion. 25 
 
 many, though the Review was one ; but considering 
 the editorial view of editorial responsibility in those 
 days one may not unfairly regard these criticisms 
 as the continuous utterances of a single tribunal, 
 and it is on that account surprising to find in a 
 review of Southey (Jan. 1839) the following remarks, 
 which practically repeat the complaint of 1831 that 
 poetry is torpid: 
 
 " Even while many of our best poets are yet alive, 
 poetry herself is dead or entranced. It appears as if 
 the extraordinary physical discoveries of late years, by 
 throwing- further and further back the boundaries of the 
 world of practical science and realizing' the most vision- 
 ary conceptions, had rendered cheap and vulgar the 
 wonders of imagination. What are the subjects of 
 thought on which the minds of most men now love to 
 expend that surplus energy which is not absorbed by 
 the ordinary duties and exigencies of their station, the 
 favourite stuff of our daydreams? The dominion at- 
 tained by man over the elements, the wonderful changes 
 in commerce and communication, and all the relations 
 of life depending on them which are beginning to open 
 upon society. These are topics which warm and exalt 
 the spirits, and render them peculiarly susceptible to 
 rhetorical exaggeration ; but they are scarcely poetical. 
 Our fancies are bent on seeking sources of grandeur 
 and power, not in themselves and in the visionary world 
 which they can create, but in new and adventurous 
 combinations of external agencies; and to be recalled 
 from the latter to the former is, for the time, an interrup- 
 tion almost an unwelcome one to the course on which 
 they are so zealously set. The star of the engineer, we 
 suspect, must be on the decline before that of the poet 
 can culminate again. There is one train of thought 
 only, peculiarly remote from the affairs of the world, 
 and least of all disturbed by the whirl and noise of the 
 vast machinery about us in which sensitive minds now 
 peculiarly love to seek for refreshment devotional 
 poetry is almost the only species cultivated with success.
 
 26 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 "That this state of things is to last but for a time 
 the analogy of all past experience assures us. Spirits 
 will arise which will so assimilate the mechanical tem- 
 perament of the age to their own genius that it shall 
 furnish a new and rich fountain of poetry. In the 
 meantime we are forced to content ourselves with re- 
 verting to the past and studying, as fairly as we are 
 able, the achievements of that school of which we have 
 seen the rise, progress, and decay within the remem- 
 brance of the living generation." 
 
 And so the reviewer proceeds to study as fairly 
 as he is able the great works of Southey. From 
 the various extracts which we have made, two things 
 will appear. First, that the influence of Tennyson's 
 early poetry was out of all proportion to its pub- 
 lished bulk; he was recognized even by hostile 
 criticism as the head of a school there were ad- 
 mittedly ' Tennysonites ' who had taken up, but 
 modified, the traditions of Shelley. Secondly, that 
 a kingdom was standing vacant for the right man 
 to enter in upon it. Tennyson did so with the 
 1842 volume. And if one reads carefully the last 
 extract which I have quoted, it becomes more than 
 ever apparent how closely Tennyson was in touch 
 with the feelings of his time. We may be still 
 looking, as Mr. Kipling's M 'Andrew says, for 
 "another Robbie Burns to sing the song of steam ", 
 but the poet who was able so "to assimilate the me- 
 chanical temperament of the age to his genius that 
 it should furnish a new and rich fountain of poetry" ; 
 who found inspiration in "the dominion attained 
 by man over the elements and the wonderful 
 change in commerce and communication"; who 
 saw nothing adverse to poetry in the star of the 
 engineer was no longer difficult to discover once 
 Locksley Hall was published ; although, curiously 
 enough, it is one of the few poems not mentioned in 
 the Edinburgh Review article of April, 1843, which
 
 Tennyson and Critical Opinion. 27 
 
 made honourable amends for earlier neglect. A 
 more remarkable conversion, however, was that of 
 the Quarterly. In 1833 Lockhart took the 1832 
 volume and wrote a review of it, which goes far to 
 justify all that has ever been said by authors of 
 the malevolence of critics, or by critics of the uses 
 of the tomahawk. Beginning with an ironical re- 
 traction of the attack upon Keats tantamount to a 
 sneer at the stupidity of a public which, in spite of 
 common sense, indisputably admires such rubbish 
 as Endymion Lockhart proceeds to recognize the 
 vogue which Tennyson's volume has attained, and 
 after an ironical compliment, quotes in ironical proof 
 of Tennyson's genius all the worst passages in the 
 book, upon which he fixes with the unerring instinct 
 of a born critic. There are, for instance, extensive 
 extracts from a poem called the Hesperides which 
 is reprinted in the Life; a passage from The Lotos- 
 Eaters containing these lines 
 
 This is lovelier and sweeter, 
 
 Men of Ithaca, this is meeter, 
 
 In the hollow rosy vale to tarry 
 
 Like a dreamy Lotos-eater a delicious Lotos-eater; 
 
 and a full quotation of a somewhat maudlin though 
 pretty set of verses on The Darling Room, somewhat 
 in the manner of a more tuneful Peter Bell. All 
 these things are taken and emphasized ; so is also 
 one of the least felicitous sonnets "Thine be the 
 strength of spirit fierce and free " ever written by a 
 poet who never rose far above accomplished medio- 
 crity in this form of verse. In addition to this 
 detection of real flaws there is the cheapest kind of 
 ridicule heaped upon really beautiful passages in 
 The Lady of Shalott and (Enone, while for recog- 
 nition of merit, which to so keen an eye must have 
 been everywhere apparent, we look in vain. But 
 the review deserves not merely to be noticed, but
 
 28 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 quoted, or pilloried, at some length. It opens 
 thus: 
 
 "This is, as some of his marginal notes intimate, 
 Mr. Tennyson's second appearance. By some strange 
 chance we have never seen his first publication, which, 
 if it at all resembles its younger brother, must be by this 
 time so popular that any notice of it on our part would 
 seem idle and presumptuous; but we gladly seize this 
 opportunity of repairing an unintentional neglect, and 
 of introducing to the admiration of our more seques- 
 tered readers a new prodigy of genius another and a 
 brighter star of that galaxy or milky-way of poetry of 
 which the lamented Keats was the harbinger ; and let us 
 take this occasion to sing our palinode on the subject of 
 Endymion. We certainly did not discover in that poem 
 the same degree of merit that its more clear-sighted 
 and prophetic admirers did. We did not foresee the 
 unbounded popularity which has carried it through we 
 know not how many editions; which has placed it on 
 every table ; and, what is still more unequivocal, familiar- 
 ized it in every mouth. All this splendour of fame, 
 however, though we had not the sagacity to anticipate, 
 we have the candour to acknowledge; and we request 
 that the publisher of the new and beautiful edition of 
 Keats's Works now in the press, with graphic illustra- 
 tions by Calcott and Turner, will do us the favour and 
 the justice to notice our conversion in his prolegomena. 
 
 " Warned by our former mishap, wiser by experience, 
 and improved, as we hope, in taste, we have to offer 
 Mr. Tennyson our tribute of unmingled approbation, 
 and it is very agreeable to us, as well as our readers, 
 that our present task will be little more than the selec- 
 tion, for their delight, of a few specimens of Mr. Tenny- 
 son's singular genius, and the venturing to point out, 
 now and then, the peculiar brilliancy of some of the gems 
 that irradiate his poetical crown." 
 
 Here is a fair example of the way in which Lock- 
 hart pointed out beauties : 
 
 "We pass by several songs, sonnets, and small
 
 Tennyson and Critical Opinion. 29 
 
 pieces, all of singular merit, to arrive at a class, we 
 may call them, of three poems derived from mytho- 
 logical sources CEnone, The Hesperides, and The Lotos- 
 Eaters. But though the subjects are derived from 
 classical antiquity, Mr. Tennyson treats them with so 
 much originality that he makes them exclusively his 
 own. CEnone, deserted by 
 
 Beautiful Paris, evil-hearted Paris, 
 
 sings a kind of dying soliloquy addressed to Mount Ida, 
 in a formula, which is sixteen times repeated in this 
 short poem. 
 
 Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die. 
 
 She tells her ' dear mother Ida ' that when evil-hearted 
 Paris was about to judge between the three goddesses 
 he hid her (CEnone) behind a rock, whence she had a full 
 view of the naked beauties of the rivals which broke her 
 heart. 
 
 Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die. 
 
 It was the deep midnoon ; one silvery cloud 
 
 Had lost his way among the pined hills : 
 
 They came all three the Olympian goddesses, 
 
 Naked they came 
 
 How beautiful they were ; too beautiful 
 To look upon ; but Paris was to me 
 More lovelier than all the world besides ; 
 O mother Ida, hearken ere I die. 
 
 In the place where we have indicated a pause follows 
 a description, long, rich, and luscious of the three 
 naked goddesses? Fye for shame no of the 'lily 
 flower violet - eyed ' and the ' singing pine ' and the 
 ' over-wandering ivy and vine ' and ' festoons ' and 
 'gnarled boughs' and 'tree tops' and 'berries' and 
 ' flowers ' and all the inanimate beauties of the scene. 
 It would be unjust to the ingenuus pudor of the author 
 not to observe the art with which he has veiled this 
 ticklish interview behind such luxuriant trellis - work, 
 and it is obvious that it is for our special sakes he has
 
 30 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 entered into these local details, because if there was 
 one thing which 'mother Ida' knew better than an- 
 other, it must have been her own bushes and brakes. 
 We then have in detail the tempting- speeches of, first : 
 
 The imperial Olympian, 
 
 With arched eyebrow smiling sovranly, 
 
 Full-eyed Here; 
 
 secondly, of Pallas : 
 
 O'eri 
 and thirdly : 
 
 Her clear and bared limbs 
 O'erthwarted with the brazen-headed spear ; 
 
 Idalian Aphrodite ocean-born, 
 Fresh as the foam, new-bathed in Paphian wells', 
 
 for one dip, or even three dips in one well, would not 
 have been enough on such an occasion and her succinct 
 and prevailing promise of 
 
 The fairest and most loving wife in Greece, 
 
 upon evil-hearted Paris's catching at which prize, the 
 tender and chaste QEnone exclaims her indignation 
 that she herself should not be considered fair enough, 
 since only yesterday her charms had struck awe into 
 
 A wild and wanton pard, 
 Eyed like the evening star, with playful tail ; 
 
 and proceeds in this anti-Martineau rapture : 
 
 Most loving is she. 
 
 Ah me, my mountain shepherd, that my arms 
 Were wound about thee and my hot lips prest 
 Close close to thine in that quickfalling dew 
 Qi fruitful kisses 
 
 Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die. 
 
 After such reiterated assurances that she was about to 
 die on the spot, it appears that CEnone thought better
 
 Tennyson and Critical Opinion. 31 
 
 of it, and the poem concludes with her taking the wiser 
 course of going" to town to consult her swain's sister, 
 Cassandra, whose advice prevailed upon her to live, as 
 we can, from other sources, assure our readers she did, 
 to a good old age." 
 
 That is the whole criticism of (Enone, and no 
 doubt the gentleman mentioned in the Life who 
 called the Quarterly " the best book in the world 
 next to God's own Bible " was convinced, with his 
 fellows, that (Enone was finally disposed of. It 
 serves Lockhart right to reprint after a lapse of 
 years this cheap and vulgar attempt to ridicule a 
 masterpiece. The same methods could be applied 
 with equal success to the balcony scene in Romeo 
 and Juliet, or to any other impassioned poetry ; and 
 to the people who in the bottom of their hearts dis- 
 like poetry they would always be convincing. But 
 the extraordinary thing is that this man certainly 
 knew a great deal about poetry, and probably liked 
 it when the author was long dead and no longer 
 capable of exciting this exuberant flow of mal- 
 evolence. For it will be observed that Tennyson 
 has justified the criticism by acting upon it. 
 Twenty-six lines of CEnone are quoted by Lock- 
 hart, and of these twenty have disappeared or been 
 altered, and the whole passage of "trellis-work" to 
 which he objected is removed. 
 
 The whole thing is the very quintessence of malice, 
 but admirable as destructive criticism. Tennyson 
 read it and was hurt to the very quick; but he 
 did not read it without profit. The Hesperides 
 disappeared from the reprint in 1843, so did the 
 verses on the room with its ' ' two couches soft and 
 white"; so of course did the passage quoted in 
 The Lotos-Eaters, while the magnificent ending 
 was added; so did some verses quoted from The 
 Lady of Shalott, while others were altered. In
 
 32 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 fact, out of all that Lockhart quoted not one line in 
 twenty is to be found in the 1842 edition. Most 
 have disappeared altogether ; many are altered ; and 
 Tennyson has shown his own power of self-criticism, 
 under the bitter stimulus of Lockhart, both by what 
 he rejected and what he retained. In vain did 
 Lockhart scoff at the sixteen-times-repeated refrain 
 of (Enone. Tennyson knew when he was right 
 and could see when he was wrong. Yet all the 
 fault-finding might have been done in a spirit that 
 would have done no hurt ; as it was, the natural 
 morbid susceptibility of the man was aggravated 
 into a disease that never left him. 
 
 There is nothing further of much moment to 
 notice from 1842 onwards till we come to the pub- 
 lication of Maud. Tennyson's position was assured, 
 even if he had not been appointed Laureate ; but he 
 was still essentially the poet of the younger gener- 
 ation, and the following passage from Mr. Leslie 
 Stephen's Studies of a Biographer describes no 
 doubt rather the feelings of Oxford and Cambridge, 
 than the general verdict of England. 
 
 "Tennyson had already made his mark when I was a 
 schoolboy; and when I was at college all youths who 
 professed a literary turn knew the earlier poems by 
 heart. Ebullient Byronism was a thing of the past. 
 There was no longer any need for the missionary zeal 
 which had taken Cambridge men of an earlier genera- 
 tion to propagate the worship of Shelley at Oxford. 
 ' Chatter ' about that luminary was already becoming 
 commonplace; a mere repetition of poetical orthodoxy. 
 Admiration of Browning, though it was distinctly be- 
 ginning, implied a certain claim to esoteric appreciation. 
 But Tennyson's fame was established, and yet had not 
 lost the full bloom of novelty. It was delightful to 
 catch a young man coming up from the country and 
 indoctrinate him by spouting Locksley Hall and The 
 Lotos-Eaters. In Memoriam had just appeared when I
 
 Tennyson and Critical Opinion. 33 
 
 was a freshman Tennyson became Poet Laureate in 
 my first term and Maud came out the year after I had 
 graduated. ... I only followed my companions 
 when I tacitly assumed that ' poet ' was a phrase 
 equivalent to 'Tennyson'. The enthusiasm no doubt 
 was partly obligatory ; to repudiate it would have been 
 to write oneself down an ass ; but it was also warm and 
 spontaneous. For that one owes a debt of gratitude to 
 the poet not easily to be estimated. It is a blessing- to 
 share an enthusiasm, and I hope rather than believe that 
 modern undergraduates have some equally wholesome 
 stimulus of the kind." 
 
 Yet even in the midst of that enthusiastic admira- 
 tion the appearance of Maud excited strong pro- 
 tests. In the Edinburgh Review it was treated 
 fairly; due tribute was paid to the extraordinary 
 beauty of the love passages; and the reviewer's 
 very intelligent criticism of the metrical innova- 
 tions which the poem contained will have to be 
 discussed later; but there is a protest against the 
 poet for being too much the child of his age, too 
 much affected by the prevailing currents of thought 
 upon political and social evils. But the general 
 tone of the press may fairly be represented by 
 Aytoun's review in Black-wood, concerning which 
 that versatile person wrote to his publisher: 
 
 "You know how I have stuck up for Alfred through 
 thick and thin, and will readily believe that I have not 
 come to this conclusion without a pang; but poetic 
 justice must be done, else the small fry who are occa- 
 sionally served up as whitebait for the gluttons of the 
 Magazine, would have a just cause for complaint." 
 
 After expressing a sincere enthusiasm for the 
 earlier poems, the critic owns to a distaste for In 
 Memoriam, allows that he was disappointed with 
 The Princess^ and is now sadly convinced by the
 
 34 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 perusal of Maud " that the man who has unques- 
 tionably occupied for years the first place among 
 the living British poets, is losing ground with each 
 successive effort ". Aytoun then goes through the 
 poem, quoting with judicial impartiality passage 
 after passage, and denouncing their cacophony, 
 their namby-pamby sentiment, or their violence, 
 turn by turn. Two cantos only please him that 
 beginning "A voice by the cedar tree" and "Come 
 into the garden, Maud". Here obviously we are 
 in presence of a critical opinion perfectly irrecon- 
 cilable with that which now obtains, and Aytoun's 
 objections are nearly all objections to qualities of 
 style. Tennyson's style must be considered else- 
 where. It will suffice to say here that Aytoun sums 
 up his judgment of Maud by describing it as 
 "ill-considered, crude, tawdry, and objectionable". 
 And the oddest part of the matter is, that Aytoun's 
 sincerity is apparent in every line. 
 
 There was of course a vehement party of sup- 
 porters, and the fact that Tennyson received his 
 D.C.L. at Oxford in the year of Maud's publication 
 is significant. But it is worth while to examine 
 the utterances of a leading partisan in his faction to 
 see what precisely a devout Tennysonian admired 
 in Tennyson in the days when the master's fame 
 was still called in question. The essay published 
 in 1855 by George Brimley, a distinguished Cam- 
 bridge scholar, may be taken as fully representative. 
 Brimley goes through the whole record of his 
 works from 1830 onwards. The earliest poems 
 seem to him, as they do to us, unreal and bodi- 
 less; some "are uninteresting from their subjects, 
 such as The Merman and The Mermaid, The Sea- 
 Fairies, The Kraken, The Dying Swan, &c. No 
 music of verse, no pictorial power, will enable a 
 reader to care for such creatures of the fancy." We 
 are more tolerant nowadays of the fancy, less cla-
 
 Tennyson and Critical Opinion. 35 
 
 morous for the human interest. Mariana and The 
 Arabian Nights, in Brimley's judgment, stand out 
 from the rest. In the second volume The Miller's 
 Daughter and The May^ Queen "at once established 
 Mr. Tennyson's capacity for becoming a popular 
 poet and made him one within a limited circle". In 
 the rest, Brimley complains, the work is like the work 
 of a painter; it appeals to the sensuous and artistic 
 perceptions rather than to the emotions. In short, 
 Tennyson owed his early vogue rather to the do- 
 mestic idyls than to CEnone or The Lotos-Eaters; 
 indeed he recognizes this himself in The Gleam. 
 "With the publication of the Third Series in 
 1842", Brimley continues, "Mr. Tennyson appears 
 distinctly as the poet of his own age. . . . 
 Mermen, mermaids, sea-fairies, Ladies of Shalott, 
 lotos-eaters disappear from the scene; Adelines, 
 Margarets, and Eleanores no longer come as ab- 
 stract types of character without speech, story, or 
 personal relations, figured forth in abundance of 
 similes, but with none of the traits by which the 
 mind apprehends individual men and women; 
 Grecian nymphs no longer pour out their loves 
 and griefs to their mother earth, and Grecian god- 
 desses no longer interfere in the affairs of mortals 
 and shed the lustre of celestial presences on the 
 mountain side." Here is obviously again a critical 
 standpoint very different from ours, which would 
 rank The Lady of Shalott, CEnone, and The Lotos- 
 Eaters among the poet's very best and most char- 
 acteristic work, and certainly immeasurably higher 
 than Godiva or The Gardener's Daughter, which are 
 selected as masterpieces that can make "our human 
 heart beat the stronger for reaction ", and are not 
 only constructed "to amuse the imagination". 
 The desire for poems of English life and the quiet 
 pathos of daily sights and scenes, which makes 
 Brimley set a value to our eyes so dispropor-
 
 36 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 donate upon poems like Dora and The Gardeners 
 Daughter is no doubt traceable to a reaction against 
 that straining after the accidentally picturesque, 
 which began with Scott's medievalism, ran into 
 Byron's oriental scenes, and degenerated into Lalla 
 Rookhs and their successors. Then follows a 
 spirited defence of Maud and of The Princess, 
 which latter poem is oddly described as one that 
 "treats the sexual relations in their most comprehen- 
 sive form, and may so be considered as containing 
 implicitly all love poems as the poetical statement 
 of the law which they all exhibit in particular in- 
 stances". But Brimley's final eulogy is reserved 
 for In Memoriam (as his final thrust is reserved for 
 the critic in B lack-wood, who " leaves it on the shelf 
 with Blair's Grave"}, and the last word of all 
 appeals from the critics to the verdict of the people 
 of England, who not only buy edition after edition, 
 but have taken the New Year's hymn Ring out, wild 
 bells for "a national song of hope and prophecy of 
 all good things to come ". 
 
 In 1859 appeared the Idylls, and from this on- 
 ward critical opinion resolved itself into a chorus 
 of eulogy. The following letter from Thackeray is 
 perhaps the extremest in expression, and also the 
 most characteristic, of many letters of congratula- 
 tion. It is written from an inn at Folkestone. 
 
 " My dear Alfred, 
 
 "I owe you a letter of happiness and thanks. 
 Sir, about three weeks ago, when I was ill in bed, I read 
 The Idylls of the King, and I thought ' Oh, I must write 
 to him now for this pleasure, this delight, this splendour 
 of happiness which I have been enjoying! But I should 
 have blotted the sheets, 'tis ill writing on one's back. 
 The letter full of gratitude never went as far as the 
 post-office, and how comes it now? 
 
 "D'abord, a bottle of claret (the landlord of the
 
 Tennyson and Critical Opinion. 37 
 
 hotel asked me down to the cellar and treated me). 
 Then afterwards, sitting" here, an old magazine, JFraser's 
 Magazine, 1850, and I come on a poem out of The 
 Princess which says, ' I hear the horns of Elfland blow- 
 ing-, blowing-', no, it's ' the horns of Elfland faintly 
 blowing ' (I have been into my bedroom to fetch my 
 pen and it has made that blot), and reading- these 
 lines, which only one man in the world could write, 
 I thought about the other horns of Elfland blowing- in 
 full strength, and Arthur in gold armour and Guine- 
 vere in gold hair, and all these knights and heroes 
 and beauties, and purple landscapes, and misty gray 
 lakes in which you have made me live. They seem like 
 facts to me, since about three weeks ag-o (three weeks, 
 or a month, was it?) when I read the book. It is on 
 the table yonder, and I don't like, somehow, to disturb 
 it, but the delig-ht and gratitude ! You have made me 
 as happy as I was as a child in the Arabian Nights, 
 every step I have walked in England has been a sort 
 of Paradise to me. (The landlord gave two bottles of 
 his claret, and I think I drank the most), and here I 
 have been lying- back in the chair and thinking of these 
 most delightful Idylls, my thoughts being turned to you; 
 what could I do but be grateful to that surprising genius 
 which has made me so happy? Do you understand that 
 what I mean is all true, and that I should break out 
 were you sitting opposite with a pipe in your mouth? 
 Gold and purple and diamonds, I say, gentlemen, and 
 glory and love and honour, and if you haven't given me 
 all these, why should I be in such an ardour of grati- 
 tude? But I have out of that dear book the greatest 
 delight that has ever come to me since I was a young 
 man; to write and think about it makes me almost 
 young, and this I suppose is what I am doing, like an 
 after-dinner speech." 1 
 
 Such a letter from such a man is an event in any 
 life. But what Thackeray said was scarcely stronger 
 than what the press and the best-known men in the 
 country were saying. 
 
 * Life, L p. 444.
 
 38 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 Here at last was the great " national poem" for 
 which the Edinburgh Review had pleaded since the 
 1842 volume. Yet amongst the most faithful there 
 was a certain regret. Mr. Leslie Stephen admits 
 that after the Idylls he was somewhat an alien from 
 the inner circle of the truly devout, FitzGerald was 
 not enthusiastic, and Ruskin wrote, doubtful "about 
 that increased quietness of style". With that insight 
 which so often has distinguished his judgments, 
 he puts the whole case against the Idylls into four 
 lines, admirable in their courtesy: 
 
 "As a description of various nobleness and tenderness 
 the book is without price ; but I shall always wish it had 
 been nobleness independent of a romantic condition of 
 externals in general". 1 
 
 He demands from the poet "the intense masterful 
 and unerring transcript of an actuality"; something 
 nearer to real human life. "This seems to me", he 
 writes, "the true task of the modern poet. And I 
 think I have seen faces and heard voices by road 
 and street side which claimed or conferred as much 
 as ever the loveliest or saddest of Camelot." 
 
 But these were only the voices of a small minority; 
 and from 1860 onwards it may be said with certainty 
 that Tennyson commanded the widest public that a 
 living poet has ever addressed. Men and women 
 read him in the Australian bush as they read him 
 in the crowded houses of New York, or among the 
 chimneys of a Lancashire manufacturing town; they 
 read him, and they never stinted him of praise. He 
 had entered in on his heritage, and it was a great 
 one. 
 
 i Life, iL p. 453-
 
 Tennyson's Treatment of Love. 39 
 
 Chapter III. 
 Tennyson's Treatment of Love. 
 
 There is in the Life a very remarkable letter from 
 Lord Dufferin to the poet, in which the writer ex- 
 pressed his gratitude for what may fairly rank 
 among the greatest of all services. 
 
 "For the first twenty years of my life", he says, "I 
 not only did not care for poetry, but to the despair of 
 my friends absolutely disliked it, at least so much of it 
 as until that time had fallen in my way. In vain my 
 mother read to me Dryden, Pope, Byron, Young-, Cow- 
 per, and all the standard classics of the day; each seemed 
 to me as distasteful as I had from early infancy found 
 Virgil. . . . Soon afterwards I fell in with a volume of 
 yours, and suddenly felt such a sensation of delight as 
 I never experienced before. A new world seemed open 
 to me, and from that day, by a constant study of your 
 works, I gradually worked my way to a thorough ap- 
 preciation of what is good in all kinds of authors." J 
 
 That is, put in an extreme case, the service which 
 each poet renders to his generation or his age. He 
 reveals to it the beauty and colour of life, as it is 
 interpreted by art. Byron had done the same for a 
 generation earlier, had done it for Tennyson him- 
 self in boyhood. How far back may be traced the 
 new ascendency is matter for conjecture, but one 
 may say with confidence that almost every lover of 
 literature who speaks our language, born since 
 1830, has begun his own personal pursuit of poetry 
 with Tennyson's love poems. There are, of course, 
 minds among young people who seize from the first 
 upon those poems, with In Memoriam at their head, 
 which embody Tennyson's central thought, his pe- 
 
 1 Life, \. p. 427. 
 (M636) D
 
 40 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 culiar message. But the natural taste of youth in 
 poetry is for love poetry. It is the awakening con- 
 sciousness of the sex attraction that demands to find 
 itself expressed in a harmony of words ; and just as 
 that is the first passion in the lovers of poetry, so 
 f also it is the poet's first inspiration. That is to say, 
 Tennyson was the first poet that most of us cared 
 about when we were young, and what we cared for 
 especially was his love poetry. As we grew older 
 we probably found that there was a great deal to 
 be said on the subject which Tennyson had not at- 
 tempted to say. We found, most of us, in Brown- 
 ing a stronger passion, beside which the vague 
 aspirations of youth after an ideal of beauty seemed 
 unsatisfying; and though we still admired Tenny- 
 son, we admired him now for other excellences. But 
 none the less, his love poetry remains historically 
 and logically the first thing to be considered. 
 
 If one looks at the Juvenilia one sees just one 
 poem, The Supposed Confessions of a Seconds-rate 
 Sensitive Mind, which is interesting for what it 
 says only one which is a document in the poet's 
 spiritual biography. It is also by far the least 
 interesting and least accomplished in point of form 
 and style. Nearly all the rest are experiments in 
 metre, the work of a young artist trying what he 
 could do with language. From that point of view 
 they will have to be considered later on. The point 
 to note at present is, that they are mostly about 
 women imaginary women, the ideals built up 
 about some pretty face or attractive personality. 
 You have the Madelines and Adelines, Lilians, 
 Margarets, Kates, and the rest, elaborately de- 
 scribed in phrases that one remembers for their 
 beauty, but the women are never individualized by 
 a single human touch. The boy who wrote these 
 things had certainly been in love with the desire to 
 be in love, but never got beyond himself so far as
 
 Tennyson's Treatment of Love. 41 
 
 to realize what is meant by passion. In Oriana 
 he writes a ballad, telling the tragic end of a love, 
 and he writes it chiefly to ring the changes upon 
 musical syllables. In Mariana there is indeed a 
 generalized study of passion a woman's yearning 
 for the absent but practically the poem is a study 
 in landscape effects. Like a boy, when he sees the 
 beauty of nature, or its suggestion, he sees it as a 
 setting for some vague dream of love. The one 
 poem of this period, The Lover's Tale, which at- 
 tempts definitely to portray passion, was suppressed, 
 and only published in self-defence years afterwards ; 
 and a very curious poem it is. The whole is 
 wrapped in a haze of wild and whirling words out 
 of which you gather that there is a boy very much 
 in love. But whom is he in love with? The girl is 
 the shadow of a shadow, a boy's dream. He loves 
 her because she is a girl and he is a boy, not 
 because he is he and she is she. The definite and 
 irresistible attraction between two individual natures 
 has not yet dawned upon him ; only the vague im- 
 pulse of sex towards sex and youth towards youth. 
 In the volume of 1832 there were two distinct 
 attempts to render passion: Fatima and Mariana in 
 the South. In each the poet was working with pure 
 imagination in the effort to show the love of woman 
 passion simply in its most naked form of com- 
 plete abandonment. Why these women love, whom 
 they love, the poet never stops to tell us ; they are 
 simply pictures of passion. Mariana dwells in 
 solitude a solitude of the South, where burning 
 sunshine drives all life out of the open to seek for 
 shelter, but at the heart of this solitude is a sleepless 
 longing. In Fatima almost for the only time Ten- 
 nyson paints the physical traits of passion: 
 
 Last night, when some one spoke his name, 
 From my swift blood that went and came
 
 42 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 A thousand little shafts of flame 
 
 Were shivered in my narrow frame. 
 O Love, O fire ! once he drew 
 With one long kiss my whole soul thro' 
 My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew. 
 
 Women have praised Fatima, and in this matter 
 they should be judges. But it is interesting to 
 note how unlike is this to Tennyson's portrayal of 
 love in man. Nowhere is this self-surrender hinted 
 at; always the man's desire is to master to be 
 
 Lord of the pulse that is lord of my breast 
 
 And it is curious to note how frequently in the love 
 idylls man is put into an attitude of condescension. 
 So it is in The Millers Daughter. The lover has 
 to soothe away the apprehensions of his Alice, and 
 love her the better for her fears; he is conscious 
 that she will do him credit, even when she cannot 
 make up her mind about the dress in which she 
 ought to be seen by his mother. In The Lord of 
 Burleigh the promoted bride feels herself unequal 
 to the splendours of her lot, and droops under her 
 lord's superiority. Even the Gardener's Daughter 
 is very much in the attitude of the Beggar Maid 
 before King Cophetua. This does not alter the 
 beauty of the poems King Cophetua is admirable, 
 and The Gardener's Daughter a miracle of luxuriant 
 word-painting; but after all, one looks in vain 
 through all this for the authentic note of passion. 
 This Cupid is charming, bowered about with roses, 
 and attended by a procession of prospective babies, 
 but he is a very domestic deity, not the " lord of 
 terrible aspect " who lives in Romeo and Juliet or 
 Antony and Cleopatra. And the interminable con- 
 descension of the hero grows irritating in the long 
 run. In Edwin Morris there is a kind of preliminary 
 sketch of Locksley Hall', we find the slight, pretty
 
 Tennyson's Treatment of Love. 43 
 
 little person who is terrified by her parents out of 
 the nobler fortunes which awaited her as the chosen 
 of a heroic character. In Locksley /fa// itself, which 
 is a real love poem, one has to admit that the note 
 of passion is there. But all the same one comes 
 upon the old central idea. Amy has proved un- 
 worthy of the high destiny that was in store for her. 
 There is condescension in the wooing. 
 
 And I said, " My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me, 
 Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee". 
 
 In a word, the lover will be graciously pleased to 
 love her. Then come the magnificent lines that 
 would redeem a hundred imperfections though it 
 is not imperfections that one has to allege: this 
 fault is of the very essence. 
 
 Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with 
 
 might; 
 Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of 
 
 sight. 
 
 I do not believe that love ever induced this young 
 man to forget himself. He is always conscious of 
 his improving influence upon the submissive Amy 
 and when she deserts him, he reproaches her 
 with forsaking the ideal 
 
 Is it well to wish thee happy? having known me to decline 
 On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine? 
 
 Heaven forgive you for a prig! is the inevitable 
 comment. Of course the thing is human nature, 
 but it is not agreeable human nature. Still, it is 
 genuine love poetry. But in the 1832 volume there 
 had already appeared one poem, The Sisters, which 
 was really tense with passion. That made it ap- 
 parent that, if Tennyson avoided subjects where 
 men and women were to be seen transfigured, and
 
 44 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 acting either above or below their natural selves, it 
 was not because he could not conceive a love that 
 might be inseparable from hate, and might conflict 
 rather than harmonize with the whole nature of the 
 lover. And among the poems which appeared first 
 in 1842 was one that breathes the very spirit of the 
 conflict between flesh and spirit, where the two are 
 so interpenetrated with one another that their voices 
 can hardly be distinguished. The man who wrote 
 these lines in Love and Duty certainly knew what 
 passion was, and knew how to stamp its features: 
 
 Ill-fated that I am, what lot is mine 
 
 Whose foresight preaches peace, my heart so slow 
 
 To feel it ! For how hard it seem'd to me 
 
 When eyes, love-languid thro' half tears, would dwell 
 
 One earnest, earnest moment upon mine, 
 
 Then not to dare to see ! when thy low voice, 
 
 Faltering, would break its syllables, to keep 
 
 My own full-tuned, hold passion in a leash, 
 
 And not leap forth and fall about thy neck, 
 
 And on thy bosom (deep-desired relief!) 
 
 Rain out the heavy mist of tears, that weigh'd 
 
 Upon my brain, my senses and my soul 1 
 
 It is only just to point out that a man with this 
 power at his command had an easy range over 
 scenes that must always excite, and if he left them 
 unwritten, most likely did so from a sense of the 
 responsibility that weighs upon an artist in paint- 
 ing such emotions. Yet the truth is rather that 
 Tennyson conceived of the true subject for poetry 
 as lying, not in passion, but in the mastery of 
 passion. In Love and Duty he lets himself go far 
 enough to show the conflict, but the attitude is still 
 the same. Decision rests with the man, and it 
 must be owned that this situation has in it some- 
 thing unsympathetic. It is the converse of the 
 relation we find in Sidney's Astrophel and Stella, 
 where the strife of love and duty is so beautifully
 
 Tennyson's Treatment of Love. 45 
 
 rendered, but it is the woman who resists. Tenny- 
 son seems to lack all feeling for the woman's natural 
 reaction against what Stevenson, writing a very 
 kindred scene in Weir of Hermiston, calls "the 
 schoolmaster that is present in all men " : 
 
 Then followed counsel, comfort, and the words 
 That make a man feel strong in speaking truth. 
 
 The relation is still that of the hero in Locksley 
 Hall to his Amy; true enough, but, as I have 
 said, unsympathetic. The schoolmaster is never a 
 taking character. Yet one forgives much for the 
 beautiful lines, where the lover consigns even the 
 shadow of himself to oblivion : 
 
 Should it cross thy dreams, 
 O might it come like one that looks content, 
 With quiet eyes unfaithful to the truth. 
 
 But in the next line the moralist comes back, not 
 wholly to be forgiven even for the sake of his 
 exquisite conclusion. 
 
 Of course one has to remember that Tennyson, 
 in this as in most things, reflected the ideals of his 
 age. It was the period of submissive heroines. In 
 1846 Vanity Fair appeared, and Amelia is only a 
 constant Amy; while it really seems clear from a 
 letter of Thackeray's, published the other day, that 
 her creator felt for Becky Sharp little of that sym- 
 pathy which few of us nowadays can deny her. 
 Nor were the poems of which I have spoken the 
 only love poems. The Talking Oak, an extraordi- 
 nary tour de force in style, easily overstepping the 
 line which separates vers de societe from poetry, 
 was not more impassioned than a compliment can 
 be. But in The Sleeping Beauty there was love 
 poetry of the most exquisite and undeniable charm. 
 An exquisite half-comic fancy in the pictures of the
 
 46 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 sleeping court alternates with romantic imagination 
 in the figures of the Sleeping Princess and the 
 
 Fairy prince, with joyful eyes 
 And lighter-footed than the fox ; 
 
 and the poem closes in the lovely canto of The 
 Departure^ where one feels under and through the 
 mere beauty of words all the symbolism of the 
 story, all the quickening of the sleeping pulses 
 that love wakens into life. 
 
 And on her lover's arm she leant, 
 
 And round her waist she felt it fold, 
 And far across the hills they went 
 
 In that new world which is the old : 
 Across the hills, and far away 
 
 Beyond their utmost purple rim, 
 And deep into the dying day 
 
 The happy princess followM him. 
 
 Unhappily, however, this gem has been put into 
 an early Victorian setting. In the volume of 1830 
 appeared the stanzas which describe the Sleeping 
 Beauty a gorgeous example of luxuriant imagina- 
 tion. To these Tennyson added others completing 
 the legend, some inferior, some even better, but all 
 harmonizing. Only, when the thing was done he 
 could not be content without a comment. Already 
 he was dogged by the spirit of didactic allegory, 
 and he moralizes the legend, whose meaning he 
 had hinted sufficiently in the verse I quoted above. 
 Some of the moralizing is done with admirable 
 felicity, though all of it would be better away, but 
 it lapses toward the end into the sheer common- 
 place of this address to his " Lady Flora " : 
 
 In the name of wife, 
 And in the rights that name may give, 
 Are clasped the moral of thy life, 
 And that for which I care to live.
 
 Tennyson's Treatment of Love. 47 
 
 The same tendency made itself perceptible more 
 conspicuously in his next volume. The Princess, 
 considered as poetry, suffers from the vice of being 
 too apposite. Questionings as to the true position 
 of woman in society, the true relation between the 
 sexes, and the true training for female minds and 
 bodies, were in the air, and Tennyson, after his 
 wont, thought to-day what England was going to 
 think to-morrow. It is the Nemesis of advanced 
 thought that the heresy of one age becomes the 
 platitude of the next, and Tennyson was in the 
 eyes of the orthodox always mildly heretical. Every 
 age likes a new and appropriate moral, but the 
 more close-fitting and appropriate the moral the 
 more certainly will it be superseded. Poetry, if it 
 is to last, must deal with the truths that are neither 
 old nor new truths that each generation in the 
 cycles of mankind rediscovers for itself. Tennyson 
 of course knew this well enough, and by an amaz- 
 ing tour de force he succeeded in uniting his 
 poetical pamphleteering on the question of woman's 
 rights to the eternal freshness of a love story. He 
 constructed an elaborate extravaganza adorned with 
 every possible virtuosity of style, clothing a sort of 
 glorified school-treat in a gorgeous mantle of words, 
 and not shrinking even from the sublime, when the 
 sublime came closest to the ridiculous. What could 
 be finer than Ida's paean of triumph? 
 
 Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n ; the seed, 
 The little seed they laughed at in the dark, 
 Has risen and cleft the soil and grown a bulk 
 Of spanless girth that lays on every side 
 A thousand arms and rushes to the Sun. 
 
 And yet, when you think that this is sung by a 
 lecturer on astronomy to celebrate the triumph of 
 mail-clad knights who contend for the right of 
 women to go to college, the reflection is saddening.
 
 48 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 Nowhere in literature not even in Cyrano de Ber- 
 gerac is there so much poetical genius squandered 
 upon a ridiculous framework as in The Princess. 
 
 And yet, when one was young, probably one 
 liked the Princess better than anything else. When 
 one was very young, it filled the mind with noble 
 aspirations towards improving the intellectual con- 
 dition of one's less fortunate sisters and cousins. 
 Then there were, and there are, always the songs, 
 happily detachable from the context; songs that 
 may rank with the very best in their kind that any 
 literature has to show. But lastly and chiefly, one 
 liked The Princess for the love story. It is hard to 
 believe that one liked the earlier passages where 
 the prince conducts his wooing in a petticoat ; but 
 all the scene of his recovery Ida's nursing of the 
 wounded prince, and the gradual birth of love in 
 her, described in lines which every one knows by 
 heart; the prince's awakening and his appeal to the 
 " sweet dream " to fulfil itself verses exquisite in 
 their movement; Ida's yielding, and the beauty of 
 her womanhood celebrated in a passage where the 
 pomp of words rings like a triumphal march all 
 this breathes the very spirit of love poetry. Then, 
 immediately following on this, come the lyric and 
 the " small sweet idyll" which the princess reads 
 to her lover poems which, set as they are in that 
 high-wrought luxuriance of style, have to be, and 
 are, xP^ r VXP vcr Te P a diamonds within gold. 
 
 The final passage has magnificent lines and noble 
 thoughts in plenty, but when the Prince awakes to 
 full consciousness I fear the schoolmaster revives 
 with him. By the necessity of the situation we are 
 reminded of the ridiculous story with which this 
 fabric of beauty is compacted, like a piece of rich 
 stained glass in a doll's house; by the nature of 
 Tennyson we are again brought face to face with 
 the moralizer. Man resumes his role as the exhor-
 
 Tennyson's Treatment of Love. 49 
 
 ter and uplifter; and the last line of the poem sums 
 up his whole attitude 
 
 Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me. 
 
 For a youth who began by masquerading in petti- 
 coats this is hopelessly incongruous; and even if 
 one accepts the incongruity as part of the poet's 
 scheme, the moral stand-point involved is, one 
 must repeat, more admirable than sympathetic. 
 
 But when all is said, there is no sort of doubt as 
 to the rank of Tennyson's best love poetry. Maud i 
 puts an end to cavillings ; for Maud is simply the 
 
 reatest love poem that has been written since 
 hakespeare. It is the most original thing that 
 Tennyson ever did, the most complete expression, 
 not perhaps of the man, but of the poet in the man; 
 and merely from a technical point of view it was 
 absolutely novel. English literature presented no 
 example of a lyrical drama before Maud; and the 
 free use in serious poetry of common names for 
 common things had never before been carried so 
 far; the imaginary barrier between poetry and prose 
 was finally broken down, and no poet, after the 
 storm raised by academic critics against passages 
 in Maud had subsided, could possibly find himself 
 damned to a dialect or jargon. Maud is a triumph 
 in many ways: triumphant as an innovation in 
 style and form; triumphant in its proof how a 
 poet can throw into his crucible the most varied ma- 
 terial, comments upon passing events, a patriot's 
 anger, observation of nature more minute than 
 Wordsworth's, and yet fuse them all into an 
 inseparable whole by the dominant unity of a cen- 
 tral emotion. But above all it is a triumph of sus- 
 tained passion. Long as it is, complex as is the 
 story it tells, one never thinks of anything but the 
 love interest The lover's bitterness against the
 
 50 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 world is simply the measure of his need for love. 
 The one drawback of the poem is of course that the 
 protagonist is a character little formed to attract 
 sympathy. Touched with madness, he is at the 
 worst "splenetic, personal, base"; at the best mor- 
 bid. Still, one has to take inspiration as it comes; 
 and it must be remembered that Tennyson's ideal 
 man, the "still strong man in a blatant land", is 
 not one to be so shaken, even by love. The hero 
 of Maud is not heroic. If you come to that, Romeo 
 is not a particularly admirable person. Romeo is 
 attractive, no doubt; and Maud's lover, this mor- 
 bidly self-centred person, quick to construe looks 
 into contempt and vehemently eager to sting back, 
 is repellent. But he is in love as much as ever 
 Romeo was, and no one has ever rendered the 
 healing touch of love upon the fevers of wounded 
 pride with more subtlety than Tennyson in the 
 early cantos. The story no doubt imposed itself 
 upon him; he hardly chose it; for the history of 
 the poem is curious. 
 
 In 1837 was published in The Tribute, a miscel- 
 lany compiled by Lord Northampton for a charitable 
 purpose, that canto which in the finished poem re- 
 presents the lover's mind brooding on the first 
 tidings of Maud's death. It is so interesting to 
 see this germ of a great poem that I transcribe it, 
 italicizing the lines which were altered or sup- 
 pressed in Maud. 
 
 STANZAS BY ALFRED TENNYSON, ESQ. 
 
 Oh that 'twere possible, 
 After long gnef and pain, 
 
 To find the arms of my true-love 
 Round me once again !
 
 Tennyson's Treatment of Love. 51 
 
 When I was wont to meet her 
 In the silent woody places 
 
 Of the land that gave me birth, 
 We stood tranced in long embraces 
 Mixt with kisses sweeter, sweeter, 
 Than any thing on earth. 
 
 IIL 
 
 A shadow flits before me 
 
 Not thou but like to thee. 
 Ah, God ! that it were possible 
 
 For one short hour to see 
 The souls we loved, that they might tell us 
 
 What and where they be. 
 
 It leads me forth at evening, 
 It lightly winds and steals 
 
 In a cold white robe before me 
 When all my spirit reels 
 
 At the shouts, the leagues of lights. 
 And the roaring of the wheels. 
 
 Half the night I waste in sighs, 
 In a wakeful doze I sorrow 
 
 For the hand, the lips, the eyes, 
 For the meeting of to-morrow, 
 The delight of happy laughter, 
 
 The delight of low replies. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Do I hear the pleasant ditty 
 
 That I heard her chant of old? 
 But I wake my dream is fled 
 Without knowledge, without pity, 
 
 In the shuddering dawn behold 
 By the curtains of my bed 
 That abiding phantom cold. 
 
 Then I rise ; the eave-drops fall 
 And the yellow vapours choke 
 The great city, sounding wide.
 
 52 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 The day comes a dull red ball 
 Wrapt in drifts of lurid smoke 
 On the misty river-tide. 
 
 VIIL 
 
 Thro' the hubbub of the market 
 
 I steal, a wasted frame ; 
 It crosseth here, it crosseth there 
 Thro' all the crowd, confused and loud, 
 
 The shadow still the same. 
 And on my heavy eyelids 
 
 My anguish hangs like shame. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Alas for her that met me, 
 
 That heard me softly call- 
 Came glimmering through the laurels 
 
 At the quiet even-fall, 
 In the garden by the turrets 
 Of the old Baronial Hall. 
 
 Then the broad light glares and beats ; 
 And the sunk eye flits and fleets, 
 
 And will not let me be. 
 I loathe the squares and streets, 
 And the faces that one meets, 
 
 Hearts with no love for me ; 
 Always I long to creep 
 To some still cavern deep, 
 And to weep and weep and weep 
 
 My whole soul out to thee. 
 
 XL 
 
 Get thee hence, nor come again, 
 Pass and cease to move about 
 
 Pass, thou death-like type of pain, 
 Mix not memory with doubt 
 
 'Tis the blot upon the brain 
 That -will show itself without 
 
 Would the happy spirit descend 
 In the chamber or the street 
 As she looks among the blest?
 
 Tennyson's Treatment of Love. 53 
 
 Should I fear to greet my friend, 
 Or to ask her "Take me, sweet, 
 To the region of thy rest"? 
 
 XIII. 
 
 But she tarries in her place 
 And I paint the beauteous face 
 Of the maiden, that I lost, 
 In my inner eyes again, 
 Lest my heart be overborne 
 Bv the thing I hold in scorn, 
 By a dull mechanic ghost 
 And a juggle of the brain. 
 
 I can shadow forth my bride 
 As I knew her fair and kind 
 
 As I ivod'd her for my wife; 
 She is lovely by my side 
 
 In the silence of my life 
 'Tts a phantom of the mind. 
 
 'Tt's a phantom fair and good 
 I can call it to my side, 
 
 So to guard my life from ill, 
 Thd its ghastly sister glide 
 
 And be moved around me still 
 With the moving of the blood 
 That is moved not of the will. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Let it pass, the dreary brow, 
 
 Let the dismal face go by, 
 Will it lead me to the grave? 
 
 Then I lose it: it will fly : 
 Can it overlast the nerves? 
 
 Can it overlive the eye? 
 But the other, like a star, 
 Thro' the channel windethfar 
 
 Till it fade and fail and die. 
 To its Archetype that waits 
 Clad in light by golden gates, 
 Clad in light the Spirit waits 
 
 To embrace me in the sky.
 
 54 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 Comparison shows that of these sixteen stanzas 
 which describe the lover as haunted by a physical 
 illusion, the last three are struck out in Maud. The 
 first five are all but identical, save that in the fifth 
 two exquisite lines are added. The sixth stanza in 
 Maud("'Tis a morning pure and sweet") is new; 
 the seventh is a good deal modified from the sixth 
 of these; lines are inserted that refer to the duel; 
 and it is followed by the verse which here stands as 
 eleventh. The next three (vii., viii., and ix. above) 
 are reproduced continuously. After them comes 
 the stanza "Would the happy spirit descend", 
 which Tennyson seems to think makes it suffi- 
 ciently clear that the "dull mechanic ghost" is not 
 Maud's own spirit but "a juggle of the brain", and 
 thus dispenses with the original conclusion ; so in 
 Maud the canto ends with the passionate cry of 
 what is here the tenth stanza. 
 
 Years later a friend Sir John Simeon pointed 
 out that the verses implied a story, and urged that 
 it should be written ; and so Maud came into being. 
 Unlike the Idylls, Enoch Arden^ and most of the 
 narrative poems, it was the poet's absolute inven- 
 tion ; it was based on no incident already recorded, 
 and for that reason it has a peculiar interest. Mad- 
 ness and all kindred forms of brooding possession, 
 the working of a mind distorted from its natural 
 self, always had a curious fascination for Tennyson. 
 As early as in The Lovers Tale one finds the notion 
 of a person walking in visions; the prince with his 
 "weird seizures" in The Princess reproduces the 
 theme; and Lancelot's frenzy in The Holy Grail 
 is yet another example. Much praise has been 
 bestowed, and with reason, upon the scene in the 
 madhouse which depicts the half-crazed delirium of 
 a mind haunted by thoughts that it cannot clearly 
 envisage. There are touches in it which Shake- 
 speare might not disdain:
 
 Tennyson's Treatment of Love. 55 
 
 Arsenic, arsenic, sure, would do it, 
 Except that now we poison our babes, poor souls ! 
 It is all used up for that. 
 
 That is the really sudden, half-shrewd, half-childish 
 thrust of mad talk; and there is the pathos of a 
 mad complaint in this cry of the man who believes 
 himself dead and troubled in the grave: 
 
 O me, why have they not buried me deep enough? 
 Is it kind to have made me a grave so rough, 
 Me that was never a quiet sleeper? 
 
 Many too have been eloquent in commendation 
 of the half-prophetic rhapsodies which begin and 
 end the poems these denunciations of what is 
 sordid and criminal in modern life, those foretell- 
 ings of what is brighter in the prospect, which 
 resemble passages in the early and the later Locks- 
 ley Hall poems. But the real essential beauty of 
 Maud lies not in this fiery rhetoric, but in the love 
 story. Browning has written love poems scarcely 
 less beautiful in a manlier key; but no one else, to 
 my thinking, has so well painted the sheer ecstasy 
 of passion. Passion grows and spreads like a 
 flower out of this seed of beauty lighting on a heart 
 prepared for it by endless longings for something 
 to love; and with passion spring the inevitable 
 jealousies and heart-burnings; but love finds its 
 long-waited answer; and the strain rises from climax 
 to climax, through palpitating beauties, till it calms 
 itself for a moment in the triumph song of assur- 
 ance: 
 
 I have led her home, my love, my only friend. 
 There is none like her, none. 
 
 This too swells into far-reaching thoughts, where 
 the glow of that splendour spreads itself even over 
 "sullen-seeming death". And the lover, wonder- 
 
 (U686)
 
 56 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 ing at this funereal note, questions himself, and 
 answers, in lines surely as like the lyrical mood of 
 Shakespeare as were ever written: 
 
 O why should Love, like men in drinking-songs, 
 Spice his fair banquet with the dust of death? 
 
 Make answer, Maud, my bliss, 
 Maud made my Maud by that long loving kiss, 
 Life of my life, wilt thou not answer this? 
 ' The dusky strand of Death inwoven here 
 With dear Love's tie, makes Love himself more dear.' 
 
 Then come hindrances to meeting, impatience, 
 and bitterness, checked by thoughts of love; and 
 last of all, the wonderful rhapsody of the lover wait- 
 ing in the garden, half mad with longing for the 
 desired beauty, where his passion clothes itself in 
 words that have the colour and the scent of every 
 flower; where the flowers themselves grow living 
 witnesses and answer him with intimations of 
 Mauds coming, in stanzas where the gorgeous 
 imagery heightens and cannot hide the flush of 
 desire. It is a sin to read these verses out of their 
 context; they are too highly wrought to stand any- 
 where but at the head of a mounting climax, for 
 they breathe the very delirium of love. Elaborate 
 and fanciful as they seem when you take them by 
 themselves, read in their place they are nothing 
 but the natural and inevitable utterance of passion. 
 All Nature is on tiptoe with expectation, for we 
 see all nature through the lover's soul. That is 
 why the red rose may cry her coming, the white 
 rose weep, the larkspur listen, and the lily whisper; 
 and surely no one but Mr. Ruskin ever found a 
 ' pathetic fallacy ' in their doing so. It is the inar- 
 ticulate cry of sheer passion wrought into words, as 
 fanciful as the final stanza, yet as true to nature as 
 its impassioned reduplication of the lyrical thought 
 the central motive of the song:
 
 Tennyson's Treatment of Love. 57 
 
 She is coming, my own, my sweet ; 
 
 Were it ever so airy a tread, 
 My heart would hear her and beat, 
 
 Were it earth in an earthy bed; 
 My dust would hear her and beat 
 
 Had I lain for a century dead; 
 Would start and tremble under her feet 
 
 And blossom in purple and red. 
 
 It is a very different love poetry from this that 
 we find in the Idylls where we find it at all. 
 Gareth and Lynette is the pretty fanciful tale of a 
 youth and maiden, but not rooted in human nature. 
 The Marriage of Geraint tells beautifully the sudden 
 happiness of Enid and her worship for the great 
 Knight who comes into her life like a burst of sun- 
 shine, rescues her, and promotes her to be his wife. 
 The later story of her sufferings with him is the 
 tale of patient Griselda, told with a new beauty of 
 phrasing, but in itself, like so many of the mediaeval 
 inventions, based on a quixotic scruple of sentiment. 
 Wifely allegiance strained to this point trenches 
 on the ridiculous, just as do the fantastic observ- 
 ances by which the paladins honoured their loves. 
 Very different is the really exquisite story of Lance- 
 lot and Elaine, which tells of a girl's natural pas- 
 sion, complete in its self-surrender, for a man who 
 is too great to pride himself on the love he has 
 awakened, and who, seeing it, and being bound to 
 another, pays it all he can his reverence and his 
 pity. A letter of Jowett's is so striking that I can- 
 not but quote three sentences from it: 
 
 "'The Lily Maid' seems to me the fairest, purest, 
 sweetest love poem in the English language. It moves 
 me like the love of Juliet in Shakspeare (though that is 
 not altogether parallel), and I do not doubt, whatever 
 opinions are expressed about it, that it will in a few years 
 be above criticism. 
 
 "There are hundreds and hundreds of all ages (and
 
 58 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 men as well as women) who, although they have not 
 died for love (have no intention of doing so), will find 
 there a sort of ideal consolation of their own troubles 
 and remembrances." 
 
 It is indeed the one of all the Idylls which seems 
 most likely to stand the test of time ; and though, 
 as Jowett says, Elaine has little in common with 
 Juliet, this presentation of a girl's ideal passion, 
 with little of earthly in it but the desire to serve 
 and minister, may rank high among the truest love 
 poetry. 
 
 I cannot say as much for the other Idylls. Pelleas 
 and Ettarre seems to me simply incredible; even 
 the love-sick imaginings which a boy may weave 
 about a courtesan have reasonable limits. The 
 passionate story of Tristram and Isolt has grown 
 cold among the moralizings of these later poems; 
 and Lancelot and Guinevere have been selected to 
 point the certainty of retribution where love is 
 chosen in place of duty. What Tennyson paints 
 is not their passion the central inspiration of the 
 whole legend for other story-tellers but their strug- 
 gles with conscience, for it and against it. It is 
 curious to see how cold is even his early lyric Sir 
 Lancelot and Guinevere, that tells of their ride to 
 Camelot "in the boyhood of the year" when the 
 spring was in their blood. All that he sings of is, 
 not their mutual impulse to each other, but simply 
 her beauty: 
 
 As fast she fled through sun and shade 
 The happy winds upon her played, 
 Blowing the ringlet from her braid, 
 She looked so lovely as she swayed 
 
 Her rein with dainty finger tips, 
 A man had given all other bliss, 
 And all his worldly worth for this, 
 To waste his whole heart in one kiss 
 
 Upon her perfect lips.
 
 Tennyson's Treatment of Love. 59 
 
 Yet there are just four lines in the Idyll of Guinevere 
 that show what Tennyson might perhaps have done 
 had he chosen: 
 
 Passion pale they met 
 
 And greeted. Hands in hands and eye to eye, 
 Low on the border of her couch they sat, 
 Stammering and staring. It was their last hour, 
 A madness of farewells. 
 
 Still, the fact remains that he did not choose, but 
 rather made the story a theme for magnificent 
 moralizings, in which the king's part seems tinged 
 with a colour of self-righteousness that would hardly 
 have won back the erring Queen from her memory 
 of Lancelot. How differently the story has inspired 
 other writers will be familiar to all who have read 
 William Morris's Defence of Guinevere and his 
 description of the lovers meeting at the tomb of 
 Arthur. Yet to illustrate what seems to me the 
 natural beauty of the legend, rather than Morris's 
 work I would quote a poem by Mr. Stephen 
 Phillips. 
 
 THE PARTING OF LAUNCELOT AND GUINEVERE. 
 
 Into a high-walled nunnery had fled 
 Queen Guinevere, amid the shade to weep, 
 And to repent 'mid solemn boughs, and love 
 The cold globe of the moon ; but now as she 
 Meekly the scarcely-breathing garden walked, 
 She saw, and stood, and swooned at Launcelot, 
 Who burned in sudden steel like a blue flame 
 Amid the cloister. Then, when she revived, 
 He came and looked on her: in the dark place 
 So pale her beauty was, the sweetness such 
 That he half-closed his eyes and deeply breathed ; 
 And as he gazed, there came into his mind 
 That night of May, with pulsing stars, the strange 
 Perfumed darkness, and delicious guilt 
 In silent hour : but at the last he said : 
 " Suffer me, lady, but to kiss thy lips 
 Once, and to go away for evermore".
 
 60 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 But she replied, " Nay, I beseech thee, go ! 
 Sweet were those kisses in the deep of night; 
 But from those kisses is this ruin come. 
 Sweet was thy touch, but now I wail at it 
 And I have hope to see the face of Christ : 
 Many are saints in heaven who sinned as I." 
 Then said he, " Since it is thy will, I go". 
 But those that stood around could scarce endure 
 To see the dolor of these two : for he 
 Swooned in his burning armour to her face, 
 And both cried out as at the touch of spears : 
 And as two trees at midnight, when the breeze 
 Comes over them, now to each other bend, 
 And now withdraw, so mournfully these two 
 Still drooped together and still drew apart. 
 Then like one dead her ladies bore away 
 The heavy Queen, and Launcelot went out 
 And through a forest weeping rode all night 
 
 Among Tennyson's later work there are prac- 
 tically no love poems. In the three historical plays 
 the love element is quite secondary, and thrown in 
 as if out of obligation. Rosamund, indeed, makes 
 love to Henry prettily enough, but the main drift 
 of the drama is elsewhere. The Cup turns upon 
 desire rather than on love, and Tennyson has not 
 cared to do more than suggest it. As for The 
 Promise of May, it is a wilderness of platitudes in 
 the love scenes no less than elsewhere. 
 
 But there is one very remarkable poem which I 
 think typifies that sort of revulsion from the physi- 
 cal aspect of passion that grew upon Tennyson 
 with the advance of years. It is called (unhappily 
 enough) Happy, and it is a dramatic lyric the 
 utterance of a lady whose husband has returned 
 from the crusades a leper. She, after the strange 
 burial service has been read by the church over 
 " the living dead ", goes to join him in his hut and 
 accept the contagion rather than deny herself his 
 presence. That surely is enough and to spare of 
 tragic inspiration; but Tennyson in one of his
 
 Tennyson's Treatment of Love. 61 
 
 extraordinary lapses into mechanical convention 
 confounds the essential tragedy of the situation 
 with a hackneyed tale of love, jealousy, and mis- 
 understanding. The lady has to explain that if 
 she let a stranger kiss her it was to make her 
 husband jealous; how he went to the wars still 
 misunderstanding, for she was too proud to explain ; 
 and how the wicked rival, coming to woo her in 
 his absence, was struck by lightning before her 
 eyes. All this fabrication is so much dead-weight 
 on the poem itself the plea of the woman to share 
 even the misery and, as one may say, the physical 
 damnation of the man she loves. And her plea is 
 strange and significant 
 
 You say your body is so foul then here I stand apart 
 
 Who yearn to lay my loving head upon your leprous breast. 
 
 The leper plague may scab my skin but never taint my heart ; 
 Your body is not foul to me, and body is foul at best. 
 
 I loved you first when young and fair, but now I love you most; 
 
 The fairest flesh at last is filth on which the worm will feast ; 
 This poor rib-grated dungeon of the holy human ghost, 
 
 This house with all its hateful needs no cleaner than the beast, 
 
 This coarse diseaseful creature which in Eden was divine, 
 This Satan-haunted ruin, this little city of sewers, 
 
 This wall of solid flesh that comes between your soul and mine, 
 Will vanish and give place to the beauty that endures, 
 
 The beauty that endures on the Spiritual height, 
 
 When we shall stand transfigured, like Christ on Hermon hill, 
 
 And moving each to music, soul in soul and light in light, 
 Shall flash through one another in a moment as we will. 
 
 The imagination in the earlier of these verses is 
 like the imagination of Swift, penetrating, irre- 
 sistible, but essentially diseased; and the extra- 
 ordinary beauty of the last stanza scarcely removes 
 the impression. Dramatically, the verses seem to 
 me magnificent; it is more than eloquence, it is the 
 real fire of poetry ; and the ideal of love which they
 
 62 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 present, is only the extreme form of that ideal which 
 is present almost constantly through Tennyson's 
 poetry certainly from the Idylls onward. He saw 
 in the spiritual side of love between the sexes a 
 love that if happy finds its fulfilment in marriage 
 and children, and if r.nhappy sacrifices all to the 
 ideal the most powerful force for good in the 
 world ; and he saw in the sin of the flesh, which at 
 its best is the choice of love before duty, the most 
 insidious leaven of demoralization that can poison 
 society. What he saw he preached, and though, 
 as I think, he warped human nature somewhat in 
 his representations of it, no man who thinks honestly 
 can deny that his ideal is not only noble and beauti- 
 ful, but true to the facts of life. 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 Tennyson's Views on Religion. 
 
 The chief preoccupation of Tennyson's mind 
 throughout life was in a certain sense religious, 
 but his intellect was essentially undogmatic. He 
 had not the temperament of a disputant; his was a 
 brooding mind, which arrived at its results by a 
 slow process of which it could give no clear ac- 
 count. Gradually, as it gazed upon formless dark, 
 things took shape and perspective; and the end 
 was vision. You may search Tennyson's work 
 from cover to cover without discovering even an 
 attempt to give a logical account of his position. 
 His creed sums itself up in one assertion: I see. 
 And what he saw resolves itself into a single fact: 
 that unless man's soul be immortal, life is meaning- 
 less and intolerable. 
 
 Ever, ever and for ever, is the leading light of man.
 
 Tennyson's Views on Religion. 63 
 
 His belief rests upon intuition. He sees that if life 
 does not end at the grave, then at least a guess may- 
 be made at the meaning of the world; but that if 
 the living man is finally dissolved when the worms 
 have their will of him, all the most significant facts 
 of existence are turned into the "tale told by an 
 idiot ". He knows perfectly well the answer to this 
 proposition ; that if a man looks hard into the dark 
 he will certainly end by seeing, but he will see the 
 creations of his own nerves and brain ; if he strains 
 his sense to hear, he will end by hearing, but it 
 will be only the murmur of his own blood. The 
 answer is unanswerable except by appeal to the 
 truth of instinct, so far as this life is concerned. 
 Tennyson is confident that the next life will justify 
 him of his faith; for that is what the whole debate 
 ends in a question of faith. Tennyson's theology 
 is entirely a natural theology. He bases nothing 
 upon the historic fact of a revelation made by Christ 
 to man; the difficulties and hopes that ally them- 
 selves with a belief in the Incarnation find little 
 reflection in his verse; his appeal is always to the 
 standing revelation in the heart. Few of the more 
 definite issues are ever raised in his speculations, 
 and none are handled with any reference to dogma. 
 I do not think that it could be proved from his 
 writings not even from the opening line of In 
 Memoriam that he believed Christ to be in any 
 literal sense the Son of God. He believed that 
 God existed and that the soul of man was im- 
 mortal; it seems a scanty equipment for one who 
 was to be perhaps the most influential religious 
 teacher of his century. But he also asserted for his 
 age the right for a man to count himself a Christian 
 on grounds other than dogmatic, and he asserted 
 the necessity of fostering the spiritual life. That 
 was the message for which his age cried out, and 
 he, emphatically the prophet of his age, delivered it
 
 64 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 with an authority that grew upon him and made 
 itself increasingly felt by those who listened. Pro- 
 claiming the lawfulness of doubt, he also pro- 
 claimed that the end of doubt, if doubt meant 
 anxious inquiry, might be vision. 
 
 There is a kind of ingratitude, inevitable, no 
 doubt, but still ungracious, from which those suffer 
 who have fought the battles of progress in any 
 direction. The accomplished fact becomes a com- 
 monplace, and a new generation rates lightly the 
 struggle which it cost. We read Essays and Re- 
 views now, laugh to find that one of these enfants 
 perdits of free thought within the Church is now 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, and wonder which of all 
 these now admitted propositions could have raised 
 such a disturbance in its day. But that does not 
 alter the fact that conspicuous moral courage was 
 needed to be among that band, and it must be 
 remembered that Tennyson's religious speculations 
 date from an earlier day still. When he went to 
 college the atmosphere was tense with the death 
 struggle, as it then seemed, between faith and 
 science. The wave of pity for suffering humanity, 
 which since has turned the universities into nur- 
 series of socialist speculation, had not made itself 
 felt; all minds were preoccupied with the question 
 whether it were permissible to doubt, or possible 
 not to doubt. Science was busy pointing out dis- 
 crepancies between the facts it revealed and the 
 narrative set down in the first chapters of Genesis, 
 and for the moment men felt, or seemed to feel, 
 that the whole fabric of Christianity stood or fell 
 with the literal authenticity of the account of Cre- 
 ation. Tennyson, living in a group of serious- 
 minded young men, keenly alive to the intellectual 
 movements of their time, listened to much dis- 
 cussion and apparently spoke little. But the 
 question had a special bearing for him, since he
 
 Tennyson's Views on Religion. 65 
 
 more than any other of that circle was impregnated 
 with the teaching of science. Astronomy was more 
 to him than a bare string of facts; it was a key 
 opening the door to imaginative vision. He saw 
 the world whirling in limitless space among other 
 stars past telling; the story of the heavens spoke to 
 him like the revelation of a human face. He knew 
 the surface of the earth minutely, and he drank 
 eagerly the knowledge which could tell him how 
 the rocks took their shape, why this was ribbed and 
 that twisted. And pondering on the relation be- 
 tween higher and lower types, he actually thought 
 out for himself in some vague form Darwin's great 
 hypothesis. Thus nothing could induce him to see 
 in science an enemy to be baffled and fought with, 
 but rather an ally or a guide. 
 
 No one could read his poems and not feel that 
 this man at least was shutting his mind against 
 nothing; and consequently the world, sick at heart 
 with hearing door after door crashed to in the face 
 of its most intimate hopes, welcomed his utterance, 
 which told them that beyond the facts which science 
 could explain there lay others utterly inexplicable 
 except upon a supposition that would Jeave to man 
 his aspirations. In short, Tennyson propounded a 
 via media between dogmatic Christianity and dog- 
 matic materialism, and the compromise was welcome. 
 
 Few as Tennyson's definite convictions would 
 appear to have been, he did not reach them without 
 pain; and among that small number of poems in 
 his work which one must take to be strictly auto- 
 biographical is a piece in the Juvenilia called the 
 Supposed Confessions of a Second-rate Sensitive 
 Mind. It is, as I have already pointed out, by 
 far the least accomplished in style of these early 
 verses, for the very good reasons that in the others 
 the young poet had nothing particular to say, and 
 saw his subject detached from himself; here he is
 
 66 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 embarrassed with the tangle of his own thoughts, 
 and must think rather about the thing to be said 
 than the way of saying it. The title, too, with its 
 assumption of contempt, is sufficiently character- 
 istic; it is just how a youth would seek to conceal 
 the real intimacy of the relation between what he 
 had uttered and the depths of his own nature. 
 Historically, of course, the poem is not autobio- 
 graphical; Tennyson's mother was alive for long 
 years after it was written; but there can be little 
 question but that, to a nature so strongly bound to 
 home, the first bitterness of religious doubts would 
 be the dread of estrangement from those whom the 
 doubter held dearest. Doubt would certainly have 
 seemed, to the household in which Tennyson was 
 bred, an impious and evil thing, and far harder to 
 relinquish than his own faith would have been his 
 faith in the faith of others. 
 
 Men pass me by; 
 
 Christians with happy countenances 
 
 And children all seem full of Thee ! 
 
 And women smile with saint-like glances 
 
 Like Thine own mother's when she bow^d 
 
 Above Thee, on that happy morn 
 
 When angels spake to men aloud, 
 
 And Thou and peace to earth were born. 
 
 And again he cries out after the sweetness of "a 
 common faith ... a common scorn of death"; and 
 after the blessed tranquillity of infancy, and the 
 days when he prayed at his mother's knee. Why 
 cannot he pray now when she prays, and 
 
 Bow myself down where thou hast knelt? 
 
 Why cannot her prayers for him avail to save his 
 faith? Is it the sin of pride that hinders? " Alas !" 
 he answers : 
 
 I think that pride hath now no place 
 Nor sojourn in me. I am void, 
 Dark, formless, utterly destroyed.
 
 Tennyson's Views on Religion. 67 
 
 " Why not believe, then?" And he answers with 
 a question. Why does not the sea mirror heaven 
 with the stillness of an inland lake? He is all 
 shaken in spirit, 
 
 Moved from beneath with doubt and fear. 
 
 The first impulse of his youth had been courage. 
 It is man's privilege to doubt, 
 
 for some day truth may emerge, a perfect image, 
 from this chaos. Is man to be as the ox or sheep 
 who feeds in the meadow, neither foreknowing his 
 end nor aspiring beyond death? Is it not man's 
 duty to grapple with doubt? 
 
 Shall we not look into the laws 
 
 Of life and death, and things that seem, 
 
 And things that be, and analyse 
 
 Our double nature, and compare 
 
 All creeds till we have found the one, 
 
 If one there be? 
 
 Yet to this comes no confident answer, only a cry 
 for guidance : 
 
 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. 
 
 And the end is half a cry, half a groan : 
 
 O weary life ! O weary death ! 
 O spirit and heart made desolate ! 
 O damned vacillating state ! 
 
 I have quoted largely from this poem, because it 
 is, I think, little studied, and because it seems a 
 valuable document. We have there, at all events, 
 a plain enough picture of morbid gloom, and it
 
 68 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 was probably the influence of Hallam, with his 
 sanguine optimism, that roused Tennyson from 
 this black-blooded state. Tennyson's letters to his 
 friend were all destroyed after Arthur Hallam's 
 death by the elder Hallam, and so one is left to 
 conjecture; but In Memoriam stands for a record 
 of the service done. It is a long way from the 
 moody vacillation of these lines to the confident 
 hope and the conscious dignity of the In Memoriam 
 stanzas. Yet Arthur Hallam's death was followed 
 by a period of intense depression, accentuated by 
 the disparagement in the press of the early poems. 
 And in the curious symbolic sketch of his life 
 which the poet wrote in one of his latest volumes 
 Merlin and The Gleam it is probably fair to inter- 
 pret the following passage not merely with a refer- 
 ence to the hostile criticism of Lockhart and others, 
 but to the harassing cloud of doubts which clouded 
 " The Gleam". 
 
 Once at the croak of a Raven who crost it, 
 
 A barbarous people, 
 
 Blind to the magic, 
 
 And deaf to the melody, 
 
 Snarl'd at and cursed me. 
 
 A demon vext me, 
 
 The light retreated, 
 
 The landskip darken'd, 
 
 The melody deaden'd, 
 
 The Master whisper'd 
 
 "Follow The Gleam". 
 
 Out of the reaction against this despondency was 
 born, so we read in the Life, the noble poem of 
 Ulysses; and out of the despondency itself, no 
 doubt, the longer and more definitely religious 
 argument, The Two Voices. I have never been able 
 to admire this composition, but it impressed people 
 strongly at the time Carlyle said it reminded him 
 of the Book of Job and it is very interesting 
 historically.
 
 Tennyson's Views on Religion. 69 
 
 The poem is an argument for and against suicide. 
 
 Thou art so full of misery, 
 Were it not better not to be? 
 
 That is the problem, and the answer is worked out 
 on the most general grounds. It is a sin, says the 
 man, to shatter this wonderful work, this human 
 fabric. And the first voice answers: Set man by 
 the side of a dragon-fly (undoubtedly a disastrous 
 comparison for most of us so far as beauty goes). 
 But the man answers that Man is the crown of 
 Creation. The mocking voice bids this " mould 
 of hopes and fears" look up through the circling 
 worlds of night: and then urges the pettiness of 
 one unit in so vast a scheme. And so man is driven 
 back on his real answer the desire to live, and he 
 introduces, as the strongest form of that desire, the 
 central motive of Ulysses ; the passion for new 
 knowledge, for a horizon that widens by man's 
 efforts. But here the poet is concerned to put also 
 the answer to this aspiration, the thought that 
 damps this passion. All quest is foredoomed to 
 failure; the horizon must always recede, and the 
 span of life is so brief that all that can be achieved 
 in all its days is practically nothing. Again the 
 man urges not a reason but an impulse, the natural 
 tendency to strive. Who is to say, moreover, that 
 the striving and the quest will end with dissolution 
 of the body? And so we strike the old Platonic 
 idea of re-incarnation, but now, under the influence 
 of modern science, thrown into a remarkable form. 
 
 Or if thro' lower lives I came 
 Tho' all experience past became 
 Consolidate in mind and frame 
 
 I might forget my weaker lot ; 
 For is not our first year forgot? 
 The haunts of memory echo not.
 
 70 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 That is practically an imaginative expression of 
 the Darwinian teaching, and in the first of these 
 two stanzas lies to me the chief interest of the 
 poem. The argument underlying the whole of it 
 is not perhaps weak, but formless a strong con- 
 trast to Browning's incisive logic and practically, 
 as I have already said, the only answer to the de- 
 sire for death is to point out the existence of a 
 stronger desire for life. 
 
 Whatever crazy sorrow saith, 
 
 No life that breathes with human breath 
 
 Has ever truly longed for death. 
 
 'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, 
 Oh life, not death, for which we pant ; 
 More life, and fuller, that I want 
 
 And so the poem concludes with a vision of happy 
 people going to church on a fine morning, a pass- 
 age whose connection with the rest is merely emo- 
 tional, not logical. And, prompted by the ' ' hidden 
 hope" which this sight and the fresh breath of 
 Nature have power to suggest, the poet does not, 
 indeed, go to church, but wanders into the fields to 
 commune with the joyful spirit of life which every- 
 where in the universe moves beside the sad spirit 
 of death. 
 
 Another poem, kindred in thought to The Two 
 Voices, and in my judgment far more interesting, 
 is The Vision of Sin. Given the belief that death 
 ends everything, there are two conclusions easily 
 deducible for the purposes of art. If life wearies 
 you, and has no significance beyond what the 
 senses feel, end it. Or secondly, if life stops at 
 the grave, carpe diem make the most of it, for the 
 profit of the senses. The former conclusion is put 
 by the Voice that counsels suicide; the second is 
 the philosophy preached by the worn-out sinner.
 
 Tennyson's Views on Religion. 71 
 
 Fill the cup, and fill the can: 
 Have a rouse before the morn: 
 
 Every moment dies a man, 
 Every moment one is born. 
 
 It is the philosophy of Horace, but Horace puts it 
 before us with no trace of bitterness; it is the phil- 
 osophy of Omar Khayyam in whom or in Fitz- 
 Gerald there is traceable a cry of revolt against 
 the power that has flung us unconsulted into a life 
 where the best to do is to drink. But Tennyson 
 puts it here as the cry of despair. The sinner has 
 drunk to the lees of pleasure the poem opens with 
 a magnificent passage where the whole circle of 
 intoxication for the senses is caught up and set to 
 a music of words and the wine has turned to gall 
 within him, and his speech is a devil's dance of 
 hideous fancies. But a moral is appended. Horace 
 and the Persian identify themselves, whether in 
 complacency or bitterness, with their creed; Tenny- 
 son stands apart and pronounces on his sinner. 
 His mind always shrinks from definite utterances, 
 and he is content to put the diverse comments. 
 Life, as it may pass from the lower to the higher, 
 may also sink in the scale. 
 
 Once more uprose the mystic mountain-range : 
 Below were men and horses pierced with worms, 
 And slowly quickening into lower forms. 
 
 There is no doubt to which slope the sinner faces ; 
 but is the downward course inevitable and irre- 
 trievable? 
 
 At last I heard a voice upon the slope 
 Cry to the summit, "Is there any hope?" 
 To which an answer peal'd from that high land, 
 But in a tongue no man could understand ; 
 And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn 
 God made Himself an awful rose of dawn. 
 
 (M685) F
 
 72 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 There is a fine touch of high mysteries about these 
 lines; but there is also a fine vagueness. Yet 
 somehow Tennyson never leaves us with the im- 
 pression that he is afraid of conclusions ; rather that 
 his mind naturally tended to find repose in suspense. 
 
 Such is, I think, the opinion to be deduced from a 
 careful reading of In Memoriam, which of course, 
 more than any other poem, embodies Tennyson's 
 religious thought; though not perhaps in their 
 most definite and final form, these are the conclu- 
 sions of his maturity, the central teachings of his 
 life. 
 
 The opening canto or prelude is to be taken, not 
 as a first word, but a last commendation ; it bears 
 the date 1849, whereas some of the verses in the 
 body of the poem were written almost directly after 
 Hallam's death in 1834. The invocation is to 
 Christ, " Strong Son of God ", but the appeal is at 
 once to God as Son and to God as Creator; and 
 it sums in four lines the whole conclusion. 
 
 Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 
 
 Whom we, that have not seen thy face, 
 By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 
 
 Believing where we cannot prove. 
 
 "Thou madest man", the poem goes on; "He 
 thinks he was not made to die, and Thou hast made 
 him: Thou art just. " The Creator is answerable 
 for the thoughts that are part of the creature ; and 
 God is not a cheat. That is the whole thesis. 
 Tennyson will not believe that this instinctive crav- 
 ing after "more life and fuller" was implanted in 
 us by some mocking destiny ; and therefore he has 
 faith. 
 
 But in what is the faith? 
 
 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.
 
 Tennyson's Views on Religion. 73 
 
 Is Christianity one of the " little systems"? In 
 so far as by Christianity is meant any particular 
 man's conception of Christianity, or even the com- 
 plex of dogmas held at any moment by any church, 
 I should say emphatically that Tennyson meant 
 that these also were things that must change, 
 " broken lights" to be succeeded by other broken 
 lights. Yet Tennyson's purpose is not to empha- 
 size points of difference but points of kinship in 
 religion, and the devoutest Christians would adopt 
 the utterance of these opening stanzas. 
 
 The religious speculation in the poem only gradu- 
 ally develops and grows out of the first moods, in 
 painting which Tennyson is painting his own grief. 
 He begins indeed with a theological notion and 
 pleads for the natural right to grieve, though death 
 should be accounted a blessing, by one who holds 
 
 That men may rise on stepping-stones 
 Of their dead selves to higher things. 
 
 Yet sorrow prompts to despair, to the doubt of any 
 benignant purpose in the universe. 
 
 "The stars", he whispers, "blindly run, 
 A web is woven across the sky." 
 
 To this there is for the moment no answer; the 
 poet goes on to trace the physiognomy of grief, its 
 common thoughts and acts its tragic sense of 
 other's sorrow, its pilgrimages to old haunts of 
 happiness. Then comes the evocation of the image 
 of the dead, and his surroundings the ship, and a 
 prayer for the ship's safety and the anxiety that 
 this at least may be granted, a grave in English 
 turf and a resting-place among his own. All these 
 early cantos deal not with thought but with feeling; 
 they show the mind that takes its flight, like a dove, 
 to meet the vessel, and plays round it in fancy,
 
 74 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 while the body is forgotten; then the realization of 
 loss, the physical confirmation, like the widower's 
 when he stretches out arms into the vacant place ; 
 and a mood answering to this, the inability to rea- 
 lize what has happened, so strong that if Arthur in 
 person came and stepped out of the ship that should 
 have borne his corpse, 
 
 I should not feel it to be strange. 
 
 Wilder fancies too come, fear of howling winds 
 that may be tossing and harrying the poor ghost; 
 but all this ends with the burial, and then comes a 
 new mood of reflection and repose. Then it is that 
 the poet has time to take thought of the outside 
 world, which may condemn him either because he 
 "unpacks his heart with words", or because he 
 wastes manhood in a useless regret while the world 
 calls for action. And the poet answers 
 
 I do but sing because I must, 
 And pipe but as the linnets sing: 
 
 And one is glad ; her note is gay, 
 
 For now her little ones have ranged; 
 And one is sad ; her note is changed, 
 
 Because her brood is stol'n away. 
 
 His brood is stolen; the fair companionship is 
 broken by 
 
 The Shadow cloak'd from head to foot, 
 Who keeps the keys of all the creeds. 
 
 Death, that is, must be the only test of truth, the 
 only possible confirmation of faith ; but from this 
 side of the veil it remains a riddle. From the 
 beautiful stanzas which proclaim the blessedness 
 of having loved even when one has lost, we pass 
 to the sense of loss so closely felt at Christmas, and 
 the hope that death is only a veil, not a severance.
 
 Tennyson's Views on Religion. 75 
 
 There is a higher felicity in the grave than rest or 
 sweet sleep : 
 
 Our voices took a higher range; 
 
 Once more we sang : " They do not die 
 
 Nor lose their mortal sympathy, 
 Nor change to us, although they change". 
 
 And so the poem enters definitely on its path of 
 metaphysical speculation. "What is the state of 
 the dead?" 
 
 When Lazarus left his charnel-cave, 
 
 And home to Mary's house return'd, 
 Was this demanded if he yearn'd 
 
 To hear her weeping by his grave? 
 
 Then for one moment, by a touch of superb poetry, a 
 wholly different attitude of mind is brought before 
 us. Mary is identified in imagination with the poet's 
 sister, Hallam's bride that should have been. She, 
 like Mary, questions nothing. 
 
 Her eyes are homes of silent prayer. 
 
 She bows, she bathes the Saviour's feet 
 With costly spikenard and with tears. 
 
 Her faith is clear in its simplicity, and to her her 
 lover is still living in love. Through the forms of 
 faith she holds to faith's essence; and it is here 
 that the poet speaks his warning to those who 
 would 
 
 with shadow'd hint confuse 
 A life that leads melodious days. 
 
 But for himself, there must be questionings, since 
 to know is vital. 
 
 My own dim life should teach me this, 
 That life shall live for evermore, 
 Else earth is darkness at the core 
 
 And dust and ashes all that is.
 
 76 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 And for once the answer is attempted : if Life ends, 
 yet is it not worth while to live for the sake of love, 
 while love can still last? Such love, the poet re- 
 plies, would lose half its sweetness, " half-dead to 
 know that it must die"; or rather, and more truly, 
 but for the hope of a life beyond 
 
 Love had not been, 
 Or been in narrowest working shut, 
 
 Mere fellowship of sluggish moods, 
 Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape 
 Had bruised the herb and crush'd the grape, 
 
 And bask'd and batten'd in the woods. 
 
 The thirty-sixth canto, which immediately follows 
 these lines, detaches itself from the rest. I can trace 
 no clear connection of thought, but it is fair to sup- 
 ply a link. If the world be so hard to explain, what 
 hope shall there be for man to come by the inner 
 truth, when nature seems to point to death as the 
 end? But, it is answered, " where truth in closest 
 words shall fail" where, that is, abstract reasonings 
 have no effect "truth embodied in a tale" is to be 
 understanded of all. God in his wisdom dealt with 
 mortal powers according to the measure of mortal 
 comprehension. 
 
 And so the Word had breath, and wrought 
 With human hands the creed of creeds 
 In loveliness of perfect deeds, 
 
 More strong than all poetic thought. 
 
 The story of Christ's life was "truth embodied in 
 a tale". But whether this passage implies an ad- 
 hesion to the orthodox doctrines of Christianity, 
 I cannot say, and I doubt if Tennyson either could 
 or would have decided. But it is clear that in 
 this canto he felt himself to be overstepping his 
 allotted province, for the next is an apology couched 
 in the conventional form of a rebuke from Urania,
 
 Tennyson's Views on Religion. 77 
 
 the Heavenly Muse. To her the Muse of Earthly 
 Song makes answer that she had indeed been be- 
 trayed into error, but only in loving memory. 
 
 But brooding on the dear one dead, 
 
 And all he said of things divine, 
 
 (And dear to me as sacred wine 
 To dying lips is all he said), 
 
 I murmur'd, as I came along, 
 
 Of comfort clasp'd in truth reveal'd; 
 And loiter'd in the master's field, 
 
 And darken'd sanctities with song. 
 
 That is, we may incidentally remark, a strong con- 
 fession of the spiritual directorship exercised by 
 Hallam on his friend; and the thirty-sixth and 
 thirty-seventh cantos may fairly be construed thus: 
 that up to the thirty-sixth the poet had been setting 
 down his own speculations about death and life ; in 
 it he repeated the truths of revealed religion, as 
 endeared to him by the friend who had accepted 
 them and spoken to him of them. 
 
 But the poem soon drifts back into its central 
 theme of a life naturally anticipated after death. 
 May not death, the poet meditates, be like marriage, 
 a passing from the old life to the new, a link in 
 the generations? Yet it is a chilly comfort that 
 such hopes can afford; and there is more reality in 
 the vague apprehension that, even granted a con- 
 tinuance of both lives, they may be lost to each 
 other in the procession of the ages, and the later 
 to depart "evermore a life behind". But against 
 this fear there is a recoil of feeling. His friend 
 was always in advance of him, yet never so far 
 as not to stretch out a helping hand. Besides, 
 if anything lasts, love must; and by a beautiful 
 adaptation of the Platonic theory, the poet con- 
 ceives of our souls as flowers that take their colour 
 and charactery from " silent traces of the past".
 
 78 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 Thus when in the "spiritual prime" the soul re- 
 awakens, love must waken with it too. Whether 
 in death there be consciousness he will not decide, 
 or whether it be merely sleep. But if I follow 
 rightly the very complex stanzas in the forty-fourth 
 and forty-fifth cantos in the grown man there is 
 oblivion of the past ; yet now and then comes some 
 unaccounted memory, "a little flash, a mystic hint". 
 So too among the happy dead, there may be a 
 sudden memory of the earlier life in which the 
 happy spirit may recall the one he loved. Yet this 
 does not suffice to allay the poet's desire for com- 
 munion ; and the argument leads to a hope of less 
 fleeting glimpses. It is only the baby who has 
 not the sense of separate existence, "has never 
 thought that 'this is I'". But the senses teach 
 him 
 
 As thro' the frame that binds him in 
 His isolation grows defined. 
 
 The lesson thus taught him by the "separateness 
 of blood and breath" is never forgotten; else to 
 what end were they given, 
 
 Had man to learn himself anew 
 
 Beyond the second birth of Death? 
 
 And though in this life the path behind us, which 
 we have travelled in our progress of development, 
 is dark, "shadowed by the growing hour", yet "in 
 that deep dawn behind the tomb" there can be no 
 blackness. The landscape of the past will lie clear 
 from margin to margin, and love, not circumscribed 
 to those few years of earthly knowledge, will shed 
 over it " a rosy warmth from marge to marge". For 
 against the thought that after death each separate 
 self may fuse into the "general soul" the poet pro- 
 tests ; such a belief
 
 Tennyson's Views on Religion. 79 
 
 Is faith as vague as all unsweet: 
 Eternal form shall still divide 
 The eternal soul from all beside; 
 
 And I shall know him when we meet 
 
 But to this belief, it will be seen, the seeker is led 
 by no other guide than hope. He interprets rightly 
 the aspiration of the lover, which is no vague long- 
 ing but definite desire to meet again the loved one; 
 and the reason for believing that this aspiration 
 will be gratified is just the same as for believing in 
 an after life. The aspiration is natural to man, and 
 God made him with it, therefore the aspiration will 
 be answered. 
 
 Yet the poet knows well that his "brief lays of 
 sorrow born" cannot be held to close "grave 
 doubts and answers here proposed". He admits 
 that Sorrow takes doubts "and makes them vassals 
 unto Love", to find some solace; and it is little 
 solace: for we go back to the cry of anguish, the 
 petition for presence of the dead. But then, with 
 the thought of the dead always at hand, comes 
 another wave in the tide of speculation (for the 
 movement of the poem is rather that of wave after 
 wave than step after step in an ascent; the march 
 is bounded by the point whence it set out). Do we 
 indeed desire the dead beside us that they may 
 see into our hearts? Whose heart will bear the 
 scrutiny? Yet the dead watch, like God, with 
 large allowance for human frailty. Can we there- 
 fore, who live, make the like allowance? Can we 
 preach that human frailty matters little in the long 
 account? and if so, may not divine Philosophy be- 
 come "procuress to the lords of hell"? 
 
 Once again the poet falls back on his cry of hope 
 and faith, "that somehow good will be the final 
 goal of ill " ; but the world offers little confirmation. 
 Nature squanders the single life to save the type: 
 is God more careful than Nature, or at strife with
 
 80 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 her? Even the type passes: may not man, too, 
 pass? even man 
 
 Who trusted God was love indeed, 
 And love Creation's final law 
 Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw 
 
 With ravine, shriek'd against his creed. 
 
 And once again there is no answer but in hope. 
 It is in passages like these, where Tennyson admits 
 unquestioningly to the fullest the hard records 
 discovered by science in the rocks and stones, 
 while he doubts and questions of the truth which 
 the Bible and all the framework of Christianity 
 affirm, that he seemed to the mind of his own 
 day to border upon heresy. To us such writings 
 seem scarcely to bear upon religion. We assume 
 that the facts of geology are facts, which reason 
 cannot ignore. The facts of revelation reason must 
 put into a wholly different category ; and here was 
 his service to the religious thought of his time, that 
 he led the way in accepting what must be accepted, 
 and in directing the battle where the battle can be 
 fought. He served at once free-thought and religion 
 in a way that no divine, who is in a sense a soldier 
 set to defend certain positions irrespective of his 
 personal convictions, could ever have done. 
 
 After this fifty-sixth canto, which states the case 
 for despair at its strongest, there is a slackening in 
 the tension of thought. One might almost say that 
 a series closes with the fifty-seventh canto and a 
 new one opens with the fifty-eighth. The poem 
 turns from the problems of the universe, as they 
 are evoked by the stimulus of sorrow, to a reflec- 
 tion of the passing moods of grief. Thus you 
 have the plea of the one left on earth not to be 
 forgotten, though his friend in that high sphere 
 of "ransomed reason" may converse with the 
 flower of all the ages. Out of all the question-
 
 Tennyson's Views on Religion. 81 
 
 ing and all the imagining there has come this 
 certitude, arrived at by no logical process, but by 
 brooding meditation, that somewhere and somehow 
 that friend survives as that friend's self, though 
 emancipated from the bondage and limitations of 
 sense. And so we pass to earthlier thoughts, fore- 
 casts of what the dead man might have attained to 
 on this earth ; his likeness comes out to those of his 
 spiritual kin ; the stamp of greatness is recognized 
 in death; and gradually the passion quiets down 
 till at the second Christmas all that is left of revolt 
 is a revolt against griefs inevitable decay. 
 
 O grief, can grief be changed to less ! 
 
 But the answer is now sane and peaceable. The 
 passing of griefs poignancy means only its diffu- 
 sion through the whole nature, and there remains 
 only the abiding resentment against Death, in that 
 
 He put our lives so tar apart 
 
 We cannot hear each other speak. 
 
 But that both lives last and will be again united is 
 now held for certain. Yet still there is the " back- 
 ward fancy" which pictures what might have been; 
 children of their mixed blood, who should have 
 "babbled 'Uncle' on my knee"; of lives lived to- 
 gether and together ended. 
 
 And he that died in Holy Land 
 Would reach us out the shining hand, 
 And take us as a single soul. 
 
 There again is what seems an explicit adherence 
 to the truth of revealed Christianity ; but a student 
 of Tennyson's thought must insist upon the fact 
 that such belief is nowhere treated as vital; it is 
 indeed put in this passage as the culmination of a 
 train of fancy and not as the pillar of a faith. 
 
 With the eighty-fifth canto new influences come
 
 8z Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 into the work. The lines are addressed to a friend 
 who shared with him the "common grief" of Hal- 
 lam's death ; and they have for their message that 
 the poet does not shut himself up in his sorrow, 
 but rather courts human fellowship and sympathy, 
 though what he has to offer is not the prime of 
 love, but rather its aftermath : 
 
 The primrose of the later year, 
 As not unlike to that of Spring. 
 
 And with the renewed fellowship comes new life 
 4 'after showers, ambrosial air" to blow the fever 
 from his cheek, and to quicken fancy with new and 
 glowing images. Nor is this the only new sym- 
 pathy. The ninety-sixth canto is plainly addressed 
 to a woman : 
 
 Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes 
 Are tender over drowning flies ; 
 
 and to this new love the man has to justify himself 
 to this woman who holds that "doubt is devil- 
 born". And the answer is, to plead fhe case of 
 Hallam, one who, "perplexed in faith, but pure in 
 deeds", did at the last " beat his music out". The 
 lines upon the faith that lives in honest doubt have 
 been hackneyed by endless quotation, and have for 
 the moment lost their thrill ; yet they were a mes- 
 sage of comfort for Tennyson's generation, for the 
 race whose mind is reflected in Kingsley's Yeast 
 and the like. The fight has been fought, and so 
 much of peace and agreement has followed that we 
 scarcely think of Tennyson as among the fighters; 
 yet his tranquil wisdom perhaps won more battles 
 than were gained by angrier disputants. 
 
 From this point onward in the poem the concen- 
 tration of thought lessens; or say rather, the eye 
 focuses itself to a wider prospect. Through all the 
 moods of memory one can follow the widening of
 
 Tennyson's Views on Religion. 83 
 
 the circles from the central commotion. In a sense 
 the earlier moods are reviewed in calmer judgment, 
 and what is stated at first as the passionate clinging 
 to a hope becomes now settled conviction. Science, 
 with the new knowledge, is not repudiated, but she 
 is bidden to know her place. " She is the second, 
 not the first." The truth that lives in Science is 
 that of a continual progress from the beast up to 
 man, and from man to something beyond ; the lesson 
 is to 
 
 Move upward, working out the beast, 
 And let the ape and tiger die. 
 
 Then for a last time is stated in all its vagueness 
 and in all its confidence belief and the ground for 
 belief. 
 
 That which we dare invoke to bless ; 
 
 Our dearest faith ; our ghastliest doubt ; 
 
 He, They, One, All ; within, without ; 
 The Power in darkness whom we guess ; 
 
 I found Him not in world or sun, 
 
 Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye ; 
 
 Nor thro' the questions men may try, 
 The petty cobwebs we have spun : 
 
 If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep, 
 
 I heard a voice " believe no more ", 
 And heard an ever-breaking shore 
 
 That tumbled in the Godless deep ; 
 
 A warmth within the breast would melt 
 The freezing reason's colder part, 
 And like a man in wrath the heart 
 
 Stood up and answer'd " I have felt ". 
 
 No, like a child in doubt and fear : 
 
 But that blind clamour made me wise ; 
 Then was I as a child that cries, 
 
 But, crying, knows his father near ; 
 
 And what I am beheld again 
 
 What is, and no man understands ; 
 And out of darkness came the hands 
 
 That reach thro' nature, moulding men.
 
 84 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 And in the later cantos thought seeks once more 
 its centre the friend, whose death has set afoot all 
 this questioning of death and life, body and soul. 
 That friend is seen now in air, sun and water, in 
 star and flower, diffused yet separate, loved and 
 capable of love. 
 
 My love involves the love before; 
 
 My love is vaster passion now; 
 
 Tho' mix'd with God and Nature thou, 
 I seem to love thee more and more. 
 
 Far off thou art, but ever nigh; 
 
 I have thee still, and I rejoice ; 
 
 I prosper, circled with thy voice; 
 I shall not lose thee tho' I die. 
 
 That is the personal issue, a type for the race of its 
 destiny by which man who has come "from out 
 the vast" and "struck his being into bounds", 
 having his own individuality in the separate use of 
 blood and breath, must progress towards those 
 beings that " eye to eye shall look on knowledge ", 
 and shall live, as Hallam lives, in God 
 
 That God, which ever lives and loves, 
 
 One God, one law, one element, 
 
 And one far-off divine event, 
 To which the whole creation moves. 
 
 Thus, by analysis of the teaching of In Memoriam, 
 we find, first a formal adherence to the creed of 
 Christianity expressed vaguely in the prelude and 
 twice over more definitely, though only incidentally, 
 in the body of the poem. But we find also a con- 
 nected body of thought separate from this, and in- 
 finitely more vital, which interrogates nature, and 
 sees in nature every indication that death is the end 
 of a life unregarded by any higher power, where 
 not merely individuals are flung away, but types 
 and races trampled into dust; yet which also finds 
 in man a cry of the heart, an instinct, prompting to
 
 Tennyson's Views on Religion. 85 
 
 believe, against the law which nature seems daily 
 to enforce, that there must come a survival. That 
 instinct Tennyson traces not to fear of death but to 
 love. The breath of such life as separates itself 
 from concerns of the body is love, and nothing that 
 science can show in nature can tell how this instinct 
 came to be implanted. And so we are not driven 
 by logic to postulate a God; rather this love is in 
 us a perpetual revelation. That is the fabric of the 
 thought; upon that the whole rests. Science and 
 philosophy are pressed for suggestions as to what a 
 life after death may mean; will it be independent of 
 this, will it remember the deeds done in the flesh? 
 And the hope it is really no more than a hope to 
 which Tennyson leans so strongly that it becomes 
 an article of faith, is that the separate self will sur- 
 vive and will retain a memory of this life ; for this 
 human life is not, as Plato made it, merely one in 
 a cycle of lives, but the critical and necessary step 
 from which we must proceed to a state of full know- 
 ledge exempt from earthly limitations, where the 
 souls will blossom like flowers in a garden, each 
 coloured and marked by its earthly past. 
 
 The more one thinks of this conception, the more 
 apparent is its vagueness and want of outline. 
 That, I think, did not trouble the poet. He was 
 content to convince himself that we were put here 
 with a purpose, and that we had a life to live 
 beyond the grave ; for the scope and range of this 
 threescore years and ten pinned down to a point in 
 limitless space seemed to him in itself a mockery of 
 insignificance. 
 
 If you ask him for a more definite answer as to 
 what God is, he may answer you with his poem of 
 The Higher Pantheism God to a man is all that is 
 not the man himself. 
 
 Dark is the world to thee: thyself art the reason why; 
 
 For is He not all but that which has power to feel "I am I"?
 
 86 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 Man can never get outside himself; God has 
 granted to him separate existence, and with the 
 grant comes blindness, for by his nature he can 
 only see things refracted through the medium of 
 his own nature. 
 
 For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool. 
 
 But all about man is God if he could only see and 
 hear it; his whole life is a vision of God seen 
 through the medium of himself. There are only 
 two things in the world; God and man's soul. 
 That is a philosophy perhaps luminous rather than 
 lucid; but it is just as lucid and conclusive as any 
 other philosophy that takes into account all the 
 factors in existence. Every man to every other 
 man is a part of God; but there are men in whom 
 the vision becomes clearer, and of these, Tennyson 
 would say no doubt, was Hallam. The power to 
 see God in others is the gift of the poet; the power 
 to make God seen in ourselves the gift of the saint, 
 No man's vision embraces the universe; no man, if 
 one likes to put it so, hath seen God at any time; 
 but the more a man sees, the more beautiful is the 
 vision, and Tennyson was of those who have power 
 to communicate what they see, or by telling us of it 
 to waken corresponding images in our mind. And 
 his value to the world lay in this chiefly, that he 
 asserted that vision was vision and not a trick of 
 the senses. 
 
 As to Tennyson's formal religion, one can at 
 least assert of it the negative quality of Protes- 
 tantism. He believed profoundly in God; he dis- 
 believed profoundly in Rome. In his early work, 
 St. Simeon Stylites, he shows, by what Browning 
 would call a dramatic monologue, the self-deception 
 of asceticism ; shows it of course with a sense of its 
 pathos and of human pity for the follies of men. 
 The very uninteresting poem on Sir John Oldcastle,
 
 Tennyson's Views on Religion. 87 
 
 the Lollard, puts the anti-papal case strongly and 
 tersely, especially in the doctrine of transubstan- 
 tiation. Tennyson was a mystic, but one so deeply 
 imbued with the teaching of science could scarcely 
 accept miracles, in the sense of a violation of the 
 laws of nature; he certainly had no tolerance for 
 the conception of a physical miracle wrought weekly 
 or daily by every priest. But it is in the plays that 
 his Protestantism makes itself most strongly felt. 
 In Queen Mary, the most effective scene, and the 
 only one where our whole sympathy falls to the 
 chief actor, is that of Cranmer's final impeachment 
 of Rome. Protestantism and the national spirit go 
 hand in hand. Mary wishes to make her kingdom 
 a fief of Spain and the appanage of Rome. In 
 Harold the same holds. Harold is a Protestant 
 before his time, and stands for England against the 
 alien. Rome lends her sanction to the trick by 
 which William seeks to bind him to irretrievable 
 submission; Harold refuses belief in any sanctity 
 that can be added to an oath by bones or relics. 
 Edward, the ascetic saint, in his zeal for the church 
 brings in the aliens to rule the church, and betrays 
 the interests of his country. And in Becket, as I 
 have elsewhere pointed out, though our sympathies 
 go with the archbishop, Henry has the better of 
 him in the argument. Tennyson is plainly for king 
 against church, for civil law as against ecclesiastical 
 domination. 
 
 In the Idylls, the ascetic side of chivalry is ig- 
 nored or rather twisted into conformity with modern 
 ideals. But this point must be more fully con- 
 sidered in relation to the whole subject of the 
 Arthurian legend. It is sufficient here to remark 
 that chivalry grew directly out of monasticism, and 
 from the whole theory of monasticism Tennyson's 
 essentially British and Protestant mind violently 
 dissented. 
 
 (M535) O
 
 88 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 On this whole matter of religious dogma one 
 perceives an inherited bias in the poet, rather than 
 a conviction arrived at by independent thought. 
 It is a part of his admirable insularity. But the 
 vital part of his teaching for he was confessedly 
 a teacher relates simply to his belief in the soul's 
 immortality. Teacher he was, but rarely a preacher. 
 Once in the poem Despair he endeavoured to set 
 out the deplorable results of a loss of faith. A man 
 and his wife brought up in a narrow Calvinism lose 
 faith in God, and being in poverty and disgrace, 
 determine to end their lives together. The man is 
 rescued, and he explains their action. The poem 
 cannot be said to carry conviction, though it con- 
 tains one great line, the despairing man's vision of 
 the universe as 
 
 A fiery scroll written over with lamentation and woe. 
 
 But it is meant to put from another point of view 
 the aspiration upon which Tennyson so strenuously 
 insists the desire for prolonged life lest we should 
 be separated from those we love. Here the bitter- 
 ness of death is in the parting without hope. 
 
 Dear Love, for ever and ever, for ever and ever farewell 
 
 That is the word on their lips as they kiss the last 
 
 kiss. 
 
 Never a cry so desolate, not since the world began, 
 Never a kiss so sad, no, not since the coming of man ! 
 
 It is love, not life, that despairs when faith in 
 God and the hope of a future are taken from the 
 world. The instinct upon which Tennyson relies 
 is not the desire for survival, the repugnance to 
 death. It is simply love. Man sees death in the 
 body; and he recognizes the end, yet he hopes. 
 
 Who forged that other influence, 
 
 That heat of inward evidence, 
 
 By which he doubts against the sense?
 
 Tennyson's Views on Religion. 89 
 
 the poet asks in The Two Voices. And the answer 
 comes plainer and plainer with advancing years. 
 It is that clinging of one soul to another which we 
 call love, and which Christianity calls the word of 
 God. Nowhere is it put more strongly and with 
 more eloquence than in the splendid chant called 
 Vastness, which appeared after his eightieth year; 
 written, as it would seem, after the death of his son. 
 It is like a Greek chorus, this chant of the old pro- 
 phet, as he scans the universe and sees its eternal 
 contrasts freedom and tyranny, wealth and desti- 
 tution, faith and doubt, fame and slander worlds 
 sweeping past in space to their dissolution unre- 
 garded of us, the single face vanished and unre- 
 mittingly mourned, " What is it all ", he cries 
 
 What is it all, if we all of us end but in being our own corpse- 
 coffins at last, 
 
 Swallow'd in Vastness, lost in Silence, drown'd in the deeps of 
 a meaningless Past? 
 
 What but a murmur of gnats in the gloom, or a moment's anger 
 of bees in their hive? 
 
 Peace, let it be ! for I loved him, and love him for ever : the 
 dead are not dead but alive. 
 
 That is practically the whole of his philosophy: it 
 is a cry of the heart in revolt against knowledge. 
 Not even the sense of this multitudinous universe 
 can rob man of the conviction of his eternal and 
 eternally important destiny. But it is not an eter- 
 nity of stationary being that Tennyson conceives. 
 Among the very latest of his poems are some epi- 
 grams headed " By an Evolutionist". Here is the 
 first stanza of them : 
 
 The Lord let the house of a brute to the soul of a man, 
 
 And the man said, "Am I your debtor?" 
 And the Lord : "Not yet ; but make it as clean as you can, 
 
 And then I will let you a better*.
 
 90 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 That is Tennyson's answer to the verse in Omar 
 Khayyam. 
 
 Oh Thou who man of baser earth didst make, 
 And even with Paradise devise the snake, 
 
 For all the wrong wherewith the face of man 
 Is blackened, man's forgiveness give and take. 
 
 Continued life will do for the soul what old age 
 does already, when the man has "climbed to the 
 snows of age", so writes Tennyson in words that 
 recall the answer of old Sophocles to the boy that 
 asked him if he were past desire: " Peace, friend, 
 I am escaped from a harsh and cruel master ". He 
 is on the snow peaks and can see all the field of 
 the past 
 
 But I bear no yelp of the beast, and the Man is quiet at last. 
 As he stands on the heights of his life with a glimpse of a height 
 that is higher. 
 
 That may be taken for the poet's final utterance, 
 the last word of his wisdom upon the thought 
 which had most occupied his life. 
 
 But two poems deserve special study by an in- 
 quirer into his philosophy. The first is Akbar^s 
 Dream, where he hints at a belief, or at least a 
 sympathy with the belief, that all creeds that 
 worship God are one and have a common origin, 
 though in this region also there is evolution and 
 the lower must give way to the higher; and the 
 second, still more important, though by no means 
 so lucid, is The Ancient Sage. Here you have once 
 more the ' two voices ' ; that of the Sage and that 
 of his follower, the Poet, who sings the refrain of 
 Omar Khayyam. Death is the end, says the singer, 
 and the true symbol to set upon your grave is the 
 inverted wine-cup. Then for God's sake let us 
 drink the wine, not spill it from trembling hands, 
 nor wait till the cup be shattered. That is the
 
 Tennyson's Views on Religion. 91 
 
 philosophy to which the Sage makes answer. Man, 
 says the Poet, is " fancy's fool" when he believes in 
 the Nameless. Yet, answers the Sage, 
 
 If thou would'st hear the Nameless, and wilt dive 
 Into the Temple-cave of thine own self, 
 There, brooding by the central altar, thou 
 May'st haply learn the Nameless hath a voice, 
 By which thou wilt abide, if thou be wise 
 As if thou knewest, though thou canst not know. 
 
 What is this but Kant's Categorical Imperative, 
 the ultimate basis of all morality? And when the 
 Poet chants again 
 
 And since from when this earth began 
 
 The Nameless never came 
 Among us, never spake with man 
 
 And never named the Name 
 
 the Sage strikes in with the final utterance of 
 human reason directed upon itself, testing itself by 
 its own tribunal : 
 
 Thou canst not prove the Nameless, O my son, 
 Nor canst thou prove the world thou movest in, 
 Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone, 
 Nor canst thou prove that thou art spirit alone, 
 Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one : 
 Thou canst not prove thou art immortal, no 
 Nor yet that thou art mortal nay, my son, 
 Thou canst not prove that I, who speak with thee, 
 Am not thyself in converse with thyself, 
 For nothing worthy proving can be proven, 
 Nor yet disproven. 
 
 For the benefit of those not familiar with his 
 philosophy it may be worth while to set down 
 Kant's fundamental antinomies. There are the self- 
 contradictory " cosmological ideas" conclusions 
 as to time and space, the world, cause and freedom, 
 the existence of God at which the pure reason,
 
 92 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 working from such data as are available, in accord- 
 ance with strict logic, must inevitably arrive : 
 
 I. Thesis. The world has a beginning in time, and is 
 limited also in regard to space. 
 
 Antithesis. The world has no beginning and no limits 
 in space, but is infinite i i respect both to time and space. 
 
 II. Thesis. Every compound substance in the world 
 consists of simple parts, and nothing exists anywhere 
 but the simple or what is composed of it. 
 
 Antithesis. No compound thing in the world consists 
 of simple parts, and there exists nowhere in the world 
 anything simple. 
 
 III. Thesis. Causality, according to the laws of 
 nature, is not the only causality from which all the 
 phenomena of the world can be deduced. In order to 
 account for these phenomena, it is necessary also to 
 admit another causality, that of freedom. 
 
 Antithesis. There is no freedom, but everything in 
 the world takes place entirely according to the laws of 
 nature. 
 
 IV. Thesis. There exists an absolutely necessary 
 Being belonging to the world, either as a part or as the 
 cause of it. 
 
 Antithesis. There nowhere exists an absolutely neces- 
 sary Being, either within or without the world, as the 
 cause of it. 
 
 I only set this down to show that Tennyson's view 
 is in conformity with the best modern thought; and 
 it must be said that Kant's conclusion of the 
 eternal self-contradiction inherent in human reason 
 is less baffling if one sees it as a proof of life's 
 transitoriness; if we view the world as "this half 
 deed" as a thing still in the making, where we 
 can only guess at hints of the design. 
 
 Yet the sceptic singer still insists upon earth's 
 lesson. Man grows from babyhood to maturity, 
 from maturity to decline ; what hope is there in this
 
 Tennyson's Views on Religion. 93 
 
 of progress towards a higher state? And the Sage 
 answers : 
 
 The shell must break before the bird can fly. 
 
 Our body, that is, seems to him only the cage ; the 
 separable self is something bound up not with the 
 body but in the body. It comes, as Tennyson cries 
 in his verses to his new-born son, 
 
 Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep, 
 
 and it goes to the deep. One loses in The Ancient 
 Sage that keen insistence of the earlier poems on a 
 separate consciousness continued after death. Each 
 self is only one " slight ripple on the boundless 
 deep ". 
 
 But that one ripple on the boundless deep 
 Feels that the deep is boundless, and itself 
 For ever changing form, but evermore 
 One with the boundless motion of the deep. 
 
 That is perhaps the last word of all philosophies 
 that recognize a spirit in man distinct from the 
 material substance. And the last word of the Sage 
 is that of mystical ethics: Live not for yourself 
 but for others ; curb act and thought ; and one day, 
 perhaps, rising above the finite reason, you may 
 "Strike on the Mount of Vision". 
 
 The conclusion, as I say, is substantially that 
 which has been reached by many minds in many 
 ages, following many paths, all perhaps guided by 
 the will-o'-the-wisp of a common desire. But it is 
 the conclusion which has been reached by the 
 severest thinkers as well as the most visionary. 
 Tennyson gave it a peculiar colour by importing 
 the idea of evolution as a scientific argument. The 
 correlative doctrine of degeneration he never in- 
 sisted upon in things spiritual, though it coloured
 
 94 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 his political thought. But the expression of his 
 own faith, rather than his reasoned convictions, 
 will be found unmistakable in the verses he dictated 
 on his death-bed, his appeal to the " Silent Voices" 
 for a leading "on and always on"; and it stands 
 supremely beautiful in the lines, Crossing the J3ar, 
 which have been hackneyed in quotation but often 
 misunderstood. Yet their meaning is plain enough. 
 Man in this life has been a sailor in port, getting 
 and spending ; the call comes and he must put out 
 to sea; there may be trouble as he crosses the 
 bar that divides him from the great Beyond, or there 
 may be a full tide to bear him over it scarce know- 
 ing. But, whether rough or smooth the going, 
 he goes to other seas and other skies, not without 
 guidance; and beyond the bar the guide may 
 reveal himself and the purpose of the going. 
 
 We walk by faith; that is the conclusion of the 
 whole matter in Tennyson's eyes; and no man who 
 reads him fairly will deny that he recognized at 
 once the rights of reason and its limitations. You 
 cannot look to htm for the tragic force that is in 
 FitzGerald's stanzas; the one man sees intensely 
 what lies under his hand, the tragi -comedy of 
 man's lot in the earth; Tennyson, seeing through 
 and beyond it, loses its terrible distinctness. His 
 philosophy is not tragic, it does not stir us; but, as 
 Maeterlinck says, where there is wisdom, tragedy 
 can scarcely come. If your mind has the singular 
 balance of Tennyson's, and you pin your faith to a 
 hope, seeing clearly that it is a hope, and seeing 
 also all the evidence that makes against it, you can- 
 not proclaim your creed with any triumphant assur- 
 ance, unless indeed you have the militant optimism 
 of Browning. But if you see all pointing to the in- 
 evitable end, and hold to the symbol of the inverted 
 wine-cup, as did FitzGerald or at least his original, 
 that very hope and desire latent in you, upon which
 
 Tennyson's Political Opinions. 95 
 
 Tennyson bases his faith, will give to your conclu- 
 sion a poignant note of despair which must be 
 always among the most moving things in literature. 
 That is why many incline to rate FitzGerald high 
 and depreciate Tennyson. Compromise is never 
 very picturesque, and Tennyson, British in this as 
 well as in everything else, held in religion to what 
 was essentially a compromise. 
 
 Chapter V. 
 Tennyson's Political Opinions. 
 
 The first article in Tennyson's political creed was 
 undoubtedly that it is a great matter to be an Eng- 
 lishman. This extreme sense of the national virtues 
 has, perhaps, its drawbacks; but there is no ques- 
 tion of the strength and genuineness of the poet's 
 patriotism. Some of the best and most character- 
 istic things that he ever wrote expressed once and 
 for all the political faith of an intelligent Briton ; 
 and he was always ready to be stirred into en- 
 thusiasm by any national achievement, or any 
 movement for national defence. This enthusiasm 
 inspired one magnificent poem, the Ballad of The 
 Revenge, and one of the most successful battle 
 pieces ever written, The Charge of the Light Brigade-, 
 it also strangely betrayed him again and again into 
 utterances where it is hard to trace the artist. The 
 1830 volume contained two patriotic lyrics, both of 
 which were suppressed in later issues of the poems. 
 The first began: 
 
 Who fears to die, who fears to die? 
 Is there any here who fears to die?
 
 96 Tennyson: A Critical Study, 
 
 and had a chorus : 
 
 Shout for England ! 
 Ho for England 1 
 
 expressing altogether a patriotism more noisy than 
 dignified. The other, half a century later, re-ap- 
 peared as the Forester's Song in the Robin Hood 
 play: 
 
 There is no land like England 
 
 Where'er the light of day be ; 
 There are no hearts like English hearts, 
 
 Such hearts of oak as they be. 
 There is no land like England 
 
 Where'er the light of day be ; 
 There are no men like Englishmen, 
 
 So tall and bold as they be. 
 
 And so on, da capo, for the women. 
 
 The triumphant sonnet upon Buonaparte was also 
 an early work; another upon Poland expressed 
 that youthful fervour on behalf of liberty, which, 
 as we have seen, actually tempted Tennyson and 
 Hallam to take part in the Spanish insurrection 
 against a despot. This sympathy never wholly 
 deserted the poet, and the most honoured guest 
 who ever came to Farringford was perhaps Gari- 
 baldi. But Tennyson's political zeal was never 
 like Shelley's, Byron's, or Browning's cosmopoli- 
 tan ; he was British to the point of insularity. Yet 
 certainly one cannot fairly object any want of 
 comprehensiveness to a mind which, concentrating 
 itself slowly on one set of phenomena, by some 
 slow process arrived at the very heart of the matter. 
 Tennyson never understood France, and his phrase 
 about the " blind hysterics of the Celt" is one of 
 those half-truths which he has denounced in a 
 famous verse ; but he understood his own country, 
 and no account of the English political spirit was
 
 Tennyson's Political Opinions. 97 
 
 ever given so luminous as that which he has con- 
 densed into a few lines: 
 
 You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease, 
 
 Within this region I subsist, 
 
 Whose spirits falter in the mist, 
 And languish for the purple seas. 
 
 It is the land that freemen till, 
 
 That sober-suited Freedom chose, 
 
 The land, where girt with friends or foes 
 
 A man may speak the thing he will; 
 
 A land of settled government, 
 
 A land of just and old renown, 
 Where Freedom slowly broadens down 
 
 From precedent to precedent : 
 
 Where faction seldom gathers head, 
 But by degrees to fullness wrought, 
 The strength of some diffusive thought 
 
 Hath time and space to work and spread. 
 
 This attitude towards his country lasted him through 
 life, and it finds a more amiable expression here 
 than in that passage of The Princess which con- 
 trasts Britain and France: 
 
 God bless the narrow sea, which keeps her off, 
 
 And keeps our Britain, whole within herself, 
 
 A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled 
 
 Some sense of duty, something of a faith, 
 
 Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made, 
 
 Some patient force to change them when we will, 
 
 Some civic manhood firm against the crowd 
 
 But yonder, whiff! there comes a sudden heat, 
 
 The gravest citizen seems to lose his head, 
 
 The Iking is scared, the soldier will not fight, 
 
 The little boys begin to shoot and stab, 
 
 A kingdom topples over with a shriek 
 
 Like an old woman, and down rolls the world 
 
 In mock heroics stranger than our own ; 
 
 Revolts, republics, revolutions, most 
 
 No graver than a schoolboys' barring out ; 
 
 Too comic for the solemn things they are, 
 
 Too solemn for the comic touches in them,
 
 98 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 Like our wild Princess with as wise a dream 
 As some of theirs God bless the narrow seas ! 
 I wish they were a whole Atlantic broad. 
 
 But Tennyson's patriotism did not limit itself to 
 admiration of things as they were. Seeing his 
 country's greatness, he was jealous for it, and he 
 preached a wise imperialism in days before the 
 nation at large had realized the conditions under 
 which it held its ascendency. Britain was to him 
 the home of freedom, set by God's special mercy 
 within barriers of "the inviolate sea", and in his 
 noble Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, 
 he, for the first time, urged upon his country, not 
 only her mission in the world, but the imperative 
 need to make the protecting barrier a true protection. 
 
 O Statesmen, guard us, guard the eye, the soul 
 Of Europe, keep our noble England whole, 
 And save the one true seed of freedom sown 
 Betwixt a people and their ancient throne, 
 That sober freedom out of which there springs 
 Our loyal passion for our temperate kings ; 
 For, saving that, ye help to save mankind 
 Till public wrong be crumbled into dust, 
 And drill the raw world for the march of mind, 
 Till crowds at length be sane and crowns be just 
 But wink no more in slothful overtrust. 
 Remember him who led your hosts ; 
 He bad you guard the sacred coasts. 
 Your cannons moulder on the seaward wall 1 
 
 That is a passage which to-day would be cheered 
 to the echo, but the poem in which it comes was 
 perhaps worse received than anything the poet ever 
 wrote. Those were the days of the Manchester 
 school, and of "peace at any price". No man 
 could be more eloquent in praise of commerce, that 
 link between the peoples, than was Tennyson a 
 decade later in his Ode sung at the Opening of the 
 International Exhibition :
 
 Tennyson's Political Opinions. 99 
 
 O ye, the wise who think, the wise who reign. 
 From growing commerce loose her latest chain, 
 And let the fair white-wing'd peacemaker fly 
 To happy havens under all the sky, 
 And mix the seasons and the golden hours ; 
 Till each man find his own in all men's good, 
 And all men work in noble brotherhood, 
 Breaking their mailed fleets and armed towers, 
 And ruling by obeying Nature's powers, 
 And gathering all the fruits of earth and crown'd with 
 all her flowers. 
 
 That is the ideal set forth already twenty years 
 earlier in Locksley Hall 
 
 The Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. 
 
 But though such Utopias had a rich incarnation in 
 the poet's vision, they did not blind him to the hard 
 realities of the present; and in his lines headed 
 The Third of February, 1852, he spoke his mind in 
 angry denunciation of the resolution of the House 
 of Lords : 
 
 My Lords, we heard you speak : you told us all 
 That England's honest censure went too far; 
 
 That our free press should cease to brawl, 
 Not sting the fiery Frenchman into war. 
 
 It was our ancient privilege, my Lords, 
 
 To fling whate'er we felt, not fearing, into words. 
 
 We feel, at least, that silence here were sin, 
 Not ours the fault, if we have feeble hosts 
 
 If easy patrons of their kin 
 Have left the last free race with naked coasts ! 
 
 They knew the precious things they had to guard : 
 
 For us, we will not spare the tyrant one hard word. 
 
 Tho' niggard throats of Manchester may bawl, 
 What England was, shall her true sons forget? 
 
 We are not cotton-spinners all, 
 
 But some love England and her honour yet. 
 
 And these in our Thermopylae shall stand, 
 
 And hold against the world this honour of the land.
 
 loo Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 That was an utterance of no doubtful import. 
 The Crimean War came two years later, but before 
 it came the opening canto of Maud was written, 
 with its outburst against the canker of peace, and 
 its cry for the keen and bitter tonic of war; and in 
 the mid excitement of the struggle was composed 
 the end, which is a sort of paean to the God of 
 Battles: 
 
 No more shall commerce be all in all, and Peace 
 Pipe on her pastoral hillock a languid note, 
 And watch her harvest ripen, her herd increase, 
 Nor the cannon-bullet rust on a slothful shore, 
 And the cobweb woven across the cannon's throat 
 Shall shake its threaded tears in the wind no more. 
 
 Peace is gone, and with it goes the "old hysteri- 
 cal mock disease", vanishing before the shout of 
 "a loyal people shouting a battle-cry". Let the 
 phantom go or stay, cries the hero of the poem 
 
 Let it go or stay, so I wake to the higher aims 
 
 Of a land that has lost for a little her lust of gold, 
 
 And love of a peace that was full of wrongs and shames, 
 
 Horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told; 
 
 And hail once more to the banner of battle unroll'd ! 
 
 The bitter feeling that was excited by such pass- 
 ages may be gathered from Mr. Gladstone's fierce 
 declamation against them. History will perhaps 
 scarce justify the Crimean War; but Tennyson's 
 view of our national obligations and national in- 
 terest is the one that has prevailed. Nor was it 
 merely upon the question of national defences that 
 he stood far in front of the trend of thought ; at the 
 very height of what we now call the Little England 
 policy, he spoke strongly for maintaining in its 
 fulness our Empire with all its greatness and all 
 its charges. The lines in his "Epilogue to the 
 Queen " which close the Idylls found a grateful 
 echo in Canada, and in all probability went far to
 
 Tennyson's Political Opinions. 101 
 
 undo the mischief made by short-sighted statesmen. 
 Written now, they would be a superb summary of 
 our national hopes and aspirations; written as they 
 were in 1872, they showed a mind touched with the 
 spirit of prophetic interpretation : 
 
 And that true North, whereof we lately heard 
 A strain to shame us " keep you to yourselves ; 
 So loyal is too costly ! friends your love 
 Is but a burthen : loose the bond, and go". 
 Is this the tone of empire? here the faith 
 That made us rulers? this, indeed, her voice 
 And meaning, whom the roar of Hougoumont 
 Left mightiest of all peoples under heaven? 
 What shock has fool'd her since, that she should speak 
 So feebly? wealthier wealthier hour by hour; 
 The voice of Britain, or a sinking land, 
 Some third-rate isle half-lost among her seas? 
 There rang her voice, when the full city peal'd 
 Thee and thy Prince ! The loyal to their crown 
 Are loyal to their own far sons, who love 
 Our ocean-empire with her boundless homes 
 For ever-broadening England, and her throne 
 In our vast Orient, and one isle, one isle, 
 That knows not her own greatness : if she knows 
 And dreads it we are falFn. 
 
 These lines, fine as they are, cannot compare in 
 literary quality with Matthew Arnold's famous 
 passage about the "weary Titan". But, given 
 the conception which Tennyson undoubtedly held, 
 that a poet's first excellence is to be measured by 
 the value of his inspiration to his people, there can 
 be no question which utterance of the two is the 
 more bracing. One cannot class The Defence of 
 Lucknow high as poetry; of the Songs, Hands all 
 Round and Riflemen form, considered as literature 
 the less said the better ; and the lines entitled The 
 Fleet, which were published in The Times in 1886 
 
 Her fleet is in your hands, 
 
 And in her fleet her Fate
 
 102 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 simply give the impression of a man so angry in 
 his passion that he is scarcely articulate. But con- 
 sidering all these things together, and the times at 
 which they were written, it can scarcely be denied 
 that Tennyson used his poetic gift, and the hold 
 which it gave him on the feelings of his country- 
 men, not merely with a high sense of his moral 
 mission, but with a singularly wide political fore- 
 cast. Man of peace as he was, he poured iron into 
 the hearts of his race. A poet can only give of 
 what is in himself, and his achievement in this 
 respect ranks him above the artist, who merely 
 makes life more beautiful and pleasant. As he 
 has himself put it with his accustomed felicity in 
 the Epilogue to his battle pieces : 
 
 the Singer for his Art 
 Not all in vain may plead 
 " The song that nerves a nation's heart 
 Is in itself a deed". 
 
 Thackeray said that " A. T. was the wisest man 
 he had ever known ", and I have tried to show by 
 this series of extracts his sagacity and his power of 
 getting at the heart of things. For the bearing of 
 his country as against the world he gave clear 
 guidance. But when we look to him for political 
 wisdom in domestic affairs the voice of his answer 
 is divided. 
 
 He went up to Cambridge in 1828, when the 
 country was in a ferment of revolt against the rule 
 of privileged classes, against repression of the 
 democratic spirit; in short, against restrictions 
 which had been drawn harder than ever since the 
 horror of the French Revolution and the terror of 
 Napoleon. The young men of his set, Hallam 
 and the rest, were full of a generous Liberalism, 
 and Tennyson, always sensitive to popular aspir- 
 ations, let himself go with the rest. He had seen
 
 Tennyson's Political Opinions. 103 
 
 all about him in Lincolnshire terrible signs of the 
 people's discontent 
 
 When Dives loathed the times and paced his land 
 
 In fear of worse, 
 And sanguine Lazarus felt a vacant hand 
 
 Fill with his purse ; 
 
 and as he tells, in the dedication to The Progress of 
 Spring from which I quote this stanza, had seen 
 one night, 
 
 When thirty ricks, 
 All flaming, made an English homestead Hell. 
 
 And with the ardour of youth he had believed 
 firmly in the power of Power to remedy injustice. 
 When the news of the Reform Bill's passing 
 reached Somersby in the dead of night, the Tenny- 
 sons were still living in the rectory as tenants after 
 their father's death. Alfred Tennyson and others 
 of the brothers and sisters "at once sallied out 
 into the darkness and began to ring the church 
 bells madly ", to the great confusion and amaze- 
 ment of the parson. And it is this spirit, this 
 fervor juventce, rather than any intensity of love 
 passion, that gives to Locksley Hall its high rank 
 among his poems. Nowhere else has he expressed 
 so passionately the poet's feeling for his race for 
 man, this wonderful creature who year by year 
 wins to himself new forces, gains new conquest 
 over the resistance of things : 
 
 Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new : 
 That which they have done but earnest of the things that they 
 shall do. 
 
 And so he follows the imaginative vision of their 
 future, heaping upon them strange riches, fought 
 for in strange contests with strange engines of 
 
 (M685) H
 
 io4 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 death, till the end is peace and order in the " federa- 
 tion of the world". 
 
 There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in 
 
 awe, 
 And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law. 
 
 Nakedly stated, this is the ideal of universal peace 
 under a cosmopolitan democracy the millennium of 
 Socialism and Tennyson was neither cosmopolitan 
 nor a democrat. Every fibre of his nature revolted, 
 when you came to test him, against the ideal im- 
 plied in either of those words. And already he saw 
 the grimmer side of democratic aspirations, the 
 aspiration of "sanguine Lazarus" after another's 
 purse, and he set it down in a marvellous couplet 
 
 Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion creeping nigher, 
 Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly-dying fire. 
 
 But for the moment the tide of enthusiasm swept 
 him away from the deeper instincts of his nature. 
 He believed, with all his heart, in the increasing 
 purpose that ran through the ages; and, for the 
 moment, he was well content to identify that with 
 the march of what we call civilization, and the 
 growing triumphs of machinery. 
 
 Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us 
 
 range! 
 Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of 
 
 change ! 
 
 Is it not significant to read, as we do in the Life, 
 that this last line was written after a railway jour- 
 ney from Liverpool, when the rail was as yet so 
 new a thing that Tennyson believed the wheels to 
 run in a groove? And when one thinks of the 
 results accomplished, so great and yet so little, by 
 the marvellous developments since these first days 
 of steam, is it wonderful that we should turn to
 
 Tennyson's Political Opinions. 105 
 
 Locksley Hall Sixty Years After and find there 
 what we do find? The fervour of youth has de- 
 parted, the brain is chilled with age, the contagious 
 enthusiasm of others has disappeared, the wonders 
 of machinery, grown commonplace, can no longer 
 intoxicate, and we find a voice coming from the 
 man's fundamental instincts. The child of many 
 generations who have belonged to the governors 
 rather than to the governed, the man accustomed 
 by inheritance to be looked up to, to direct rather 
 than to be directed, speaks, or rather passionately 
 cries out, against the revolt from all the old disci- 
 pline, the disappearance of old subordinations. He 
 has no faith in the great experiments everywhere 
 being tried about him, and he recedes explicitly 
 from his youthful profession of faith : 
 
 " Forward " rang the voices then, and of the many mine was 
 
 one. 
 Let us hush this cry of "Forward" till ten thousand years have 
 
 gone. 
 
 There is in all this the natural transition from 
 youth's standpoint to that of age; and if one is to 
 weigh the two opinions, allowance must be made 
 in each for the bias of nature. ''When the old 
 man says," writes Stevenson in his essay, Crabbed 
 Age and Youth, "'Ah, so I thought when I was 
 your age', he has proved the youth's case. Doubt- 
 less, whether from growth of experience or decline 
 of animal heat, he thinks so no longer; but he 
 thought so while he was young; and all men 
 have thought so while they were young, since 
 there was dew in the morning or hawthorn in 
 May; and here is another young man adding his 
 vote to those of previous generations and rivetting 
 another link to the chain of testimony." An ap- 
 peal lies from Tennyson in youth to Tennyson 
 in age; another, not less valid, from the mind of
 
 io6 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 eighty to the mind of twenty-four. But there is 
 more in the discrepancy than this merely natural 
 difference. The real Tennyson, who was, if you 
 like, a Liberal but no democrat, no real believer in 
 modern progress, spoke in TJie Princess. Com- 
 pared with the conservative principles of the day 
 in which it was written, that poem preached a 
 creed of advanced liberalism; compared with the 
 facts of the case, it merely inculcated a healthy 
 conservatism, a respect for nature. But Locksley 
 Hall is on a different level. The cry of "Forward" 
 meant something not really in Tennyson's nature. 
 For once in a way he was crying with the pack, led 
 and not leading; and between the first Locksley 
 Hall and the second all his political preachings 
 made for a wide-minded desire to preserve the old. 
 It is curious to contrast the liberalism of his Cam- 
 bridge days, and the bell-ringing over Reform Bills, 
 with his later forecast of what Arthur Hallam might 
 have been 
 
 A life in civic action warm, 
 
 A soul on highest mission sent, 
 A potent voice of Parliament, 
 
 A pillar stedfast in the storm, 
 
 Should licensed boldness gather force, 
 Becoming, when the time has birth, 
 A lever to uplift the earth 
 
 And roll it in another course, 
 
 With thousand shocks that come and go, 
 With agonies, with energies, 
 With overthrowings, and with cries, 
 
 And undulations to and fro. 
 
 This is no jubilant mood in which to contemplate 
 the cry of "Forward" and its outcome. It is an 
 early intimation of that dread and hatred of revolu- 
 tion which gradually increased upon the poet, and 
 of his deep-seated distrust of the undisciplined 
 masses. He was not the only one who had counted
 
 Tennyson's Political Opinions. 107 
 
 rashly upon tapping a reservoir of political virtue 
 in the heart of the working-man ; Mill showed the 
 same faith in his earlier writings, and in the Re- 
 presentative Government we find him busy devising 
 checks by which to safeguard society against the 
 preponderance of this same factor in it. The lines 
 To the Duke of Argyll show the real Tennyson, to 
 whom the true statesman is, like Virgil's mrum 
 pietate gravem, one calming from a great moral 
 height the tumult of a rabble 
 
 O Patriot Statesman, be thou wise to know 
 The limits of resistance, and the bounds 
 Determining concession ; still be bold 
 Not only to slight praise but suffer scorn ; 
 And be thy heart a fortress to maintain 
 The day against the moment, and the year 
 Against the day ; thy voice, a music heard 
 Thro' all the yells and counter-yells of feud 
 And faction, and thy will, a power to make 
 This ever-changing world of circumstance, 
 In changing, chime with never-changing Law. 
 
 Law; that is the key-note of Tennyson's teaching 
 both in politics and morals ; that is the truth which 
 he laboured in his Idylls to enforce. In so early a 
 work as (Enone he formulated it; the counsel of 
 Pallas to Paris condensed into a few pregnant lines 
 the whole of his philosophy of conduct. " Self- 
 reverence, self-knowledge, self-control", all imply 
 submission to a law with which we should identify 
 ourselves, "Acting the law we live by without 
 fear". 
 
 The spirit of discipline is to him by far more 
 important than the spirit of unchartered freedom. 
 Arthur comes as a reformer, but he comes to bring 
 law. He sweeps away the forests, letting in light; 
 he tramples out the wild unbridled life of the beasts, 
 and of men as wild as they; and he establishes the 
 freedom of an ordered state. He breaks in his sub-
 
 log Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 jects and he makes them move, as Duke William 
 in Harold aspires to make the " jarring earldoms" 
 of Britain move, "to music and to order". Repres- 
 sion is of the essence of this law which rules every- 
 where, in man and in the commonwealth ; and that 
 is scarcely the ideal of democracy, or even of liber- 
 alism. In a fine essay written many years ago 
 Professor Dowden contrasted Tennyson's worship 
 of law with Browning's glorification of impulse, 
 "this or that poor impulse which for once had play 
 unstifled". What has been so well said there, I 
 need not say over again ; but it is worth pointing 
 out how Tennyson's morals interpenetrate his 
 views of government. Looseness of any sort makes 
 against discipline; and probably no man has ever 
 stated so strongly the demoralizing effect of sexual 
 irregularities. The Round Table and the whole 
 order which it stands for are based upon chastity, 
 that is, single-hearted love between man and wo- 
 man; the break-up of that order begins with the 
 first seeds of unlawful love. When men cease to 
 ' ' love one woman only and to cleave to her " they 
 lose faith to God and faith to their king; from this 
 law-breaking spring all other breaches of law. The 
 thing is put as a symbol in the Idylls ; but in the 
 later poem of Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, the 
 fiercest of all the fierce denunciations is directed 
 against the growing license of literature 
 
 Authors essayist, atheist, novelist, realist, rhymester, play your 
 
 part, 
 Paint the mortal shame of nature with the living hues of Art. 
 
 Rip your brothers' vices open, strip your own foul passions bare, 
 Down with Reticence, down with Reverence, forward naked 
 let them stare. 
 
 Feed the budding rose of boyhood with the drainage of your 
 
 sewer, 
 Send the drain into the fountain, lest the stream should issue 
 
 pure,
 
 Tennyson's Political Opinions. 109 
 
 Set the maiden fancies wallowing in the troughs of Zolaism, 
 Forward, forward, ay and backward, downward too into the 
 abysm. 
 
 Do your best to charm the worst, to lower the rising race of 
 
 men; 
 Have we risen from out the beast, then back into the beast again? 
 
 That is what caps the climax; that is the worst 
 feature that Tennyson sees in the modern life which 
 he denounces with all the bitterness of disappoint- 
 ment. There is, however, no want of other accusa- 
 tion; the maiming of brute beasts, dynamite and 
 revolver, " menace, madness, spoken lies"; lies 
 of democracy, equalizing the unequal, seeking 
 upon matters of imperial import "the suffrage of 
 the plough"; ruling the simple masses through 
 the cunning of words. 
 
 So the Higher wields the Lower, while the Lower is the Higher. 
 
 Never was there a fiercer rhetoric of denunciation 
 
 Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! once again the sickening 
 
 game; 
 Freedom, free to slay herself, and dying while they shout her 
 
 Step by step we gain'd a freedom known to Europe, known to 
 
 Step by step we rose to greatness, thro' the tonguesters we may 
 fall. 
 
 You that woo the Voices tell them "Old Experience is a fool", 
 Teach your flatter 5 d kings that only those who cannot read can 
 rule. 
 
 Pluck the mighty from their seat, but set no meek ones in their 
 
 place ; 
 Pillory Wisdom in your markets, pelt your offal at her face. 
 
 Tumble Nature heel o'er head, and, yelling with the yelling 
 
 street, 
 Set the feet above the brain and swear the brain is in the feet.
 
 no Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 This is the very madness of reaction, and any fair- 
 minded person looking at the indictment will allow 
 that it does not correspond with facts. And indeed 
 neither of the Locksley Hall poems is to be taken 
 as fitly representative of Tennyson's mind. Each 
 poem has in it a fire, almost a frenzy, that sets it 
 apart from the rest of his work, or rather in a class 
 with the rhapsodies that open and close Maud\ and 
 each, with all the marvel of its eloquence, is marred 
 by a sort of falsetto note. The voice rises almost 
 to a shriek. For Tennyson's real mind upon poli- 
 tics I would look rather to the poems, calm in their 
 balance of phrasing and their stately self-contained 
 measure, which praise the equipoise of the constitu- 
 tion, and the freedom which restrains 
 
 Leather of the lawless crown 
 As of the lawless crowd. 
 
 And if one compares the later and less-known poem 
 on Freedom from which I quote these lines with 
 the magnificent stanzas written half a century 
 earlier, one sees a perfect harmony of thought the 
 same love of fearless truth, the same hatred of 
 "the falsehood of extremes". Nothing is gone 
 but the dew of the morning; and with that is 
 vanished perhaps also something of the triumphant 
 confidence in truth, something of the unalloyed 
 pride in the English race; and instead there lurk 
 in the background sombre apprehensions. As 
 Tennyson grew older he began to be haunted 
 by a new thought, instilled into him with the 
 teachings of science ; that if selection and progress 
 was everywhere in nature, so also were degenera- 
 tion and decadence ; and he watched with anxious, 
 unavailing eyes for a sign of a backward swing of 
 the pendulum for 
 
 Reversion, ever dragging Evolution in the mud.
 
 Tennyson's Outlook upon Nature. in 
 
 He saw it plainly there in Paris, and his minute 
 scrutiny for signs of it in England blinded him, I 
 think, to the more hopeful features in the political 
 and social order. But politics are not like religion; 
 they cannot be fairly studied in retreat; and the 
 utterances of a man who lived in voluntary seclu- 
 sion from the movement of affairs, judging acts 
 and actors from a distance, can never be regarded 
 as trustworthy guides. In the rub and bustle of 
 affairs men learn tolerance. Your recluse, like 
 Carlyle, is apt to fulminate damnation against what 
 is merely distasteful to his own prepossessions. 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 Tennyson s Outlook upon Nature. 
 
 I have tried to show that Tennyson's whole con- 
 ception of the spiritual universe was profoundly 
 coloured by the evolutionist theory. Not in this 
 matter alone, but in his outlook upon life and the 
 physical world, he sees and thinks and speaks like 
 a poet who is also a man of science. The truths of 
 astronomy are for ever present to his mind, not as 
 mere formulae, but realized with all the intensity of 
 a poet's imagination. Against the claim of man to 
 spiritual significance he is for ever setting man's 
 physical insignificance. One finds it first in The 
 Two Voices'. 
 
 I said, " When first the world began, 
 Young Nature thro' five cycles ran, 
 And in the sixth she moulded man. 
 
 " She gave him mind, the lordliest 
 Proportion, and, above the rest, 
 Dominion in the head and breast."
 
 ii2 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 Thereto the silent voice replied ; 
 
 " Self-blinded are you by your pride : 
 
 Look up thro' night : the world is wide. 
 
 " This truth within thy mind rehearse, 
 
 That in a boundless universe 
 
 Is boundless better, boundless worse. 
 
 " Think you this mould of hopes and fears 
 Could find no statelier than his peers 
 In yonder hundred million spheres?" 
 
 And the same thought is put with far more power 
 in Fastness: 
 
 Many a hearth upon our dark globe sighs after many a vanish'd 
 
 face, 
 Many a planet by many a sun may roll with the dust of a 
 
 vanish'd race. 
 
 Raving politics, never at rest as this poor earth's pale history 
 
 runs, 
 What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million 
 
 million of suns? 
 
 In Despair, the tragedy of creation that "groaneth 
 and travaileth in pain " extends far beyond human 
 ken: 
 
 And the suns of the limitless Universe sparkled and shone in 
 
 the sky, 
 Flashing with fires as of God, but we knew that their light was 
 
 a lie 
 Bright as with deathless hope but, however they sparkled and 
 
 shone, 
 The dark little worlds running round them were worlds of woe 
 
 like our own 
 
 No soul in the heaven above, no soul on the earth below, 
 A fiery scroll written over with lamentation and woe. 
 
 But by far the finest example of an imagination fed 
 with the facts of astronomy is in a really great 
 passage of Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, where 
 the poet takes up from the earlier poem the theme 
 of a warless earth which his young mind held in
 
 Tennyson's Outlook upon Nature. 113 
 
 vision, and comments upon it with the experience 
 of a life. Sixty years has seen the reign of science, 
 and how much nearer are we to the vision? " War- 
 less earth ", he cries 
 
 Warless? when her tens are thousands, and her thousands 
 
 millions, then 
 All her harvest all too narrow who can fancy warless men? 
 
 Warless? War will die out late then. Will it ever? late or 
 
 soon? 
 Can it, till this outworn earth be dead as yon dead world the 
 
 moon? 
 
 Life on the moon is dead, the new astronomy tells 
 us, worn out in anguish ; but across the worlds who 
 knows of that anguish? From across space that 
 theatre of desolation looks a perpetual peace. And 
 then, by a noble reach of thought, he shows us the 
 littleness of our own destiny "the trouble of ants" 
 that, seen across space, may look like utter tran- 
 quillity : 
 
 Dead, but how her living glory lights the hall, the dune, the 
 
 grass! 
 Yet the moonlight is the sunlight, and the sun himself will pass. 
 
 Venus near her! smiling downward at this earthlier earth of 
 
 ours, 
 Closer on the Sun, perhaps a world of never-fading flowers. 
 
 Hesper, whom the poet call'd the Bringer home of all good 
 
 Es. 
 things may move in Hesper, perfect peoples, perfect 
 ^ ;. 
 
 Hesper Venus were we native to that splendour or in Mars, 
 We should see the Globe we groan in, fairest of their evening 
 stars. 
 
 Could we dream of wars and carnage, craft and madness, lust 
 
 and spite, 
 Roaring London, raving Paris, in that point of peaceful light? 
 
 Might we not in glancing heavenward on a star so silver-fair, 
 Yearn, and clasp the hands and murmur, " Would to God that 
 we were there"?
 
 ii4 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 Two things there are, said Kant, that fill me 
 with awe: the starry heaven above me and the 
 moral law within me. That is for Tennyson also 
 the lesson of astronomy; the permanent contrast 
 between man's pettiness in the universe and his 
 "far-off touch of greatness", for the poem closes, 
 as I have already urged, with an emphatic assertion 
 of man's eternal destiny. 
 
 Another such contrast is that between the law of 
 love in which man's heart finds the key-note of the 
 universe and the law of cruelty which we see every- 
 where in Nature. 
 
 For nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal ; 
 The May-fly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow spear'd by the 
 
 shrike, 
 And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder and 
 
 prey. 
 
 There is the fact stated; but for the contrast ex- 
 pressed one has to turn to a passage of In Me- 
 moriam that may rank among the noblest in 
 English verse. Here in a few lines the poem 
 concentrates the whole existence of man hoping 
 against hope "who built him fanes of fruitless 
 prayer" and the attitude of nature ranged in 
 permanent denial of all his beliefs : 
 
 And he, shall he, 
 
 Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair, 
 Such splendid purpose in his eyes, 
 Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies, 
 
 Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, 
 
 Who trusted God was love indeed 
 And love Creation's final law 
 Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw 
 
 With ravine, shriek'd against his creed 
 
 Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills, 
 Who battled for the True, the Just, 
 Be blown about the desert dust, 
 
 Or seal'd within the iron hills?
 
 Tennyson's Outlook upon Nature. 115 
 
 These appear to me the two main lessons which 
 Tennyson learnt from science; from astronomy 
 man's insignificance in space, from geology his 
 transitoriness in time. It is hardly necessary to 
 prove from casual references how fully his mind was 
 fed with the facts of science. Such a passage as 
 this from The Two Voices proves a knowledge 
 which no other English poet had cared to acquire: 
 
 Before the little ducts began 
 
 To feed thy bones with lime, and ran 
 
 Their course, till thou wert also man. 
 
 It is also an example of that extraordinary power 
 which Tennyson repeatedly displayed the power 
 of clothing the teachings of science in a style that 
 gave them beauty and hid nothing of their clearness. 
 Lucretius is among his finest poems; it is also 
 perhaps the best concise statement ever written of 
 the atomic theory of creation ; and a few lines of 
 Lady Psyche's lecture in The Princess condense a 
 more modern view of the same. It is easy also 
 to detect the skill with which Tennyson used his 
 knowledge to realize physically in our minds things 
 that to most of us are only abstract knowledge. 
 For instance, in the lines 
 
 Move eastward, happy earth, and leave 
 
 Yon orange sunset waning slow : 
 From fringes of the faded eve, 
 
 O, happy planet, eastward go ; 
 Till over thy dark shoulder glow 
 
 Thy silver sister-world, and rise 
 
 To glass herself in dewy eyes 
 That watch me from the glen below. 
 
 Ah, bear me with thee, smoothly borne, 
 
 Dip forward under starry light. 
 And move me to my marriage-morn, 
 
 And round again to happy night. 
 
 A fine image too is latent under what seems a
 
 n6 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 commonplace in the lines in memory of the Prince 
 Consort addressed to the Queen : 
 
 Her over all whose realms, to their last isle 
 Commingled with the gloom of imminent war, 
 The shadow of his loss drew like eclipse, 
 Darkening the world. 
 
 For what is pictured is not merely gloom, but a 
 gloom that swept round the world swift as the 
 electric message could leap from point to point; 
 literally, like the shadow round the spinning globe. 
 Everything, all knowledge, with Tennyson went to 
 feed the visual imagination; he was before all 
 things a creator of forms. In his observation of 
 nature one feels the trained eye of the sportsman or 
 artist, but also the disciplined observation of the 
 botanist or geologist. He saw with extraordinary 
 distinctness, as I shall have to show, all that was 
 about him ; but he could also construct, with almost 
 equal vividness, imaginary landscape from descrip- 
 tion. His mind revelled in tropical imaginings; 
 there is a story in the Life of his disgust because 
 he could not kindle Wordsworth's enthusiasm with 
 an account of some island in the South Seas where 
 Spring came with a flush of crimson leafage. 
 There is no need to quote the famous passage in 
 Locksley Hall that describes 
 
 Summer isles of Eden lying in dark purple spheres of sea. 
 
 In the poem called The Voyage there is a succession 
 of landscapes like those in The Lotos-Eaters, but 
 based on fact: 
 
 By sands and steaming flats and floods 
 
 Of mighty mouth we scudded fast, 
 And hills and scarlet-mingled woods 
 
 Glow'd for a moment as we passed. 
 
 But the most notable of these must at least be
 
 Tennyson's Outlook upon Nature. 117 
 
 quoted the great passage in Enoch Arden, which 
 has been praised almost without measure, but 
 scarcely beyond its deserts. 
 
 The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns 
 And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven, 
 The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes, 
 The lightning flash of insect and of bird, 
 The lustre of the long convolvuluses 
 That coiled around the stately stems, and ran 
 Ev'n to the limit of the land, the glows 
 And glories of the broad belt of the world, 
 All these he saw ; but what he fain had seen 
 He could not see, the kindly human face, 
 Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard 
 The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl, 
 The league-long roller thundering on the reef, 
 The moving whisper of huge trees that branch'd 
 And blossom'd in the zenith, or the sweep 
 Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave, 
 As down the shore he ranged, or all day long 
 Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge, 
 A shipwreck'd sailor, waiting for a sail : 
 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 ; 
 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. 
 
 The teachings of science thus had a double im- 
 portance in Tennyson's development. Upon them 
 first of all was based his whole attitude towards 
 religion and the universe. He accepted resolutely 
 and unflinchingly all that science could prove; but 
 by reason of his close acquaintance with what was 
 then accounted the enemy, he saw also the limita- 
 tions of this dreaded power. Seeing what it could 
 prove and explain, he saw also what it could neither 
 prove nor explain. And secondly, beyond this
 
 n8 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 abstract intellectual framework which Science pro- 
 vided for his thought, it furnished also the most 
 fertile food for his imagination. Child of his age 
 in this, as in all else, he wondered at the marvels 
 of his own generation; and not less instinct with 
 beauty to him than either man or woman, picture 
 or poem, were "the fairy tales of Science and the 
 long result of time". The tale of man's victories 
 over nature filled him with pride ; but Science was 
 more to him than a recital of discoveries, or of such 
 exploits as Mr. Kipling delights to celebrate. It 
 gave a new beauty and significance to what was 
 already beautiful. One cannot rightly separate 
 Tennyson's observation of Nature from his interest 
 in physical science. He looked at Nature with the 
 eyes of a lover awake to every loveliness, from the 
 dimness of far-off hills to the delicate markings of 
 a tiny flower at his feet; but he always looked with 
 the eyes of one trained in the school of Science. 
 He has been compared to Wordsworth, and judged 
 inferior because he did not attempt, as Wordsworth 
 did, to find a living spirit, a conscious face, in 
 mountains and rivers: the judgment seems to me 
 wholly unreasonable. Man was in Tennyson's eye 
 the roof and crown of things; the interpreter of 
 Nature, whose forces he moulded to his own will ; 
 her master and not her dependant. Nature was 
 only the setting for man, the material given on 
 which he might display his energies, the record in 
 which he might read, if he could, his fate. Nature 
 would answer his moods; sunlight to Mariana in 
 the South might show only desolation ; but Nature 
 could only give back an echo, or at most answer 
 when she was questioned. The other view was 
 native to Wordsworth, and true no doubt for him ; 
 but Tennyson's appears to be the saner and more 
 genuine, and his observation infinitely finer and 
 more searching. It would, I think, be hard to
 
 Tennyson's Outlook upon Nature. 119 
 
 establish that Wordsworth really observed with 
 any exceptional closeness, though he certainly in- 
 troduced into poetry a new use of detail. The 
 magic of sights and sounds in lonely places; the 
 cuckoo's cry 
 
 Breaking the silence of the seas 
 Among the farthest Hebrides ; 
 
 he has rendered incomparably, and that sense of 
 exaltation which mountain air only can give. But, 
 as an observer of Nature, and as a painter of her 
 innumerable aspects great and small, Tennyson 
 
 foes far beyond Wordsworth or any poet since 
 hakespeare. 
 
 The closeness of study upon which his most 
 gorgeous pictures rested, comparable to the work 
 of Turner redeems even the affectation of his 
 juvenile pieces. For the most part the landscape 
 in them is vague and conventional; diamond ril- 
 lets, gleaming fountains, green lawns and sighing 
 breezes. 
 
 From the green rivage many a fall 
 Of diamond rillets musical, 
 Thro' little crystal arches low 
 Down from the central fountain's flow 
 Fall'n silver-chiming, seemed to shake 
 The sparkling flints beneath the prow. 
 
 But if you come to study the Juvenilia close, you 
 see again and again the truth of imagination. It 
 is an imagination nursed in a land of willow and 
 poplar, a land of plains 
 
 grassy, wild, and bare, 
 Wide, wild, and open to the air. 
 
 fenced from the sea by sand-hills. Nothing can be 
 juster in observation than the lines in the Ode to 
 Memory (written at about fifteen) which first re- 
 
 (M686) I
 
 i2o Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 vealed to Mr. Leslie Stephen (by his own account) 
 the charm of fen scenery. 
 
 Whether the high field on the bushless Pike, 
 
 Or even a sand-built ridge 
 Of heaped hills that mound the sea, 
 Overblown with murmurs harsh, 
 
 Or even a lowly cottage whence we see 
 Stretch'd wide and wild the waste enormous marsh, 
 
 Where from the frequent bridge, 
 
 Like emblems of infinity, 
 The trenched waters run from sky to sky. 
 
 You feel, too, in the Song which describes the spirit 
 of autumn a mind in the very closest touch with 
 what it pictures: the " moist rich smell of the rot- 
 ting leaves ", and the first signs of decay when the 
 strong sunflower grows heavy-headed, and the 
 petals lose their lustre. 
 
 And, finally, the one poem among the Juvenilia 
 which has always to be seriously considered is 
 Mariana, essentially a piece of imaginative land- 
 scape; landscape seen through a veil of human 
 passion, but seen with the keenest intensity of 
 vision. One need only recall the opening: 
 
 With blackest moss the flower-plots 
 Were thickly crusted, one and all : 
 
 The rusted nails fell from the knots 
 That held the pear to the gable-wall. 
 
 These are Virgil's loca senta situ, but seen how 
 definitely! how admirable is that touch, so minute, 
 yet so ample in suggestion of the neglected garden 
 where the trees hang loose from the wall ! 
 
 And everywhere one comes upon the charac- 
 teristic that never left Tennyson, his delight in all 
 the shapes and sounds of water. He tells you here 
 in his early poems of 
 
 The sea 
 
 At midnight when the crisp slope waves, 
 After a tempest, rib and fret 
 The broad imbased beach ;
 
 Tennyson's Outlook upon Nature. 121 
 
 he tells you of 
 
 the brook that loves 
 
 To purl o'er matted cress and ribbed sand, 
 Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves, 
 Drawing into his narrow earthen urn, 
 
 In every elbow and turn, 
 The filter'd tribute of the rough woodland. 
 
 There is not yet the same breadth and happiness 
 of touch that was to show later how 
 
 Twice a day the Severn fills, 
 The salt sea-water passes by, 
 And hushes half the babbling Wye, 
 And makes a silence in the hills ; 
 
 nor the skilled magic that, after eighty years of 
 learning, evolved the image of 
 
 Such a tide as moving seems asleep, 
 Too full for sound and foam ; 
 
 but there is the same study, the same delight. I 
 have named from among the later passages the two 
 that instantly suggest themselves by their supreme 
 beauty ; but if one wished to parallel more closely 
 these early sketches, how easy it would be. The 
 Brook has its own poem though I think that is 
 not the brook that passed 
 
 The seven elms and poplars four 
 That stand beside my father's door ; 
 
 but a brook of livelier runnings than can be found 
 among the Lincolnshire flats; and the sea is never 
 out of Tennyson's verse. One recalls the echoing 
 passage in Maud, where the lover walks in his 
 garden and hears the tempestuous voices of wave 
 and beach; one recalls the "Wild wave in the wide 
 North-Sea ", with all 
 
 Its stormy crests that smoke against the skies,
 
 122 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 to which is likened the charge of Lancelot's kin 
 upon Lancelot unrecognized ; and how many other 
 images taken from the sea, whether in storm or 
 calm. 
 
 One image which has for me a singular power of 
 suggestion is that in the close of The Palace of Art 
 which describes the Soul's punishment, shut for its 
 spiritual exclusive arrogance in "dull stagnation" 
 till it feels like 
 
 A still salt pool, lock'd in with bars of sand, 
 Left on the shore ; that hears all night 
 
 The plunging seas draw backward from the land 
 Their moon-led waters white. 
 
 And need I quote the longing of the Lotos-eaters 
 
 To watch the crisping ripples on the beach 
 And tender curving lines of creamy spray 
 
 where the sound, as always, beautifully answers the 
 sense. 
 
 Tennyson made his home by the sea, where in 
 winter 
 
 the hoary Channel 
 Tumbles a billow on chalk and sand, 
 
 and where in summer the waves made a "silent 
 sapphire-spangled marriage-ring of the land"; 
 the home of his boyhood was almost within the 
 hearing of a rougher, grayer water, on the bleak 
 east coast; and from the two he learnt all moods 
 of the sea, at least as a landsman knows it. But 
 the rivers of his affection, save for what he saw 
 in the Gorge of Cauteretz and pictured in (Enone, 
 were all the rivers of a plain country, not the 
 brown salmon-haunted streams that we know in 
 Ireland and Scotland, which race and break, but 
 rather such as this pictures:
 
 Tennyson's Outlook upon Nature. 123 
 
 A league of grass washed by a slow broad stream 
 That, stirr'd with languid pulses of the oar, 
 Waves all its lazy lilies and creeps on 
 Barge-laden to three arches of a bridge 
 Crowned with the minster towers. 
 
 His delight was in the earth and its creatures 
 as well as in the sea and the streams. As one 
 turns over the poems, on every page there appear 
 touches of that minute imaginative sight which 
 comes of observation informed by knowledge. Here 
 is an instance from The Two Voices'. 
 
 To-day I saw the dragon-fly 
 
 Come from the wells where he did lie. 
 
 An inner impulse rent the veil 
 Of his old husk ; from head to tail 
 Came out clear plates of sapphire mail. 
 
 He dried his wings : like gauze they grew, 
 Thro' crofts and pastures wet with dew 
 A living flash of light he flew. 
 
 Tennyson knows how the blackbird, gorged with 
 summer fruit, ceases his song; he knows how the 
 "dropping snipe" hums in the dusk; he knows 
 how plumage changes with the season, and the 
 lapwing renews his crest with the spring; he knows 
 how the many-wintered crow is the leader of the 
 homing rookery; all this lore he shares with the 
 poacher or gamekeeper. He knows, too, how, 
 when autumn came, the bracken "rusted on the 
 crags"; he knows how autumn "lays a fiery finger 
 on the leaves"; he sees these effects like an artist. 
 But he sees, too, what many an artist would never 
 notice; how with spring's coming " rosy plumelets 
 tuft the larch"; how the poppy comes limp and 
 crumpled from its sheath; and how the drooping 
 chestnut buds spread gradually into the perfect fan. 
 He sees in short like the artist or the collector, but
 
 124 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 he sees also like the man of science. He knows the 
 loves of the plants ; he can realize 
 
 These blind motions of the Spring 
 That show the year is turned ; 
 
 that bid the oak to 
 
 languidly adjust 
 His vapid vegetable loves 
 With anthers and with dust. 
 
 How curiously minute is his accuracy I can best 
 prove by quoting at some length from Mr. Lowe's 
 work, The Yew Trees of Great Britain and Ireland. 
 
 " In the poems of Lord Tennyson, and especially in 
 In Memoriam, the yew is frequently mentioned with that 
 minute and accurate observation in which he transcends 
 all other poets. But he, the truest interpreter of Nature 
 in all her aspects, has not escaped the tendency to re- 
 gard the tree in its gloomy aspect, as being associated 
 with the cemetery. This was to be expected in such a 
 poem as In Memoriam ; but how beautiful are some of 
 the touches with which he depicts it! Thus in Stanza 
 ii., beginning at 'Old Yew, which graspest at the stones', 
 he goes on to say: 
 
 The seasons bring the flower again, 
 
 And bring the firstling to the flock ; 
 And in the dusk of thee, the clock 
 
 Beats out the little lives of men. 
 
 O not for thee the glow, the bloom, 
 Who changest not in any gale, 
 Nor branding summer suns avail 
 
 To touch thy thousand years of gloom : 
 
 And gazing on thee, sullen tree, 
 
 Sick for thy stubborn hardihood, 
 
 I seem to fail from out my blood 
 And grow incorporate into thee. 
 
 It has been supposed by some that Tennyson in this 
 stanza implies that the yew does not flower, and that
 
 Tennyson's Outlook upon Nature. 125 
 
 his later alteration in the eleventh edition is a confession 
 of his error; but it is inconceivable that so minute an 
 observer, who in another place speaks of the fruit, can 
 have been so ignorant as to suppose that the tree does 
 not flower. He evidently intended that it had not con- 
 spicuous and brilliant flowers. ' O, not for thee the 
 glow, the bloom',' but he never could have meant to say 
 that it had no flower. 
 
 "In the later edition, he makes a change from 'the 
 thousand years of gloom ' and points out that even the 
 yew has its 'golden hour' which had been lacking to 
 the subject of the poem : 
 
 And answering now my random stroke 
 With fruitful cloud and living smoke 
 
 To thee too comes the golden hour 
 When flower is feeling after flower. 
 
 The difficulty which has beset the general reader is in 
 great measure caused by overlooking the dioecious habit 
 of the tree; the pollen being on one tree and the berry 
 on the other. . . . 
 
 "It is very possible that Lord Tennyson felt that the 
 original lines seemed to imply an absence of flower in 
 the yew, and hence the alteration to make his meaning 
 more obvious. 
 
 "The alteration in Canto xxxix. runs as follows: 
 
 Old warder of these buried bones, 
 
 And answering now my random stroke 
 With fruitful cloud and living smoke, 
 
 Dark yew, that graspest at the stones 
 
 And dippest towards the dreamless head, 
 To thee too comes the golden hour 
 When flower is feeling after flower 
 
 But Sorrow fixt upon the dead, 
 
 And darkening the dark graves of men, 
 What whisper'd from her lying lips? 
 Thy gloom is kindled at the tips 1 
 
 And passes into gloom again. 
 
 1 The young shoots in spring being a brighter green and becoming darker 
 with age.
 
 126 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 " We find the same smoke-like dust doing duty again 
 in The Holy Grail (line 13): 
 
 Beneath a world-old yew-tree, darkening half 
 
 The cloisters, on a gustful April morn 
 
 That pufPd the swaying branches into smoke. 
 
 It is the pollen arising in clouds from the staminal 
 flowers of the tree which appears as smoke ' living 
 smoke' Tennyson truly calls it." 
 
 As another example of this curious and learned 
 observation I am tempted to point out how Tenny- 
 son seems to have been enamoured of a familiar 
 prettiness in a weed. He first uses the dandelion 
 for a symbolism in The Poet, telling how the 
 singer's "vagrant melodies" flew abroad on the 
 winds at random till they lighted. 
 
 Then, like the arrow-seeds of the field flower, 
 The fruitful wit 
 
 Cleaving, took root, and springing forth anew 
 
 Where'er they fell, behold, 
 Like to the mother plant in semblance, grew 
 
 A flower all gold. 
 
 The dandelion comes again in the Idylls, for the 
 Sun's shield with its golden blazon flares upon 
 Gareth like 
 
 the flower 
 That blows a globe of after arrowlets; 
 
 and in Aylmer's Field the same image closes a 
 pretty passage which describes how the two lovers, 
 still children, played together, and Leolin 
 
 told her fairy-tales, 
 
 Showed her the fairy footings on the grass, 
 The little dells of cowslip, fairy palms, 
 The pretty marestail forest, fairy pines, 
 Or from the tiny pitted target blew 
 What look'd a flight of fairy arrows aim'd 
 All at one mark, all hitting.
 
 Tennyson's Outlook upon Nature. 127 
 
 It would be tedious to multiply instances of this 
 minute study of flowers, which can only be paral- 
 leled in the poetry of the man who wrote in 
 Cymbeline of the mole on Imogen's breast: 
 
 cinque-spotted like the crimson drops 
 P the bottom of a cowslip. 
 
 But it should be observed with what skill and what 
 love Tennyson has rendered the common beauties 
 of rich English country. The last of his pictures in 
 The Palace of Art is sketched in the quatrain that 
 every one knows describing the English home, "a 
 haunt of ancient peace"; and it is from the English 
 Idyls that one may best illustrate his talent for 
 rendering, not so much the Turneresque haze in 
 which he bathed so many of his visions, especially 
 those drawn from classical mythology, as the nearer 
 details. One goes to them for foregrounds, not for 
 distances. What could be more charming or more 
 complete than the picture given here: 
 
 I loved the brimming wave that swam 
 
 Thro' quiet meadows round the mill, 
 The sleepy pool above the dam, 
 
 The pool beneath it never still, 
 The meal-sacks on the whiten'd floor, 
 
 The dark round of the dripping wheel, 
 The very air about the door 
 
 Made misty with the floating meal. 
 
 The last touch offended the susceptibilities of Lock- 
 hart, but in this instance Tennyson was wisely 
 resolute; and in Enoch Arden he does not shrink 
 from representing Philip 
 
 like the working bee in blossom-dust, 
 Blanch'd with his mill. 
 
 One could quote beautiful touches of observation 
 indefinitely from these English Idyls \ for instance,
 
 128 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 in The Brook the picture of the boy lover "like a 
 wader in the surf", who comes "waist-deep in 
 meadow-sweet ". But it is in Aylmer's Field that 
 they cluster thickest the Idyl that is laid in a land 
 of "hops and poppy-mingled corn"; the tale of 
 Edith Aylmer and her fair-haired lover whose cheek 
 wore 
 
 a but less vivid hue 
 Than of that islet in the chestnut bloom; 
 
 the tale that pictures the Kentish cottages set each 
 in its own peculiar glory of flowers, as a back- 
 ground to its happy opening; and then the shat- 
 tered oak which played post for the lovers. What 
 a sense of summer dawn is given in these four 
 lines : 
 
 The father panting woke, and oft, as dawn 
 Aroused the black republic on his elms, 
 Sweeping the frothfly from the fescue, brush'd 
 Thro' the dim meadow toward his treasure-trove. 
 
 Elsewhere, it may be noticed, Tennyson uses the 
 motions of a rookery to mark the hour, at the close 
 of The Princess'. 
 
 a shout arose again and made 
 The long line of the approaching rookery swerve 
 From the elms and shook the branches of the deer 
 From slope to slope through distant ferns, and rang 
 Beyond the bourn of sunset. 
 
 The truth of picture-making observation is there ; 
 but for a still better example of it I should quote 
 the last lines of Aylmer's Field'. 
 
 And where the two contrived their daughter's good, 
 Lies the hawk's cast, the mole has made his run, 
 The hedgehog underneath the plantain bores, 
 The rabbit fondles his own harmless face, 
 The slow-worm creeps, and the thin weasel there 
 Follows the mouse, and all is open field.
 
 Tennyson's Outlook upon Nature. 129 
 
 Lines like these can only be written by a man 
 who year after year has lain quiet out of doors, 
 motionless, till the pretty brutes came out and played 
 or went about their business all round him. 
 
 These illustrations everyone may pursue for him- 
 self; but, after all, the point needs no labouring. 
 Most of us remember the passage in Cranford 
 where the gentleman farmer takes shame to himself 
 because he has lived all his life in the country, yet 
 never found out that ash buds were black in March 
 till this new poet told him to look at them. The 
 power of observation, at least in so far as regards 
 tree and flower life, was never carried further, nor 
 ever joined with a more perfect felicity of expres- 
 sion. And in the larger business of suggesting 
 whole landscapes by a few touches, Tennyson has 
 no master. His landscape is never put there for its 
 own sake; he never indulges idly in word-painting; 
 it is part and parcel of the story or the thought. 
 This again one could prove by endless quotation, 
 but I need only extract two passages from the In 
 Memoriam, whose application to contrasted moods, 
 or rather to moods that succeed as storm follows 
 calm, everyone will remember: 
 
 Calm is the morn without a sound, 
 
 Calm as to suit a calmer grief, 
 
 And only thro' the faded leaf 
 The chestnut pattering to the ground: 
 
 Calm and deep peace on this high wold, 
 
 And on these dews that drench the furze, 
 And all the silvery gossamers 
 
 That twinkle into green and gold : 
 
 Calm and still light on yon great plain 
 
 That sweeps with all its autumn bowers, 
 And crowded farms and lessening towers, 
 
 To mingle with the bounding main. 
 
 The poet has the advantage of the painter in that 
 he can appeal to more senses than one; and it is
 
 130 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 worth noticing how the very spirit of autumn is 
 caught in the first stanza by the evocation of sound. 
 There is sound too in the companion poem, though 
 a very different sound : 
 
 To-night the winds begin to rise 
 
 And roar from yonder dropping day : 
 The last red leaf is whirl'd away, 
 
 The rooks are blown about the skies ; 
 
 The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd, 
 
 The cattle huddled on the lea ; 
 
 And wildly dash'd on tower and tree 
 The sunbeam strikes along the world. 
 
 The great masters of landscape painting have 
 been English; but neither Constable nor Turner 
 has felt more finely or rendered more completely 
 the grace or majesty of form, the glow or purity of 
 colour, and the living play of light and shade, than 
 this painter in words, in whom the love of these 
 was so intense that it inspired his art with what is 
 no less than a magic of evocation. 
 
 Chapter VII. 
 The Poems. 
 
 Such criticism as the preceding pages contain 
 has been directed primarily to Tennyson's ideas 
 or habits of mind, and I pass now to a general 
 consideration of the poems. Of these the Idylls, 
 as has been already shown, appeared to the poet's 
 own generation by far the most important the 
 consummate achievement of his life. They detach 
 themselves cleanly from the rest of his work, and 
 must be dealt with in a separate chapter. Here
 
 The Poems. 131 
 
 it need only be said, that in my judgment Tenny- 
 son will take rank in the eyes of posterity, not 
 by the Idylls^ but by Maud and In Memoriam -, 
 that is, not by his work in narrative, but by the 
 greatest of his lyrics. Maud and In Memoriam 
 are essentially lyrical, not only in form but in 
 feeling ; yet they represent very different aspects of 
 the poet's nature. In Memoriam, with its ' ' short 
 swallow flights of song ", is mainly the poetry of 
 reflection of close thought fused by strong emo- 
 tion into the fire of poetry; Maud is first and 
 foremost a rendering of passion in its different 
 moods ; and such thought as enters into the frame- 
 work of the poem comes in moments of reaction, 
 and is tinged deeply with the colour of love. 
 Probably in all generations men will prefer the 
 one poem or the other according to their tempera- 
 ment; but it seems to me clear that they rank 
 in importance above Tennyson's other work. Yet 
 there are many things among the shorter pieces in 
 no way inferior to the finest passages in either, and 
 these also make an integral part of the basis on 
 which his reputation will rest. 
 
 Maud, In Memoriam, The Princess, and the plays 
 are criticised in some detail elsewhere in the course 
 of this volume. Before criticising the great mass 
 of the shorter poems one must attempt some sort of 
 grouping. A large number of the most important 
 are in form dramatic monologues, where a charac- 
 ter is made to express his or her personality, or tell 
 a life history in one protracted speech or soliloquy. 
 Next to these come the English Idyls written for 
 the most part in blank verse (but occasionally with 
 songs interspersed) which are highly wrought 
 narratives of domestic life. Besides these two 
 classes there is a mass of poems in rhyme, chiefly 
 ballads or pure lyrics. In the former sometimes 
 the narrative element preponderates, as in The
 
 132 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 Revenge or The Charge of the Light Brigade \ some- 
 times the lyrical, as in The Lady of Slialott or 
 Sir Galahad. The pure lyrics vary from abstract 
 meditations like Vastness or The Higher Pan- 
 theism^ or again from the magnificent threnody 
 upon Wellington, to the simplicity of a bird's song. 
 Nor must we forget the occasional poems, such as 
 the addresses to the Queen and other members of 
 the Royal Family, or the letter to F. D. Maurice. 
 Last of all must be placed the verses written leviore 
 plectroThe Talking Oak, The Day Dream, Will 
 Waterproof, and the like. The poems in dialect 
 form a class by themselves ; they are all humorous 
 dramatic monologues; and one is tempted at the 
 risk of a cross-division to make another separate 
 class of the poems upon subjects drawn from the 
 classical mythology. The Juvenilia I omit from 
 this classification, as they have only a historic and 
 technical interest for posterity, except The Poet, 
 which is a fine lyric, and Mariana, which belongs 
 properly to a group that I do not know how to 
 describe except as picture poems. 
 
 Criticism naturally directs itself first to the poems 
 upon classical subjects, for in these Tennyson first 
 achieved a masterpiece. CEnone and The Lotos- 
 Eaters, though not in their consummate form, were 
 included in the volume of 1833. Ulysses was 
 written almost directly after the death of Arthur 
 Hallam, and Tithonus (though not published till 
 Thackeray begged a poem for the Cornhill twenty- 
 five years later) was unearthed from an old note- 
 book of that same date. 
 
 It is easy enough to see why Tennyson should 
 have made his first successes here. This was not 
 raw material that he wrought in, but the stuff of 
 poetry handled for three thousand years by poets ; 
 old myths already made beautiful, yet pregnant for 
 every man with a fresh significance. Ulysses is
 
 The Poems. 133 
 
 true to the temper of the Ithacan as we know him 
 in Homer ; but it was written to express the poet's 
 own revolt against despondency after the death of 
 his friend. There is no need to quote what every- 
 one knows by heart; but I cannot imagine an age 
 which should be indifferent to Ulysses. It is for 
 all ages ; but stamped with the impress of a period 
 in which intellectual adventure was rife, an age of 
 discovery. 
 
 I am a part of all that I have met ; 
 Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' 
 Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades 
 For ever and for ever when I move. 
 
 CEnone is hardly less perfect; it is essentially a 
 poem of description as Ulysses is of character. 
 Yet, just as in the end of Ulysses you find one of 
 Tennyson's finest landscape effects, so in CEnone 
 you find the completest expression in the speech 
 of Pallas that Tennyson ever gave to his moral 
 code. The motive which most stirred his spirit 
 the hope of a future life was out of place when his 
 scene was laid among the Greeks ; but his worship 
 of law could nowhere more fitly be expressed. 
 Yet the spirit of the poem is not Greek: it recalls 
 indeed the Sicilian Muse of Theocritus, but far 
 more closely the narrative style of Virgil in his 
 Georgics or Eclogues. 
 
 Tithonus, again, is a Greek story, but not treated 
 in the classic spirit. In most of the Greek or 
 Roman references to the legend Tithonus is im- 
 mortal and immortally young; nowhere is this 
 tragedy of "immortal age beside immortal youth" 
 insisted on. And it is strange and characteristic 
 that Tennyson should have been content to tell 
 the story merely as a story, with no suggestion 
 of any symbolism. All that he cares for is to 
 give the picture; to keep all the beauty and the
 
 134 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 pathos, and avoid every touch of ugliness in this 
 miracle of high-wrought style. There is an obvious 
 parallel in Mr. Stephen Phillips's beautiful Mar- 
 pessa, which tells of the choice made by a girl, 
 who, being wooed by the sun-god, prefers a mortal 
 lover. She chooses the human heritage of sorrow, 
 the human delight of children, rather than to be 
 like Apollo, " a spirit gliding through tranquillity". 
 But the more instructive contrast is with a great 
 work of prose imagination. The tragedy of Ti- 
 thonus is the same as that of the Struldbrugs in a 
 terrible passage of Gullivers Travels. It is worth 
 quoting the latter to show in how different manner 
 the same thought that of life protracted without 
 corresponding youth may strike two minds. 
 
 "After this preface he gave me a particular account 
 of the Struldbrugs among them. He said, they commonly 
 acted like mortals, till about thirty years old; after which 
 by degrees they grew melancholy and dejected, increas- 
 ing- in both till they came to fourscore. This he learned 
 from their own confessions; for otherwise, there not 
 being above two or three of that species born in an age, 
 they were too few to form a general observation by. 
 When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned 
 the extremity of living in this country, they had not only 
 all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many 
 more, which arose from the dreadful prospect of never 
 dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covet- 
 ous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, 
 and dead to all natural affection, which never descended 
 below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires 
 are their prevailing passions. But those objects against 
 which their envy seems principally directed, are the 
 vices of the younger sort, and the deaths of the old. 
 By reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off 
 from all possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see 
 a funeral they lament and repine that others are gone to 
 a harbour of rest, to which they themselves never can 
 hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of anything,
 
 The Poems. 135 
 
 but \vhat they learned and observed in their youth and 
 middle age, and even that is very imperfect. And for 
 the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend 
 on common tradition than upon their best recollections. 
 The least miserable among them appear to be those 
 who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories ; 
 these meet with more pity and assistance, because they 
 want many bad qualities which abound in others. 
 
 " If a Struldbrug happen to marry one of his own 
 kind, the marriage is dissolved of course by the courtesy 
 of the kingdom, as soon as the younger of the two 
 comes to be fourscore. For the law thinks it a reason- 
 able indulgence, that those who are condemned without 
 any fault of their own to a perpetual continuance in the 
 world, should not have their misery doubled by the load 
 of a wife." 
 
 Tithonus, it need hardly be said, mourns also for 
 the passion that can no longer touch him, and 
 envies the "happy men that have the power to 
 die". I have not quoted the repulsive physical 
 traits on which Swift dwells: but the contrast is 
 strange indeed between them and the superb lines 
 that lament over "this grey shadow once a man", 
 yet, in describing his gradual wreckage at the hands 
 of the " strong Hours", suggest only a dignity like 
 that of withered oak trees. But the poem can 
 scarcely rank with GEnone and Ulysses, for the 
 simple reason that it is a masterpiece of style and 
 nothing beyond that. CEnone tells a human passion ; 
 Ulysses puts into imperishable words an aspiration 
 as old as man, and growing stronger with every 
 century of his development. It was probably some 
 consciousness of this deficiency in Tithonus that 
 led Tennyson to suppress it for so long; yet it is a 
 deficiency that we do not care to dwell on. Beauty 
 is not so common that we need ask it always to be 
 more than beauty. 
 
 Three other poems in the same class, though of 
 
 (M535) K
 
 136 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 a very different rank, are Tiresias, Demeter and 
 Perseplume, and The Death of (Enone. Of these 
 we need only say that they are better than the best 
 imitations of Tennyson published by Sir Lewis 
 Morris and the rest Demeter vastly better. Godiva, 
 though it is on an English subject, is classical in 
 treatment. This, like The Death of (Enone, is a 
 simple narration, not a monologue. The poems 
 on Sir John Oldcastle and that on Columbus are 
 dramatic monologues, but have no other right to 
 be mentioned in this group. St. Simeon Stylites 
 is nearer Browning's vein than Tennyson comes 
 elsewhere; it is self-revelation with an irony im- 
 plied by the poet: one may compare it to the 
 Cardinal ordering his tomb in St. Praxed's. The 
 poem, as I have said above, marks strongly enough 
 Tennyson's dislike to all the extravagances of as- 
 ceticism: and it stands almost alone among his 
 verses, excepting only the dialect poems, as an 
 instance in which he gave play to that sense of 
 humour which his friends recognized in his talk; 
 for no faculty but humour can perceive at once the 
 pathos and the irony of this spiritual pride which 
 displays itself as an ostentatious humility. 
 
 There remains in the group Lucretius, which I 
 believe Professor Jebb has rated above all the poet's 
 other work. Full as it is of beauties beauty of 
 detail and beauty of conception I cannot rank it 
 among the masterpieces. And yet one might illus- 
 trate from it Tennyson's highest qualities; begin- 
 ning with the superb exposition of Lucretian 
 philosophy, and passing to such lines as these: 
 
 That was mine, my dream, I knew it 
 Of and belonging to me, as the dog 
 With inward yelp and restless forefoot plies 
 His function of the woodland, 
 
 where the closeness of observation is matched by
 
 The Poems. 137 
 
 the felicity of phrase; or these, which rival Lucre- 
 tius in his own stately beauty: 
 
 The Gods, who haunt 
 The lucid interspace of world and world, 
 Where never creeps a cloud, or moves a wind, 
 Nor ever falls the least white star of snow, 
 Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans, 
 Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar 
 Their sacred everlasting calm ! 
 
 And, better even yet, is the Shakespearean brevity 
 of this: 
 
 Tired of so much within our little life, 
 
 Or of so little in our little life 
 
 Poor little life that toddles half an hour 
 
 Crown* d with a flower or two, and there an end. 
 
 Yet somehow, as a whole, the poem does not 
 strike its stamp clean and whole upon the mind; 
 and the great passage upon the Gods of Epicurus 
 that I have quoted falls far below the wonderful 
 last stave in the choric chant of The Lotos-Eaters. 
 
 In The Lotos-Eaters, as in Tithonus, the inspira- 
 tion is classical, yet the treatment perfectly indi- 
 vidual. The opening description of the sailors 
 coming to the land recalls the manner of Theo- 
 critus; but the legend grows in Tennyson's hands. 
 He lifts into a song that longing for repose which 
 is the force within us permanently at war with 
 the aspiration for prolonged activity rendered in 
 Ulysses. 
 
 How dull it is to pause, to make an end, 
 To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use ! 
 
 That is the cry of the world wanderer; and the 
 answering strain to it comes in The Lotos-Eaters: 
 
 Why are we weigh'd upon with heaviness, 
 And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
 
 138 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 While all things else have rest from weariness? 
 
 All things have rest : why should we toil alone, 
 
 We only toil, who are the first of things, 
 
 And make perpetual moan, 
 
 Still from one sorrow to another thrown : 
 
 Nor ever fold our wings. 
 
 And cease from wanderings, 
 
 Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm : 
 
 Nor harken what the inner spirit sings, 
 
 " There is no joy but calm !" 
 
 Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things? 
 
 I should myself put Ulysses and The Lotos-Eaters 
 higher than any of the minor poems, except the 
 best of the songs; perhaps above the songs, for, 
 when all is said and done, they are not less beauti- 
 ful, and they mean more. The theme of Ulysses 
 lies in the full course of human thought and 
 endeavour, that of The Lotos-Eaters in a back eddy 
 of the stream. For the poem is not a mere fancy ; 
 it pictures a tragic forgetfulness. The sense of the 
 world's misery and struggle is present throughout 
 it, though present as a heightening of repose. It 
 was not for nothing that men pictured the gods 
 delighted with the spectacle of human agony: 
 
 But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song, 
 Steaming up, a lamentation, and an ancient tale of wrong, 
 Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong. 
 
 Men in all ages have made the gods in their own 
 image, and this conception answers to a feeling 
 deeply seated in the human heart, the poignant 
 pleasure of contrast. In the sense of release from 
 action lies half the luxury of repose. 
 
 It is strange to compare Ttie Lotos-Eaters with a 
 very fine example of Tennyson's later poetry, The 
 Voyage of Maeldune. Classical legend is part of 
 the heritage which every scholar receives almost 
 unconsciously; he moulds it to his own tempera- 
 ment, it becomes easily instinct with his own per-
 
 The Poems. 139 
 
 sonality. But here Tennyson is fascinated, as any 
 stranger might be, with the Celtic romance, and he 
 writes with extraordinary virtuosity something that 
 keeps the Celtic extravagance, yet restrains it with- 
 in the discreet bounds of beauty. And the result is 
 absolutely exotic. The fact is worth emphasizing, 
 for many of our poets nowadays run after these new 
 inventions, and seek to find the true sources of in- 
 spiration in the legends of a tongue that they have 
 never spoken, and in a literature that has never 
 set its mark on the world. The ways of art are 
 many, but it is as well to point out that Gaelic 
 legend to the educated Scot or Irishman is almost 
 invariably alien, while Greek and Latin stories are 
 in his very blood. Tennyson gave a far more con- 
 spicuous proof of this truth when he essayed the 
 story of Arthur. Do what he would, the "matter 
 of Britain" remained intractable, while the older 
 myths that lay about the roots of all modern civili- 
 zation were freely familiar to his hand. 
 
 It is, however, clear that Tennyson's contempor- 
 aries clamoured for something more English 
 though a better expression of the best English 
 spirit than breathes in Ulysses cannot be found 
 and they first took to their hearts the Idyls of 
 English domestic life. The Wordsworthian theory 
 of absolute simplicity still obtained to some degree, 
 and Tennyson records that he found this simplicity 
 the hardest quality to achieve consistently with 
 poetic style. The natural magnificence of his dic- 
 tion had to be laid aside in poems like Dora, or 
 the most famous of this group, Enoch Arden 
 though in this last the description of the tropical 
 island gave the chance for a contrast of style a 
 gorgeous passage set in a narrative otherwise 
 studiously simple. It seems to me that he was 
 turning counter to the bent of his genius in all these 
 efforts; but Enoch Arden has been more translated
 
 140 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 than any of his poems. Yet I doubt whether 
 posterity will greatly care for it. The Gardener's 
 Daughter ; though not of remarkable interest, I 
 take to be the best of this group ; but here there is 
 no question of simplicity ; the style is of a studied 
 luxuriance, though the sentiment is domestic; the 
 Gardener's Daughter moves among roses and sun- 
 light. Dora seems to me tame; Audley Court, 
 Walking to the Mail, and Edwin Morris are per- 
 fectly uninteresting; and Sea Dreams is perhaps 
 the worst thing in the 1842 volume. All these are 
 in blank verse, and, I confess, have very little 
 claim at all, in my opinion, to rank as poetry. 
 Aylmer's Field is very much better, and the in- 
 dignant brother's sermon gives Tennyson an open- 
 ing for that impassioned rhetoric of which he was 
 so great a master. His other tales in blank verse: 
 The Lover's Tale, with its maturer episode of The 
 Golden Supper-, The Sisters (not the ballad), The 
 Ring, and so forth, are by common consent as near 
 mediocrity as so excellent an artist could fall. 
 
 But among the greatest of these early successes 
 greatest that is as successes were the rhymed idylls 
 and poems. The Miller's Daughter everyone will 
 allow to be charming; I cannot allow it to be more. 
 Lady Clara Vere de Vere and The Lord of Burleigh 
 plainly belong to the epoch of John Leech's ring- 
 leted young ladies ; they are early Victorian with a 
 vengeance, and to my mind perfectly intolerable. 
 Worse still is The May Queen, which is through- 
 out in a false key of pathos. Yet these three poems 
 were perhaps more widely popular than any of his 
 other work. They appealed to the public which 
 now reads Tit-Bits. A later poem, The Children's 
 Hospital, had the good fortune to be less read, but 
 was very unworthy of its author. But two others, 
 The First Quarrel and The Grandmother, especially 
 the latter, rank high among the poet's work.
 
 The Poems. 14: 
 
 Still, the bent of Tennyson's mind was not to 
 simplicity. First and last he saw things as he saw 
 them in The Palace of Art, with a glow of colour 
 that no man could render better; and when he 
 essayed the poetry of small things, as in The May 
 Queen, he was apt to degenerate into a frame of mind 
 that was almost maudlin, and to aim at the cheap 
 and obvious sentiment affected by the ordinary 
 hymn-writer. 
 
 Little remains to be classified except the great 
 mass of shorter lyrics. But one may exclude from 
 these three small groups. In one I should class 
 poems like the two Marianas, The Dream of Fair 
 Women, and The Palace of Art. These are neither 
 lyrics nor narratives; they are for the most part a 
 poetry of sheer pictorial description, masterly in its 
 kind, but by its kind too nearly related to paintings 
 of still life. They have everything that one can 
 desire in poetry except life, and perhaps for that 
 reason lend themselves with exceptional ease to 
 quotation. Quatrain after quatrain may be detached 
 and valued by itself, and this is a sufficient ground 
 for relegating them to a second class in the poet's 
 total achievement. 
 
 Not higher than these, but scarcely lower, must 
 be ranked the addresses to the Queen and the royal 
 family. No poet has done this duty of compliment 
 or condolence so well since the days of Horace, 
 largely no doubt for the reason that Tennyson, like 
 Horace, was perfectly sincere in his admiration and 
 gratitude. The laureate never sacrificed the dignity 
 of his art, yet never failed to mark a deep respect 
 which grew into reverence under the sympathy 
 inspired by bereavements which moved the whole 
 nation. With these also might perhaps most fitly 
 be placed such addresses and epistles as are lyrical 
 only in form though the form is often exquisite. 
 A beautiful example is the invitation to F. D.
 
 142 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 Maurice; and the lines to Lord Dufferin are superb; 
 Horace has nothing to surpass their opening: 
 
 At times our Britain cannot rest, 
 
 At times her steps are swift and rash , 
 She moving, at her girdle clash 
 
 The golden keys of East and West. 
 
 Not swift or rash, when late she lent 
 The sceptre of her West, her East, 
 To one, that ruling has increased 
 
 Her greatness and her self-content. 
 
 But indeed the best way to praise Tennyson's 
 accomplishment in this whole kind of literature, 
 where grace, dignity, and finish of style are the 
 first essentials, is to call his work truly Horatian. 
 Only, when one does so, it should be remembered 
 that Horace has nothing to show against Maud or 
 The Lotos-Eaters. And I question whether even 
 Horace has written anything to equal in felicity 
 the lines To Virgil. 
 
 I pass to the dialect poems quite a considerable 
 group. There are, to begin with, the two Northern 
 Farmers ; there is The Northern Cobbler, The Spin- 
 ster's Sweet- Arts, The Village Wife or the Entail, 
 Owd Rod, and, in the very last volume, The Church- 
 warden and the Curate. Not one of them but has 
 something good, some genuine touch of humour: 
 I quote the last two verses of The Churchwarden 
 (a converted Baptist, who sticks to the Church since 
 the " Baptises" "weshed their sins in his pond"). 
 
 But Parson 'e ivtll speak out, saw, now 'e be sixty-seven, 
 He'll niver swap Owlby an' Scratby fur owt but the Kingdom 
 
 o' Heaven; 
 An' thou'll be 'is Curate 'ere, but, if iver tha means to git 
 
 'igher, 
 Tha mun tackle the sins o' the Wo'ld, an' not the faults o' the 
 
 Squire.
 
 The Poems. 143 
 
 An' I reckons tha'll light of a livin' somewheers i' the Wowd 1 
 
 or the Fen, 
 
 If tha cottons down to thy betters, an' keeaps thysen to thysen. 
 But niver not speak plaain out, if tha wants to git forrards a bit, 
 But creeap along the hedge-bottoms, an' thou'll be a Bishop yit. 
 
 Naay, but tha mun speak hout to the Baptises here i' the town, 
 Fur moast on 'em talks agean tithe, an' I'd like tha to preach 
 
 'em down, 
 Fur they've bin a-preachin' mea down, they heve, and I haates 
 
 'em now, 
 Fur they leaved their nasty sins i' my pond, an' it poison'd the 
 
 cow. 
 
 Grim enough the humour is at times; the Village 
 Wife is not an agreeable person; a malicious old 
 gossip, to put it plain ; but the portrait of her 
 clings very close to the realities of life. The 
 Northern Cobbler is the only spirited thing known 
 to me that can be read on a teetotal platform, and 
 Owd Rod is excellent. But the first two The 
 Northern Farmer (Old Style) and The Northern 
 Farmer (New Style} are far beyond the rest. Each 
 of them sprang, as the Life tells us, from a single 
 sentence. " When I canters my 'erse along the 
 the ramper (highway), I 'ears proputty, proputty ": 
 there is the germ of The Northern Farmer (New 
 Style): 
 
 Proputty, proputty's ivrything 'ere, an', Sammy, I'm blest 
 If it isn't the saame oop yonder, fur them as 'as it's the best. 
 
 Tisn' them as 'as munny as breaks into 'ouses an' steals, 
 Them as 'as coats to their backs an' taakes their regular meals. 
 Noa, but it's them as niver knaws wheer a meal's to be 'ad. 
 Taake my word for it, Sammy, the poor in a loomp is bad. 
 
 And if we praise this, what are we to say about the 
 old-style farmer, whose portrait (Tennyson wrote) 
 "is founded on the dying words of a farm bailiff, 
 as reported to me by a great uncle of mine when 
 verging upon eighty ' God A'mighty little knows
 
 144 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 what He's about a-taking me. An' Squire will be 
 so mad an' all ' I conjectured the man from that 
 one saying"? 
 
 This portrait is as living and dramatic as the 
 other; it is also what the other is not a poem. 
 There is essential poetry in the presentment of this 
 rough old brute (so FitzGerald called him), with his 
 strong hold on life and his stolid contempt of death. 
 The whole man and his life are there, crowded into 
 less than seventy lines, and there also is the uncon- 
 scious poetry of the life. This dogged old animal 
 comes, and after fifty years the waste places rejoice; 
 they do not blossom like a rose, but they bear fruit 
 abundantly, and he feels that his life is there : 
 
 Dubbut loook at the waaste : theer warn't not feead for a cow ; 
 Nowt at all but bracken an' fuzz, an' loook at it now 
 Warn't worth nowt a haacre, an' now theer's lots o' feead, 
 Fourscoor yows upon it an' some on it down i' seead. 
 
 That is not just "proputty, proputty"; it is the 
 pride of a man in his work, perhaps the truest of 
 all subjects for poetry ; and Tennyson makes you 
 feel the poetry of it behind the half-articulate 
 utterance. His old brute does not say: 
 
 I have lived my life, and that which I have done 
 May he within himself make pure ; 
 
 but he does say, I have lived my life and I have 
 done something; and if I cannot go on living my 
 own life, I will live no other: 
 
 Git ma my aale I tell tha, an' if I mun doy I mun doy. 
 
 These two poems (but especially the one which 
 is a poem) must be counted among the elect handful 
 of Tennyson's work. You cannot estimate him 
 fairly without reference to them, for no man working 
 in verse has excelled them in humorous creative
 
 The Poems. 145 
 
 power since Shakespeare. I would put the man 
 who " stubbed Thornaby waste " beside Ulysses just 
 as confidently as a Rembrandt by a Greek statue. 
 One may regret that this quality of humour was so 
 absent from the larger work of the poet; yet the 
 possession of that faculty must throughout have 
 been a saving grace. Maud is extravagant enough 
 and shrill in passages; imagine what it might have 
 been if Tennyson, like his great contemporary, 
 Victor Hugo, had only been endowed with wit. 
 That he kept humour continuously in abeyance and 
 suspense is due, I think, to the inherent classicism 
 of his mind, which aimed above all things at 
 securing a unity of conception and treatment. 
 
 Among the lyrics, several easily detach them- 
 selves as being properly ballads that is, lyrical nar- 
 ratives, where the narrative interest preponderates. 
 Such a poem as The Defence of Lucknow is little 
 more than a stirring recital of the events of a siege ; 
 Lord Roberts, no mean authority, has put on 
 record his admiration for its truth to the facts and 
 feelings of that time. The Charge of the Light 
 Brigade is narrative fused into the glow of a war- 
 song, and, hackneyed as the lines are, it is impos- 
 sible to read them aloud without being caught by 
 the emotion. The Charge of the Heavy Brigade is 
 mere narrative; an attempt to repeat a success. 
 But finest of all the ballads is the great poem upon 
 Sir Richard Grenville and his * Revenge'. The form, 
 by no means a common one, was almost certainly 
 suggested by Browning's Herue Riel; but Herve 
 Riel, though a spirited poem, has no claim to rank 
 with Tennyson's magnificent work. The inequali- 
 ties of the metre, which with Browning made a 
 series of roughnesses, are by Tennyson used with 
 the finest effect to mark transitions in the intensity 
 of the narrative; and nothing could exceed the 
 skill with which in the last stave he gives the
 
 146 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 movement of the storm rising ever higher and 
 higher in attack upon the fleet, till at last there 
 came the final downward plunge and all was lone 
 water, a waste immensity of waves : 
 
 And the little Revenge herself went down by the island crags, 
 To be lost evermore in the main. 
 
 This, with The Charge of the Light Brigade, pro- 
 bably makes up the only ballad work of Tennyson's 
 which posterity will care about. Rizpah, which 
 Mr. Swinburne hailed with a pasan of exaltation as 
 proving decisively Tennyson's superiority to De 
 Musset (in whom Mr. Swinburne saw his French 
 counterpart), is certainly a great poem ; yet perhaps 
 too spasmodic in its utterance to be permanently 
 accepted. But in the poems where the passion is 
 more than the events which are lyrics rather than 
 ballads he has achieved many minor successes. 
 The Lady of Shalott must rank among his best and 
 most characteristic poems. St. Agnes' Eve and 
 Sir Galahad have a wonderful depth and melody 
 in their very simple versification. Few things in 
 Tennyson are more magical than the opening: 
 
 Deep on the convent-roof the snows 
 
 Are sparkling to the moon : 
 My breath to heaven like vapour goes : 
 
 May my soul follow soon. 
 
 And both of the poems carry one along with a rush 
 and fire that is not found in the later lyrics. King 
 Cophetua is another little masterpiece, and so is 
 The Sailor Boy. 
 
 The greatest of his pure lyrics are to be found, I 
 think, in Maud and In Memoriam, and with these 
 must be ranked, without a single exception, all the 
 songs in The Princess. "Tears, idle tears" is 
 unique in the language. Browning's One Word
 
 The Poems. 147 
 
 More and Lamb's delightful lines on the "old 
 familiar faces " are poems, in a sense lyrical, that 
 dispense with rhyme ; Collins's Ode to Evening has 
 been much praised for the melody of its versifica- 
 tion. But none of these is like " Tears, idle tears ", 
 which has the absolute movement and quality of 
 song, not less than even such verses as "The 
 splendour falls on castle walls ", where everything 
 is done by an elaborate system of single and double 
 rhymes and by repeated refrains to suggest music 
 to the ear. And apart from the haunting charm of 
 the verse, there is poetry of the subtlest kind in 
 this new expression of the thought that Virgil put 
 so inimitably in his 
 
 " Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt ". 
 
 Inimitably, one says, for Tennyson only takes the 
 suggestion; what he has done with it is to make 
 something that baffles translation as effectually as 
 the lacrimae rerum itself. Words and thought are 
 blended beyond all possibility of separation ; and 
 that is a mark of the very highest poetry. Prob- 
 ably for this reason schoolmasters particularly 
 delight to set hapless boys to torture this passage 
 into Latin elegiacs. 
 
 Besides the gems set in caskets of their own 
 there are detached lyrics and to spare in Tenny- 
 son's nine hundred pages. Even among the 
 Juvenilia, The Deserted House is not easy to forget, 
 and The Dying Swan is full of beauty. Break, 
 break, break, will always be admirable; so will Flow 
 down, cold rivulet, to the sea, and the two lovely 
 stanzas called Requiescat: 
 
 Fair is her cottage in its place, 
 
 Where yon broad water sweetly slowly glides. 
 It sees itself from thatch to base 
 
 Dream in the sliding tides.
 
 148 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 And fairer she, but ah how soon to die ! 
 
 Her quiet dream of life this hour may cease. 
 Her peaceful being slowly passes by 
 
 To some more perfect peace. 
 
 It is worth while looking close here to observe the 
 skill with which the studied irregularity of metre is 
 used: the ten-syllable line, introduced in the first 
 stanza to suggest the slow movement of the river, 
 is caught up in the second as if the life were being 
 gradually borne irresistibly out to sea. 
 
 The skill of early manhood was, if anything, 
 enhanced in old age, and song stayed with him 
 as long as speech. Very late, indeed, in his 
 work come the exquisite lines on The Throstle ', 
 mocking the bird's note 
 
 Summer is coming, summer is corning. 
 I know it, I know it, I know it. 
 
 And last of all in place, though not absolutely 
 latest in time, is the great lyric, Crossing the Bar, 
 which has a thrill in it from the opening words 
 onward that is beyond the power of music to answer 
 a true inspiration. 
 
 A place apart is held by the Funeral Ode on 
 Wellington, which beyond question stands very 
 high indeed among poems written for a fixed 
 occasion. The two opening stanzas are admirable; 
 after them the movement flags somewhat, though 
 with flashes such as this sudden and brilliant tran- 
 sition : 
 
 Letthebellbetoll'd: 
 
 And a deeper knell in the heart be knoll'd ; 
 
 And the sound of the sorrowing anthem roll'd 
 
 Thro' the dome of the golden cross ; 
 
 And the volleying cannon thunder his loss ; 
 
 He kneu, their voices of old.
 
 The Poems. 149 
 
 Then comes the splendid invocation to Nelson, 
 concluding with the refrain 
 
 With honour, honour, honour, honour to him, 
 Eternal honour to his name. 
 
 A little farther comes the best-known passage in 
 the whole that which describes the "path of 
 duty". But finer by far in my judgment is the 
 closing strophe, characteristic alike in thought and 
 in expression, and not so well known but that one 
 may quote it : 
 
 Peace, his triumph will be sung 
 
 By some yet unmoulded tongue 
 
 Far on in summers that we shall not see : 
 
 Peace, it is a day of pain 
 
 For one about whose patriarchal knee 
 
 Late the little children clung : 
 
 O peace, it is a day of pain 
 
 For one, upon whose hand and heart and brain 
 
 Once the weight and fate of Europe hung. 
 
 Ours the pain, be his the gain ! 
 
 More than is of man's degree 
 
 Must be with us, watching here 
 
 At this, our great solemnity. 
 
 Whom we see not we revere ; 
 
 We revere, and we refrain 
 
 From talk of battles loud and vain, 
 
 And brawling memories all too free 
 
 For such a wise humility 
 
 As befits a solemn fane : 
 
 We revere, and while we hear 
 
 The tides of Music's golden sea 
 
 Setting toward eternity, 
 
 Uplifted high in heart and hope are we, 
 
 Until we doubt not that for one so true 
 
 There must be other nobler work to do 
 
 Than when he fought at Waterloo, 
 
 And Victor he must ever be. 
 
 For tho' the Giant Ages heave the hill 
 
 And break the shore, and evermore 
 
 Make and break, and work their will ; 
 
 Tho' world on world in myriad myriads roll 
 
 Round us, each with different powers, 
 
 And other forms of life than ours,
 
 150 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 What know we greater than the soul? 
 On God and Godlike men we build our trust. 
 Hush ! the Dead March wails in the people's ears : 
 The dark crowd moves, and there are sobs and tears : 
 The black earth yawns : the mortal disappears ; 
 Ashes to ashes, dust to dust ; 
 He is gone who seem'd so great- 
 Gone ; but nothing can bereave him 
 Of the force he made his own 
 Being here, and we believe him 
 Something far advanced in State, 
 And that he wears a truer crown 
 Than any wreath that man can weave him. 
 Speak no more of his renown, 
 Lay your earthly fancies down, 
 And in the vast cathedral leave him, 
 God accept him, Christ receive him. 
 
 It remains only to point out that in this, as in 
 the very fine stanzas written for the Queen's Jubilee, 
 Tennyson has aimed at a stately rhythm, which 
 followed closely the modulations of prose in their 
 variety and earnestness, yet is lifted into the sphere 
 of poetry by almost imperceptible touches of style. 
 
 It is this extraordinary command of metre and 
 extraordinary sense of the fitting that stamps 
 Tennyson for the most consummate artist in verse 
 since Keats and, except Keats, he has no equal 
 till you go back to Milton. His range was of the 
 widest. When he condescended to the merely 
 fanciful, no man ever had a lighter or a prettier 
 touch; witness The Talking Oak, Amphion, or 
 Will Waterproof, a poem which immeasurably 
 goes beyond Praed and Locker in their own 
 peculiar excellences. And in estimating a poet 
 one must always attach some weight to everything 
 that he did well. Few poets in the world have 
 done so many things so well as Tennyson ; that 
 does not decide his position, but it constitutes an 
 integral part of his fame.
 
 The Idylls of the King. 151 
 
 Chapter VIII. 
 The Idylls of the King. 
 
 My business in this volume is purely with literary 
 criticism, and in this chapter I have simply to 
 estimate and classify the Idylls as poetry. There 
 is, however, a formidable literature which has 
 sprung up round the Arthurian story. It is 
 exhaustively treated by Professor Maccallum in 
 his book, Tennyson' s Idylls of the King and Ar- 
 thurian Legend. Those who do not care to follow 
 Mr. Maccallum into his recondite researches will 
 find as much as anybody but the special student of 
 mediaeval literature requires to know in Professor 
 Saintsbury's volume The Flourishing of Romance 
 and Rise of Allegory. Here I need only say that 
 the Arthurian story was one of the three great and 
 fertile subjects for mediaeval romance the matter 
 of France, the matter of Britain, and the matter 
 of Rome. Those tales which centre round Charle- 
 magne are the matter of France; the matter of 
 Rome includes the tale of Troy and the mythical 
 adventures of Alexander of Macedon ; the matter 
 of Britain is the Arthuriad in one form or other, 
 and as it was the latest to take definite literary 
 form, so it has lasted longest as an abiding source 
 of inspiration. Professor Maccallum traces it out 
 in all the authors who have treated of it down to 
 the present day, from what one may call its practical 
 inception in the work of Geoffrey of Monmouth. 
 It dates as a completed story from early in the 
 twelfth century; where exactly it came from, the 
 doctors cannot agree to decide. Some say that it 
 was a Welsh or Armorican myth or legend, trans- 
 mitted to France and there shaped ; some that it is 
 devoid of national colour, a mere literary creation ; 
 
 (M636) L
 
 152 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 others, and of these is Professor Saintsbury, that 
 it was English or Anglo-Norman, at least in its 
 developed form. In its crude state one finds 
 principally the heroic figure of Arthur, a great 
 slayer of warriors in the Saxon and Norman wars. 
 Then gradually comes in the story of Arthur's 
 fairy origin and his mysterious passing; but only 
 when the personage of Lancelot and the central 
 interest of the Holy Grail are blended with the 
 legend do we find that romance which has inspired 
 countless poets. Professor Saintsbury believes 
 that Walter Map invented Lancelot; at all events, 
 whoever invented him changed the entire character 
 of the legend. Tales of the Saxon and Norman 
 wars were superseded by the love interest between 
 Lancelot and Guinevere the typical invention of 
 an age in which chivalry, the direct offshoot of 
 monasticism, despised marriage and saw the ro- 
 mance of love only in passion outside the bond ; 
 and this love interest was heightened by the mystical 
 quest of the Holy Grail. Thus upon the story 
 of passionate but unlawful love was grafted the 
 extravagant mediaeval worship of virginity again 
 an offshoot of monasticism ; Lancelot, though he 
 cannot achieve the quest, attempts it, nothing but 
 his sin of love withstanding him; and what he 
 cannot win himself is attained by his son, the 
 maiden knight Galahad. 
 
 We need not inquire here into the different ver- 
 sions of the legend as told by Chrestien de Troyes 
 and the rest; for the source of Tennyson's inspira- 
 tion is clear, the prose romance of Sir Thomas 
 Malory. This he supplemented by the Welsh 
 Mabinogion, translated by Lady Charlotte Guest, 
 whence he took the Idyll of Enid and Geraint. 
 But it is important to emphasize at once the char- 
 acter both of Tennyson's work and that of the 
 sources from which he drew. Malory's book is
 
 The Idylls of the King. 153 
 
 not an epic; it is a romance. The distinction is 
 so admirably drawn in Professor Ker's Epic and 
 Romance (p. 5) that I make no apology for quota- 
 tion. 
 
 "Whatever Epic may mean, it implies some weight 
 and solidity; Romance means nothing, if it does not 
 convey some notion of mystery and fantasy. . . . The 
 two great kinds of narrative literature in the Middle 
 Ages might be distinguished by their favourite incidents 
 and commonplaces of adventure. No kind of adventure 
 is so common or better told in the earlier heroic manner 
 than the defence of a narrow place against odds. Such 
 are the stories of Hamther and Sorli in the hall of 
 Ermanaric, of the Niblung kings in the hall of Attila, of 
 the Fight of Finnesburh, of Walter at the Wasgestein, 
 of Byrhtnoth at Maldon, of Roland in the Pyrenees" 
 [and, I may add, of Ulysses in the hall at Ithaca against 
 the suitors]. "The favourite adventure of mediaeval 
 romance is something different a knight riding alone 
 through a forest; another knight; a shock of lances; 
 a fight on foot with swords, ' racing, tracing, and foin- 
 ing like two wild boars'; then, perhaps, recognition 
 the two knights belong to the same household and are 
 engaged in the same quest. This collision of blind 
 forces, this tournament at random, takes the place, in 
 the French romances, of the older kind of combat. In 
 the older kind the parties have always good reasons of 
 their own for fighting; they do not go into it with the 
 same sort of readiness as the wandering champions of 
 romance." 
 
 There is nothing fantastic about the epic; it is 
 practically a drama narrated, as Aristotle saw ; it is 
 of the stuff of life. 
 
 " If its characters are not men, they are nothing; not 
 even thoughts or allegories ; they cannot go on talking 
 unless they have something to do; and so the whole 
 stuff of life comes boldly into the epic poem." 1 
 
 1 Ker, Epic and Romance, p. 10.
 
 154 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 Romance, on the other hand, depends upon a 
 picturesque condition of the external environment; 
 Ulysses may ride in a cart, Lancelot cannot without 
 sore disgrace. And consequently, because romance 
 shuts its eyes to the trivial, its scenes naturally are 
 conceived with "the more airy mode of imagina- 
 tion". Tennyson has felt strongly the need of this, 
 and his actors move among wonderful blue land- 
 scapes, or by lonely meres ; they dwell in houses, 
 it is true, but their dwelling is in "the dim rich 
 city" Camelot, built like a dream, and like a dream 
 to vanish. He is committed to romance because 
 his aim is allegorical; for if in your allegory the 
 characters assume real flesh and blood, what ab- 
 straction can compete with that interest? 
 
 To a certain extent the Idylls of the King, in so 
 far as they relate the life and passing of Arthur, are 
 comparable with such an artificial epic as Virgil's 
 ^Eneid. Like the j&neid, they tell a story taken 
 out of books, not direct from life itself; they are a 
 work of the literary imagination ; and this is what 
 Tennyson meant, no doubt, when he wrote, in the 
 sort of prelude to the Morte d' Arthur, of an "epic" 
 that had been attempted and burnt 
 
 His epic, his King Arthur in twelve books. 
 
 Like Virgil, he is choosing a picturesque subject 
 out of the nation's half-mythical past ; like Virgil, 
 he is professedly describing the temper and the 
 doings of a time divided from him by dead faiths 
 and forgotten centuries ; like Virgil, he relies chiefly 
 upon the literary beauty of his workmanship. But, 
 unlike Virgil, he abandons the direct continuity of 
 narrative which is the formal characteristic of the 
 literary epic; and, unlike Virgil's, his purpose is 
 confessedly allegorical. 
 
 Too much can easily be made of the allegorical
 
 The Idylls of the King. 155 
 
 aspect. Tennyson got interested in the stories he 
 retold, as was inevitable: and in proportion as he 
 grew interested the allegory tended to disappear. 
 In the earlier -written Idylls, allegory there is 
 little or none. Vivien certainly indicates the moral 
 purpose, but the story is told for its own sake: 
 Enid, Gareth and Lynette, and Elaine are simply 
 tales taken direct from the Mabinogion and Malory 
 and beautifully retold; Guinevere insists again upon 
 the moral purpose, but beyond that is in no way 
 allegorical that I can see. It is when we come to 
 the Idylls written later to complete the cycle, The 
 Coming of Arthur, The Holy Grail, and The Last 
 Tournament, that we feel ourselves distracted be- 
 tween what is said and what implied. Here the 
 narrative is less, and the beauty of detached pass- 
 ages more; and in the final canto, The Passing 
 of Arthur, there is added to the original Morte 
 d 1 Arthur not only a prologue describing Arthur's 
 moods and doubts before the "last great battle in 
 the West", but also some thirty lines of epilogue 
 which emphasize the religious or metaphysical sym- 
 bolism of the legend. What that symbolism, as 
 distinct from the obvious moral purpose, precisely 
 implies I do not know, nor do I care to fix a mean- 
 ing; Tennyson himself deprecated a too exact in- 
 terpretation, and one may read, as I have said, 
 several of the Idylls without temptation to seek it, 
 and all without the need to go beyond the surface 
 beauty of the narrative. But of the intention there is 
 no doubt, and no doubt also that it was there from 
 the first. Indeed, we have been spared much. In 
 the Life, Lord Tennyson gives a first draft sketched 
 about 1833, in which the two Guineveres of the 
 original story were to figure, one representing 
 primitive Christianity, the other Roman Catholi- 
 cism, while the Round Table stood for Liberal 
 Institutions, and King Arthur himself typified
 
 156 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 religious Faith. Yet at the same time Tennyson 
 was writing The Lady of Shalott, St. Agnes' Eve, 
 and Sir GalaJiad, which are all in the key of pure 
 lyrical romance, and show the full fascination of 
 the legend itself. He was too good a poet to be- 
 come a slave to an allegory, but, for all that, in his 
 moral ardour he twisted the whole story clean out 
 of its original shape; and unfortunately the shape 
 was essential to the spirit. The tale of Troy, as 
 Homer told it, has made the stuff of poetry for all 
 ages; it deals with simple and universal human 
 motives, the solid, business of life. But the legend 
 of Arthur and his knights, as we read it in Malory 
 or elsewhere, is a legend of knight-errantry, in- 
 volving the whole creed of chivalry. Now, chivalry 
 is the direct offspring of monasticism ; of that medi- 
 aeval conception of faith by which the highest ideal 
 of life lay in virginity; and your warrior knight, 
 finding that the world could not get on without 
 love between the sexes, compromised for his ideal 
 by a sort of super-sensual love-making. Marriage 
 was looked upon as a concession to our gross 
 nature; heroic love aimed at nothing beyond free 
 service and worship to the woman of the heart's 
 choice. The love of any husband for his wife could 
 not fulfil the conditions of the ideal ; the love of 
 Lancelot for Guinevere was ideal save in so far as 
 it lowered itself to earthly passion ; and but for this 
 sin Lancelot would have achieved the quest of the 
 Grail, which Arthur never essayed. It is permitted 
 to Lancelot to achieve it, not indeed in his own 
 person, but through his son, Galahad, the maiden 
 knight. Thus the story holds together, and centres 
 round Lancelot and Galahad, who is Lancelot glori- 
 fied. It is essentially a literature of that science of 
 love, which knights, ladies, and minstrels discussed 
 and elaborated in the courts of Provence. 
 
 Tennyson takes this whole cycle of stories, and
 
 The Idylls of the King. 157 
 
 makes them into an allegory, which for its plainest 
 lesson inculcates the various moral effects of love; 
 and instantly the new wine bursts the old bottles. 
 His highest ideal is love in marriage; "to love one 
 woman only and to cleave to her " ; man's highest 
 profession is that of Arthur to Guinevere: "For 
 I was ever virgin save for thee ". Arthur with 
 him is the centre of the story: or rather the story 
 has two centres, for Galahad still achieves the Grail; 
 and Tennyson can only reconcile the two ideals by 
 representing Galahad's choice, if fit at all, as fit 
 only for exceptional sanctities of nature. Thus he 
 departs from the good faith of the legend, and 
 shows us knight-errantry, always hard to believe 
 in, still more incredible because stripped of its real 
 inspiration. 
 
 The change of focus has of course necessitated 
 many changes in the story. In the Morte d Arthur, 
 written twenty years before the other Idylls, Tenny- 
 son held very close indeed to Malory; except 
 for Arthur's speech, of the "old order changeth, 
 yielding place to new ", there is little hint of the 
 framework which was to come. But in 1858 he 
 went back to the cycle, and first took in hand the 
 tale of Vivien. Vivien or Nimue in Malory is 
 simply a damsel whom Merlin persecutes with 
 importunity, and who, by a woman's wit, contrives 
 to shut him within a prison of his own devising. 
 In Tennyson she is the seed of a corruption which 
 spreads through the court; a seed of Mark's sowing, 
 for he sends his paramour deliberately to break up 
 the triumphant honesty of Arthur's knightly com- 
 panionship. Into Enid is introduced a moral 
 strangely at variance with the ideas of chivalry; 
 for Arthur contrasts the moral victory over himself 
 won by Edyrn with Geraint's exploits, and censures 
 the prince for his wild adventure, which Malory 
 would surely have applauded. Gawain also in the
 
 158 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 old legends is one of the greatest and most courteous 
 knights; yet his treachery to Sir Pelleas may be 
 held to give Tennyson some ground for treating 
 him as the example of fickleness in love; a tilter 
 and fighter destitute of the nobler qualities of heart. 
 But the retribution which Malory does concern 
 himself to exact is not from the faithless Gawain 
 but from the cruel Ettarre; cruelty is a worse 
 crime than faithlessness to his eyes ; and so Nimue, 
 the damsel of the Lake, throws a charm upon 
 Ettarre, by which she must love Pelleas and he 
 be cold to her, so that at the last Ettarre dies 
 from love-sickness. Likewise Tristram and "la 
 beale Isoude " are in no way accounted pernicious 
 examples, but rather held up for imitation as the 
 perfect union of valiant knight and fair lady, 
 coupled continually with the fame of Lancelot and 
 Guinevere; and the erring queen with her supreme 
 knight is the centre and soul of the whole legend. 
 Lancelot is the queen's protector. When Guinevere 
 is accused of poisoning a knight at her table, she 
 has no recourse but to Lancelot's kinsmen to find 
 a champion, since he himself has left the king- 
 dom at her bidding, given in a moment of jealous 
 anger; Arthur must stand by and see, and if no 
 champion be forthcoming, or if the champion be 
 worsted, then he must order his queen to the stake. 
 But Sir Bors sends hasty messengers to Lancelot, 
 and at the last moment, when Bors is already in 
 the lists, Lancelot rides in to take his place and 
 overthrow the challenger, Sir Mador de la Port. 
 Arthur bulks largely in the opening of the book ; 
 but as the story develops and the love interest 
 heightens, Lancelot grows more and more the 
 central figure, and the tale, as Malory tells it, 
 closes, not with the passing of Arthur, but with the 
 death of Lancelot, who from being knight-errant 
 passes into the convent, not thwarting, but fulfilling,
 
 The Idylls of the King. 159 
 
 the whole tenor of his life. Yet he was buried not 
 as monk, but as prince in his own chapel at Joyous 
 Gard, where came Sir Ector de Maris, his brother, 
 and heard singing and praying and saw lights in 
 the choir. 
 
 "Then went Sir Bors unto Sir Ector and told him 
 how there lay his brother, Sir Launcelot, dead. And 
 then Sir Ector threw his shield, sword, and helm from 
 him ; and when he beheld Sir Launcelot's visage, he 
 fell down in a swoon; and when he awaked, it were 
 hard for any tongue to tell the doleful complaints that 
 he made for his brother. ' Ah, Launcelot,' said he, 
 ' thou wert head of all Christian knights.' 'And now, 
 I dare say,' said Sir Bors, 'thou Sir Launcelot, there 
 thou liest, that thou wert never matched of earthly 
 knight's hands ; and thou wert the courtliest knight that 
 ever bare shield ; and thou wert the truest friend to thy 
 lover that ever bestrode horse; and thou wert the truest 
 lover of a sinful man that ever loved woman ; and thou 
 wert the kindest man that ever strake with sword ; and 
 thou wert the goodliest person that ever came among 
 press of knights ; and thou wert the meekest man, and 
 the gentlest, that ever ate in hall among ladies; and 
 thou wert the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that 
 ever put spear in the rest.' " 
 
 There, as I say, you have the true inspiration of 
 the legend. Lancelot was a sinner, but a sinner 
 who came nearer to salvation than King Arthur 
 treading the beaten highway of marriage, sitting 
 at home a governor, not riding errant for adventure. 
 Such was the view of those who shaped the legend, 
 and who saw in this world nothing of much con- 
 sequence for itself, but a pathway to hell or Para- 
 dise. For a man to take and handle the tale as 
 Tennyson has handled it, is as though he should 
 rewrite the Iliad from the standpoint of the Atridse, 
 to bring out the evil consequences of insubordina-
 
 160 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 tion. Malory no more blames Lancelot for his love 
 than Homer censures Achilles for his wrath. 
 
 A comparison with Malory thus makes one feel, 
 as I think, the ineradicable vice of Tennyson's 
 scheme. But not less certainly it brings into relief 
 the fineness of his art; and since few except pro- 
 fessed students read the old knight, it seems worth 
 while to print here in full the story of Elaine as he 
 tells it; there is no other way so good for showing 
 what Tennyson took in suggestion, and what he 
 added in form and detail. 
 
 " Within a fifteen days of that feast the king let cry a 
 great justs and a tournament that should be at that day 
 at Camelot, that is Winchester. And the king let cry 
 that he and the king of Scots would just against all 
 that would come against them. And when this cry was 
 made, thither came many knights. So there came 
 thither the king of Northgalis, and king Anguish of 
 Ireland, and the king with the hundred knights, and Sir 
 Galahalt the haut prince, and the king of Northumber- 
 land, and many other noble dukes and earls of divers 
 countries. So king Arthur made him ready to depart 
 to these justs, and would have had the queen with him : 
 but at that time she would not, she said, for she was 
 sick and might not ride at that time. That me re- 
 penteth, said the king, for this seven year ye saw not 
 such a fellowship together, except at Whitsuntide when 
 Galahad departed from the court. Truly, said the queen 
 to the king, ye must hold me excused, I may not be 
 there, and that me repenteth. And many deemed the 
 queen would not be there because of Sir Launcelot du 
 Lake, for Sir Launcelot would not ride with the king ; 
 for he said he was not whole of the wound the which Sir 
 Mador had given him. Wherefore the king was heavy 
 and passing wroth, and so he departed towards Win- 
 chester with his fellowship. And so by the way the 
 king lodged in a town called Astolat, that is now in 
 English called Gilford, and there the king lay in the 
 castle. So when the king was departed, the queen
 
 The Idylls of the King. 161 
 
 called Sir Launcelot unto her, and said, Sir Launcelot 
 ye are greatly to blame, thus to hold you behind my 
 lord : what trow ye, what will your enemies and mine 
 say and deem? nought else but see how Sir Launcelot 
 holdeth him ever behind the king, and so doth the 
 queen, for that they would be together; and thus will 
 they say, said the queen to Sir Launcelot, have ye no 
 doubt thereof. 
 
 " Madam, said Sir Launcelot, I allow your wit, it is 
 of late come sin ye were wise, and therefore, madam, 
 as at this time I will be ruled by your counsel, and this 
 night I will take my rest, and to-morrow by time 
 will take my way toward Winchester. But wit you 
 well, said Sir Launcelot to the queen, that at the justs 
 I will be against the king and all his fellowship. Ye 
 may there do as ye list, said the queen, but by my 
 counsel ye shall not be against your king and your 
 fellowship, for therein be full many hardy knights of 
 your blood, as ye wot well enough, it needeth not to 
 rehearse them. Madam, said Sir Launcelot, I pray you 
 that ye be not displeased with me, for I will take the 
 adventure that God will send me. And so upon the 
 morn early Sir Launcelot heard mass, and brake his 
 fast, and so took his leave of the queen, and departed. 
 And then he rode so much until he came to Astolat, 
 that is Gilford; and there it happed him in the eventide 
 he came to an old baron's place, that hight Sir Bernard 
 of Astolat. And as Sir Launcelot entered into his 
 lodging, king Arthur espied him as he did walk in a 
 garden beside the castle, how he took his lodging, and 
 knew him full well. It is well, said king Arthur unto 
 the knights that were with him in that garden beside 
 the castle, I have now espied one knight that will play 
 his play at the justs to the which we be gone toward, I 
 undertake he will do marvels. Who is that, we pray 
 you tell us, said many knights that were there at that 
 time. Ye shall not wit for me, said the king, at this 
 time. And so the king smiled, and went to his lodging. 
 So when Sir Launcelot was in his lodging, and unarmed 
 him in his chamber, the old baron and hermit came 
 unto him, making his reverence, and welcomed him in
 
 162 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 the best manner; but the old knight knew not Sir 
 Launcelot. Fair sir, said Sir Launcelot to his host, I 
 would pray you to lend me a shield that were not 
 openly known, for mine is well known. Sir, said his 
 host, ye shall have your desire, for me seemeth ye be 
 one of the likeliest knights of the world, and therefore I 
 shall shew you friendship. Sir, wit you well I have two 
 sons which were but late made knights, and the eldest 
 hight Sir Tirre, and he was hurt that same day that he 
 was made knight, that he may not ride, and his shield 
 ye shall have, for that is not known, I dare say, but 
 here and in no place else. And my youngest son hight 
 Sir Lavaine, and if it please you he shall ride with you 
 unto that justs, and he is of his age strong and wight. 
 For much my heart giveth unto you that ye should be a 
 noble knight, therefore, I pray you tell me your name, 
 said Sir Bernard. As for that, said Sir Launcelot, ye 
 must hold me excused as at this time, and if God give 
 me grace to speed well at the justs I shall come again 
 and tell you. But I pray you, said Sir Launcelot, in 
 any wise let me have your son Sir Lavaine with me, 
 and that I may have his brother's shield. Also this 
 shall be done, said Sir Bernard. 
 
 ''The old baron had a daughter that time that was 
 called that time the fair maid of Astolat. And ever she 
 beheld Sir Launcelot wonderfully. And, as the book 
 saith, she cast such a love unto Sir Launcelot that she 
 could never withdraw her love, wherefore she died; and 
 her name was Elaine le Blank. So thus as she came to 
 and fro, she was so hot in her love that she besought 
 Sir Launcelot to wear upon him at the justs a token of 
 hers. Fair damsel, said Sir Launcelot, and if I grant 
 you that, ye may say I do more for your love than ever 
 I did for lady or damsel. Then he remembered him 
 that he would go to the justs disguised, and for because 
 he had never afore that time borne no manner of token 
 of no damsel, then he bethought him that he would bear 
 one of her, that none of his blood thereby might know 
 him. And then he said, Fair maiden, I will grant you 
 to wear a token of yours upon my helmet, and there- 
 fore what it is show it me. Sir, she said, it is a red
 
 The Idylls of the King. 163 
 
 sleeve of mine, of scarlet well embroidered with great 
 pearls. And so she brought it him. So Sir Launcelot 
 received it and said, Never did I erst so much for no 
 damsel. And then Sir Launcelot betook the fair maiden 
 his shield in keeping, and prayed her to keep that until 
 that he came again. And so that night he had merry 
 rest and great cheer. For ever the damsel Elaine was 
 about Sir Launcelot, all the while she might be suf- 
 fered. 
 
 " So upon a day on the morn, king Arthur and all 
 his knights departed; for their king had tarried there 
 three days to abide his noble knights. And so when 
 the king was riden, Sir Launcelot and Sir Lavaine made 
 them ready for to ride, and either of them had white 
 shields, and the red sleeve Sir Launcelot let carry with 
 him. And so they took their leave at Sir Bernard the 
 old baron, and at his daughter the fair maiden of 
 Astolat. And then they rode so long till they came to 
 Camelot, that time called Winchester. And there was 
 great press of kings, dukes, earls, and barons, and many 
 noble knights. But there Sir Launcelot was lodged 
 privily, by the means of Sir Lavaine, with a rich bur- 
 gess, that no man in that town was ware what they 
 were. And so they sojourned there till our Lady Day, 
 Assumption, as the great feast should be. So then 
 trumpets blew unto the field, and king Arthur was set 
 on high upon a scaffold, to behold who did best. But, 
 as the French book saith, king Arthur would not suffer 
 Sir Gawaine to go from him, for never had Sir Gawaine 
 the better an Sir Launcelot were in the field; and 
 many times was Sir Gawaine rebuked when Launcelot 
 came into any justs disguised. Then some of the kings, 
 as king Anguish of Ireland and the king of Scotland, 
 were that time turned upon the side of king Arthur. 
 And then on the other party was the king of Northgalis, 
 and the king with the hundred knights, and the king of 
 Northumberland, and Sir Galahalt the haut prince. But 
 these three kings and this duke were passing weak to 
 hold against king Arthur's party: for with him were the 
 noblest knights of the world. So then they withdrew 
 them either party from other, and every man made him
 
 164 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 ready in his best manner to do what he might. Then 
 Sir Launcelot made him ready, and put the red sleeve 
 upon his head, and fastened it fast; and so Sir Launce- 
 lot and Sir Lavaine departed out of Winchester privily, 
 and rode until a little leaved wood, behind the party 
 that held against king Arthur's party, and there they 
 held them still till the parties smote together. And 
 then came in the king of Scots and the king of Ireland 
 on Arthur's party: and against them came the king of 
 Northumberland; and the king with the hundred knights 
 smote down the king of Northumberland, and the king 
 with the hundred knights smote down king Anguish of 
 Ireland. Then Sir Palamides, that was on Arthur's 
 party, encountered with Sir Galahalt, and either of them 
 smote down other, and either party halp their lords on 
 horseback again. So there began a strong assail upon 
 both parties. And then there came in Sir Brandiles, 
 Sir Sagramor le Desirous, Sir Dodinas le Savage, Sir 
 Kay le Seneschal, Sir Griflet le Fise de Dieu, Sir 
 Mordred, Sir Meliot de Logris, Sir Ozanna le Cure 
 Hardy, Sir Safere, Sir Epinogris, and Sir Galleron of 
 Galway. All these fifteen knights were knights of the 
 Table Round. So these with more others came in 
 together, and beat on back the king of Northumberland, 
 and the king of North Wales. When Sir Launcelot 
 saw this, as he hoved in a little leaved wood, then 
 he said unto Sir Lavaine, See yonder is a company of 
 good knights, and they hold them together as boars 
 that were chafed with dogs. That is truth, said Sir 
 Lavaine. 
 
 " Now, said Sir Launcelot, an ye will help me a 
 little, ye shall see yonder fellowship which chaseth now 
 these men in our side, that they shall go as fast back- 
 ward as they went forward. Sir, spare not, said Sir 
 Lavaine, for I shall do what I may. Then Sir Launce- 
 lot and Sir Lavaine came in at the thickest of the press, 
 and there Sir Launcelot smote down Sir Brandiles, Sir 
 Sagramor, Sir Dodinas, Sir Kay, Sir Griflet, and all this 
 he did with one spear. And Sir Lavaine smote down 
 Sir Lucan le Buttelere, and Sir Bedivere. And then Sir 
 Launcelot gat another spear, and there he smote down
 
 The Idylls of the King. 165 
 
 Sir Agravaine, Sir Gaheris, and Sir Mordred, and Sir 
 Meliot de Logris. And Sir Lavaine smote down Ozanna 
 le Cure Hardy: and then Sir Launcelot drew his sword, 
 and there he smote on the right hand and on the left 
 hand, and by great force he unhorsed Sir Safere, Sir 
 Epinogris, and Sir Galleron. And then the knights of 
 the Table Round withdrew them aback, after they had 
 gotten their horses as well as they might. O mercy, 
 said Sir Gawaine, what knight is yonder, that doth so 
 marvellous deeds of arms in that field? I wot what he 
 is, said king Arthur. But as at this time I will not 
 name him. Sir, said Sir Gawaine, I would say it were 
 Sir Launcelot, by his riding and his buffets that I see 
 him deal: but ever me seemeth it should not be he, for 
 that he beareth the red sleeve upon his head, for I wist 
 him never bear token, at no justs, of lady nor gentle- 
 woman. Let him be, said king Arthur, he will be better 
 known and do more or ever he depart. Then the party 
 that were against king Arthur were well comforted, and 
 then they held them together, that beforehand were sore 
 rebuked. Then Sir Bors, Sir Ector de Maris, and Sir 
 Lionel, called unto them the knights of their blood, as 
 Sir Blamor de Ganis, Sir Bleoberis, Sir Aliduke, Sir 
 Galihud, Sir Galihodin, Sir Bellangere le Beuse, so 
 these nine knights of Sir Launcelot's kin thrust in 
 mightily, for they were all noble knights. And they, 
 of great hate and despite that they had unto him, 
 thought to rebuke that noble knight Sir Launcelot, and 
 Sir Lavaine, for they knew them not. And so they 
 came hurtling together, and smote down many knights 
 of Northgalis and of Northumberland. And when Sir 
 Launcelot saw them fare so, he gat a spear in his hand, 
 and there encountered with him all at once Sir Bors, Sir 
 Ector, and Sir Lionel, and all they three smote him at 
 once with their spears. And with force of themselves 
 they smote Sir Launcelot's horse to the earth. And by 
 misfortune Sir Bors smote Sir Launcelot through the 
 shield into the side, and the spear brake, and the head 
 left still in his side. When Sir Lavaine saw his master 
 lie on the ground, he ran to the king of Scots, and 
 smote him to the earth, and by great force he took his
 
 1 66 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 horse and brought him to Sir Launcelot, and maugre 
 them all he made him to mount upon that horse. And 
 then Launcelot gat a spear in his hand, and there he 
 smote Sir Bors horse and man to the earth, in the same 
 wise he served Sir Ector and Sir Lionel, and Sir Lavaine 
 smote down Sir Blamor de Ganis. And then Sir Launce- 
 lot drew his sword, for he felt himself so sore and hurt 
 that he wend there to have had his death. And then he 
 smote Sir Bleoberis such a buffet on the helmet that he 
 fell down to the earth in a swoon. And in the same 
 wise he served Sir Aliduke and Sir Galihud. And Sir 
 Lavaine smote down Sir Bellangere, that was the son 
 of Alisander le Orphelin. And by this was Sir Bors 
 horsed, and then he came with Sir Ector and Sir Lionel, 
 and all they three smote with swords upon Sir Launce- 
 lot's helmet. And when he felt their buffets, and his 
 wound the which was so grievous, then he thought to 
 do what he might while he might endure; and then he 
 gave Sir Bors such a buffet that he made him bow his 
 head passing low, and therewithal he rased off his helm, 
 and might have slain him, and so pulled him down. 
 And in the same wise he served Sir Ector and Sir Lionel. 
 For, as the book saith, he might have slain them, but 
 when he saw their visages his heart might not serve him 
 thereto, but left them there. 
 
 "And then afterward he hurled in the thickest press 
 of them all, and did there the marvellousest deeds of 
 arms that ever man saw or heard speak of; and ever Sir 
 Lavaine the good knight with him. And there Sir 
 Launcelot with his sword smote and pulled down, as 
 the French book maketh mention, more than thirty 
 knights, and the most party were of the Table Round. 
 And Sir Lavaine did full well that day, for he smote 
 down ten knights of the Table Round. 
 
 " Mercy, said Sir Gawaine to Arthur, I marvel what 
 knight that he is with the red sleeve. Sir, said king 
 Arthur, he will be known or he depart. And then the 
 king blew unto lodging, and the prize was given by 
 heralds unto the knight with the white shield, that 
 bare the red sleeve. Then came the king with the 
 hundred knights, the king of Northgalis, and the king
 
 The Idylls of the King. 167 
 
 of Northumberland, and Sir Galahalt the haut prince, 
 and said unto Sir Launcelot, Fair knight, God thee 
 bless, for much have ye done this day for us, therefore 
 we pray you that ye will come with us, that ye may re- 
 ceive the honour and the prize as ye have worshipfully 
 deserved it. My fair lords, said Sir Launcelot, wit you 
 well, if I have deserved thank I have sore bought it, 
 and that me repenteth, for I am like never to escape with 
 my life, therefore, fair lords, I pray you that ye will 
 suffer me to depart where me liketh, for I am sore hurt. 
 I take none force of none honour, for I had lever to 
 repose me than to be lord of all the world. And there- 
 withal he groaned piteously, and rode a great gallop 
 away-ward from them, until he came under a wood's 
 side ; and when he saw that he was from the field nigh 
 a mile, that he was sure that he might not be seen, then 
 he said with an high voice, O gentle knight Sir Lavaine, 
 help me that this truncheon were out of my side, for it 
 sticketh so sore that it nigh slayeth me. O mine own 
 lord, said Sir Lavaine, I would fain do that might please 
 you, but I dread me sore, and I draw out the truncheon, 
 that ye shall be in peril of death. I charge you, said 
 Sir Launcelot, as ye love me draw it out. And there- 
 withal he descended from his horse, and right so did 
 Sir Lavaine, and forthwith Sir Lavaine drew the trun- 
 cheon out of his side. And he gave a great shriek, and 
 a marvellous grisly groan, and his blood brast out nigh 
 a pint at once, and at last he sank down, and so swooned 
 pale and deadly. Alas, said Sir Lavaine, what shall I 
 do? And then he turned Sir Launcelot into the wind, 
 but so he lay there nigh half an hour as he had been 
 dead. And so at the last Sir Launcelot cast up his 
 eyes, and said, O Lavaine, help me that I were on my 
 horse, for here is fast by within this two mile a gentle 
 hermit, that sometime was a full noble knight and a 
 great lord of possessions: and for great goodness he 
 hath taken him to wilful poverty, and forsaken many 
 lands, and his name is Sir Baudewin of Brittany, and 
 he is a full noble surgeon, and a good leech. Now let 
 see, help me up that I were there. For ever my heart 
 giveth me that I shall never die of my cousin-german's 
 
 (KB35) II
 
 168 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 hands. And then with great pain Sir Lavaine halp him 
 upon his horse; and then they rode a great gallop 
 together, and ever Sir Launcelot bled that it ran down 
 to the earth. And so by fortune they came to that 
 hermitage, which was under a wood, and a great cliff 
 on the other side, and a fair water running under it. 
 And then Sir Lavaine beat on the gate with the butt of 
 his spear, and cried fast, Let in for Jesu's sake. And 
 there came a fair child to them, and asked them what 
 they would? Fair son, said Sir Lavaine, go and pray 
 thy lord the hermit for God's sake to let in here a knight 
 that is full sore wounded, and this day tell thy lord that 
 I saw him do more deeds of arms than ever I heard say 
 that any man did. So the child went in lightly, and 
 then he brought the hermit, the which was a passing 
 good man. So when Sir Lavaine saw him, he prayed 
 him for God's sake of succour. What knight is he? 
 said the hermit, is he of the house of king Arthur or 
 not? I wot not, said Sir Lavaine, what is he, nor what 
 is his name, but well I wot I saw him do marvellously 
 this day, as of deeds of arms. On whose party was he? 
 said the hermit. Sir, said Sir Lavaine, he was this day 
 against king Arthur, and there he wan the prize of all 
 the knights of the Round Table. I have seen the day, 
 said the hermit, I would have loved him the worse 
 because he was against my lord, king Arthur, for 
 sometime I was one of the fellowship of the Round 
 Table, but I thank God now I am otherwise disposed. 
 But where is he? let me see him. Then Sir Lavaine 
 brought the hermit to him. 
 
 "And when the hermit beheld him as he sat leaning 
 upon his saddle-bow, ever bleeding piteously, and ever the 
 knight hermit thought that he should know him, but he 
 could not bring him to knowledge, because he was so 
 pale for bleeding, What knight are ye? said the hermit, 
 and where were ye born? My fair lord, said Sir Launce- 
 lot, I am a stranger, and a knight adventurous that 
 laboureth throughout many realms for to win worship. 
 Then the hermit advised him better, and saw by a 
 wound on his cheek that he was Sir Launcelot. Alas, 
 said the hermit, mine own lord, why hide you your name
 
 The Idylls of the King. 169 
 
 from me: forsooth, I ought to know you of right, for 
 ye are the most noblest knight of the world ; for well I 
 know you for Sir Launcelot. Sir, said he, sith ye know 
 me, help me and ye may, for God's sake; for I would 
 be out of this pain at once, either to death or to life. 
 Have ye no doubt, said the hermit, ye shall live and fare 
 right well. And so the hermit called to him two of his 
 servants, and so he and his servants bare him into the 
 hermitage, and lightly unarmed him and laid him in his 
 bed. And then anon the hermit stanched his blood, 
 and made him to drink good wine, so that Sir Launcelot 
 was well refreshed, and knew himself. For in those 
 days it was not the guise of hermits as is nowadays. 
 For there were none hermits in those days but that they 
 had been men of worship and of prowess, and those 
 hermits held great household, and refreshed people that 
 were in distress. 
 
 "Now turn we unto king Arthur, and leave we Sir 
 Launcelot in the hermitage. So when the kings were 
 come together on both parties, and the great feast 
 should be holden, king Arthur asked the king of 
 Northgalis and their fellowship where was that knight 
 that bare the red sleeve : Bring him before me, that he 
 may have his laud and honour and the prize, as it is 
 right. Then spake Sir Galahalt the haut prince, and 
 the king with the hundred knights: We suppose that 
 knight is mischieved, and that he is never like to see 
 you, nor none of us all, and that is the greatest pity 
 that ever we wist of any knight. Alas, said Arthur, 
 how may this be? Is he so hurt? What is his name? 
 said king Arthur. Truly, said they all, we know not 
 his name, nor from whence he came, nor whither he 
 would. Alas, said the king, these be to me the worst 
 tidings that came to me this seven year : for I would not 
 for all the lands I hold, to know and wit it were so that 
 that noble knight were slain. Know ye him? said they 
 all. As for that, said Arthur, whether I know him or 
 know him not, ye shall not know for me what man he 
 is, but Almighty Jesu send me good tidings of him. 
 And so said they all. By my head, said Sir Gawaine, if 
 it be so, that the good knight be so sore hurt, it is
 
 170 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 great damage and pity to all this land, for he is one of 
 the noblest knights that ever I saw in a field handle a 
 spear or a sword. And if he may be found I shall find 
 him, for I am sure he is not far from this town. Bear 
 you well, said king Arthur, and ye may find him, unless 
 that he be in such a plight that he may not hold himself. 
 Jesu defend, said Sir Gawaine, but wit I shall what he 
 is, and I may find him. Right so, Sir Gawaine took a 
 squire with him, upon hackneys, and rode all about 
 Camelot within six or seven miles. But so he came 
 again, and could hear no word of him. 
 
 "Then within two days king Arthur and all the fellow- 
 ship returned unto London again. And so as they rode 
 by the way, it happed Sir Gawaine at Astolat to lodge 
 with Sir Bernard, there as was Sir Launcelot lodged. 
 And so as Sir Gawaine was in his chamber to repose 
 him, Sir Bernard the old baron came unto him, and 
 his daughter Elaine, for to cheer him, and to ask him 
 what tidings, and who did best at that tournament of 
 Winchester. Truly, said Sir Gawaine, there were two 
 knights that bare two white shields; but the one of 
 them bare a red sleeve upon his head, and certainly he 
 was one of the best knights that ever I saw just in field. 
 For I dare say, said Sir Gawaine, that one knight with 
 the red sleeve smote down forty valiant knights of the 
 Table Round, and his fellow did right well and worship- 
 fully. Now blessed be God, said the fair maiden of 
 Astolat, that that knight sped so well, for he is the man 
 in the world that I first loved, and truly he shall be the 
 last that ever I shall love. Now, fair maid, said Sir 
 Gawaine, is that good knight your love? Certainly, sir, 
 said she, wit ye well he is my love. Then know ye his 
 name? said Sir Gawaine. Nay, truly, said the damsel, 
 I know not his name nor from whence he cometh, but 
 to say that I love him, I promise you and God that I 
 love him. How had ye knowledge of him first? said 
 Sir Gawaine. 
 
 "Then she told him as ye have heard tofore, and how 
 her father betook him her brother to do him service, 
 and how her father lent him her brother Sir Tirre's 
 shield, And here with me he left his own shield. For
 
 The Idylls of the King. 171 
 
 what cause did he so? said Sir Gawaine. For this 
 cause, said the damsel, for his shield was too well 
 known among: many noble knights. Ah, fair damsel, 
 said Sir Gawaine, please if you let me have a sight of 
 that shield. Sir, said she, it is in my chamber covered 
 with a case, and if ye will come with me, ye shall see it. 
 Not so, said Sir Bernard, till his daughter let send for 
 it. So when the shield was come, Sir Gawaine took off 
 the case : and when he beheld that shield, he knew anon 
 that it was Sir Launcelot's shield, and his own arms. 
 Ah, mercy, said Sir Gawaine, now is my heart more 
 heavier then ever it was tofore. Why? said Elaine. 
 For I have great cause, said Sir Gawaine: is that 
 knight that owneth this shield your love? Yea truly, 
 said she, my love he is, God would I were his love. 
 Truly, said Sir Gawaine, fair damsel, ye have right, 
 for, an he be your love, ye love the most honourable 
 knight of the world, and the man of most worship. So 
 me thought ever, said the damsel, for never, or that 
 time, for no knight that ever I saw loved I never none 
 erst. God grant, said Sir Gawaine, that either of you 
 may rejoice other, but that is in a great adventure. But 
 truly, said Sir Gawaine unto the damsel, ye may say ye 
 have a fair grace, for why, I have known that noble knight 
 this four and twenty year, and never or that day I nor 
 none other knight, I dare make it good, saw nor heard 
 say that ever he bare token or sign of no lady, gentle- 
 woman, nor maiden, at no justs nor tournament. And 
 therefore, fair maiden, said Sir Gawaine, ye are much 
 beholden to him to give him thanks. But I dread me, 
 said Sir Gawaine, that ye shall never see him in this 
 world, and that is great pity that ever was of earthly 
 knight. Alas, said she, how may this be? Is he slain? 
 I say not so, said Sir Gawaine, but wit ye well, he is 
 grievously wounded, by all manner of signs, and by 
 men's sight more likely to be dead then to be on live ; 
 and wit ye well he is the noble knight Sir Launcelot, 
 for by this shield I know him. Alas, said the fair 
 maiden of Astolat, how may this be, and what was his 
 hurt? Truly, said Sir Gawaine, the man in the world 
 that loved him best hurt him so, and I dare say, said
 
 172 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 Sir Gawaine, an that knight that hurt him knew the 
 very certainty that he had hurt Sir Launcelot, it would 
 be the most sorrow that ever came to his heart. Now, 
 fair father, said then Elaine, I require you give me 
 leave to ride and to seek him, or else I wot well I shall 
 go out of my mind, for I shall never stint till that I find 
 him and my brother Sir Lavaine. Do as it liketh you, 
 said her father, for me right sore repenteth of the hurt 
 of that noble knight. Right so the maid made her 
 ready, and before Sir Gawaine making great dole. 
 Then on the morn Sir Gawaine came to king Arthur, 
 and told him how he had found Sir Launcelot's shield 
 in the keeping of the fair maiden of Astolat. All that 
 knew I aforehand, said king Arthur, and that caused me 
 I would not suffer you to have ado at the great justs : 
 for I espied, said King Arthur, when he came in till his 
 lodging, full late in the evening in Astolat. But marvel 
 have I, said Arthur, that ever he would bear any sign 
 of any damsel : for, or now, I never heard say nor knew 
 that ever he bare any token of none earthly woman. 
 By my head, said Sir Gawaine, the fair maiden of 
 Astolat loveth him marvellously well ; what it meaneth 
 I cannot say; and is ridden after to seek him. So the 
 king and all came to London, and there Sir Gawaine 
 openly disclosed to all the court that it was Sir Launce- 
 lot that justed best. 
 
 "And when Sir Bors heard that, wit ye well he was 
 a heavy man, and so were all his kinsmen. But when 
 queen Guenever wist that Sir Launcelot bare the red 
 sleeve of the fair maiden of Astolat, she was nigh out 
 of her mind for wrath. And then she sent for Sir Bors 
 de Ganis in all the haste that might be. So when Sir 
 Bors was come tofore the queen, then she said, Ah, Sir 
 Bors, have ye heard say how falsely Sir Launcelot hath 
 betrayed me? Alas, madam, said Sir Bors, I am afraid 
 he hath betrayed himself, and us all. No force, said 
 the queen, though he be destroyed, for he is a false 
 traitor knight. Madam, said Sir Bors, I pray you say 
 ye not so, for wit you well I may not hear such lan- 
 guage of him. Why, Sir Bors, said she, should I not 
 call him traitor, when he bare the red sleeve upon his
 
 The Idylls of the King. 173 
 
 head at Winchester, at the great justs? Madam, said 
 Sir Bors, that sleeve-bearing" repenteth me sore, but I 
 dare say he did it to none evil intent, but for this cause 
 he bare the red sleeve, that none of his blood should 
 know him; for, or then, we nor none of us all never 
 knew that ever he bare token or sign of maid, lady, ne 
 gentlewoman. Fie on him, said the queen, yet for all 
 his pride and boasting, there ye proved yourself his 
 better. Nay, madam, say ye never more so, for he beat 
 me and my fellows, and might have slain us, an he 
 had would. Fie on him, said the queen, for I heard Sir 
 Gawaine say before my lord Arthur, that; it were marvel 
 to tell the great love that is between the fair maiden of 
 Astolat and him. Madam, said Sir Bors, I may not 
 warn Sir Gawaine to say what it pleased him : but I 
 dare say as for my lord Sir Launcelot, that he loveth 
 no lady, gentlewoman, nor maid, but all he loveth in 
 like much, and therefore, madam, said Sir Bors, ye may 
 say what ye will, but wit ye well I will haste me to 
 seek him, and find him wheresoever he be, and God 
 send me good tidings of him. And so leave we them 
 there, and speak we of Sir Launcelot, that lay in great 
 peril. 
 
 "So as fair Elaine came to Winchester, she sought 
 there all about, and by fortune Sir Lavaine was ridden 
 to play him, to enchafe his horse. And anon as Elaine 
 saw him she knew him, and then she cried onloud until 
 him. And when he heard her, anon he came to her; 
 and then she asked her brother, How did my lord, 
 Sir Launcelot? Who told you, sister, that my lord's 
 name was Sir Launcelot? Then she told him how Sir 
 Gawaine by his shield knew him. So they rode together 
 till that they came to the hermitage, and anon she 
 alight. So Sir Lavaine brought her in to Sir Launce- 
 lot. And when she saw him lie so sick and pale in his 
 bed, she might not speak, but suddenly she fell to the 
 earth down suddenly in a swoon, and there she lay a 
 great while. And when she was relieved she sighed, 
 and said, My lord Sir Launcelot, alas, why be ye in this 
 plight? and then she swooned again. And then Sir 
 Launcelot prayed Sir Lavaine to take her up, And
 
 174 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 bring- her to me. And when she came to herself, Sir 
 Launcelot kissed her, and said, Fair maiden, why fare 
 ye thus? Ye put me to pain; wherefore make ye no 
 more such cheer, for, an ye be come to comfort me, ye 
 be right welcome, and of this little hurt that I have, I 
 shall be right hastily whole, by the grace of God. But 
 I marvel, said Sir Launcelot, who told you my name. 
 Then the fair maiden told him all how Sir Gawaine was 
 lodged with her father, And there by your shield he 
 discovered your name. Alas, said Sir Launcelot, that 
 me repenteth, that my name is known, for I am sure it 
 will turn unto anger. And then Sir Launcelot com- 
 passed in his mind that Sir Gawaine would tell queen 
 Guenever how he bare the red sleeve, and for whom, 
 that he wist well would turn unto great anger. So this 
 maiden, Elaine, never went from Sir Launcelot, but 
 watched him day and night, and did such attendance 
 to him that the French book saith there was never 
 woman did more kindlier for man than she. Then Sir 
 Launcelot prayed Sir Lavaine to make espies in Win- 
 chester, for Sir Bors if he came there, and told him by 
 what tokens he should know him, by a wound in his 
 forehead : For well I am sure, said Sir Launcelot, that 
 Sir Bors will seek me, for he is the same good knight 
 that hurt me. 
 
 " Now turn we unto Sir Bors de Ganis, that came 
 unto Winchester to seek after his cousin, Sir Launcelot ; 
 and so when he came to Winchester, anon there were 
 men that Sir Lavaine had made to lie in a watch for 
 such a man; and anon Sir Lavaine had warning; and 
 then Sir Lavaine came to Winchester, and found Sir 
 Bors, and there he told him what he was, and with 
 whom he was, and what was his name. Now, fair 
 knight, said Sir Bors, I require you that ye will bring me 
 to my lord Sir Launcelot. Sir, said Lavaine, take your 
 horse, and within this hour ye shall see him. And so 
 they departed, and came to the hermitage. 
 
 " And when Sir Bors saw Sir Launcelot lie in his bed, 
 pale and discoloured, anon Sir Bors lost his countenance, 
 and for kindness and pity he might not speak, but wept 
 tenderly a great while. And then when he might speak
 
 The Idylls of the King. 175 
 
 he said thus: O my lord Sir Launcelot, God you bless, 
 and send you hasty recovery; and full heavy am I of 
 my misfortune and of mine unhappiness, for now I may 
 call myself unhappy, and I dread me that God is greatly 
 displeased with me, that he would suffer me to have 
 such a shame for to hurt you, that are all our leader 
 and all our worship, and therefore I call myself un- 
 happy. Alas, that ever such a caitiff knight as I am 
 should have power by unhappiness to hurt the most 
 noblest knight of the world. Where I so shamefully 
 set upon you and overcharged you, and where ye might 
 have slain me, ye saved me, and so did not I : for I, 
 and your blood, did to you our utterance. I marvel, 
 said Sir Bors, that my heart or my blood would serve 
 me, wherefore my lord Sir Launcelot, I ask your mercy. 
 Fair cousin, said Sir Launcelot, ye be right welcome, 
 and wit ye well overmuch ye say for to please me, the 
 which pleaseth me not; for why? I have the same 
 sought, for I would with pride have overcome you all, 
 and there in my pride I was near slain, and that was in 
 mine own default, for I might have given you warning 
 of my being there. And then had I had no hurt; for it 
 is an old said saw, there is hard battle there as kin and 
 friends do battle either against other; there may be no 
 mercy, but mortal war. Therefore, fair cousin, said Sir 
 Launcelot, let this speech over-pass, and all shall be 
 welcome that God sendeth ; and let us leave off this 
 matter, and let us speak of some rejoicing : for this that 
 is done may not be undone, and let us find a remedy 
 how soon that I may be whole. Then Sir Bors leaned 
 upon his bed's side, and told Sir Launcelot how the 
 queen was passing wroth with him, because he ware the 
 red sleeve at the great justs. And there Sir Bors told 
 him all how Sir Gawaine discovered it by your shield 
 that ye left with the fair maiden of Astolat. Then is the 
 queen wroth, said Sir Launcelot, and therefore am I 
 right heavy, for I deserved no wrath, for all that I did 
 was because that I would not be known. Right so 
 excused I you, said Sir Bors, but all was in vain, for she 
 said more largely to me than I to you now. But is 
 this she, said Sir Boris, that is so busy about you, that
 
 176 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 men call the fair maiden of Astolat ? She it is, said Sir 
 Launcelot, that by no means I cannot put from me. 
 Why should ye put her from you? said Sir Bors, she is a 
 passing fair damsel, and well beseen and well taught; 
 and God would, fair cousin, said Sir Bors, that ye could 
 love her, but as to that I may not, nor I dare not, 
 counsel you. But I see well, said Sir Bors, by her 
 diligence about you, that she loveth you entirely. That 
 me repenteth, said Sir Launcelot. Sir, said Sir Bors, 
 she is not the first that hath lost her pain upon you, and 
 that is the more pity. And so they talked of many more 
 things. And so within three days or four, Sir Launcelot 
 was big and strong again. 
 
 "Then Sir Bors told Sir Launcelot how there was 
 sworn a great tournament and justs betwixt king Arthur 
 and the king of Northgalis, that should be on Allhallow- 
 mass day, beside Winchester. Is that truth? said Sir 
 Launcelot, then shall ye abide with me still a little 
 while, until that I be whole, for I feel myself right big 
 and strong. Blessed be God, said Sir Bors. Then were 
 they there nigh a month together ; and ever this maiden 
 Elaine did ever her diligent labour, night and day, unto 
 Sir Launcelot, that there was never child nor wife more 
 meeker to father and husband, than was that fair 
 maiden of Astolat. Wherefore Sir Bors was greatly 
 pleased with her. So upon a day, by the assent of Sir 
 Launcelot, Sir Bors and Sir Lavaine they made the 
 hermit to seek in woods for divers herbs. And so Sir 
 Launcelot made fair Elaine to gather herbs for him, to 
 make him a bath. In the mean while, Sir Launcelot 
 made him to arm him at all pieces, and there he thought 
 to assay his armour and his spear, for his hurt or not. 
 And so when he was upon his horse, he stirred him 
 fiercely, and the horse was passing lusty and fresh, 
 because he was not laboured a month before. And 
 then Sir Launcelot couched that spear in the rest : that 
 courser lept mightily when he felt the spurs; and he 
 that was upon him, the which was the noblest horse of 
 the world, strained him mightily and stably, and kept 
 still the spear in the rest. And therewith Sir Launcelot 
 strained himself so straitly, with so great force, to get
 
 The Idylls of the King. 177 
 
 the horse forward, that the bottom of the wound brast, 
 both within and without, and therewithal the blood 
 came out so fiercely that he felt himself so feeble that he 
 might not sit upon his horse. An then Sir Launcelot 
 cried unto Sir Bors, Ah, Sir Bors, and Sir Lavaine, 
 help, for I am come to mine end. And therewith he 
 fell down on the one side to the earth, like a dead 
 corpse. And then Sir Bors and Sir Lavaine came to 
 him, with sorrow making" out of measure. And so by 
 fortune the maiden Elaine heard their mourning, and then 
 she came thither. And when she found Sir Launcelot 
 there armed in that place, she cried and wept as she 
 had been wood, and then she kissed him, and did what 
 she might to awake him. And then she rebuked her 
 brother and Sir Bors, and called them false traitors, 
 why they would take him out of his bed ; then she cried, 
 and said she would appeal them of his death. With 
 this came the holy hermit, Sir Baudewin of Britanny; 
 and when he found Sir Launcelot in that plight he said 
 but little, but wit ye well he was wroth; and then he 
 bade them, Let us have him in. And so they all bare 
 him unto the hermitage, and unarmed him, and laid him 
 in his bed, and evermore his wound bled piteously, but 
 he stirred no limb of him. Then the knight hermit put 
 a thing in his nose, and a little deal of water in his 
 mouth, and then Sir Launcelot waked of his swoon, and 
 then the hermit stanched his bleeding. And when he 
 might speak, he asked Sir Launcelot why he put his 
 life in jeopardy. Sir, said Sir Launcelot, because I 
 wend I had been strong, and also Sir Bors told me that 
 there should be at Allhallowmass a great justs betwixt 
 king Arthur and the king of Northgalis, and therefore I 
 thought to assay it myself, whether I might be there or 
 not. Ah, Sir Launcelot, said the hermit, your heart 
 and your courage will never be done until your last day, 
 but ye shall do now by my counsel ; let Sir Bors depart 
 from you, and let him do at that tournament what he 
 may, and by the grace of God, said the knight hermit, 
 by that the tournament be done, and ye come hither 
 again, Sir Launcelot shall be as whole as ye, so that 
 he will be governed by me."
 
 178 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 Here follows an account of a second tournament j 
 after which Sir Bors, returning to Launcelot, finds 
 him well and walking. 
 
 " So then they made them ready to depart from the 
 hermit. And so upon a morn they took their horses, 
 and Elaine le Blank with them ; and when they came to 
 Astolat, there they were well lodged, and had great 
 cheer of Sir Bernard the old baron, and of Sir Tirre his 
 son. And so upon the morn, when Sir Launcelot 
 should depart, fair Elaine brought her father with her, 
 and Sir Tirre and Sir Lavaine, and thus she said : 
 
 "My lord Sir Launcelot, now I see ye will depart, 
 now, fair knight and courteous knight, have mercy upon 
 me, and suffer me not to die for thy love. What would 
 ye that I did? said Sir Launcelot. I would have you to 
 my husband, said Elaine. Fair damsel, I thank you, 
 said Sir Launcelot, but truly, said he, I cast me never 
 to be wedded man. Then, fair knight, said she, will ye 
 be my love? Jesu defend me, said Sir Launcelot, for 
 then I rewarded to your father and your brother full evil 
 for their great goodness. Alas, said she, then must I 
 die for your love. Ye shall not so, said Sir Launcelot, 
 for wit ye well, fair maiden, I might have been married 
 an I had would, but I never applied me to be married 
 yet. But because, fair damsel, that ye love me as ye 
 say ye do, I will, for your good will and kindness, shew 
 you some goodness, and that is this ; that wheresoever 
 ye will beset your heart upon some good knight that 
 will wed you, I shall give you together a thousand 
 pound yearly, to you and to your heirs. Thus much 
 will I give you, fair madam, for your kindness, and 
 always while I live to be your own knight. Of all this, 
 said the maiden, I will none, for, but if ye will wed me, 
 or else be my lover, wit you well, Sir Launcelot, my 
 good days are done. Fair damsel, said Sir Launcelot, 
 of these two things ye must pardon me. Then she 
 shrieked shrilly, and fell down in a swoon; and then 
 women bare her into her chamber, and there she made 
 overmuch sorrow. And then Sir Launcelot would de- 
 part; and there he asked Sir Lavaine what he would do.
 
 The Idylls of the King. 179 
 
 What should I do, said Sir Lavaine, but follow you, 
 but if ye drive me from you, or command me to go from 
 you? Then came Sir Bernard to Sir Launcelot, and 
 said to him, I cannot see but that my daughter Elaine 
 will die for your sake. I may not do withal, said Sir 
 Launcelot, for that me sore repenteth; for I report me 
 to yourself that my proffer is fair, and me repenteth, 
 said Sir Launcelot, that she loveth me as she doth: I 
 was never the causer of it, for I report me to your son, 
 I early nor late proffered her bounty nor fair behests; 
 and as for me, said Sir Launcelot, I dare do all that a 
 good knight should do, that she is a true maiden, both 
 for deed and for will ; and I am right heavy of her 
 distress, for she is a full fair maiden, good, and gentle, 
 and well taught. Father, said Sir Lavaine, I dare make 
 good she is pure and good as my lord Sir Launcelot 
 hath said; but she doth as I do, for since I first saw my 
 lord Sir Launcelot I could never depart from him, nor 
 nought I will an I may follow him. Then Sir Launce- 
 lot took his leave, and so they departed, and came unto 
 Winchester. And when Arthur wist that Sir Launcelot 
 was come, whole and sound, the king made great joy of 
 him, and so did Sir Gawaine, and all the knights of the 
 Round Table except Sir Agravaine and Sir Mordred. 
 Also queen Guenever was wood wroth with Sir Launce- 
 lot, and would by no means speak with him, but 
 estranged herself from him, and Sir Launcelot made all 
 the means that he might to speak with the queen, but 
 it would not be. 
 
 "Now speak we of the fair maiden of Astolat, that 
 made such sorrow day and night, that she never slept, 
 eat, nor drank ; and ever she made her complaint unto 
 Sir Launcelot. So when she had thus endured a ten 
 days, that she feebled so that she must needs pass out 
 of this world, then she shrived her clean, and received 
 her Creator. And ever she complained still upon Sir 
 Launcelot. Then her ghostly father bade her leave such 
 thoughts. Then she said, Why should I leave such 
 thoughts? am I not an earthly woman? and all the 
 while the breath is in my body I may complain me, for 
 my belief is I do none offence though I love an earthly
 
 180 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 man, and I take God to my record I never loved none 
 but Sir Launcelot du Lake, nor never shall ; and a pure 
 maiden I am for him and for all other. And since it is 
 the sufferance of God that I shall die for the love of so 
 noble a knight, I beseech the High Father of heaven to 
 have mercy upon my soul, and upon mine innumerable 
 pains that I suffered may be allegiance of part of my 
 sins. For sweet Lord Jesu, said the fair maiden, I take 
 thee to record, on thee I was never great offender 
 against thy laws, but that I loved this noble knight Sir 
 Launcelot out of measure, and of myself, good lord, I 
 might not withstand the fervent love wherefore I have 
 my death. And then she called her father Sir Bernard, 
 and her brother Sir Tirre, and heartily she prayed her 
 father that her brother might write a letter like as she 
 did endite it ; and so her father granted her. And when 
 the letter was written word by word as she devised, 
 then she prayed her father that she might be watched 
 until she were dead, And while my body is hot, let this 
 letter be put in my right hand, and my hand bound fast 
 with the letter until that I be cold, and let me be put in 
 a fair bed, with all the richest clothes that I have about 
 me, and so let my bed, and all my richest clothes be laid 
 with me in a chariot unto the next place where Thames 
 is, and there let me be put within a barget, and but one 
 man with me, such as ye trust to steer me thither, and 
 that my barget be covered with black samite, over and 
 over. Thus, father, I beseech you, let it be done. So 
 her father granted it her faithfully, all things should be 
 done like as she had devised. Then her father and her 
 brother made great dole, for, when this was done, anon 
 she died. And so when she was dead, the corpse, and 
 the bed, all was led the next way unto Thames, and 
 there a man, and the corpse, and all, were put into 
 Thames, and so the man steered the barget unto West- 
 minster, and there he rowed a great while to and fro or 
 any espied it. 
 
 "So by fortune king Arthur and the queen Guenever 
 were speaking together at a window; and so as they 
 looked into Thames, they espied this black barget, and 
 had marvel what it meant. Then the king called Sir
 
 The Idylls of the King. 181 
 
 Kay, and shewed it him. Sir, said Sir Kay, wit you 
 well there is some new tidings. Go thither, said the 
 king to Sir Kay, and take with you Sir Brandiles and 
 Agravaine, and bring me ready word what is there. 
 Then these three knights departed, and came to the 
 barget, and went in; and there they found the fairest 
 corpse lying in a rich bed, and a poor man sitting in 
 the barget's end, and no word would he speak. So 
 these three knights returned unto the king again, and 
 told him what they found. That fair corpse will I see, 
 said the king. And so then the king took the queen 
 by the hand and went thither. Then the king made the 
 barget to be holden fast; and then the king and the 
 queen entered, with certain knights with them. And 
 there he saw the fairest woman lie in a rich bed, covered 
 unto her middle with many rich clothes, and all was 
 of cloth of gold, and she lay as though she had smiled. 
 Then the queen espied a letter in her right hand, and 
 told it to the king. Then the king took it, and said, 
 Now I am sure this letter will tell what she was, and 
 why she is come hither. Then the king and the queen 
 went out of the barget, and so commanded a certain 
 man to wait upon the barget. And so when the king 
 was come within his chamber, he called many knights 
 about him, and said that he would wit openly what was 
 written within that letter. Then the king brake it, and 
 made a clerk to read it; and this was the intent of the 
 letter: Most noble knight, Sir Launcelot, now hath 
 death made us two at debate for your love ; I was your 
 lover, that men called the fair maiden of Astolat ; there- 
 fore unto all ladies I make my moan ; yet pray for my 
 soul, and bury me at the least, and offer ye my mass- 
 penny. This is my last request. And a clean maiden 
 I died, I take God to witness. Pray for my soul, Sir 
 Launcelot, as thou art peerless. This was ^.11 the 
 substance in the letter. And when it was read, the 
 king, the queen, and all the knights wept for pity of 
 the doleful complaints. Then was Sir Launcelot sent 
 for. And when he was come, king Arthur made the 
 letter to be read to him ; and when Sir Launcelot heard 
 it word by word, he said, My lord Arthur, wit ye well
 
 182 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 I am right heavy of the death of this fair damsel. God 
 knoweth I was never causer of her death by my willing, 
 and that will I report me to her own brother; here he 
 is, Sir Lavaine. I will not say nay, said Sir Launcelot, 
 but that she was both fair and good, and much I was 
 beholden unto her, but she loved me out of measure. 
 Ye might have shewed her, said the queen, some bounty 
 and gentleness, that might have preserved her life. 
 Madam, said Sir Launcelot, she would none other way 
 be answered, but that she would be my wife or else 
 my love, and of these two I would not grant her; but 
 I proffered her, for her good love that she showed me, 
 a thousand pound yearly to her and to her heirs, and 
 to wed any manner knight that she could find best to 
 love in her heart. For, madam, said Sir Launcelot, 
 I love not to be constrained to love ; for love must arise 
 of the heart, and not by no constraint. That is truth, 
 said the king, and many knights : love is free in himself, 
 and never will be bounden; for where he is bounden 
 he loseth himself. Then said the king unto Sir Launcelot, 
 It will be your worship that ye oversee that she be 
 interred worshipfully. Sir, said Sir Launcelot, that 
 shall be done as I can best devise. And so many 
 knights went thither to behold that fair maiden. And 
 so upon the morn she was interred richly, and Sir 
 Launcelot offered her mass-penny, and all the knights 
 of the Table Round that were there at that time offered 
 with Sir Launcelot. And then the poor man went 
 again with the barget. Then the queen sent for Sir 
 Launcelot, and prayed him of mercy, for why she had 
 been wroth with him causeless. This is not the first 
 time, said Sir Launcelot, that ye have been displeased 
 with me causeless ; but, madam, ever I must suffer you, 
 but what sorrow I endure I take no force." 
 
 It will be seen that Tennyson has invented the 
 whole story of the diamonds, prize of the joust, 
 which he uses with fine skill in the dramatic 
 moment. Otherwise he follows the main lines, 
 only enriching them here and there: Gawain in
 
 The Idylls of the King. 183 
 
 Malory undertakes the quest and is not sent upon 
 it; there is no word of Gawain's love-making with 
 the u lily maid"; he behaves him like a courteous 
 knight. I need not point out how exquisitely 
 Tennyson has elaborated the few hints in Malory 
 for the figure of Elaine ; nor with what fine tact he 
 has cut down the unnecessary tourneyings. It is 
 important, however, to notice first that he chooses 
 this occasion to suggest through the mouth of 
 Guinevere a contrast between the king and Lance- 
 lot; then less explicitly, a contrast between the 
 loyal though sinful knight and the fickleness of 
 Gawain ; and, again by implied contrast, he shows 
 the shortcoming of such a passion as Guinevere's 
 when set against the pure devotion of Elaine. 
 Elaine would not have thought, we are to under- 
 stand, that "the low sun makes the colour". 
 
 You have, in short, in Elaine, Malory's story just 
 as it stands in broad outline, but simplified by the 
 omission of endless details of tournament, every- 
 where profuse in Malory; by the omission of Bors, 
 who is a necessary figure in Malory, since all 
 Lancelot's kin serve him in his love no less than 
 in his wars, but in Tennyson's story has no place; 
 you have it heightened and at least pointed by a 
 conscious moral purpose; and you have it un- 
 questionably embellished by the beauty of such 
 passages as that which describes the castle where 
 Elaine lives, the hermit's cave, where 
 
 The green light from the meadows underneath 
 Struck up and lived along the milky roofs ; 
 And in the meadows tremulous aspen-trees 
 And poplars made a noise of falling showers ; 
 
 or again the description of the king's dragon- 
 blazoned chair and garments. To these must be 
 added many touches of beautiful invention; for 
 instance, Lancelot's disclosure of himself to Lavaine 
 
 (M635) N
 
 184 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 how admirably conceived from the mere sugges- 
 tion of Lavaine's words to his father: "Father, I 
 dare make it good that she is a clean maid as for 
 my lord Sir Launcelot; but she doth as I do. For 
 sithence that I first saw my lord Sir Launcelot I 
 could never depart from him; nor nought I will 
 an I may follow him." 
 
 Tennyson's also is the invention of Lancelot's 
 "one discourtesy that he used"; and Tennyson's 
 also, I regret to say, the combination by which it 
 is Arthur who, bringing word of the red sleeve, 
 first wakes jealousy in Guinevere. 
 
 Altogether, whether in what is added or what 
 omitted, the Idyll may stand for a fair example 
 of Tennyson's treatment of Malory's material; ex- 
 cept that here there is no touch upon the story of 
 the Grail, which, as it completes and gives mean- 
 ing to Malory's whole book, so, in spite of all the 
 beauties of style which are lavished on the telling 
 it, destroys the reasonable coherence and even the 
 artistic sincerity of Tennyson's. 
 
 Chapter IX. 
 Tennyson's Dramatic Works. 
 
 The Idylls of the King (with the exception of 
 Balin and Balan} were completed in 1872. The 
 poet was then in his sixty-fourth year, but in the 
 score of years which were still to run almost a 
 half of his entire works were composed and pub- 
 lished. And of these later harvests more than half 
 was dramatic poetry. Considered in bulk his plays 
 make nearer a third than a quarter of his entire 
 work. Considered as part of the achievement by
 
 Tennyson's Dramatic Works. 185 
 
 which he will rank among poets, I fear they are 
 almost a negligible quantity. They are admirable 
 productions, and three at least of them stood the 
 test of stage representation with a large measure 
 of success ; but the same may be said of Dry den's 
 tragedies, and who now reads All for Love or The 
 Indian Emperorl Still the plays are things that 
 cannot be omitted in a critical study of Tennyson's 
 work, and in many respects they well repay atten- 
 tion. Three of them, however, may be dismissed 
 with little ceremony. The Falcon is a graceful trifle, 
 and the large style of Tennyson's blank verse hardly 
 fits itself to trifles ; while the story in itself, pretty in 
 its original setting as an Italian tale, lacks human 
 nature "the saving touch of saving common 
 sense". The Foresters, his last work, is what the 
 Elizabethans called a masque simply a framework 
 which gives occasion to elaborate pageants, inter- 
 spersed with songs. The fairy interlude in it is 
 perhaps the worse thing that Tennyson ever wrote, 
 and the humorous passages are terribly mechan- 
 ical. By common consent of his friends Tennyson 
 abounded in humour, as I have observed, but except 
 in his Lincolnshire verses, the Northern Farmer 
 and the rest, this quality scarcely appears in his 
 work. As for The Promise of May, which was pro- 
 duced by Mrs. Bernard Beere at the Globe Theatre, 
 and gave rise to the witty saying that the poet- 
 laureate, after filling the world with his verse, was 
 now emptying the Globe with his prose, it seems 
 to me frankly detestable. Edgar, the wicked prig 
 round whom the plot turns, is at once intolerable 
 and incredible. That a man should seduce a girl 
 is not unheard of; that a man should hold opinions 
 which lead him to regard morality as a convention 
 is not unheard of; but the two are very seldom 
 related as cause and effect. If a man seduces a 
 girl, he does so in obedience to aboriginal instincts
 
 186 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 which have very little to say to reasoning, and the 
 most vicious prig that ever was created probably 
 never justified such an action to himself on such 
 grounds as Edgar produces. And then to suggest 
 that a man, having seduced a girl and driven her 
 from her home, should return after a few years and 
 propose, by way of reparation, to marry her sister, 
 trusting in a change of name and the growth of 
 a beard to prevent recognition in a neighbourhood 
 where he had been perfectly well known, passes the 
 limits even of stage possibility. Edgar is a piece 
 of pasteboard, so is the plot. A popular dramatist, 
 according to Lord Tennyson, said, that if he had 
 had the play for twenty minutes he would have 
 made it the success of the season. Very likely. 
 For starting with the prestige of Tennyson's name, 
 he had only slightly to embellish Farmer Dobson, 
 Dora's lover, fling Dora into his ready arms in the 
 last act, and send Edgar off repentant and rejected ; 
 then you would at once have had a drama such as 
 the British public delights in. But Tennyson was 
 at heart too much of an artist for this ; he did not 
 paint his rustics in rose-water, he made them smell 
 of the manure-heap. The adroit dramatist, to match 
 his conventional villain, would have vamped up 
 conventional rustics; he would have put a rose in 
 Dobson's button -hole, and the farmer's lumpish 
 utterance would have given place ten minutes be- 
 fore the curtain to a torrent of homely and moving 
 eloquence. Tennyson handicapped himself at the 
 start with a didactic purpose, and was led into the 
 artistic untruth of representing as the outcome of 
 a certain way of thought sins which spring from 
 very different causes ; the result was that when the 
 artist in him reasserted itself and reached after 
 nature, there was a tumble between two stools. 
 
 The Cup stands on a very different level from the 
 pieces I have spoken of. To begin with, it contains
 
 Tennyson's Dramatic Works. 187 
 
 a very fine dramatic situation. The first act is 
 improbable and unreasonable enough ; there is the 
 old convention of a man making remarks aside, 
 as Sinnatus does, apparently in order that the sus- 
 pected listener may overhear them ; there is also the 
 conventional foolish woman, who goes to a rendez- 
 vous with a man whom she has every reason to 
 mistrust. The whole structure, in short, is slight 
 and superficial, but it is beautifully ornamented; 
 Gamma's speech in defence of hopeless rebellions 
 is a triumph of eloquence : 
 
 Sir, if a state submit 
 At once, she may be blotted out at once 
 And swallow'd in the conqueror's chronicle. 
 Whereas in wars of freedom and defence 
 The glory and grief of battle won or lost 
 Solders a race together yea tho' they fail, 
 The names of those who fought and fell are like 
 A bank'd-up fire that flashes out again 
 From century to century, and at last 
 May lead them on to victory I hope so 
 Like phantoms of the Gods. 
 
 And upon this structure is built a really noble and 
 impressive second act, where Camma in the Temple 
 of Artemis gives her consent to wed Synorix her 
 husband's slayer, and in the high solemnity before 
 the shrine of the Goddess, pledges him from his 
 own gift, the cup, in a draught of poison. As a 
 stage effect it is finely conceived, and every speech 
 of Gamma's tells as it should, whether she speaks, 
 after the old Greek fashion, in a riddling utterance 
 of double meanings, or rises into a stately strain 
 of verse, like a prophetess inspired by the coming 
 doom. 
 
 Rouse the dead altar-flame, fling in the spices, 
 
 Nard, cinnamon, amomum, benzoin. 
 
 Let all the air reel into a mist of odour, 
 
 As in the midmost heart of Paradise. 
 
 Lay down the Lydian carpets for the king.
 
 188 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 The king should pace on purple to his bride ; 
 And music there to greet my lord the king. 
 
 The highest point in the poetry is undoubtedly 
 reached by the double invocation to Artemis god- 
 dess of birth and goddess of death which Synorix 
 and Camma pronounce before the offering of the 
 marriage libation. 
 
 Synorix. O Thou, that dost inspire the germ with life, 
 The child, a thread within the house of birth, 
 And give him limbs, then air, and send him forth 
 The glory of his father Thou whose breath 
 Is balmy wind to robe our hills with grass, 
 And kindle all our vales with myrtle-blossom, 
 And roll the golden oceans of our grain, 
 And sway the long grape-bunches of our vines, 
 And fill all hearts with fatness and the lust 
 Of plenty make me happy in my marriage ! 
 
 Chorus (chanting). Artemis, Artemis, hear him, Ionian Ar- 
 temis ! 
 
 Camma. O Thou that slayest the babe within the womb 
 Or in the being born, or after slayest him 
 As boy or man, great Goddess, whose storm voice 
 Unsockets the strong oak, and rears his root 
 Beyond his head, and strows our fruits, and lays 
 Our golden grain, and runs to sea and makes it 
 Foam over all the fleeted wealth of kings 
 And peoples, hear. 
 
 Whose arrow is the plague whose quick flash splits 
 The mid-sea mast, and rifts the tower to the rock, 
 And hurls the victor's column down with him 
 That crowns it, hear. 
 
 Who causest the safe earth to shudder and gape, 
 And gulf and flatten in her closing chasm 
 Domed cities, hear. 
 
 Whose lava-torrents blast and blacken a province 
 To a cinder, hear. 
 
 Whose winter-cataracts find a realm and leave it 
 A waste of rock and ruin, hear. I call thee 
 To make my marriage prosper to my wish ! 
 
 Chorus. Artemis, Artemis, hear her, Ephesian Artemis ! 
 
 Camma. Artemis, Artemis, hear me, Galatian Artemis ! 
 I call on our own Goddess in our own Temple. 
 
 Chorus. Artemis, Artemis, hear her, Galatian Artemis !
 
 Tennyson's Dramatic Works. 189 
 
 It would be hard to better that passage of verse, and 
 indeed the scene sinks from this climax : Gamma's 
 dying speech is tame after it. Yet although they 
 were fortunate who saw Miss Terry, then at her 
 very best, act in the piece, The Cup adds nothing to 
 Tennyson's reputation. It is a smaller achieve- 
 ment than any one of the better Idylls, to say 
 nothing of the poet's greater works; and it is 
 hardly different in kind, for here, though you have 
 stage effect admirably managed, you have no real 
 drama, no interplay of character. None of the 
 figures live. The fame of Tennyson as a dramatic 
 artist, if such fame is to be his, must rest on the 
 three historical plays, Queen Mary, Harold, and 
 Becket. 
 
 These pieces, differing widely as they do in sub- 
 ject, have a common character. They are dramas 
 of England. The main interest lies not so much 
 in the actual plot or in the characters as in their 
 concentrated presentment of some critical period 
 in the " rough island story". Harold dramatizes 
 the contest between Norman and Saxon rather than 
 the story of a single ruler's rise and fall. In Queen 
 Mary the central theme is the duel between Rome 
 and Lutheranism; while in Becket the pith and 
 marrow of the whole action is the strife for supre- 
 macy between the temporal and the spiritual power. 
 Tennyson mended his hand as he went on, and 
 Becket is far less abstract and political than the 
 others; but of all three it may be said that, where- 
 as in Shakespeare's historical plays your attention 
 is concentrated on a group of individuals at strife 
 or in league with one another, so that you have to 
 stop and reflect in order to discover behind the 
 purely human and personal forces the larger national 
 and political movements of which they are a part 
 in Tennyson it is with these wider agencies that 
 the play is primarily concerned, and you feel, as it
 
 i QO Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 were, incidentally grateful for a presentment of 
 the personalities through whom they were worked 
 out. 
 
 Queen Mary, as it was the first of these plays 
 it was published in 1875 and acted at the Lyceum 
 in 187650 it was the extremest instance of Tenny- 
 son's peculiar method. He himself called it a 
 "chronicle play", and the term well describes this 
 attempt to crowd the history of a whole reign into 
 five acts. The dramatist is not content to fix him- 
 self upon the central theme of the play, that con- 
 flict between Lutheran and Roman which makes 
 the pivot of the whole history; nor upon the human 
 motive, Mary's barren passion for a husband to 
 whom she is repugnant, which links itself naturally 
 with the religious struggle, since Mary in wedding 
 Philip deliberately gave over her whole kingdom 
 to be the engine of Rome. He will not omit even 
 the side issues. And thus we have a picture of the 
 court intrigues and conflicts which kept Elizabeth 
 a prisoner but saved her from the block; we have 
 a picture of the diplomatic rivalry between France 
 and England, and even in the end the further 
 division of forces when Mary finds that in allying 
 herself to Spain she is leagued with a power that 
 makes war upon Rome. Given the general con- 
 ception, it is difficult to say how any of these 
 elements could have been omitted ; but the truth is 
 that the conception was unsound. A play must 
 interest, and it is scarcely conceivable that Queen 
 Mary should interest any possible audience. It 
 will be answered that Shakespeare wrote chronicle 
 plays, that his audiences approved them, and that 
 therefore if we are not a degenerate race the same 
 things ought to please us. But in Shakespeare's 
 day the stage provided the public not merely with 
 artistic excitement but with instruction. It was 
 an age of few books, and there is no doubt that
 
 Tennyson's Dramatic Works. 191 
 
 many a man went to see Henry VI. because 
 he wanted to know something of his country's 
 history. Books of history were not many, and 
 they were dull, while the historical romance was 
 not yet dreamed of. Shakespeare's chronicle plays 
 have vanished from the boards except two. In 
 Richard III. the extraordinary dramatic possi- 
 bilities of the subject, and the extraordinary vigour 
 with which they were developed, have triumphed 
 over the inherent defects of the form ; and Henry 
 IV. is kept alive for the sake of the greatest of 
 all comic characters. But in Queen Mary the 
 element of humour is entirely absent; the story, 
 in so far as it concerns the central figure, is 
 not exciting, while Mary's character is not cal- 
 culated to draw easy sympathy; and the mass of 
 material to be handled has compelled the poet to 
 retrench the ornamentation of which he was so 
 great a master. Many of the scenes, though en- 
 tirely admirable in expression, are adorned with 
 neither wit nor poetry; the debate where Gardiner 
 advocates persecution, against Pole who deprecates 
 it, is a fine piece of work, but the verse has not 
 the spring and elasticity which gives to similar 
 passages in Shakespeare the exhilaration of poetry. 
 There are two really dramatic moments in this 
 succession of loosely-connected scenes, though they 
 do not relate themselves to each other, nor is either 
 vital to the existence of the drama. The first is 
 the concluding scene of Wyatt's rebellion, where 
 the Queen and her Court wait barricaded in the 
 gatehouse of Westminster Palace and listen to 
 messenger after messenger coming in with news of 
 the rebels' unchecked advance. Her counsellors 
 press the Queen to fly, but the Tudor blood in her 
 rises higher and higher as the danger grows more 
 imminent, and she answers at first with rebuke, 
 then with taunts, till suddenly the tide turns and
 
 192 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 Wyatt's defeat is announced. Then comes a burst 
 of vindictive command and wild exultation : 
 My foes are at my feet, and I am Queen ; 
 
 but in a moment the woman reasserts herself over 
 the ruler, and her cry changes to 
 
 My foes are at my feet, and Philip king. 
 
 Still more finely dramatic is the scene in St. Mary's 
 Church at Oxford indeed both the scenes in which 
 Cranmer appears, for they work continuously to 
 the climax where, set up on a platform to read his 
 final recantation before he goes to the stake, the old 
 man in a speech full of superb poetry recants indeed, 
 but recants his recantation, declaring with his last 
 utterance for the Protestant faith which he had 
 weakly abjured. 
 
 Still, the situation here was made ready to the 
 artist's hand, and a lesser man could hardly have 
 missed it. What is really striking and original in 
 this play is the character of Mary herself; the 
 woman in whom religious fanaticism the cold 
 heat of persecuting zeal, strengthened by the im- 
 perious Tudor will, and exasperated by the opposi- 
 tion to her succession, has blended itself inextri- 
 cably with the hopeless passion of an unattractive 
 woman for a man eleven years younger than herself. 
 All emotions in her the sovereign's desire for irre- 
 sistible authority, the zealot's fervour for a faith, 
 the barren woman's longing for a child, and the 
 neglected wife's passionate eagerness to win an 
 answer to her love all these reinforce each other 
 and give to her language and her actions that exal- 
 tation which is half sprung from over-stimulated 
 craving of the senses and affections, half truly 
 spiritual. The speech that she utters alone when 
 she has fancied that she "felt the motion of her 
 babe " is truly lyrical, and truly natural moreover.
 
 Tennyson's Dramatic Works. 193 
 
 Mary. He hath awaked ! he hath awaked ! 
 He stirs within the darkness ! 
 Oh, Philip, husband ! now thy love to mine 
 Will cling more close, and those bleak manners thaw, 
 That make me shamed and tongue-tied in my love. 
 The second Prince of Peace 
 The great unborn defender of the Faith, 
 Who will avenge me of mine enemies- 
 He comes, and my star rises. 
 The stormy Wyatts and Northumberlands, 
 The proud ambitions of Elizabeth, 
 And all her fieriest partisans are pale 
 Before my star ! 
 
 The light of this new learning wanes and dies : 
 The ghosts of Luther and Zuinglius fade 
 Into the deathless hell which is their doom 
 Before my star ! 
 
 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 I 
 My star, my son ! 
 
 All the motions of this strong nature thwarted its 
 rancorous hate, its morbid fondness, its stubborn 
 pride, and its desperate courage, are rendered in 
 their turn, separately or in fusion, till the woman 
 stands out, and amid the despair of the last act she 
 is brought visibly before us, in the scene where she 
 takes the lute from her ladies and sings her song, 
 which ranks high among Tennyson's lyrics. 
 
 Hapless doom ot woman happy in betrothing! 
 Beauty passes like a breath and love is lost in loathing : 
 Low, my lute ; speak low, my lute, but say the world is nothing 
 Low, lute, low ! 
 
 Love will hover round the flowers when they first awaken ; 
 Love will fly the fallen leaf, and not be overtaken ; 
 Low, my lute ! oh low, my lute ! we fade and are forsaken 
 Low, dear lute, low ! 
 
 Take it away? not low enough for me ! 
 Alice. Your grace hath a low voice.
 
 194 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 Mary. How dare you say it? 
 
 Even for that he hates me. A low voice 
 Lost in a wilderness where none can hear ! 
 A voice of shipwreck on a shoreless sea ! 
 A low voice from the dust and from the grave. 
 (Sitting on the ground.} There, am I low enough now? 
 
 Alice. Good Lord ! how grim and ghastly looks her Grace, 
 With both her knees drawn upward to her chin. 
 There was an old-world tomb beside my father's 
 And this was open'd, and the dead were found 
 Sitting, and in this fashion ; she looks a corpse. 
 
 I do not know anything in Tennyson that gives 
 a more vivid picture to the eye than this passage. 
 But that is a merit of the poet rather than of the 
 playwright, and from the dramatic point of view 
 the play, I think, would always be a failure (apart 
 from the succes tfestime), because the chief character 
 is essentially one to excite pity without sympathy 
 an emotion much too complex to hold an audience. 
 
 Harold is in many ways a better piece of work 
 than Queen Mary. It is simpler, better knit 
 together, and runs more smoothly to its conclusion. 
 Yet somehow I should not rate it so highly as the 
 earlier drama. Everything in it, every action, 
 every speech and character, is coherent, probable, 
 and plausible, but neither word nor action seems 
 inevitable and entirely convincing. It is a ques- 
 tion whether an artist should make his work turn 
 upon a motive with which he has no possible 
 sympathy. Certainly the action of Harold is in no 
 way altered by the oath which he swore to William 
 on the covered bones of the saints ; if a curse is to 
 come on him, he disregards it and makes the best 
 headway that he can against disastrous chances. 
 Yet the whole atmosphere of the play is charged 
 with the curse; in the fine opening scene all men's 
 minds are full of the comet that glares over 
 England, a menace of divine wrath, and Harold, 
 the one man who disregards superstition and defies
 
 Tennyson's Dramatic Works. 195 
 
 augury, is forthwith thrown into a plight where all 
 the machinery of the Church is employed to play 
 upon a conscience, already uneasy over a promise 
 given with no purpose of fulfilment, and to instil into 
 it a dread of the supernatural. It does not seem to 
 me that the half-rationalizing, half-credulous atti- 
 tude which Harold is made to assume fits with the 
 man or the times ; it reads throughout like a nine- 
 teenth-century comment on the beliefs of eight 
 centuries ago. There is no single character in the 
 play drawn with the subtlety that marks the portrait 
 of Mary, and no scene at all so really dramatic as 
 Cranmer's declaration of faith on the scaffold at St. 
 Mary's. Actors have, I think, shown their wisdom 
 in abstaining from attempts to produce Harold; 
 and there are few things in the language so nearly 
 excellent throughout that are so uninteresting to 
 read. The conflict of Norman and Saxon is shown, 
 not as the victory of a higher civilization over a 
 lower, but as the triumph of forces united under 
 a single will over a kingdom distracted by too 
 many princelings. Tennyson is even so insular 
 as to imply throughout a preponderance of moral 
 virtues among the Saxons; the libertine Normans 
 are coming to debauch the modest women of 
 England. This is carrying the habit of British 
 self-righteousness an amazingly long way back. 
 
 There remains to be considered the last, and in 
 my opinion by far the best of these plays, the 
 drama of Becket. Here you have a great theme 
 the struggle of church and throne for supremacy 
 put into terms of human passion ; for it is really 
 a long duel of two personalities, Becket's and 
 Henry's, each using all his advantages, moral and 
 material, to break the will of the other. The con- 
 flict of wills is foreshadowed in the prologue, where 
 the king and his chancellor face each other over 
 the chess-board, and it continues to the end. The
 
 196 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 two men are strongly drawn; their words and 
 actions do not seem dictated in accordance with 
 a formula in the poet's mind, but spring from 
 nature itself. Eleanor the Queen, too, is conceived 
 with great subtlety of portraiture; hers is the 
 jealousy that outlives love and finds itself allied 
 with other passions. She hates Rosamund not 
 because she is Henry's paramour to that she 
 would be indifferent but because she has won 
 a love which Eleanor herself never held; and she 
 hates her too because a woman whom the king 
 loves may be a power in the state. She hates her, 
 moreover, because Becket protects her, and she 
 herself would gladly find favour in Becket's eyes. 
 Rosamund is pretty and pathetic, the scenes be- 
 tween her and Henry should be affecting on the 
 stage; but it is hard to forgive the passion for 
 propriety which made Tennyson complicate his 
 plot with the unreasonable invention that Rosamund 
 was ignorant of the king's marriage. To be so 
 she must have been guileless indeed, and Tenny- 
 son writes to represent her as a woman with in- 
 telligence as well as devotion, who has sacrificed 
 her maiden honour with her eyes open for the sake 
 of the man she loves. And it is no ignorant girl 
 that turns thus upon the Queen at the threat of 
 death: 
 
 And I will fly with my sweet boy to heaven, 
 And shriek to all the saints among the stars : 
 " Eleanor of Aquitaine, Eleanor of England ! 
 Murder'd by that adulteress Eleanor, 
 Whose doings are a horror to the east, 
 A hissing in the west !" 
 
 But the strength of the play lies in the characters 
 of Becket and the King, each admirably rendered. 
 Nothing shows Tennyson's religious bias more 
 strongly than the persistency with which he enlists 
 our sympathy for Henry's side of the argument.
 
 Tennyson's Dramatic Works. 197 
 
 The case for secular control of the clerics is put 
 at its very strongest, the answer is left on a merely 
 theological ground : 
 
 Shall hands that do create the Lord be bound 
 Behind the back like laymen-criminals? 
 
 Intensely English as Tennyson is, he is even more 
 intensely anti-Roman ; and the cause which Becket 
 defended was the claim of a foreign power to inter- 
 fere in our national affairs, and of the priest to be 
 supreme in all matters relating to conduct. Yet 
 while his sympathies are against the cause of Becket, 
 he is in love with the large humanity of the man. 
 This tonsured layman, suddenly promoted to an 
 archbishopric, has little of the priest about him. 
 He sighs for wife and child : 
 
 The more or less of daily labour done, 
 The pretty gaping bills in the home-nest 
 Piping for bread the daily want supplied 
 The daily pleasure to supply it. 
 
 And more openly still, when the cloud of murder 
 hovers near over him for, says he, 
 
 The drowning man, they say, remembers all 
 The chances of his life, just ere he dies 
 
 he speaks his mind, saying to John of Salisbury 
 
 how much we lose, we celibates, 
 Lacking the love of woman and of child, 
 
 and recalls the memory of a "little fair-haired 
 Norman maid", who till she died of leprosy was 
 " the world's lily", as Rosamund is the world's 
 rose. These are scarcely the touches that a poet 
 of Becket's church would use to paint the canonized 
 martyr ; and perhaps a devout Catholic would hold 
 that Tennyson's Becket allied the question of the
 
 198 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 church's supremacy too much with the triumph of 
 his individual will. The beatitude of the meek is 
 not for him. One has to deplore that the drama 
 is not accomplished without a mere mechanical 
 ingenuity that connects Rosamund with the death 
 of Becket. Eleanor in the play uses the circum- 
 stance that the Archbishop has ordered her into 
 a nunnery to goad the king into his final fury. It 
 is a clever arrangement, but a great deal too clever : 
 the invention is false artistically, for the murder 
 of Becket was a logical outcome of the king's 
 resentment, and needed no such adventitious cir- 
 cumstance to produce it. Still, the play is a noble 
 piece of work, and full of beautiful lines and stately 
 speeches. I need only quote : 
 
 Prate not of bonds, for never, oh ! never again 
 Shall the waste voice of the bond-breaking sea 
 Divide me from the mother church of England. 
 
 But when all is said, I question whether even 
 Becket will hold the stage. It is neither good 
 enough nor bad enough. The tragedies that last 
 may be counted on the fingers, and among the 
 wreckage of the Elizabethans and the poets of Ben 
 Jonson's day, there are many far more poignant, 
 though few statelier than this. The lyrical gift upon 
 which I think Tennyson's fame will rest finds no 
 scope in the drama; and his plays for some reason 
 never had any of that peculiar appositeness in 
 thought, which gave even to his less interesting 
 poems so extraordinary a vogue in their own 
 generation.
 
 Style and Metre. 199 
 
 Chapter X. 
 Style and Metre. 
 
 What exactly is meant by style? That is a 
 question as old as criticism, and one which every 
 critic has to answer for himself. Broadly speaking, 
 it means the individual manner of doing things. 
 If a man does any given thing often enough, from 
 writing with a pen to bowling at cricket, he develops 
 a way of doing it, not unlike that of other people, 
 but distinguishable as his, and indeed inseparable 
 from himself, stamped with the impress of his own 
 particular endowment. This manner varies by 
 excess or defect; it may arrive at perfect grace, it 
 may be a contortion ; but it is always there, and 
 the more difficult the achievement, the greater will 
 be the individual differences. Now it stands to 
 reason that you cannot define style; a quality of 
 this sort eludes definition. You may define the 
 action of bowling, but you cannot define the action 
 of a famous bowler, though you may attribute to 
 it certain characteristics, in short, describe it: but 
 it is highly improbable that your description will 
 convey anything to a person who has not seen 
 what you are describing. Still, description may 
 help to concentrate attention upon the peculiar 
 excellences of performance. But the difficulty of 
 writing of Tennyson's style is that every manner 
 results from a sort of compromise between indi- 
 vidual endowment and imitation of a model ; and 
 we are conscious, only to a certain extent, of the 
 peculiarities of that style which we take as our 
 model. No man knows how he looks to others; 
 and to a certain extent he sees his model as he 
 sees himself. We are all bound to Tennyson by 
 too many links of discipleship to see him clearly 
 
 (M635) O
 
 200 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 and in detachment. Dickens, for instance, and 
 Carlyle are as plain to us in their separate identities 
 as Fielding and Johnson. We can sit and judge 
 of their procedure, seeing it with the senses of a 
 stranger: but Tennyson is still by far too near 
 us; and in this chapter I shall keep as closely as 
 possible to those formal qualities of style about 
 which there can be little divergence of opinion. 
 
 Nothing more need be said about his dramatic 
 work, for critical opinion is practically agreed that 
 they do not show Tennyson at his best. It is also 
 probable that posterity will let them fall into as 
 complete oblivion as has overtaken The Borderers 
 and Remorse. We have to consider him, then, as 
 a lyrical and narrative poet; that is to say, as a 
 man using language and metre either to tell a 
 story, to express a feeling or passion, or to set out 
 a train of thought. And first, on the question of 
 construction, which is at least akin to that of style, 
 nobody can lay down the procedure of a lyric. In 
 narrative there are well -recognized laws. It is 
 worth noting perhaps that in the earlier narrative 
 poems he tends to begin at the beginning, with 
 
 Sir Aylmer Aylmer, that almighty man, 
 or 
 
 A prince I was, blue-eyed and fair of face ; 
 
 but in the Idylls he adopts as a rule the more ela- 
 borate method of starting with a scene somewhere 
 in the middle of the story, such, for instance, 
 as Enid's lament over the inaction of Geraint, 
 which, half overheard, leads to his jealousy; and 
 then, after bringing this strongly before the mind's 
 eye, harks back to an explanation. And it cannot 
 be questioned that Tennyson was a master of this 
 art of narrative. The Lover's Tale, so strangely 
 incoherent when contrasted with its mature sequel,
 
 Style and Metre. 201 
 
 The Golden Supper^ affords an easy means to judge 
 by what labour he arrived at this perfection. Each 
 one of the Idylls is a model of story-telling; they 
 are perfectly lucid, they hold the attention, and 
 they never fail of such an ending as Tennyson 
 himself preferred, where the emotion roused softens 
 gradually away to the quiet end with the ceasing 
 of the narrator's voice. One may or may not care 
 for the stories ; but there is no doubt that they are 
 admirably told, so far as concerns the sequence and 
 marshalling of events and the selection of incidents. 
 Excellent they are also in what is more purely 
 a matter of style ; the choice of key in which to set 
 the recital. Elaine is studiously simple, Gareth 
 and Lynette is elaborately pretty; in The Holy 
 Grail the style feels the exaltation of the subject, 
 and breaks into long and passionate rhapsodies of 
 declamation; and in The Passing of Arthur there 
 is the solemnity of an organ-music. But here we 
 strike a question which reaches wider than the 
 mere business of narrative, and concerns the archi- 
 tecture of all poetry. A poet working by means of 
 language and metre has first of all to choose the 
 tone of treatment for his subject; and from this 
 more general choice follow consequences that dic- 
 tate in all matters of detail. For instance, compare 
 the light-hearted tone of Herue Riel with the dig- 
 nity of The Revenge-, any one can see that Brown- 
 ing is justified by his attitude towards the subject 
 in the use of phrases which would be incongruous 
 in Tennyson. Given the subject, there remains a 
 choice of language in which to express it. Given 
 Tennyson's attitude towards the story of Lancelot 
 and the maiden's sleeve which is very different 
 from Malory's it follows that here is no place for 
 such sonorities of diction and splendour of phrase 
 as may rightly adorn the legend of The Holy Grail. 
 Given again his attitude towards the story of Maud
 
 202 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 and her lover that is, dramatic recital by a speaker 
 half unhinged in mind it is fit that the utterance 
 should be strained and violent. Few poets, if any, 
 have a wider range over the vocabulary ; none are 
 more discreet in their use of it. 
 
 The same holds of metre; the poet, once given 
 his subject, has not only to select his metre appro- 
 priately, but to make the metre chosen obey the 
 mood. And in the lyrics, need it be pointed out 
 how admirably Tennyson fits his metre to all 
 cadences of the emotion? Witness, of course, 
 Maud] witness his ballad of The Revenge, where 
 the verse moves fast or slow at will, and where 
 short lines are introduced, either to express the 
 hurry of an instant decision 
 
 Shall we fight or shall we fly? 
 
 Good Sir Richard, tell us now, 
 For to fight is but to die ; 
 
 or with equal skill to suggest the voice pausing 
 upon words of heavy emphasis 
 
 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? 
 
 A passage like that keeps through the harmony of 
 metre all the natural rhythms of speech ; and it is 
 above all in this particular excellence in the con- 
 summate mastery of metre that Tennyson seems to 
 me so great an artist. 
 
 Yet he is hardly less, if less at all, as an artist 
 in language. The first quality of style, whether in 
 prose or verse, to be aimed at is, I think, lucidity. 
 Contemporary opinion is against me in this matter, 
 and critics are apt to set little store by the pains
 
 Style and Metre. 203 
 
 which a man takes to be understood ; but clearness 
 seldom fails of its ultimate reward. Tennyson, as 
 I have pointed out in an earlier chapter, was at first 
 freely accused of obscurity; and it must be allowed 
 that certain passages of In Memoriam are very 
 difficult to follow. But not all thoughts admit of 
 equal clearness in exposition, and the thought in 
 these passages is of necessity complex. Maud 
 puzzled the critics greatly at its first appearance ; it 
 is not easy to see why, as a very little imagination 
 supplies easily the necessary links. 1 But for the 
 most part it will be conceded that Tennyson had a 
 singular power of expressing ideas, even complex 
 ideas, so that the thought should be lucid and 
 harmonious. Yet this gift of lucidity, though it 
 stands first, is not the highest of a poet. The 
 highest, if we are to exclude the dramatic power to 
 make a living man put his whole self into a word, 
 is the quality of magical suggestion. Literature 
 affords no better instance than Virgil's 
 
 Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tang unt. 
 
 This is something even higher than the Horatian 
 felicity of expression which packs a definite thought 
 into words that become inseparable from it, like 
 the Rectius vives Ode : yet in Horace too you can 
 match it with a passage 
 
 Nos ubi decidimus 
 
 Quo pater Aeneas, quo dives Tullus et Ancus, 
 Pulvis et umbra sumus. 
 
 Lines like these can never be adequately translated. 
 Virgil's line can scarcely be translated at all, it can 
 only be felt ; it has the magic of Shakespeare. That 
 
 1 As an instance, Lewis Carroll (Life, p. 71) was so slow of compre- 
 hension as to need an explanation from Tennyson of "Well, if it prove 
 a girl, my boy will have plenty ; so let it be ".
 
 204 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 is where one cannot be sure about a contemporary. 
 Will any lines in Tennyson have this magical sug- 
 gestion, this imperishable accent? I seem to hear 
 it in Ulysses, I seem to hear it in Tears, idle tears, 
 I seem to hear it in the germinal lines of Maud. 
 
 Oh that 'twere possible, 
 
 After long quiet and pain, 
 To find the arms of my true love 
 
 Round me once again ! 
 
 Where do the words come from? we ask ourselves 
 over lines like these: what is there in them that 
 should stir vague hopes and long-forgotten regrets 
 and set all the vaults of our memory echoing? If 
 we had the answer, we should be able to define 
 poetry. 
 
 This is the highest thing in poetry, this power 
 of intellectual suggestion beyond the thought actu- 
 ally put into words. Quite different from it is the 
 mere quotable felicity of language like the lines on 
 Lancelot's "honour rooted in dishonour": quite 
 different again is the quality of sense-suggestion, 
 on which I have dwelt in regard to landscape. Both 
 of these gifts Tennyson had to perfection, and espe- 
 cially the latter. No man ever had a greater power 
 of setting the eye to work through the brain; and 
 this depends, first, on a marvellously close obser- 
 vation ; secondly, on that power of selection which 
 is so essential to the artist. Tennyson knows in an 
 instant the value of a touch like 
 
 The rooks are blown about the sky. 
 
 And further, it depends upon a dexterity in the use 
 of words which has never been surpassed. Tenny- 
 son can do anything with words. He can paint 
 you a Dutch picture of still life, like his pie 
 
 Where quail and pigeon, lark and leveret lay 
 Embedded and enjellied:
 
 Style and Metre. 205 
 
 that instantly brings the thing before your eyes, 
 and, as a fabric of words, is in itself a masterpiece 
 of technical skill ; or he can show you the dog at 
 work who 
 
 With inward yelp and restless forefoot plies 
 H is function of the woodland. 
 
 He knows, too, no man better, the value of that 
 perpetual slight novelty, which Aristotle writes of, 
 and he keeps the mind continually awake by the use 
 of some epithet slightly diverted from its habitual 
 application, gaining or lending a new beauty. The 
 thing is nowhere better exemplified than in the line 
 which at once praises Virgil for this particular gift 
 and illustrates it: 
 
 All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word. 
 
 Yet, like Virgil, he seldom parades his graces; he 
 seldom deviates into extravagance. Exception 
 must be made for passages like the opening and 
 close of Maud, where one sees certain qualities of 
 his style carrried to an excess; but the typical style 
 of Tennyson must remain always, I think, among 
 the most graceful and sanest of our English poetic 
 manners. It is extremely original; in fifty years 
 perhaps men will see it distinctly enough to trace 
 its affinities better; yet even in the Poems by Two 
 Brothers there are these lines which suggest to my 
 mind no poet but Alfred Tennyson: 
 
 A wan dull lengthened sheet of swimming light 
 Lies the broad lake. 
 
 Beneath, the gurgling eddies slowly creep 
 
 Blackened by foliage, and the glutting wave, 
 
 That saps eternally the cold grey steep, 
 Sounds heavily within the hollow cave. 
 
 There you have a very early example, and a very
 
 206 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 complete one, first, of the landscape effects in which 
 Tennyson always excelled ; and, secondly, of that 
 device which he carried perhaps further than any 
 other poet has ever done perhaps indeed too far 
 the suggestion of sound. 
 
 This is, strictly speaking, a trick of language 
 rather than of metre; it can be done in prose just 
 as well as in verse; and the verse which does it 
 most successfully borrows from prose; for instance, 
 Clarence Mangan's grim refrain: 
 
 I heard four planks 
 
 Fall down with a hollow echo. 
 
 But Tennyson used it incessantly as an aid to the 
 effect of metre. Metre is a device natural to man 
 to express emotion. Man has sung as long as the 
 birds, and he has always rendered the quickening 
 of his pulses by some sort of rhythm. Whether in 
 a lyric the metre chooses the expression or the ex- 
 pression the metre it would not always be easy to 
 say. The opening line of The Revenge 
 
 At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay- 
 was in Tennyson's desk for years; the metrical in- 
 spiration of the subject came first. But in the 
 gradual development of art men found that they 
 could do a great deal with metre besides rendering 
 the general idea of physical exaltation, and one of 
 their earliest discoveries was this power of actual 
 physical suggestion. Many ruder artists had given 
 the sound of a fall in words before Virgil ended a 
 line with procumbit humi bos\ and many had caught 
 the echo of a gallop before he wrote 
 
 Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum. 
 
 These, of course, are flagrant instances, where 
 indeed the device becomes too obvious, and it is
 
 Style and Metre. 207 
 
 not hard to parallel them from Tennyson, since 
 every excellence is apt to run into excess. 
 
 And my pulses closed their gates with a shock on my heart as I 
 
 heard 
 The shrill- edged shriek of a mother divide the shuddering night. 
 
 There, as elsewhere in the same poem, the over- 
 charged alliteration heightens the effect; one may 
 quote another bad example ; listen to the thump of 
 the pestle as the apothecary sits 
 
 To pestle a poisoned poison behind his crimson lights. 
 
 But here is a finer and more characteristic passage, 
 which describes the lonely man haunted by the 
 vision of Maud's "cold and clear-cut face" till he 
 could bear it no more: 
 
 But arose, and all by myself in my own dark garden ground, 
 Listening now to the tide, in its broad-flung ship-wrecking roar, 
 Now to the scream of a madderid beach dragged down by the 
 
 wave, 
 
 WalKd in a wintry wind by a ghastly glimmer, and found 
 The shining daffodil dead, and Orion low in his grave. 
 
 The sound of the sea and the beach is unmistak- 
 able; but it is worth noting too how the chilly 
 effect of the wind is attained by a studied use of 
 thin vowel sounds. Every poet gets to know by 
 study, and instinctively chooses, the right vowel 
 combinations as well as the right words ; you can- 
 not write lines where the main vowels are z's and 
 tf's and u's which have, for instance, the ring of 
 
 Charge, Chester, charge ! on, Stanley, on ! 
 Were the last words of Marmion. 
 
 Examine The Charge of the Light Brigade, and it 
 will appear that nearly all the strong accents fall 
 upon #'s and o's.
 
 2o8 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 All these things Tennyson knew so well that he 
 did not have to think of them. Like Virgil, like 
 Victor Hugo, like all poets who are first and fore- 
 most artists in metre, he arrived at his extraordinary 
 virtuosity by an endless making of verses, a great 
 part of which, in Tennyson's case, were never 
 written down (in Hugo's unhappily they all were; 
 Tennyson's used to go up the chimney with the 
 smoke of his pipe). At all events his mastery was 
 complete; the lines Silent Voices , composed when 
 he was all but speechless in death, are full of subtly 
 interlaced alliterations and vowel assonances. He 
 had all the artifices at command till his difficulty 
 was to restrain too great a show of artifice ; to keep 
 alliteration, for instance, within proper bounds. 
 Sometimes it got the better of him, and one notices 
 the lapses ; but if the text of his work be studied as 
 a whole, it is impossible not to admire the restraint 
 with which it is used. The opening of Ulysses, for 
 instance, almost dispenses with this more obvious 
 assonance, and relies for that sonority, which with 
 all its monosyllables it attains, upon a careful 
 harmony of the vowels. The other device, that 
 of onomatopoeia, or actual suggestion of sound, so 
 much rarer, so much more difficult, and to the 
 average reader so much less apparent, was one in 
 whose employment Tennyson recognized no limit. 
 Nine times out of ten the thing is done with ex- 
 quisite judgment: here, for instance 
 
 Just now the dry-tongued laurett pattering talk 
 Seem'd her light foot along the garden walk, 
 
 where the evocation of the sound is instant and 
 beautiful. Or again, it is done with a subtler 
 suggestion in the lines on Will-. 
 
 He seems as one whose footsteps halt, 
 Toiling in immeasurable sand.
 
 Style and Metre. 209 
 
 It is as hard to say those syllables quickly syllables 
 which, but for designed effect, Tennyson would 
 never have put together as to move the feet quickly 
 over deep sand. 
 
 I need not quote the several passages where the 
 music of bells is caught up, as in 
 
 The merry, merry bells of Yule ; 
 
 nor, perhaps, others like this from Godiva : 
 
 The shameless noon 
 Was clash'd and hammer'd from a hundred towers ; 
 
 but one conspicuous instance ought not to be over- 
 looked; the description of Sir Bedivere carrying 
 Arthur to the barge: 
 
 Dry clash'd his harness in the icy caves 
 And barren chasms, and all to left and right 
 The bare black cliff clang'd round him, as he based 
 His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang 
 Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels. 
 
 It is extraordinarily clever; the armour goes clang- 
 ing down with all its echoes, the same vowel sound 
 reverberating sharply through every line; but there 
 is, perhaps, too much of the artifice, and it begins 
 to seem a trick. Still, it is a trick which few men 
 have the skill to imitate ; and for a final and most 
 elaborate example of it I would refer to the earlier 
 parts of the Wellington Ode, where one hears first 
 the clash of bells, then the boom of cannon, at 
 measured intervals. 
 
 Of Tennyson's mastery in metre, considered 
 merely as the harmony of sound, there was no 
 doubt from his first volume. Nearly everything 
 in the Juvenilia, whatever else may be said of 
 them, is exquisitely musical. There is a great 
 variety of rhythms, many of them composed almost
 
 210 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 at random in so far as concerns the length of lines 
 and the recurrence of rhymes; and only a man 
 with the greatest perfection of ear can write verse 
 under these conditions and hope for salvation. 
 Such a poem as Life and Thought owes all its real 
 impressiveness to the delicately-managed cadences 
 which in the last verse suddenly swell and rise, 
 only to fall again sadly in the last line of all, a 
 melody broken short. Many of the more elaborate 
 devices which were subsequently caught up by 
 Rossetti and Morris especially the refrain are 
 traceable to this volume. Where Tennyson got 
 them from I do not know ; the history of his early 
 reading would have to be written for us to answer 
 that question. But many things in these early 
 works, and some of the songs in The Princess, 
 suggest to my mind that he owed a good deal to 
 the example of Moore, whose skill in evoking the 
 more obvious harmonies out of words has been 
 hardly enough recognized. 
 
 The 1842 volume presented also a great but 
 hardly so great a variety of metres. The elaborate 
 quatrain of The Palace of Art and The Dream of 
 Fair Women was, I believe, Tennyson's own. In 
 The Lady of Shalott he employed with great skill 
 a beautiful stanza to which he never returned 
 except in Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere, find- 
 ing, no doubt, that the exigencies of the rhyme 
 were too great; as it is, he strains the laws of 
 rhyme to comply with them, and the first edition 
 sinned considerably more in that respect than the 
 existing text. The same remark applies to the 
 metre of The Two Voices, almost the only instance 
 where, in my judgment, Tennyson chose a measure 
 ill fitted to his subject. The result is a roughness 
 and obscurity of expression which it would not be 
 easy to parallel in his other work. 
 
 In the opening of The Lotos-Eaters and there
 
 Style and Metre. 211 
 
 only he employed with admirable mastery the 
 Spenserian stanza; the chorus is composed in ir- 
 regular staves of rhymed iambic lines; the length 
 of line and disposition of the rhymes varying at the 
 poet's will ; the last strophe, which was added later, 
 is written in what is practically the long trochaic 
 metre of Locksley Hall, but used in a very different 
 way; the caesura much less regular, and the divi- 
 sion into couplets ignored, while in many cases the 
 accent is so placed as to lose the trochaic character 
 almost entirely. 
 
 But the tendency on the whole in this volume 
 was towards a greater sobriety of metrical effect and 
 a more disciplined verse. Tennyson was disposed 
 to loosen the fetters of rhyme. He had published 
 his first essays in blank verse Ulysses ', OEnone, 
 and the Morte cT Arthur', he had shown in Day 
 Dreams and other poems what rich harmonies 
 might be drawn from the old and well-known 
 stanzas; and he had also in one or two short 
 poems put forth the stanza of In Memoriam. 
 
 There has been much dispute over the genesis 
 of this type of verse. I myself count it the easiest 
 supposition to believe that it was the poet's own 
 device, for the simple transposition of the com- 
 monest of all stanzas, the octosyllabic with alter- 
 nate rhymes, was not a difficult invention; and 
 once the idea occurred to so good an artist, the 
 advantages of it were obvious, since the mono- 
 tonous recurrence of rhymes is at once avoided. 
 The ingenuity of scholars has pointed out that the 
 octosyllabic quatrain with rhymes thus disposed 
 occurs in Ben Jonson and Sidney. Yet in Sidney 
 the internal rhymes are double, and the whole 
 character of the verse is altered by this ; nor is Ben 
 Jonson's treatment of the stanza at all like what we 
 meet in In Memoriam. 
 
 But Mr. Churton Collins in his edition of the
 
 212 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 Poems of Lord Herbert of Cherbury (who died in 
 1648) has noted a much more striking precedent. 
 The metre of In Memoriam is used by Lord Herbert 
 in two poems, of which the first (A Ditty] has little 
 merit or interest, but the second anticipates Tenny- 
 son in the most surprising way. Not only is the 
 movement of the metre almost identical in many 
 stanzas, but there is a correspondence in thought 
 which, one would have thought, could hardly be 
 accidental. Herbert's poem is called An Ode upon 
 a Question moved whether Love should continue for 
 ever. It describes two lovers, Melander and Celinda, 
 walking in a grove in spring, and communing of 
 love: 
 
 When, with a sweet though troubled look, 
 
 She first brake silence, saying " Dear Friend, 
 O that our love might take no end 
 
 Or never had beginning took". 
 
 And she goes on to explain that she does not fear 
 death, but that if death had taken Melander, she 
 would be joyful 
 
 To come where your loved presence is. 
 
 Her fear is that love may not last beyond death : 
 
 Only if love's fire with the breath 
 Of life be kindlfd, I doubt 
 With our last air 'twill be breathed out 
 
 And quenched with the cold of death. 
 
 That is the fear expressed in many different ways 
 by Tennyson in In Memoriam. Melander answers 
 in stanzas that at every other verse recall Tenny- 
 son's line of thought, though they are based upon 
 a literal acceptance of the Church's doctrines. Shall 
 evil desires last, he asks, and suffer their punish- 
 ment in hell
 
 Style and Metre. 213 
 
 And shall our Love, so far beyond 
 
 That low and dying appetite, 
 
 And which so chaste desires unite, 
 Not hold in an eternal bond? 
 
 No, he answers ; if the evil lasts so must the good- 
 ness of pure love : 
 
 Else were our souls in vain elect, 
 
 And vainer yet were Heaven's laws, 
 When to an everlasting Cause 
 
 They gave a perishing Effect. 
 
 These eyes again, then, eyes shall see, 
 And hands again these hands enfold, 
 And all chaste pleasures can be told 
 
 Shall with us everlasting be. 
 
 For if no use of sense remain 
 
 When bodies once this life forsake, 
 Or could they no delight partake, 
 
 Why should they ever rise again? 
 
 And if every imperfect mind 
 
 Make love the end of knowledge here, 
 How perfect will our love be where 
 
 All imperfection is refined! 
 
 So when from hence we shall be gone, 
 
 And be no more nor you nor /, 
 
 As one another's mystery 
 Each shall be doth, yet both but one. 
 
 I have italicised a few lines, but the resemblance is 
 everywhere so striking, both in the thought and the 
 fall of the verse, that nothing short of a positive 
 assurance that Tennyson had not read the poem 
 would make me question that Herbert suggested to 
 him the metre. 
 
 This assurance, however, is given in the Life. 
 Tennyson never read Lord Herbert's poem till 
 1880. Moreover, there is no doubt that the verse 
 itself very largely determines the use of it: that 
 anyone writing in the stanza of In Memoriam would
 
 214 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 write more or less like Tennyson. This may be 
 fairly inferred from a very odd resemblance which 
 an ingenious and widely-read friend has pointed out 
 to me. In 1806 was published an anthology called 
 The Lyre of Love, edited, according to the catalogue 
 in the British Museum, by P. L. Courtier. It 
 included selections from Surrey, Wyat, and from 
 many of the Elizabethan and Cavalier poets who 
 were then but little known ; coming down to modern 
 times, it included a good deal of trash from the 
 magazines, among which were several poems by 
 P. L. Courtier, with a biographical memoir pre- 
 fixed, a very pretty example of puffery. There was 
 also at the end a whole series of Poems entitled 
 Amoretta: By the Editor, who did not openly avow 
 his identity with P. L. Courtier. Among them 
 occurs the following effusion in two stanzas : 
 
 I wonder if her heart be still 
 
 The same that once I fondly met? 
 
 Will she her plighted faith forget? 
 Or she my dearest hopes fulfil? 
 
 I fear to pen the wish'd request, 
 
 To ask if all within be so 
 
 I almost dread the truth to know, 
 So changeful seems the human breast. 
 
 If the second of these stanzas were read to any 
 critic, he would be prepared to swear that it was 
 written either by Tennyson in a moment of im- 
 becility, or by some one with an ear for metre and 
 no eye for sense who was imitating In Memoriam. 
 The stanza appears naturally to lend itself either 
 to reflective writing or to writing which has the 
 appearance of reflection ; the movement can never 
 be rapid with this particular arrangement of rhymes ; 
 as indeed is shown sufficiently by the opening qua- 
 train of the Miltonic or Italian sonnet. 
 
 It is, however, quite possible that Tennyson may
 
 Style and Metre. 215 
 
 have read Courtier's stanzas quoted above, and 
 noted the possibilities of the metre, and the seed 
 thus sown may have germinated after many years, 
 by a process of which the poet himself was wholly 
 unconscious. 
 
 The stanza thus added to the stock of metres 
 well established in the language was in no sense 
 revolutionary. But the volume in which came 
 Maud marked an entirely new departure, upon 
 which I will quote the excellent contemporary com- 
 ment of The Edinburgh Review (Oct. 1835), written, 
 I am told, by Mr. Coventry Patmore. 
 
 "The striking metrical novelties of this volume call 
 for one or two remarks. In the greater portion of the 
 principal poem we have the Anglo-Saxon principle of 
 isochronous bars, of which the filling-up is left to the 
 will of the poet. Hitherto all poets since the total 
 disuse of the Anglo-Saxon measure, which long sur- 
 vived the Anglo-Saxon language, 1 have held themselves 
 bound by certain classical laws fixing the invariable use 
 or at least the great preponderance of one and the same 
 kind of ' foot ' in the same kind of verse. Coleridge in 
 Christabel was the first to make a systematic attempt 
 to regulate his verse simply by equidistant accents. In 
 his preface to that poem he seems to regard this idea as 
 a discovery of his own ; whereas it was merely a return 
 to the original principle of English verse. But Cole- 
 ridge's practice was not by any means a full development 
 of the principle; for throughout Christabel it will be 
 found that, in each considerable passage, there is a 
 preponderance of a particular foot, conferring on that 
 passage a 'dactylic', 'trochaic', 'iambic', or 'ana- 
 paestic' character, as the case may be. But in the 
 greater part of Maud there is really no other metrical 
 foundation than equality of the number of accents in 
 each verse." 
 
 1 Piers Plowman was written between 1362 and 1377. The system of 
 marking rhythm by beats rather than by syllables may be seen in the 
 poems of Skelton who lived from 1460 to 1529. 
 
 (M635) P
 
 2i6 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 The reviewer goes on to describe the metre as 
 " for the most part a hexameter of the most lawless 
 kind ", recalling the hexametrical character of the 
 old Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic verse. There are, 
 however, he continues, certain differences: 
 
 "Mr. Tennyson's metre employs rhyme, which the 
 Anglo-Saxon did not; and it does not make any sys- 
 tematic use of alliteration, which was essential to the 
 Anglo-Saxon. But these differences are not funda- 
 mental, though they may seem so at first. Rhyme in 
 the greater portion of Maud has no metrical value ; and 
 that Mr. Tennyson felt this is proved by the immense 
 intervals at which the rhymes commonly occur, and still 
 more by the total irregularity of these intervals. Again, 
 it was the monosyllabic character of the Anglo-Saxon 
 language which rendered alliteration necessary for the 
 indication of the places of the accents ; but modern Eng- 
 lish is no longer so characterized ; and in a line, say of 
 fourteen to eighteen syllables, we have seldom any diffi- 
 culty about the situation of the metrical stress in any 
 one of its six places. 
 
 "The metre of Maud, then, is a real metre though a 
 very lax one. Indeed, to the best of our recollection it 
 has no equal in ancient or modern verse for its freedom 
 from law. Such freedom is always an immense dis- 
 advantage for any but the greatest masters ; and if it be 
 hard to make up, by perpetual self-control and internal 
 law, for the defect of external bond in ordinary blank 
 verse, which is a comparatively strict metre, how hard 
 (might we not say how impossible?) must it be to write 
 up to the requirements of the new hexameter of which 
 Mr. Tennyson is the inventor. Neither sound nor sense 
 can reconcile us to such lines as 
 
 Now to the scream of a madden'd beach, dragg'd down by the 
 wave, 
 
 or to 
 
 The deathful 
 The 
 
 deathful grinning mouths of the fortress flames, 
 blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire.
 
 Style and Metre. 217 
 
 The reviewer goes on to note that since Cowper all 
 poets, 
 
 "with almost the single and great exception of Cole- 
 ridge, have knowingly and purposely despised and 
 neglected the consideration of metre as an art. The 
 consequence has been that the verse of the last half- 
 century presents a curious series of illustrations both 
 of extreme poverty of metre and of very high spon- 
 taneous metrical character, the last being of course in 
 small proportion to the first." 
 
 While begging Tennyson not to be rash with in- 
 novation, he recognizes that metre may undergo a 
 development almost as far-reaching as that which 
 in modern times has transfigured music. He was 
 soon justified of his prediction by the wonderful 
 harmonies which Mr. Swinburne, treading the path 
 that Tennyson had opened, drew from our language. 
 And though at present poetry inclines to return to 
 the older and more cautious ways, it is hard to say 
 how far the example set by Maud may be carried. 
 Certainly the line between prose and verse has been 
 since then increasingly hard to draw. Stevenson 
 and his followers have made a prose hardly less 
 complex or less musical than verse; and many of 
 the young poets, following the lead of Mr. Robert 
 Bridges, aim at subtle variation of cadence which 
 sets the old laws of scansion a good deal at defiance. 
 The subject, however, is too technical to be pursued 
 here. It is sufficient to say that, after Maud, Tenny- 
 son wrote very little that was not in a well-defined 
 measure ; though metrical experiments always had 
 a fascination for him. His extraordinary tours de 
 force with the old classical forms alcaic, hendeca- 
 syllabic, and the rest are famous; and of all his 
 experiments the most triumphant is the Boadicea 
 in the metre of the Atys of Catullus perhaps the 
 most difficult line to handle ever invented. These
 
 218 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 things, however, are merely exotic, strange speci- 
 mens; one may class with them his charming 
 stanzas that string together names of flowers for 
 the mere love of the sounds : 
 
 All among the gardens, auriculas, anemones, 
 Roses and lilies and Canterbury bells. 
 
 A more excellent feat, and one which might be 
 imitated, though only by a finished artist, is the 
 metre of his Daisy, used also in the Invitation to 
 F. D. Maurice. A friend points out to me that 
 the suggestion for this curious quatrain almost 
 certainly came from FitzGerald's famous Persian 
 measure. Here at all events is the same arrange- 
 ment of rhymes with the third line blank. But 
 Tennyson, with a fine subtlety, lightens and 
 quickens the movement of that solemn metre by in- 
 troducing a two-syllabled ending in the third verse, 
 which gives to the eight-syllabled iambic a feminine 
 ending, and by altering the run of the fourth 
 line by a dactyl somehow cunningly let in among 
 the iambics. Altogether it is a very dainty piece 
 of craftsmanship, and gives a special character to 
 the two exquisite poems written in it. Another in- 
 vention which will scarcely be let drop is the metre 
 used first in Wages, and later, with the addition of 
 another member to the verse, in Vastness, a strange 
 swinging rhythm that scans only by accent. Finest 
 of all his occasional inventions, however, is perhaps 
 the long trochaic line devised for the Ode To Virgil, 
 which is simply the metre of Locksley Hall with one 
 more trochee added after the caesura. 
 
 But the most important of all Tennyson's con- 
 tributions to the riches of English metre is probably 
 his blank verse, regenerating that metre from the 
 lamentable condition to which Wordsworth had 
 reduced it. From his earliest essays in it from 
 (Etume onwards he proved himself capable of
 
 Style and Metre. 219 
 
 drawing from the measure a sustained charm which 
 no one since Milton had achieved. The verse of 
 Shelley's Alastor had, indeed, great and beautiful 
 qualities; it had throughout a rush and flow that 
 Tennyson only occasionally could match; but it 
 had not the haunting quality which marks the best 
 work in all poetry in Shelley's as well as the rest. 
 Shelley's blank verse, it is true, has the great merit 
 of being built, not of lines, but of paragraphs; yet, 
 upon analysis, this appears to be due less to an 
 effect of art than to the breathless character of 
 Shelley's mind and imagination. He has the 
 qualities of his great defect. Ideas do not present 
 themselves to him clearly; but they do not present 
 themselves in detachment; they have always the 
 charm of continuity. Line flows into line, thought 
 into thought, image into image; and pauses are 
 far between. Now Tennyson was a very definite 
 thinker, a very clear-eyed observer, and he had a 
 singular gift of terse expression. The result is that 
 he tends perhaps unduly to detach his thoughts in 
 single lines and short phrases; the long verse- 
 paragraph is found, of course, as, for instance, in 
 a beautiful passage at the end of The Princess 
 describing the growth of love; or many times in 
 the Idylls-, or in so noble an example as the ten 
 lines of Ulysses that begin 
 
 There lies the port ; the vessel puffs her sail 
 
 Yet the most characteristic passages in Tennyson 
 are those where each line is singly beautiful, a 
 model of harmony and expression, but a unit, not 
 a part, in the integral whole of a verse structure: 
 for instance, these lines from Titfwnus 
 
 Why should a man desire in any way 
 To vary from the kindly race of men, 
 Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance 
 Where all should pause, as is most meet for all?
 
 220 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 Compared with Milton, the great master in this art, 
 he falls short in this faculty of verse architecture ; 
 falls short also in the variety of cadences which he 
 elicits from the instrument. Here is a passage 
 from Paradise Regained'. 
 
 So spake the Eternal Father, and all Heaven 
 Admiring stood a space ; then into hymns 
 Burst forth, and in celestial measures moved, 
 Circling the throne and singing, while the hand 
 Sung with the voice, and this the argument : 
 " Victory and triumph to the Son of God, 
 Now entering his great duel, not of arms, 
 But to vanquish by wisdom hellish wiles". 
 
 'Here it is noticeable, in the first place, that Milton 
 suggests in the few words that I have italicised the 
 stately rhythm of the dance, but, unlike Tennyson, 
 does not carry the suggestion to any considerable 
 length; secondly, that the choric chant of the 
 angels assumes a character totally different from the 
 rest of the verse. The sound of harps and voices 
 singing is in it; though all that is done in the first 
 line is to substitute a dactyl for the first iambus. 
 Tennyson never contrives or never attempts to 
 wrest the verse thus completely from its iambic 
 character; and herein he resembles Shakespeare; 
 it must be said also that if he lacks Milton's variety 
 and grandeur, he avoids his frequent roughnesses. 
 It deserves also to be noted that he has contrived 
 to give, on occasion, a purely lyric quality to blank 
 verse, so that his blank-verse songs (for instance, 
 Tears, idle tears) distinguish themselves as lyrics 
 from their blank-verse narrative setting. 
 
 Grace, clearness, and felicity; those seem to be 
 the leading characteristics of Tennyson's style; 
 harmony and expression of his verse. Other men 
 perhaps inferior to him have contrived to give a 
 greater impression of force; other men have sug- 
 gested deeper thoughts; but none has combined so
 
 Conclusion. 221 
 
 much thought with so perfect lucidity; none has 
 been apter in the choice of the exact epithet to 
 flash a picture on the mind; none has shown a 
 greater skill in making the metre answer to the 
 emotion expressed, and even suggest the physical 
 sensation that accompanies it. 
 
 Chapter XL 
 Conclusion. 
 
 What has been said of Tennyson's style is true 
 in a more general way of his whole poetical 
 achievement. We are still too near to estimate 
 justly either him or Browning. Their fame is 
 undoubtedly passing into that period of eclipse 
 which almost invariably follows the waning of a 
 great popularity the eclipse from which Dickens 
 has only of late emerged, and whose full shadow 
 rests upon George Eliot. In twenty years we shall 
 see better, or at least we shall see how Tennyson 
 looks to our sons. For the moment all that one 
 can do is to evoke other images and set them beside 
 that one which has grown, like a face that is all 
 our life beside us, so familiar as to be scarcely 
 distinct. 
 
 With Chaucer there is obviously no analogy, 
 and, I think, no comparison ; if the best verdicts 
 go for anything, Chaucer stands next after Shake- 
 speare and Milton. Spenser affords a better standard 
 by which to measure our modern. And it must be 
 said at once that a review of this kind makes one 
 feel the extraordinary extent and variety of Tenny- 
 son's genius. One need not put Tennyson's lyrics 
 into the scale as a make-weight: the Idylls alone 
 will very fitly stand comparison with The Faery
 
 222 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 Queen. Allegory for allegory, I prefer the Idylls ; 
 for the human interest of the story, for the ad- 
 venture, and for the romance, Tennyson seems to 
 me to surpass easily Spenser's swan -song of 
 chivalry. There are unquestionably many pas- 
 sages of great beauty in The Faery Queen ; but the 
 beauty is always one that can be paralleled from the 
 Idylls the beauty of high-wrought literary work- 
 manship, of a somewhat languid grace of style, and 
 of a fine sense of the romantic value of landscape. 
 Nothing could be more characteristic of Spenser 
 than this verse : 
 
 For round about the walls yclothed were 
 With goodly arras of great majesty, 
 Woven with gold and silk so close and near 
 That the rich metal lurked privily, 
 As faining to be hid from envious eye ; 
 Yet here and there and everywhere unwares 
 It showed itself, and shone unwillingly, 
 Like to a discoloured snake whose hidden snares 
 Through the green grass his long bright burnished back 
 declares. 
 
 Compare with that, for instance, the description 
 of Arthur's seat at the tournaments: 
 
 So spake Lavaine, and when they reach'd the lists 
 By Camelot in the meadow, let his eyes 
 Run thro' the peopled gallery which half round 
 Lay like a rainbow fall'n upon the grass, 
 Until they found the clear-faced King, who sat 
 Robed in red samite easily to be known, 
 Since to his crown the golden dragon clung, 
 And down his robe the dragon writhed in gold, 
 And from the carven-work behind crept 
 Two dragons gilded, sloping down to make 
 Arms for his chair, while all the rest of them 
 Thro' knots and loops and folds innumerable 
 Fled ever thro' the woodwork, till they found 
 The new design wherein they lost themselves, 
 Yet with all ease, so tender was the work. 
 
 I do not say that Tennyson outdoes Spenser in his
 
 Conclusion. 223 
 
 magnificence of phrasing and sensuous richness of 
 style ; I say that he equals him in this his peculiar 
 excellence; whereas you cannot match for charm in 
 The Faery Queen such a thing as the whole story 
 of Elaine, nor for dignity and depth the passing 
 speech of Arthur. Yet I think that in all English 
 literature there is no genius so like Tennyson's as 
 that of Spenser, and I would gladly call Tennyson 
 a greater Spenser, to whose musical utterance and 
 luxuriant imagination has been added a greater 
 power of thought and a gift of passionate song. 
 
 What would Tennyson have been in the days of 
 Queen Anne? it is curious to ask oneself. Would 
 he have carried on that tradition of the academic 
 ode which culminated for the moment in Dryden's 
 lyrical masterpiece, Alexander's Feast, to be re- 
 vived fifty years later by Gray a poet whose secure 
 immortality promises the like to Tennyson merely 
 for his quality of literary workmanship, and for 
 his faculty of coining the phrase that passes current 
 on men's lips. But in a sense Tennyson's position 
 comes nearer that of Pope than of any other poet, 
 although no two minds in our literature were less 
 alike. Pope entered in upon the heritage which 
 Dryden and his contemporaries had drawn to- 
 gether; he found a style rough-hewn, a literary 
 tradition established; he perfected the style, he 
 fulfilled to the uttermost the covenant of the tradi- 
 tion ; and, beyond and above the value of his own 
 achievement, he set his stamp upon all poetry in 
 this country for close upon a century. Tennyson 
 in the same way came in upon the wake of Words- 
 worth and Shelley; with less of masculine vigour 
 than Wordsworth, with less of fire and air than 
 Shelley, he perfected their work, he carried on their 
 tradition, and he set the standard of poetic style, so 
 completely that, more than half a century after he 
 first grew famous, the flood of definite imitators
 
 224 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 flows as strong as ever, and the most considerable 
 poet among us, since Mr. Swinburne has ceased to 
 write Mr. Stephen Phillips, shows unmistakably 
 in what school he learnt. Tennyson no more 
 made a revolution in literature than did Pope; 
 there was a literary revolution at the Restora- 
 tion, and another in the days of the French 
 Revolution; but a great epoch in English poetry 
 is inseparably associated with the name of Pope, 
 and Tennyson will almost certainly inherit the like 
 distinction. Pope is a great name, but I think 
 Tennyson will be a greater. What the Essay on 
 Man was to the day of Swift and Bolingbroke, the In 
 Memoriam will be to the age of Carlyle and Danvin; 
 it sums up the representative thought of the time. 
 Pope's Essay, brilliant as it is, seems to us nowa- 
 days scarce poetry. I can hardly conceive that any 
 future generation will not hear the true lyrical note 
 among the meditations of In Memoriam. 
 
 When we come to "commit him with his peers ", 
 who shall determine? Byron was the only poet of 
 the earlier generation who attained to all Tenny- 
 son's popularity; and if we compare the works on 
 which their vogue rested, who shall say that the 
 Idylls are not equal to Childe Harold '? while Enoch 
 Arden, Aylmer's Field, and the rest hold their own 
 very well against the Corsairs, Sieges of Corinth, 
 Laras, and Giaours. If we wish seriously to 
 weigh the best and most characteristic work of each, 
 it is easy enough to select it ; but what scales can 
 balance Maud and In Memoriam against Don Juan 
 and Ttie Vision of Judgment! Coleridge evades 
 comparison. The Ancient Mariner may be set 
 beside anything in all literature and lose none of 
 its glory ; but that, with two fragments, constitutes 
 the claim of its author to immortality. Keats died 
 young and left little, but of that little at least two 
 poems, the Ode to a Nightingale, and the Ode on a
 
 Conclusion. 225 
 
 Grecian Urn, reach a level that Tennyson never 
 attained. About Shelley the world has yet scarcely 
 made up its mind; but Adonais and many of his 
 lyrics at all events must stand with The Ancient 
 Mariner and the best work of Keats. Of Words- 
 worth I would only say that, as Pope is to Dryden, 
 so is Tennyson to Wordsworth : I question whether 
 posterity's general voice will differentiate between 
 their excellences more clearly than it does between 
 the two great Augustans. 
 
 There remains Browning, whom all of us love 
 who love poetry. But when one reviews the facts, 
 it is hard not to believe that Browning will survive 
 only in the anthologies. To my thinking there is 
 no more desirable immortality. I do not hope 
 that Browning will be read as a whole by future 
 generations if indeed he is so read by this one. 
 He will always be read by the few who value 
 original thought, for Browning was essentially an 
 original thinker. Tennyson was a thinker, as was 
 Pope; but, like Pope, he thought rather the 
 thoughts of his day than thoughts inseparable 
 from himself. The fate of Browning is tied up 
 with that of Mr. George Meredith. Posterity may 
 be wise enough to keep them ; but more probably 
 it will lose them and never guess what it has 
 lost. Tennyson, whatever his rank may be, is safe. 
 Compare Herve Riel with The Revenge, and though 
 the comparison is unfair to Browning, it is plain at 
 once why one immortality is safe and the other at 
 best doubtful. 
 
 Upon the whole, the men in English literature 
 who seem, though for very different reasons, to 
 have affinity with Tennyson are Spenser, Gray, 
 and Pope; and his place, one may say with con- 
 fidence, will be as high as the highest of theirs. 
 Outside this country parallels are apt to be mis- 
 leading. The comparison with De Musset is a
 
 226 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 case in point; De Musset is just as typically French 
 as Tennyson is typically English, and by dwelling 
 on a characteristic excellence in one it is easy to 
 point out a corresponding defect in the other. It 
 would indeed be a disastrous comparison to set 
 Tennyson's plays beside the delightful Comedies 
 et ProverbeSj upon which, to a foreigner, De Mus- 
 set's true fame seems to rest. But if one compares 
 what is fairly comparable, the love passages in 
 Maud to me make even the famous Nuits look 
 pale and artificial. As for Victor Hugo, I only 
 mention him to observe that, after a supremacy 
 perhaps less disputed than Tennyson's, he is to-day 
 spoken of with either indifference or contempt by 
 the younger generation of Frenchmen. Some 
 critics still judge him sanely, and the reaction will 
 not be long in coming. But it is pretty certain 
 that in ten years it will require a certain courage to 
 praise openly In Memoriam or the Idylls. 
 
 All the more reason to be bold while we still 
 dare. It was the fortune or misfortune of Tenny- 
 son to be born in a country which has twice known 
 such a flowering of poetic genius as cannot be 
 matched out of Greece, and his rank in the hier- 
 archy of English poets, though it be far from the 
 first, yet sets him high in the literature of the world. 
 Tennyson never, at least to my mind, recalls the 
 Greeks. The Latins of the Augustan age he recalls 
 at every turn, and he may have a certain similarity 
 of fate to theirs. Virgil, Horace, and Ovid owe 
 their exceptional position to an accident or a privi- 
 lege. They were the spokesmen of a world empire, 
 the chosen poets of a speech which became the 
 language of literature and government throughout 
 the civilized world. Latin has fallen from its pride 
 of place, but the halo of Rome lingers about the 
 head of its poets. Ovid has lost his nimbus, and 
 it is small boldness now to rank Tennyson high
 
 Conclusion. 227 
 
 above him, appealing in confirmation to a world 
 where English will soon be as widely familiar 
 as ever was Latin. Horace holds us, and always 
 will hold us, with the charm of his personality ; he 
 is at once poet and essayist ; under the toga of the 
 lyrist there hides a Montaigne. For that reason 
 he is the favourite poet of all those who do not 
 care for poetry; Jie has a delightful philosophy 
 expressed in the most quotable form. But in so 
 far as he is a poet, I maintain that Tennyson is his 
 equal. Who would put the " Quis desiderio sit 
 pudor aut modus?" into comparison with any one 
 of a dozen lyrics in the In Memoriami Even the 
 great odes of patriotism do not surpass " Love thou 
 thy land with love far-brought ", and The Revenge, 
 though in a very different key, is as noble as the 
 passage which tells how Regulus returned to Car- 
 thage, and put aside with unmoved countenance 
 the entreaties of his kinsmen and the populace that 
 would have blocked his way to the port. Indeed, 
 if you judge Horace strictly as a poet, he must 
 come after Lucretius if not after Catullus ; and with 
 either of these Tennyson or Wordsworth may 
 assuredly take place. But the true parallel in 
 Latin literature for Tennyson is Virgil, and there 
 are no two poets in the world whose qualities are 
 more resembling. 
 
 Like Virgil, Tennyson is essentially a learned 
 poet, essentially a poet of dumb life "landscape- 
 lover, lord of language": the phrase fits him who 
 wrote it as well as him of whom it was written. 
 Take from either of them their intricate perfection 
 of style, their sense of the beauty and life of the 
 silent universe, and you leave them devoid of 
 almost everything. Passion does not come direct 
 from them ; their minds are full of echoes, and they 
 write of the battle and the fighters in borrowed 
 accents. Tennyson, the modern, had more of the
 
 228 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 primitive man than the classic; there is a truly 
 martial ardour in his Revenge and his Charge of 
 the Light Brigade not to be paralleled in Virgil. 
 But the tourneys in the Idylls are strangely like 
 the battles of the later books of the sEneid; admir- 
 ably academic, but lacking the sweat and dust, the 
 passionate cries and fierce faces of the warriors. 
 What one remembers of those later ^Eneids is the 
 brotherly devotion and joint exploits of Nisus and 
 Euryalus; the beautiful figures of young Pallas 
 and young Lausus, the agony of their fathers for 
 them slain: what will live of the Idylls is the 
 pathos of Elaine, the tenderness of Enid, the 
 courtesy in arms of Lancelot. Throughout the 
 narrative work of both poets the softer emotions 
 preponderate. Dido might be a creation of Tenny- 
 son's, Virgil might have told the story of Elaine. 
 And the best work of each is to be found outside 
 of the Idylls and outside of the ^Eneid. Each 
 chose his subject because he felt the desire to do 
 something great; but for the true Virgil one will 
 look, not in the ^Eneid except in such a passage 
 of it as the sixth book but in the Eclogues and 
 Georgics\ and for the true Tennyson, not in the 
 story of Arthur's wars and the tilting and knight- 
 errantry of his Round Table, but in the musings of 
 In Memoriam or the love lyrics of Maud. It does 
 no good to strain the analogy. But I think it will 
 be plain to anyone that the Pollio, with its pro- 
 phesying of the "snakeless meadow, unlaborious 
 earth and oarless sea" ; the praise of Italy in the 
 second Georgic, and the tale of Orpheus and Eury- 
 dice which closes the fourth, resemble in their 
 high-wrought beauty the work of our Victorian 
 poet. And in one thing more than another the 
 Roman and the Englishman are closely allied in 
 their glorification of the imperial idea, their proud 
 faith in the mission of their race.
 
 Conclusion. 229 
 
 Therein may lie for Tennyson, as there has lain 
 for Virgil, a strangely wide-spread fame. He does 
 not indeed stand almost alone in the field, as Virgil 
 did with scarcely one serious competitor ; but he has 
 had the good fortune to be the chosen prophet of his 
 race at a period of its widest expansion; and he 
 may, like Horace and Virgil, go to teach boys their 
 rudiments on the banks of rivers known to him 
 only by name. 
 
 It is rating Tennyson high indeed to put him 
 into comparison with Virgil, and I think he sus- 
 tains the comparison, though there is no doubt as 
 to where the greater greatness lies. That imperial 
 style compassed by Virgil 
 
 Wielder of the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of 
 man 
 
 was not to be attained in a modern tongue by any, 
 save perhaps by Milton. In range of thought, in 
 single felicities of expression, in command of pathos 
 Tennyson may at least challenge comparison; in 
 passion he attains what Virgil never attempted; 
 but for the supreme magic he cannot match such 
 lines as these : 
 
 Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas 
 Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum, 
 Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari. 
 
 Tennyson was a great, Virgil was the great literary 
 artist. As one may call Tennyson without extrava- 
 gance a greater Spenser, it may be admitted with- 
 out dispraise that he is a lesser Virgil; and if 
 anyone resents the terms "greater" and "lesser" 
 in such comparisons, it suffices to say that in 
 temper and achievement he seems a sort of con- 
 necting link between these two great names a less 
 dreamy Spenser, and a less materially - minded 
 Virgil.
 
 230 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 However we rank him, all of us are indisputably 
 in his debt. Those of us who write and not those 
 who write verse only, nor even only those who 
 write are his disciples; we have him in our 
 blood: he is a chief part in our endowment. We 
 owe him thanks, not only for melody of words 
 and beauty of images; not only for opening our 
 eyes to what is beautiful in nature and making 
 it yet more beautiful; but because he showed 
 to his age poetry in what seemed at first the 
 negation of poetry, all this march of modern dis- 
 covery; and because, confronted with theories 
 which seemed to threaten man's spiritual existence, 
 and to make of his best hopes a delusion, he did 
 not let himself be intimidated, but chose rather to 
 accept truth proven as necessarily good in itself, 
 but not as necessarily concluding in itself the search 
 for other and higher verities. And, lastly, we are 
 grateful to the man merely for having existed. No 
 one can read his Life and his works, and look at 
 his picture, without being aware that here at least 
 was one who in body, mind, and spirit filled up the 
 measure of man ; one who did honour to the race, 
 and one who assures by his life and work among 
 us that we have not yet spent our strength. Com- 
 pare Spenser the Elizabethan with Tennyson the 
 Victorian, and say which of the two is the poet of 
 a decadence.
 
 Index. 
 
 Akbar's Dream, 90. 
 
 Allen, Dr., the company promoter, 
 
 ii. 
 
 Amoretta, P. L. Courtier's, 214. 
 Ancient Sage, The, 90. 
 "Apostles", the, 6. 
 Arthurian legend, 151 ; Prof. Mac- 
 
 callum on, 151 ; Prof. Saintsbury 
 
 on, 152. 
 Astrophel, Sidney's, compared with 
 
 Tennyson's love poems, 44, 45. 
 Aylmers Field, 128, 140. 
 Aytoun's review of Maud, 33, 34. 
 
 Ballads, Tennyson's, 145. 
 
 Ballads and other Poems, 13. 
 
 Becket, 195-198. 
 
 Blackwood 's Magazine reviews 
 Maud, 33, 34. 
 
 Blank verse, Tennyson's, 218; com- 
 pared with Shelley's, 219 ; Mil- 
 ton's, 220; Shakespeare's, 220. 
 
 Brimley, George, essay on Tennyson, 
 34-3 6 - 
 
 Browning, Tennyson compared and 
 contrasted with, 40, 55, 108, 136, 
 201, 225; his Hervt Kiel inspired 
 form of The Revenge, 145. 
 
 Byron, Tennyson compared with, 
 224. 
 
 Cambridge school of poets, 21. 
 Carlyle's portrait of Tennyson, 9; 
 
 his opinion of The Two Voices, 68. 
 Charge of the Light Brigade, The, 12. 
 Classical poems, Tennyson's, 132, 
 
 133- 
 
 Coach of Death, The, 4, 23. 
 Coleridge, 23. 
 (M685) 
 
 Complimentary verses, Tennyson's, 
 
 141, 142. 
 Courtier, P. L., his Amoretta in In 
 
 Memoriam stanza, 214. 
 Crossing the Bar, 14, 94, 148. 
 Cup, The, 13, 186-189. 
 
 Darwin's hypothesis, 65, 70. 
 
 De Musset, Tennyson compared 
 
 with, 226. 
 Despair, 88, 112. 
 
 Dialect poems, Tennyson's, 142-144. 
 Domestic poems, Tennyson's, 139, 
 
 140. 
 Dowden, Prof., contrasts Tennyson 
 
 and Browning, 108. 
 Dufferin's, Lord, letter to Tennyson, 
 
 39- 
 
 Edinburgh Review discusses poetry 
 in the 'thirties, 17-19 ; Tennyson, 
 24 ; reviews Maud, 33 ; on the 
 metre of Maud, 215-217. 
 
 Elaine, Jowett's opinion of, 57, 58 ; 
 the story from Malory, 160-182. 
 
 English dramas, Tennyson's, 189; 
 compared with Shakespeare's, 
 190, 191. 
 
 English Idyls, 10, 139, 140. 
 
 Enoch Arden, 139. 
 
 Epic and Romance, 153. 
 
 Falcon, The, 13, 185. 
 FitzGerald, E., 5, 13, 38, 71, 218. 
 Foresters, The, 14, 185. 
 Freedom, no. 
 
 Gardener's Daughter, The, 140. 
 Garibaldi, Tennyson's guest, 96. 
 Q
 
 232 
 
 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 Gladstone's admiration for the 
 Idylls, 13; voyage with Tenny- 
 son, 13 ; denunciation of the war 
 passages in Maud, 100. 
 
 Gulliver's Travels, quotation from 
 in illustration of Tithonus, 134, 135. 
 
 Hallam, Arthur, 6-8. 
 
 Happy, 60-62. 
 
 Harold, 194, 195. 
 
 Herbert of Cherbury, Lord, his Ode 
 in In Memoriam stanza, 212, 213. 
 
 Hervi Riel compared with The 
 Revenge, 145, 201. 
 
 Higher Pantheism, The, 85, 86. 
 
 Horace, Tennyson compared with, 
 71, 142, 203, 227. 
 
 Houghton, Lord. See Monckton 
 Milnes. 
 
 Hugo, Victor, compared with Ten- 
 nyson, 208, 226. 
 
 Idylls of the King, 12, 13, 36, 37, 
 
 102, 132 ; their love-poetry, 57-59 ; 
 
 their spirit, 107, 108 ; discussed, 
 
 151-184. 
 In Memoriam, 8, u, 12. 68, 114, 
 
 129 ; discussed, 72-85 ; source of 
 
 the stanza, 211-214. 
 
 Jebb's, Prof., opinion of Lucretius, 
 136. 
 
 Jonson's anticipation of In Memo- 
 riam stanza, an. 
 
 Jowett's opinion of Elaine, 57 , 58. 
 
 Kant's philosophy, 91, 92. 
 
 Keats, Tennyson compared with, 
 
 225. 
 Ker's, Prof., distinction between 
 
 Epic and Romance, 153. 
 
 Lady of Shalott, The, 7, 210. 
 Lionel Tennyson, 14. 
 Locker Lampson's appreciation of 
 Tennyson, 15. 
 
 Lockhart reviews Tennyson, 7, 27, 
 
 3i- 
 
 Locksley Hall, to, 103, 105. 
 
 Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, 
 14, 105, 108, ii2, 113. 
 
 Lotos-Eaters, The, 7, 137, 138. 
 
 Love-poems, Tennyson's, 40-46. 
 
 Lowe's Yew Trees quoted on Ten- 
 nyson's observation of nature, 
 124-126. 
 
 Lucretius, 115, 136; Jebb's opinion 
 of, 136. 
 
 Mabinogion, 152, 155. 
 
 Maccallum, Prof., on Arthurian 
 legend, 151. 
 
 Malory, 152, 155, 157, 158; story of 
 Elaine from, 160-182. 
 
 Mariana, iao. 
 
 Maud, 12, 49-57, 205, 215, 216, 217. 
 
 Metre of Maud, 215-217. 
 
 Metrical inventions of Tennyson, 
 217, 218. 
 
 Milnes, Monckton (Lord Houghton), 
 5. ". 24. 
 
 Milton's blank verse, 220. 
 
 Moore, Thomas, Tennyson's poeti- 
 cal debt to, 210. 
 
 Morris, William, poetical debt to 
 Tennyson, 210. 
 
 North, Christopher, reviews Poems 
 
 Chiefly Lyrical, 7. 
 Northern Farmer, 143, 144. 
 
 Ode on Wellington, 148, 150. 
 Ode to Memory, 119. 
 (Enone, 7, 133, 135. 
 Omar Khayyam, philosophy of, 71 ; 
 stanza imitated by Tennyson, 218. 
 Ovid, Tennyson compared with, 227. 
 
 Palace of Art, The, 7. 
 
 Patmore, Coventry, on the metre of 
 
 Maud, 215-217. 
 Phillips, Stephen, his Launcelot and
 
 Index. 
 
 2 33 
 
 Guinevere, 59, 60; his Marpessa, 
 
 134, 224. 
 
 Plays, Tennyson's, 87, 184-198. 
 Poems by Two Brothers, 4, 22. 
 Poems Chiefly Lyrical, 7. 
 Poetic taste in the 'thirties, 16-24. 
 Political poems, Tennyson's, 141. 
 Pope, Tennyson compared with, 
 
 223, 224. 
 
 Princess, The, 47-49, 106. 
 Promise of May, The, 13, 185, 186. 
 
 Quarterly Review on Tennyson's 
 
 early poems, 7, 27-31. 
 Queen Mary, 13, 190-194. 
 
 Reade, K, minor poet, basis of 
 
 Edinburgh Review article on 
 
 poetry, 27-29. 
 Requiescat, 147, 148. 
 Revenge, The, 145, 146, 201, 202. 
 Rizpah, praised by Swinburne, 146. 
 Roberts, Lord, praises The Defence 
 
 ofLucknow, 145. 
 Rogers, Samuel, 7, 9. 
 Romance and Epic, 153. 
 Rossetti's poetical debt to Tennyson, 
 
 210. 
 Ruskin's reception of the Idylls, 13, 
 
 18. 
 
 St. Simeon Stylites, 136. 
 
 Saintsbury, Prof., on the Arthurian 
 legend, 152. 
 
 Sellwood, Emily (Lady Tennyson), 
 8, ii. 
 
 Shakespeare's blank verse, 220. 
 
 Shelley's blank verse, 219. 
 
 Shorter poems, Tennyson's, group- 
 ing of, 131, 132. 
 
 Sidney, Sir Philip: his Astrophel 
 compared with Tennyson's love- 
 poems, 44, 45 ; his anticipation of 
 the In Memoriam stanza, 211. 
 
 Silent Voices, 208. 
 
 Simeon, Sir John, 54. 
 
 Songs, Tennyson's, u, 48, 101, 147, 
 
 148, 193, 220. 
 Spenser, Tennyson compared with, 
 
 221-223. 
 Spenserian stanza, Tennyson's use 
 
 of, 211. 
 Stanza of In Memoriam, 211-213, 
 
 215- 
 Stephen, Leslie, on Tennyson in 
 
 1850, 32, 33; on the Idylls, 38; 
 
 on Tennyson's pictures of nature, 
 
 120. 
 Struldbrugs, Swift's, analogy with 
 
 Tithonus, 134, 135. 
 Style, what it means, 199; Tenny- 
 son's, 2OO-22I. 
 
 Swinburne's praise of Rizpah, 146. 
 Symbolism of the Idylls, 155, 156. 
 
 Tears, idle Tears, 146, 147. 
 
 Tennyson: birth, 3; education, 3; 
 early verse, 4; models, 4; at 
 Cambridge, 5-7, 16; friendship 
 with A. H. Hallam, 6-8; visit to 
 Spain, 7; despondency after Hal- 
 lam's death, 8, 68 ; engagement, 
 8; in London, 9; loses fortune, 
 10 ; pension, marriage, and lau- 
 reateship, n; travels in Italy, n ; 
 at Farringford, 12; refuses baron- 
 etcy, 13 ; first dramas, 13 ; builds 
 Aldworth, 13 ; voyage in Pem- 
 broke Castle, 13 ; peerage, 13; ill- 
 ness and death, 14; Edinburgh 
 Review on, 22; his debt to Byron, 
 22, to Coleridge, 23, and Shelley, 
 24; charged with obscurity, 24; 
 recognized as head of poetical 
 school, 26; criticised by Lock- 
 hart, 27-31; use he made of criti- 
 cism, 21 ; alterations in CEnone, 
 Lotos-Eaters, Lady of Shalott, 31; 
 D.C.L. of Oxford, 34; wins gen- 
 eral recognition, 35; letter from 
 Thackeray, 36, 37; love poetry, 
 44, 45 ; additions to Sleeping
 
 234 
 
 Tennyson: A Critical Study. 
 
 Beauty, 46 ; treatment of Guine- 
 vere contrasted with that of Morris 
 and S. Phillips, 59; creed, 62; 
 message to his age, 63, 64 ; rela- 
 tions to science and religious 
 doubt, 65-67 ; influence of Hal- 
 lam, 68 ; religious thought in In 
 Memoriam, 72-85; Protestantism, 
 86, 87; belief in immortality, 89, 
 90; view of life compared with Fitz- 
 Gerald's and Browning's, 94, 95; 
 patriotism, 95, 97; imperialism, 
 98, 101, 229; praise of commerce, 
 98, 99; and war, too; early 
 liberalism, 102, 103 ; later con- 
 servatism, 105, 106 ; worship of 
 law, 107, 108, 133; denunciation 
 of license in literature, 108, 109; 
 use of astronomy, 111-113; know- 
 ledge and use of science, 114-118; 
 exact observation, 116, 118, 123, 
 204 ; constructive imagination, 
 116, 117, 204; attitude to Nature 
 compared with Wordsworth's, 118, 
 119; imaginative landscapes, 118- 
 120; delight in water, 120, 121, 
 and imagery thence derived, 122; 
 intimate knowledge of Nature, 
 123-126, especially flowers, 126, 
 127; pictures of English life and 
 scenery, 127, 128; purpose in 
 landscape, 129; essentially lyric, 
 131 ; poems classical in subject or 
 form, 132-139; poems on English 
 domestic life, 139, 140, 185; pic- 
 torial poems, 141 ; complimentary 
 verses, 141, 142; dialect poems, 
 142-145; humour, 145; ballads, 
 145, 146, and lyrics, 146-148; 
 studied irregularity of metre, 148; 
 width of range, 150; sources of 
 the Idylls, 152-157; allegorical 
 aim, 154-156, its predominance in 
 later Idylls, 155; ideal of love. 
 157; changes in the stories of 
 
 Idylls, 157, 160; use of Malory's 
 story of Elaine, 182, 183 ; inven- 
 tion of incident, 184; plays, 184- 
 198; dramatist of England, 189- 
 197; insularity, 195; love of pro- 
 priety, 196; methods of construc- 
 tion, 200; mastery of narrative, 
 200, 201, of language, 201, 202, 
 204, and metre 202 ; lucidity, 203; 
 power of magical suggestion, 203, 
 204; originality, 205; skill in sug- 
 gesting sound, 206, 207; allitera- 
 tion and onomatopoeia, 207-209; 
 rhythms, 210 ; obligations to 
 Moore, 210; blank verse, 211, 
 218-220 ; source of In Memoriam 
 stanza, 211-218; metrical innova- 
 tion in Maud, 216, 217, and other 
 poems, 218; poetical analogues: 
 Spenser, 221-223, Pope, 223, 224, 
 and others, 224-226; place in 
 literature, 226-229 ; especial like- 
 ness to Virgil, 227-229 ; influence 
 as poet and man, 229. 
 
 Tennyson, the family, 3, 5, 7, 9, 14. 
 
 Thackeray, 13, 36, 37, 102, 132. 
 
 Theocritus, 133, 137. 
 
 Timbuctoo, 5. 
 
 Tiresias, 14. 
 
 Tithonus. 133-135. 
 
 Tribute, The, 24, 50. 
 
 Two Voicts, The, 8, 68-70, in, 112, 
 210. 
 
 Ulysses, 8, n, 133, 135, 138. 
 
 Vastness, 89, 112. 
 
 Virgil, Tennyson compared with, 
 
 120, 133, 154, 203, 205, 206, 208, 
 
 227-229. 
 
 Vision of Sin, The, 70, 71. 
 Voyage of Maeldune t 138, 139. 
 
 War poems, 145, 146. 
 Will Waterprooj , 9. 
 Wordsworth, 118, 119, 225.
 
 
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