Beacon Lights of History Volume Xiii Part 15

One could wish, indeed, that more decisive marks of moral development had been exhibited in the latter stages of Faust's career. But here comes in the Christian doctrine of Grace, which Goethe applies to the problem of man's destiny. Faust is represented as saved by no merit of his own, but by the interest which Heaven has in every soul in which there is the possibility of a heavenly life.

And so the new-born ascending spirit is committed by the Mater gloriosa to the tutelage of Gretchen [Margaret],--_una poenitentium,_--now purified from all the stains of her earthly life, to whom is given the injunction:--

"Lift thyself up to higher spheres!

When he divines, he'll follow thee."

And the Mystic Choir chants the epilogue which embodies the moral of the play:--

"All that is peris.h.i.+ng Types the ideal; Dream of our cheris.h.i.+ng Thus becomes real.

Superhumanly Here it is done; The ever womanly Draweth us on."

ALFRED (LORD) TENNYSON.

1809-1892.

THE SPIRIT OF MODERN POETRY.

BY G. MERCER ADAM.

Of Tennyson what can one write freshly to-day that will not seem but an echo of what has been said or written of England's n.o.ble singer who, on the death of Wordsworth, now over half a century ago, a.s.sumed the official bays of the English laureates.h.i.+p? Personal homage, of course, one can pay to the ill.u.s.trious name, so dear to the heart of the English-speaking race; but how freshly or vitally can any writer now speak of that magnificent body of his verse which is the glory of his age, of the n.o.bility and knightly virtues of its author's character, of the splendor of his genius, or of the breadth of intellectual and spiritual interests which was so signally manifested in all that Tennyson thought and wrote? Among the "Beacon Lights" in the present series of volumes the Laureate of the age has not hitherto been included, and to fill the gap the writer of this sketch has ventured, not, of course, to say all that might be said of the great poet, but modestly to deal with the man and his art, so that neither his era nor his work shall go unchronicled or fail of some recognition, however inadequate, in these pages.

Tennyson's supreme excellence, it is admitted, lies not so much in his themes as in his transcendent art. It is this that has given him his hold upon a cultured age and won for him immortality. His work is the perfection of literary form, and, in his lyrical pieces especially, his melody is exquisite. Not less masterly is his power of construction, while his sensibility to beauty is phenomenal. His secluded life brought him close to nature's heart and made him familiar with her every voice and mood. In interpreting these, much of the charm lies in the fidelity of his descriptions and in the surpa.s.sing beauty of the word-painting.

In the Shakespearian sense he lacked the dramatic faculty, and he had but slender gifts of invention and creation. But broad, if not always strong, was his intelligence, and keen his interest in the problems of the time. Though living apart from the world, he was yet of it; and in many of his poems may be traced not only the doings, but the thought and tendencies, of his age. His Christianity, though undogmatic, was real and pervasive, and his love for nature was a devotion. In national affairs, as befitted the official singer of his country (witness his fine 'Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington'), he showed himself the historic as well as the modern Englishman, and great was his reverence for law and freedom. Attractive also, if at times somewhat commonplace, is the quiet domestic sphere which Tennyson has hallowed in the many modern idylls which depict the joys and sorrows of humble life.

No trait in the poet's many-sided character is more beautiful than the sympathy he has manifested in these poems with the world's toilers; while nothing could well be more touching than the pathos with which he invests their simple annals.

Typical of the Victorian age in which he lived, Tennyson is also representative of its highest thought and culture. This is seen not only in the thought of his verse, but in its splendid forms, and especially in the technical equipment of the poet. In his dialogues there is much movement and action, and he had consummate skill in the handling of metres. Few poets have approached him in the successful writing of blank verse, which has a delightful cadence as well as calm strength. Above all his gifts, he was an artist in words, his ear being most sensitively attuned and his taste pure and refined for the delicate artistry of the poet's work. In this respect he is a matchless literary workman. Besides the music of his verse, his thought is ever high, and in his serious moods consecrated to n.o.ble and reverent purposes. In the midst of the negations and convulsive movements of his day his spirit is always serene, and his thought, while at times dreamily melancholy, is conserving and full of faith's highest a.s.surance. His sympathy with his fellow-man was keen and wide-souled; and though he stood aloof from the conflict and struggle of his day, he was far from indifferent to its movements, and with high purpose strove if not to direct at least to reflect them. This was specially characteristic of the man, and in the conflict with doubt no poet has more keenly interpreted the mental struggles of the thoughtful soul and the deep underlying spirit of his time, or more beneficently given the age an a.s.sured ground of faith while conserving its highest and dearest hopes. Happily, too, unlike many poets, his own character was lofty and blameless, and hence his message comes with more consistency, as well as with a higher inspiration and power. Nor is the message the less impressive for the note of honest doubt which finds utterance in many a poem, or for the intimation of a creed that is at once liberal and conservative. With the evidences before the reader that the poet himself had had his own soul-wrestlings and periods of mental conflict, his counsellings of courage and faith are all the more effective, as they are in unison with his belief in the upward progress of the race, and his unshaken trust in a higher Power.

Lacking in intensity of pa.s.sion and dramatic force, Tennyson here again is but typical of his era, to him one of reposeful content and calm, reasoning progress. Of permanent, lasting value much of his verse undoubtedly is, but not all of it will escape the indifference of posterity or the measuring-rod and censure, it may be, of the future critic. He had not the stirring strains or the careless rapture of other and earlier poets of the motherland,--his characteristic is more contemplative and brooding,--yet his range is unusually comprehensive and his power varied and sustained, as well as marked by the highest qualities of rhythmic beauty. In the idyll, where he specially s.h.i.+nes, we have much that is lovely and limpid, with abounding instances of that felicitous word-painting for which he was noted. This is especially seen in the simple pastoral idylls, such as 'Dora,' 'The May Queen,' and 'The Miller's Daughter,' or in those tender lyrics such as 'Mariana,' 'Sir Galahad,' 'The Dying Swan,' and 'The Talking Oak.' In the ballads and songs, how felicitous again is the poet's work, and how rich yet mellifluous is the strain! Had Tennyson written nothing else but these, with the verse included in the volumes issued by him in 1832 and 1842, how high would he have been placed in the choir of song, and how supreme should we have deemed his art! In "The Princess" alone there are songs that would have made any poet's reputation, while for music and color, and especially for perfection of poetic workmans.h.i.+p, they are almost matchless in their beauty.

Fortunately, however, the poet was to give us much even beyond these surpa.s.singly beautiful things, and make a more unique and distinctive contribution to the verse of his era. In the years that followed the production of his early writings the poet matures in thought as his art ripens and reaches still higher qualities of craftsmans.h.i.+p. Recluse as he was, he moreover had his experiences of life and drank deeply of sorrow's cup, as we see in "In Memoriam,"--that n.o.ble tribute to his youthful friend, Arthur Hallam, with its grand hymnal qualities and powerful and reverent lessons for an age s.h.i.+fting in its beliefs and unconfirmed in its faith. In later work from his pen we also see the Laureate--for he has now received official recognition from his nation--in his relations to the culture as well as to the thought of his time, keeping pace with the age in all its complex engrossments and problems. This is shown in much and varied work turned out with its author's loving interest in the poetic art, and with characteristic delicacy and finish. The most important labor of this later time includes "The Princess," "Maud and Other Poems," "Enoch Arden," the dramas "Becket," "Queen Mary," and "Harold," "Tiresias," "Demeter," "The Foresters," but above all, and most notably, that grand epic of King Arthur's time,--"The Idylls of the King." In the latter, the most characteristic, and perhaps the most permanent, of Tennyson's work, the poet manifests his historic sense and love for England's legendary past, and achieves his design not only to glorify it, but to imbue it with a deep ethical motive and underlying purpose, the expression of his own chivalrous, knightly soul and strenuous, thoughtful, and blameless life.

In these splendid tales of knight-errantry we have the full flower of the poet's genius, narrated in the true romantic spirit, but with an ideality and imagination quite Tennysonian, and with a spiritualistic touch in harmony with "the voice of the age" that reminds us that,--

"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."

It is with such themes and speculations that Tennyson has powerfully and impressively influenced his age. Beyond and above the mere artistry of the poet, we recognize his interest in man's higher, spiritual being, his love for nature, and awe in contemplating the heights and depths of infinite time and s.p.a.ce, ever looking upward and inward at the mysteries of the world behind the phenomena of sense. It is difficult, in set theological terms, to define the poet's creed, though we know that he was won by the Broad Church teaching of his friends, Frederick Robertson and Denison Maurice, and had himself many a battle to fight with honest doubts until--as his 'Crossing the Bar' shows us--he finally conquered and laid them. But while there is an absence of definite doctrine in his work there is no question about his religious convictions or of his belief in the eternal verities, the immanence of G.o.d in man and the universe. Throughout his poems he a.s.sumes the existence of a great Spirit and recognizes that our souls are a part of Him, however Faith at times seems to veil her face from the poet, and all appears a mystery, though a mystery presided over by infinite Power and Love. The great problems of metaphysics and of man's origin and destiny, we are told, occupied much of his thought, and he dwelt upon them with eager, intense interest, and touched upon them with great candor, earnestness, and truthfulness. No sophistry could shake his belief in man's immortality, for without belief in this doctrine the human race, he was convinced, had not incentive enough to virtue, while all man's inspirations were otherwise meaningless. For the doctrine of Evolution, in its materialistic aspect, he had nothing but scorn, though he accepted it in the more spiritual guise with which Russel Wallace propounded it. If we come from the brutes we are nevertheless linked with the Divine, he believed, and it was the Divine in man that was to conquer the brute within him, and, in the upward struggle, work out salvation. So, in the realm of physical science, on the principles of which, as Huxley tells us, he had a great grasp, the poet, while appalled by the mystery, accepts and indeed rejoices in its truths, though he cannot acquiesce in a G.o.dless world or in the denial of a life to come, in which the race, through infinite love, shall be brought into union with G.o.d.

But leaving here Tennyson's speculations and beliefs,--a most interesting part of the poet's a.n.a.lytical and reflective character,--let us look for a little at the man personally, and record briefly the chief incidents in his quiet though ideal home-life. To those who know the Memoir by his son, Hallam Tennyson,--a memoir that while paying honor to filial reverence and devotion is at the same time and in all respects most worthy of its high theme,--the events in the poet's life will hardly need dwelling upon, though they throw much light on, and impart the distinction of a high dignity to, the Laureate's work. The life Hallam Tennyson describes was, we know, not lived in the public eye, and was wholly without sensational elements or any of the vapid interests which usually attach to a man whose name is, in a special sense, public property, and about whom the world was eagerly, and often officiously, curious. The life the poet lived, in a popular sense, lacked all that usually attracts the ma.s.ses, for he was personally little known to his generation, rarely seen among large gatherings of the people, and, great Englishman as he was, was almost a stranger, in his later years at least, in the English metropolis, or, if we except the seats of the universities, in any of the chief towns of the kingdom. And yet, in another and a higher sense, the century has hardly known among its many intellectual forces one that has been more influential in its effect upon literary art, or in certain directions has more potently influenced the ideals and more profoundly given expression to the ethical and philosophic thought of the time. Secluded as his life was, it was one not of obscurity or of mere asceticism; on the contrary, it was rich in all the elements that make for a great reputation, and ever devoted to strenuous, elevating purpose, and to an ideal poetic career.

So far as his tastes and opportunity offered, Tennyson's life, moreover, was enriched by many wise and n.o.ble friends.h.i.+ps, and by intimacy with not a few of the best and most thoughtful minds of his age. It was spent, we rejoice to think also, in unceasing toil in and for his high art, with a resulting productiveness which proved the extent and varied range of his labors as well as the mastery of his craft.

Until the appearance of the biography referred to, we had known the Laureate almost wholly through his books. Now, thanks to the authoritative record of his accomplished surviving son, we know the poet as he lived, and feel that behind his writings there is a personality of the most interesting and impressive kind. It is a personality such as consorts with the opinions which most thoughtful readers of Tennyson's writings must have had of one of the greatest and serenest minds of the age,--a poet who, aside from the splendor of his workmans.h.i.+p and the beauty and melody of his verse, has greatly enriched the poetic literature of the century, and has, we feel, given profound thought to the intellectual problems and spiritual aspirations of his era. Nor does the Memoir, as a revelation of the poet's intellectual and personal life, fall away, on any page of it, from the high plane on which it has been prepared and written. There is no undue invasion, which a son's pride might be apt to make, of domestic privacy, and no dealing with irrelevant topics or elaboration of those set forth with becoming modesty and restraint; far less is there the discussion of any subject, for a trivial or vain purpose. Throughout the work we meet with no unnecessary lifting of veils or treatment of themes merely to satisfy morbid curiosity. Everywhere there is the evidence of sound judgment, unimpeachable taste, and a wholesome sanity. This is especially the case in the frank revelation of the poet's views on religion and his att.i.tude towards scientific and theological thought, to which we have ourselves referred. In this respect, a large debt is due to the biographer for setting before the reader, not only the high ethical purpose which Tennyson had in view in selecting the themes of his poems and in the mode of handling them, but, as we have said, in showing us what beyond peradventure were his religious opinions, and, despite a certain curtaining of gloom, how profoundly he was influenced by faith in the Divine life. Nor is the least interest in the Memoir to be found in the light the biographer throws on the poet's writings as a whole--how they were conceived and elaborated, and on the often hidden meaning that underlies some of the most thoughtful verse. This, to students of the Laureate's writings, is of high value, in addition to the service rendered by the biographer in tracing in his father's poetic work the influences which fas.h.i.+oned it and the pains he took to give it its marvellous beauty and artistic finish of expression.

It is this instructive as well as skilled and dignified treatment, with the vast literary and deep personal interest in the life, that will commend the Memoir to all who are proud of the Laureate's fame, and wished to have nothing written that was unworthy of either the poet or the man, or that would in the least detract from his laurels. Nor does the restraint which the biographer imposes upon himself conceal from us the man in his human aspects, or lead him to set before the reader an imaginary, rather than a veritable and real, portraiture. We have a picture, it is true, of an almost ideal domestic life, and of a man of rare gifts and fine culture, whose work and career have been and are the pride and glory of the English-speaking race. But we have also the story of an author not free from human weaknesses, and though endowed with manifold and great gifts, yet who had to labor long and earnestly to perfect himself in his art, and in his early years had much discouragement and not a little adversity to contend with. With all the toil and stress his early years had known, when success came to the poet no one was less unspoiled by it; and when suns.h.i.+ne fell upon and gilded his life, maturing years brought him serenity, happiness, and, at length, peace.

Alfred Tennyson was born at his father's rectory, Somersby, Lincolns.h.i.+re, August 6,1809. He was the fourth of twelve children, seven of whom were sons, two of them, Frederick and Charles, being endowed, like Alfred, with poetic gifts. The poet's mother, a woman of sweet and tender disposition, had much to do in moulding the future Laureate's character; while from his father, a man of fine culture, he received not only much of his education, but his bent towards a recluse, bookish career. Alfred was from his earliest days a retired, shy child, fond of reading and given to rhyming, and with a characteristic love of nature and of quiet rural life. Later on he had a pa.s.sion for the sea-coast, and for those scenes of storm and stress about the seagirt sh.o.r.es of old England which he was so feelingly and with such poetic beauty to depict in "Sea Dreams," and in those incomparable songs, embodiments at once of sorrow and of faith, 'Break, break, break,' and 'Crossing the Bar.'

Besides the education he received from his scholarly father, and at a school at Louth for four years, young Tennyson spent some years at Trinity College, Cambridge, where, though he did not take a degree, he won in 1829 the Chancellor's medal for the best English poem of the year, the subject of which was 'Timbuctoo.' At college he had the good fortune to number among his friends several men who later in life were, like himself, to rise to eminence,--such as Henry Alford (afterwards Dean of Canterbury), R.C. Trench (later Archbishop of Dublin), C.

Merivale (historian and Dean of Ely), Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), James Spedding (editor of Lord Bacon's Works), Macaulay, Thackeray, and, most endeared of all, Arthur Henry Hallam, son of the historian, whose memory Tennyson has immortalized in "In Memoriam." With him at college was also his brother Charles, one year his senior, with whom he collaborated in the collection of verse, issued in 1827, under the t.i.tle of "Poems by Two Brothers." In 1830, Tennyson made a journey to the Pyrenees with Arthur Hallam, who was engaged to the poet's sister Emilia, and in the same year he published an independent volume, ent.i.tled "Poems chiefly Lyrical." In this, his first venture alone in poetry, and in another issued in 1832, Tennyson was to manifest to the world his poetic powers and art, for they contained, besides much rhythmical and contemplative verse, such poems as 'Mariana,' 'Claribel; 'Lilian,' 'Lady Clare,' 'The Lotus Eaters,' 'A Dream of Pair Women,'

'The May Queen,' and 'The Miller's Daughter,' In spite of the great promise bodied forth in these works, the volumes were subject to not a little unfavorable criticism, which stayed his further publis.h.i.+ng for a period of ten years, though not the furtherance of his creative work, nor his enthusiastic efforts towards increasing the perfection of his art.

It was not until 1842 that the poet again appeared in print, this time with a volume to which he appended his name, "Poems by Alfred Tennyson,"

and which gave him high rank among the acknowledged singers of his day,--Wordsworth, Southey, Landor, Campbell, Rogers, and Leigh Hunt, in England; and in the New World, Longfellow, Bryant, Lowell, Whittier, and Emerson. The poet-contemporaries of his youth--Byron, Scott, Coleridge, Sh.e.l.ley, and Keats--had by this time all died, and in 1843 Southey died, when Wordsworth, whom Tennyson reverenced, became Poet Laureate. The gap occasioned by the death of these early English poets of the century was now to be filled in large measure by Tennyson, though among the writers of song to arise were the Brownings, Rossetti, Matthew Arnold, and Swinburne. Critical appreciation of the volume of 1842 was happily encouraging to the poet; indeed, it was most gratifying, for its many remarkable beauties were now justly and adequately appraised, particularly such fine new themes as the volume contained--'Ulysses,'

'G.o.diva,' 'The Two Voices,' 'The Talking Oak,' 'Oenone,' 'Locksley Hall,' 'The Vision of Sin,' and 'Morte D'Arthur,' the germ of the future "Idylls of the King." Nor on this side the Atlantic did the new volume lack substantial recognition, and from such competent critics as Emerson and Hawthorne; while among his English contemporaries Tennyson became, if we except for the time Wordsworth, the acknowledged head of English song. At this period the poet resided in London or its neighborhood, his family home in Lincolns.h.i.+re having been broken up in 1837, six years after the death of his father. Here, in spite of the secluded life he led, he became a notable figure in literary circles, and greatly increased the range of his friends, correspondents, and admirers. Among the latter were the Carlyles, Thomas and his clever wife Jane being especially drawn to the poet, and to them we owe interesting sketches of the personal appearance of Tennyson at this time. Mrs. Carlyle, in one of her delightful letters gossiping about d.i.c.kens, Bulwer-Lytton, and Tennyson, esteems the latter "the greatest genius of the three,"

adding that "besides, he is a very handsome man, and a n.o.ble-hearted one, with something of the gypsy in his appearance, which for me is perfectly charming." This is the historian, her husband's, piece of portraiture: "A fine, large-featured, dim-eyed, bronze-colored, s.h.a.ggy-headed man, dusty, smoky, free-and-easy; who swims, outwardly and inwardly, with great composure in an articulate element as of tranquil chaos and tobacco smoke; great now and then when he does emerge; a most restful, brotherly, solid-hearted man." Another portrait we have from the Chelsea philosopher and scorner of shams which describes the poet very humanly as "one of the finest-looking men in the world, with a great shock of rough, dusky, dark hair; bright, laughing, hazel eyes; ma.s.sive, aquiline face, most ma.s.sive, 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."

Besides the Carlyles and other notable contemporaries, Tennyson numbered at this time among his intimates John Sterling, whose life was written by the author of "Sartor Resartus," James Spedding, Bacon's editor, who wrote a fine critique of the 1842 volume of poems for the Edinburgh Review, Aubrey De Vere, Edmund Lus.h.i.+ngton, A.P. Stanley (afterwards Dean of Westminster), and Edward Fitzgerald, the future translator of the "Rubaiyat," or Quatrains of the Persian Poet, Omar Khayyam. These were all enthusiastic admirers of Tennyson's work and art, and his close personal friends, who have left on record many interesting sketches of the poet in their published writings, or in letters to him, and especially in reminiscences furnished for the Memoir by the poet's son.

Nine years before the appearance of the 1842 volume of Tennyson's verse the poet's bosom friend, Arthur Hallam, died at an immature age at Vienna, and his death was the subject of much brooding in n.o.ble, elegiac verse, written, as was Milton's 'Lycidas,' to commemorate the loss of one very dear to the poet. In "In Memoriam," as all know, Tennyson sought to a.s.suage his grief and give fine, artistic expression to his profound sorrow at the loss of his companion and friend; but the work is more than a labored monument of woe, since it enshrines reflections of the most exalted and inspiring character on the eternally momentous themes of life, death, and immortality. The work was published in 1850, and it at once challenged the admiration of the world for the perfection of its art, no less than for its high contemplative beauty. This was the year when Wordsworth pa.s.sed to the grave, and Tennyson, in his room, was given the English laureates.h.i.+p. In this year, also, we find him happily married to Emily S. Sellwood, a lady of Berks, to whom the poet had been engaged since 1837. With his bride he took up house at Twickenham, near London, where his son, Hallam Tennyson, was born in 1852. In the following year he removed to Farringford, on the Isle of Wight, which was to be his home for forty years, and where, as his son tells us, some of his best-known works were written. Here, in 1854, his second son, Lionel, was born, whose young life of promise was terminated by jungle fever thirty-two years later on a return voyage from India,--all that was mortal of him finding repose in the depths of the Red Sea. To complete the chief incidents in the poet's personal career, we may here record that while Tennyson acquired another home at Aldworth, Surrey,--where he died Oct. 6, 1892, followed some four years later by his wife,--his happiest days were spent at Farringford, the pilgrimage place of many eminent wors.h.i.+ppers of the poet's muse, where was dispensed an unostentatious but open-handed and genial British hospitality. It should be added that, besides the perquisites which attach to the office of the Poet Laureate, Tennyson was given from 1845 a pension of 200 ($1000) and that, while in 1865 he refused a baronetcy, in 1884 he accepted a peerage, and had the honor of burial (Oct. 12, 1892) in Westminster Abbey.

We now revert to the poet's early, or, rather, to his middle-age, creative years, and to a resume of his princ.i.p.al writings, with a brief, running comment on his message and art. In 1847, three years before he became Laureate, he published "The Princess," a charming narrative poem in blank verse, which, though it abounds in fine descriptions and has an obvious moral in the treatment of the theme,--the woman question of today,--is inherently lacking in unity and strength, as well as weak in the depicting of the characters. In later editions the poem was amended in several faulty respects, and was especially enriched by the insertion between the cantos of many lovely and now familiar songs, which serve not only to bind together the whole structure of the poem, but to enhance and enforce its high moral meaning. Any a.n.a.lysis of "The Princess" is here deemed unnecessary, since it must not only be familiar to most readers of the poet's works, but familiar also in the varied annotated editions of such editors as Rolfe, Woodberry, and Wilson Farrand. Familiar, it is believed, also, that it will be to Tennysonian students in the "Study of the Princess," with critical and explanatory notes by Dr. S.E. Dawson, of Montreal (now of Ottawa, Canada),--an able commentary which received the approval of Lord Tennyson himself, and elicited from him a highly interesting letter to the author on points in the poem either misunderstood or not discerningly apprehended by other critics and reviewers. The purport of the poem, it may be said, however, is to frown upon revolutionary attempts to alter the position of women, of scholastically be-gowned and college-capped dames, who would seek by other than nature's ways to put the s.e.x upon an equality with man, while repressing their own individuality, doing violence to their maternal instincts, and trampling upon their "gracious household ways." In the handling of the "medley" Tennyson brings into exercise not only his far-seeing powers, which were greatly in advance of his time, but his gifts of raillery and humor, especially in the early divisions of the poem, as well as his high, serious motives in the moral lessons to which he points in the later cantos, where he aims at the elevation of women in correspondence with the diversity of their natures, for, as he himself says, "Woman is not undeveloped man, but diverse." His ideal of perfect womanhood he would attain through the awakening power of the affections and the transforming power of love, rather than by ignoring the difference of physique, founding women's universities, and becoming blue-stockinged high priestesses of learning. Of the medley of characters in the poem, poet-princes in disguise at the college, violet-hooded lady princ.i.p.als,

"With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans, And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair,"

it is Lady Psyche's child that is the true, effective heroine of the story, as Dr. Dawson aptly points out. "Ridiculous in the lecture room, the babe in the poem, as in the songs, is made the central point upon which the plot turns, for the unconscious child is the concrete embodiment of Nature herself, clearing away all merely intellectual theories by her silent influence." This is the explanation, then, of the appearance of the babe--symbol of the power and tenderness of Nature--in critical pa.s.sages of the poem, as well as in the unsurpa.s.sably beautiful intercalary songs, for it is the child that enables the poet to soften the Princess's nature toward the Prince, and to effect the reconciliation between the Princess and Lady Psyche, while imparting beauty as well as high meaning in the recital of the incidents and development of the tale.

"In Memoriam," as we have stated, appeared in 1850, and was unique in its appeal to the mind of the era as a stately meditative poem on a single theme,--the death of the poet's friend, Arthur Hallam. The English language, if we except Milton's 'Lycidas' and 'Hymn to the Nativity,' and Wordsworth's grand 'Ode on Intimations of Immortality,'

has no poem so n.o.ble or so faultless in its art as this magnificent series of detached elegies. The high thought, philosophic reflection, and pa.s.sionate religious sentiment that mark the whole work, added to the exquisiteness of the versification, place it wellnigh supreme in the literature of elegiac poetry. Its grave, majestic hymnal measure adds to its solemn beauty and stateliness, while the varied phases of spiritualized thought and emotional grief which find expression in the poem seem to elevate it in its harmonies to the rank of a profound psalm-chant from the choir of heaven. In the sumptuously embellished edition of the elegy, embodying Mr. Harry Fenn's drawings, with a sympathetic preface by the Rev. Dr. Henry Van d.y.k.e, there is a brief but luminous a.n.a.lysis of the nine divisions of the poem, or commentary on the great cla.s.sic. To those who desire to read the great elegy understandingly, the value of Dr. Van d.y.k.e's work is earnestly commended, since without this commentary, or such as are to be obtained in other critical sources, there is much of poetic beauty, of sorrow-brooding thought, and especially of emotional reflection on life, death, and immortality, in the hundred and thirty lyrics of which the poem consists, which will be lost to even the thoughtful reader. The poem, as a critic truthfully observes, has done much "to express and to consolidate all that is best in the life of England, its domestic affection, its patriotic feeling, its healthful morality, its rational and earnest religion."

The sentimental metrical romance "Maud" appeared in 1855 (the year of the Crimean War), with some additional poems, including 'The Charge of the Light Brigade,' written after Raglan's repulse of the Russians at Balaclava, and the fine 'Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington.'

The lyrical love-drama, "Maud," we are told, was one of Tennyson's favorite productions, of which he was wont to read parts to his guests.

As the poet has himself said of the monodrama, "it is a little Hamlet,"

"the history of a morbid poetic soul, under the blighting influence of a recklessly speculative age. He is the heir of madness, an egotist with the makings of a cynic, raised to sanity by a pure and holy love which elevates his whole nature, pa.s.sing from the heights of triumph to the lowest depths of misery, driven into madness by the loss of her whom he has loved, and when he has at length pa.s.sed through the fiery furnace, and has recovered his reason, giving himself up to work for the good of mankind through the unselfishness born of his great pa.s.sion." The poem, when it appeared, was reviled by some critics as an allegory of the war with Russia, and they did its author the injustice of supposing that he lauded war for war's sake, instead of, as is the case, applauding war only in defence of liberty. Apart from this misunderstanding, due to abhorrence of the war-frenzy of the period, the poem has outlived the mistaken objections to it when it appeared, and is now admired in its vindicated light, and especially for the rich and copious beauty manifest throughout the work, and for the magnificent lyric art with which it is composed.

We now come to Tennyson's masterpiece, the "Idylls of the King," an epic of chivalry, interpreted as personifying in its various characters the soul at war with the senses. These appeared during the years 1859 and 1872. Each of the Idylls, which has a connecting thread binding it to its fellow-allegory, takes its plot or fable from the legendary lore that has cl.u.s.tered round the name of Arthur, mythical King of the Britons about the era of the first invasion by the English. Out of the ma.s.s of material which was gathered by Sir Thomas Malory for his prose history of Arthur and his Knights, Tennyson takes the chief incidents and n.o.blest heroic traits of character in the legends and blends them in a fas.h.i.+on of his own, steeping them in an atmosphere which his imagination creates, and lighting up all with a pa.s.sion and glory of knightly adventure, as well as with a chasteness, purity, and high fervor of ethical thought, that must perpetuate the romance, as he has given it us, unto all time. The sections of the work as it now stands, in addition to its introductory dedication to the late Prince Consort, and the closing poem to the late Queen Victoria, are as follows: 'The Coming of Arthur,' which relates the mystery of the birth of the King, his marriage to Guinevere, daughter of Leodogran, King of Cameliard, and the wonders attending his crowning and establishment on the throne; next comes 'Gareth and Lynette,' a tale of love and scorn, and of the conflict between a false pride and a true ambition; to this is appended 'The Marriage of Geraint,' of Arthur's court, and a member of the great order of the Round Table. Next follows 'Geraint and Enid,'--Enid, the gentle and timid, whom Geraint had married after wooing the haughty Lynette,--a tale of pure and loyal womanhood, darkened for awhile by the clouds of jealousy and suspicion, yet closing happily long after the "spiteful whispers" had died down, and Geraint, a.s.sured of Enid's fealty, had ruled his kingdom well and gone forth to "crown a happy life with a fair death" against the heathen of the Northern Sea, "fighting for the blameless King." The next Idyll relates how the venerable magician Merlin succ.u.mbs to the thrall of the wily harlot Vivien, decked in her rare robe of samite, and yields to her the charm which was his secret. 'Lancelot and Elaine' follows with its conflict between the virgin innocence of Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat, and the guilty pa.s.sion of the n.o.ble though erring Lancelot. To this, in order, succeeds 'The Holy Grail,' telling of the vain quest of Arthur's Knights for the sacred relic. Despite its mystic character, this is admittedly one of the finest of the series of Idylls, and rich in its spiritual teaching,--that the heavenly vision is to be seen only by the eyes of purity and grace. 'Pelleas and Ettarre' is a tale of dole, showing the evil at work at the court, and the wrecking effect of another woman's perfidy. 'The Last Tournament' has for its hero the court fool, who, amid the treason of Arthur's knights, is firm in his loyal allegiance to the King. In contrast to him is Sir Tristram, who, despite his prowess, in jousts on the tilting-field, is "one to whom faith is foolishness, and the higher life an idle delusion." The climax is reached in 'Guinevere,' whom, in spite of her faithlessness and guilty intrigue with Lancelot, Arthur, with his great high soul, pityingly loves and forgives. The end comes with the sad though shadowy 'Pa.s.sing of Arthur,'

the royal barge mysteriously carrying him out into the beyond, whence issue sounds of hail and greeting to the victor-hero

"----as if some fair city were one voice Around a king returning from his wars."

In 1864 Tennyson published "Enoch Arden," an idyll of the hearth, depicting a pathetic incident in a seafarer's career, of much simple idyllic beauty. The poem has some fine descriptive pa.s.sages, and many examples of the poet's rich word-painting in treating of the splendid tropic scenery among which the mariner is for the time cast. The volume contained also some minor pieces, including the dialect poem, 'The Northern Farmer,' with its humorous rendering of yokel speech. This was followed (1875-84) by three dramas on English historical themes, which, as the poet had not, as we have already hinted, the gifts of a Shakespeare, were somewhat unsuccessful, though written, despite Tennyson's advanced years, with much fine force and vividness of character delineation. These dramas (to enumerate them in their historic order) were "Harold," "Becket," and "Queen Mary." "Becket" is the best and most ambitious of them, though not, as "Queen Mary" is, a play designed for the stage. It is a vigorous Englishman's closet study of a prolonged and bitter struggle--the conflict in Henry II.'s time between the church and the crown--as exhibited in the person and dominant ecclesiastical att.i.tude of the audacious prelate who met his tragic end by Canterbury's altar. "Harold" strikingly realizes to the modern reader the stirring activities of a strenuous time,--that of the English conquest by Norman William, opposed to the death by Harold at Senlac in 1066. The drama is as rich in character as it is swift and energetic in action. "Queen Mary" deals with the religious and political dissensions (the struggle between the Papacy and the Reformation) of Mary Tudor's era, with her love for and marriage with Philip of Spain, and her hopeless yearning for an heir to the double crown of England and Spain.

An important and prized addition to our English literature the drama undoubtedly is, but it is not more than a careful, accurate, and elaborate historical study. It lacks, both in spirit and movement, the characteristics of the Shakespearian drama. Its characters, however, are vividly brought out, and its situations are often picturesque and telling. The personages, moreover, are wanting in the play of creative effect, and the incidents lack the stir of inventive resource. Further, though the story of Mary's life is essentially dramatic, and the incidents of her reign are tragic in the extreme, the poet does not seem to have extracted from either that which goes to the making of a great drama. This evidently is the result of following too faithfully the events of history and the records of the time, as well as, in some degree, from want of sympathy, which Tennyson could not impart, with the leading characters and their actions. Still, much is made of the materials; and though the personages and incidents appear in the narrative in the neutral tints of history, yet the period is made to reappear with a freshness and distinctness which, while it satisfies the scholar, gives a true charm to every lover of the drama. Again and again, as we read, are we reminded of the Laureate's rare poetical fancy and fine literary instinct, and the dialogues contain many pa.s.sages of striking thought and n.o.ble utterance. But the work is overcast by the great gloom of its central figure,--the gloom of bigotry, pa.s.sion, jealousy, disappointment, and despair which ever environs the miserable Queen; and much though the poet has striven to brighten the picture and awaken sympathy for the weakness of the woman, who, royal mistress though she was, could not command her love to be requited, the poetic measure of his lines roughens and hardens to the close, when the curtain falls on what is felt to be a tragic and unlovely life.

We can only briefly refer to the other _dramatis personae_ introduced to us, who are among the notable historical characters that figure during Mary Tudor's reign. They are those who take part in the incidents, religious, civil, and political, of the period, and are, for the most part, both in speech and bearing, the portraits familiar to us in Mr.

Froude's history. Of these the most pleasing is the Princess Elizabeth, whose portrait is drawn with masterly skill, and engages our interest as the fortunes of its original oscillates "'Twixt Axe and Crown":--

"A Tudor Schooled by the shadow of death, a Boleyn too Glancing across the Tudor."

But, aside from the interest in the safety of her person, which is in constant jeopardy from the jealousy of her half-sister, Elizabeth wins upon the reader by her modest, maidenly bearing, her frankness of manner, and by a playfulness of disposition which readily adapts itself to the restraints which the Queen is ever placing upon her person, and which endears her to the people, who, could the hated Mary be got rid of, would fain become her subjects. The civil strife of the period furnishes material for some powerful pa.s.sages, which are wrought up with excellent effect, and in this connection Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Thomas Stafford, the Earl of Devon, Sir William Cecil, and other historical personages appear upon the stage. The other incidents introduced are those which attach themselves to the religious persecutions of the time, and which brought Cranmer to the stake, and give play to the papal intrigues of Pole, Gardiner, and the emissaries of the Spanish court.

The second and third scenes in the fourth act devoted to Cranmer, which detail his martyrdom, are hardly so satisfactory as we think they might have been, though the poet here again follows closely the historical accounts. The scenes, however, give occasion for the introduction of a couple of local gossips whose provincial dialect and keen interest in the national and religious policy of the time, here as in occasional street scenes, are cleverly portrayed. This sapient reflection in the mouth of one of these gossips, Tib, is a specimen at hand:--

"A-burnin' and a-burnin', and a-making o' volk madder and madder; but tek thou my word vor't, Joan,--and I bean't wrong not twice i' ten year,--the burnin' o' the owld archbishop 'ill burn the Pwoap out o'

this 'ere land for iver and iver."

Philip we have not spoken of; but he fills such a hateful niche in the historical gallery of the time, and the poet introduces him but to act his pitiful role, that we pa.s.s him by, though many of the grandest pa.s.sages in the drama are those which give expression to Mary's pa.s.sionate love for him, and her longing desire for an issue of their marriage, which afterwards culminates in her madness and death.

We have to speak of but one other character in the drama, whose death, it has been said, was sufficient to honor and to dishonor an age. The beautiful Lady Jane Grey appears for a little among the shadows of the poem, and moves to her tragic fate.

"Seventeen,--a rose of grace!