English Literature
to instruct? Even the novel breaks away from Scott's romantic influence,
and first studies life as it is, and then points out what life may and
ought to be. Whether we read the fun and sentiment of Dickens, the social
miniatures of Thackeray, or the psychological studies of George Eliot, we
find in almost every case a definite purpose to sweep away error and to
reveal the underlying truth of human life. So the novel sought to do for
society in this age precisely what Lyell and Darwin sought to do for
science, that is, to find the truth, and to show how it might be used to
uplift humanity. Perhaps for this reason the Victorian Age is emphatically
an age of realism rather than of romance,--not the realism of Zola and
Ibsen, but a deeper realism which strives to tell the whole truth, showing
moral and physical diseases as they are, but holding up health and hope as
the normal conditions of humanity.
It is somewhat customary to speak of this age as an age of doubt and
pessimism, following the new conception of man and of the universe which
was formulated by science under the name of involution. It is spoken of
also as a prosaic age, lacking in great ideals. Both these criticisms seem
to be the result of judging a large thing when we are too close to it to
get its true proportions, just as Cologne Cathedral, one of the world's
most perfect structures, seems to be a shapeless pile of stone when we
stand too close beneath its mighty walls and buttresses. Tennyson's
immature work, like that of the minor poets, is sometimes in a doubtful or
despairing strain; but his _In Memoriam_ is like the rainbow after storm;
and Browning seems better to express the spirit of his age in the strong,
manly faith of "Rabbi Ben Ezra," and in the courageous optimism of all his
poetry. Stedman's _Victorian Anthology_ is, on the whole, a most inspiring
book of poetry. It would be hard to collect more varied cheer from any age.
And the great essayists, like Macaulay, Carlyle, Ruskin, and the great
novelists, like Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, generally leave us with a
larger charity and with a deeper faith in our humanity.
So also the judgment that this age is too practical for great ideals may be
only a description of the husk that hides a very full ear of corn. It is
well to remember that Spenser and Sidney judged their own age (which we now
consider to be the greatest in our literary history) to be altogether given
over to materialism, and to be incapable of literary greatness. Just as
time has made us smile at their blindness, so the next century may correct
our judgment of this as a material age, and looking upon the enormous
growth of charity and brotherhood among us, and at the literature which
expresses our faith in men, may judge the Victorian Age to be, on the
whole, the noblest and most inspiring in the history of the world.
I. THE POETS OF THE VICTORIAN AGE
ALFRED TENNYSON (1809-1892)
O young Mariner,
You from the haven
Under the sea-cliff,
You that are watching
The gray Magician
With eyes of wonder,
_I_ am Merlin,
And _I_ am dying,
_I_ am Merlin
Who follow The Gleam.
. . . . . . .
O young Mariner,
Down to the haven
Call your companions,
Launch your vessel,
And crowd your canvas,
And, ere it vanishes
Over the margin,
After it, follow it,
Follow The Gleam.
One who reads this haunting poem of "Merlin and The Gleam" finds in it a
suggestion of the spirit of the poet's whole life,--his devotion to the
ideal as expressed in poetry, his early romantic impressions, his
struggles, doubts, triumphs, and his thrilling message to his race.
Throughout the entire Victorian period Tennyson stood at the summit of
poetry in England. Not in vain was he appointed laureate at the death of
Wordsworth, in 1850; for, almost alone among those who have held the
office, he felt the importance of his place, and filled and honored it. For
nearly half a century Tennyson was not only a man and a poet; he was a
voice, the voice of a whole people, expressing in exquisite melody their
doubts and their faith, their griefs and their triumphs. In the wonderful
variety of his verse he suggests all the qualities of England's greatest
poets. The dreaminess of Spenser, the majesty of Milton, the natural
simplicity of Wordsworth, the fantasy of Blake and Coleridge, the melody of
Keats and Shelley, the narrative vigor of Scott and Byron,--all these
striking qualities are evident on successive pages of Tennyson's poetry.
The only thing lacking is the dramatic power of the Elizabethans. In
reflecting the restless spirit of this progressive age Tennyson is as
remarkable as Pope was in voicing the artificiality of the early eighteenth
century. As a poet, therefore, who expresses not so much a personal as a
national spirit, he is probably the most representative literary man of the
Victorian era.
LIFE. Tennyson's life is a remarkable one in this respect, that from
beginning to end he seems to have been dominated by a single impulse, the
impulse of poetry. He had no large or remarkable experiences, no wild oats
to sow, no great successes or reverses, no business cares or public
offices. For sixty-six years, from the appearance of the _Poems by Two
Brothers_, in 1827, until his death in 1892, he studied and practiced his
art continually and exclusively. Only Browning, his fellow-worker,
resembles him in this; but the differences in the two men are world-wide.
Tennyson was naturally shy, retiring, indifferent to men, hating noise and
publicity, loving to be alone with nature, like Wordsworth. Browning was
sociable, delighting in applause, in society, in travel, in the noise and
bustle of the big world.
Tennyson was born in the rectory of Somersby, Lincolnshire, in 1809. The
sweet influences of his early natural surroundings can be better understood
from his early poems than from any biography. He was one of the twelve
children of the Rev. George Clayton Tennyson, a scholarly clergyman, and
his wife Elizabeth Fytche, a gentle, lovable woman, "not learned, save in
gracious household ways," to whom the poet pays a son's loyal tribute near
the close of _The Princess_. It is interesting to note that most of these
children were poetically inclined, and that two of the brothers, Charles
and Frederick, gave far greater promise than did Alfred.
When seven years old the boy went to his grandmother's house at Louth, in
order to attend a famous grammar school at that place. Not even a man's
memory, which generally makes light of hardship and glorifies early
experiences, could ever soften Tennyson's hatred of school life. His
complaint was not so much at the roughness of the boys, which had so
frightened Cowper, as at the brutality of the teachers, who put over the
school door a wretched Latin inscription translating Solomon's barbarous
advice about the rod and the child. In these psychologic days, when the
child is more important than the curriculum, and when we teach girls and
boys rather than Latin and arithmetic, we read with wonder Carlyle's
description of his own schoolmaster, evidently a type of his kind, who
"knew of the human soul thus much, that it had a faculty called memory, and
could be acted on through the muscular integument by appliance of birch
rods." After four years of most unsatisfactory school life, Tennyson
returned home, and was fitted for the university by his scholarly father.
With his brothers he wrote many verses, and his first efforts appeared in a
little volume called _Poems by Two Brothers_, in 1827. The next year he
entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he became the center of a
brilliant circle of friends, chief of whom was the young poet Arthur Henry
Hallam.
At the university Tennyson soon became known for his poetical ability, and
two years after his entrance he gained the prize of the Chancellor's Medal
for a poem called "Timbuctoo," the subject, needless to say, being chosen
by the chancellor. Soon after winning this honor Tennyson published his
first signed work, called _Poems Chiefly Lyrical_ (1830), which, though it
seems somewhat crude and disappointing to us now, nevertheless contained
the germ of all his later poetry. One of the most noticeable things in this
volume is the influence which Byron evidently exerted over the poet in his
early days; and it was perhaps due largely to the same romantic influence
that Tennyson and his friend Hallam presently sailed away to Spain, with
the idea of joining the army of insurgents against King Ferdinand.
Considered purely as a revolutionary venture, this was something of a
fiasco, suggesting the noble Duke of York and his ten thousand men,--"he
marched them up a hill, one day; and he marched them down again." From a
literary view point, however, the experience was not without its value. The
deep impression which the wild beauty of the Pyrenees made upon the young
poet's mind is reflected clearly in the poem "Oenone."
In 1831 Tennyson left the university without taking his degree. The reasons
for this step are not clear; but the family was poor, and poverty may have
played a large part in his determination. His father died a few months
later; but, by a generous arrangement with the new rector, the family
retained the rectory at Somersby, and here, for nearly six years, Tennyson
lived in a retirement which strongly suggests Milton at Horton. He read and
studied widely, cultivated an intimate acquaintance with nature, thought
deeply on the problems suggested by the Reform Bill which was then
agitating England, and during his leisure hours wrote poetry. The first
fruits of this retirement appeared, late in 1832, in a wonderful little
volume bearing the simple name _Poems_. As the work of a youth only
twenty-three, this book is remarkable for the variety and melody of its
verse. Among its treasures we still read with delight "The Lotos Eaters,"
"Palace of Art," "A Dream of Fair Women," "The Miller's Daughter,"
"Oenone," and "The Lady of Shalott"; but the critics of the _Quarterly_,
who had brutally condemned his earlier work, were again unmercifully
severe. The effect of this harsh criticism upon a sensitive nature was most
unfortunate; and when his friend Hallam died, in 1833, Tennyson was plunged
into a period of gloom and sorrow. The sorrow may be read in the exquisite
little poem beginning, "Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O
Sea!" which was his first published elegy for his friend; and the
depressing influence of the harsh and unjust criticism is suggested in
"Merlin and The Gleam," which the reader will understand only after he has
read Tennyson's biography.
For nearly ten years after Hallam's death Tennyson published nothing, and
his movements are hard to trace as the family went here and there, seeking
peace and a home in various parts of England. But though silent, he
continued to write poetry, and it was in these sad wandering days that he
began his immortal _In Memoriam_ and his _Idylls of the King_. In 1842 his
friends persuaded him to give his work to the world, and with some
hesitation he published his _Poems_. The success of this work was almost
instantaneous, and we can appreciate the favor with which it was received
when we read the noble blank verse of "Ulysses" and "Morte d'Arthur," the
perfect little song of grief for Hallam which we have already mentioned,
and the exquisite idyls like "Dora" and "The Gardener's Daughter," which
aroused even Wordsworth's enthusiasm and brought from him a letter saying
that he had been trying all his life to write such an English pastoral as
"Dora" and had failed. From this time forward Tennyson, with increasing
confidence in himself and his message, steadily maintained his place as the