English Literature
best known and best loved poet in England.
The year 1850 was a happy one for Tennyson. He was appointed poet laureate,
to succeed Wordsworth; and he married Emily Sellwood,
Her whose gentle will has changed my fate
And made my life a perfumed altar flame,
whom he had loved for thirteen years, but whom his poverty had prevented
him from marrying. The year is made further remarkable by the publication
of _In Memoriam_, probably the most enduring of his poems, upon which he
had worked at intervals for sixteen years. Three years later, with the
money that his work now brought him, he leased the house Farringford, in
the Isle of Wight, and settled in the first permanent home he had known
since he left the rectory at Somersby.
For the remaining forty years of his life he lived, like Wordsworth, "in
the stillness of a great peace," writing steadily, and enjoying the
friendship of a large number of people, some distinguished, some obscure,
from the kindly and sympathetic Victoria to the servants on his own farm.
All of these he called with equal sincerity his friends, and to each one he
was the same man, simple, strong, kindly, and noble. Carlyle describes him
as "a fine, large-featured, dim-eyed, bronze-colored, shaggy-headed man,
... most restful, brotherly, solid-hearted." Loving solitude and hating
publicity as he did, the numerous tourists from both sides of the ocean,
who sought him out in his retreat and insisted upon seeing him, made his
life at times intolerable. Influenced partly by the desire to escape such
popularity, he bought land and built for himself a new house, Aldworth, in
Surrey, though he made his home in Farringford for the greater part of the
year.
His labor during these years and his marvelous freshness and youthfulness
of feeling are best understood by a glance at the contents of his complete
works. Inferior poems, like _The Princess_, which was written in the first
flush of his success, and his dramas, which were written against the advice
of his best friends, may easily be criticised; but the bulk of his verse
shows an astonishing originality and vigor to the very end. He died very
quietly at Aldworth, with his family about him in the moonlight, and beside
him a volume of Shakespeare, open at the dirge in _Cymbeline:_
Fear no more the heat o' the sun,
Nor the furious winter's rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages.
The strong and noble spirit of his life is reflected in one of his best
known poems, "Crossing the Bar," which was written in his eighty-first
year, and which he desired should be placed at the end of his collected
works:
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as, moving, seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
WORKS. At the outset of our study of Tennyson's works it may be well to
record two things, by way of suggestion. First, Tennyson's poetry is not so
much to be studied as to be read and appreciated; he is a poet to have open
on one's table, and to enjoy as one enjoys his daily exercise. And second,
we should by all means begin to get acquainted with Tennyson in the days of
our youth. Unlike Browning, who is generally appreciated by more mature
minds, Tennyson is for enjoyment, for inspiration, rather than for
instruction. Only youth can fully appreciate him; and youth, unfortunately,
except in a few rare, beautiful cases, is something which does not dwell
with us long after our school days. The secret of poetry, especially of
Tennyson's poetry, is to be eternally young, and, like Adam in Paradise, to
find every morning a new world, fresh, wonderful, inspiring, as if just
from the hands of God.
Except by the student, eager to understand the whoje range of poetry in
this age, Tennyson's earlier poems and his later dramas may well be
omitted. Opinions vary about both; but the general judgment seems to be
that the earlier poems show too much of Byron's influence, and their
crudeness suffers by comparison with the exquisitely finished work of
Tennyson's middle life. Of dramatic works he wrote seven, his great
ambition being to present a large part of the history of England in a
series of dramas. _Becket_ was one of the best of these works and met with
considerable favor on the stage; but, like all the others, it indicates
that Tennyson lacked the dramatic power and the humor necessary for a
successful playwright.
Among the remaining poems there is such a wide variety that every reader
must be left largely to follow his own delightful choice.[235] Of the
_Poems_ of 1842 we have already mentioned those best worth reading. _The
Princess, a Medley_ (1847), a long poem of over three thousand lines of
blank verse, is Tennyson's answer to the question of woman's rights and
woman's sphere, which was then, as in our own day, strongly agitating the
public mind. In this poem a baby finally solves the problem which
philosophers have pondered ever since men began to think connectedly about
human society. A few exquisite songs, like "Tears, Idle Tears," "Bugle
Song," and "Sweet and Low," form the most delightful part of this poem,
which in general is hardly up to the standard of the poet's later work.
_Maud_ (1855) is what is called in literature a monodrama, telling the
story of a lover who passes from morbidness to ecstasy, then to anger and
murder, followed by insanity and recovery. This was Tennyson's favorite,
and among his friends he read aloud from it more than from any other poem.
Perhaps if we could hear Tennyson read it, we should appreciate it better;
but, on the whole, it seems overwrought and melodramatic. Even its lyrics,
like "Come into the Garden, Maud," which make this work a favorite with
young lovers, are characterized by "prettiness" rather than by beauty or
strength.
Perhaps the most loved of all Tennyson's works is _In Memoriam_, which, on
account of both its theme and its exquisite workmanship, is "one of the few
immortal names that were not born to die." The immediate occasion of this
remarkable poem was Tennyson's profound personal grief at the death of his
friend Hallam. As he wrote lyric after lyric, inspired by this sad subject,
the poet's grief became less personal, and the greater grief of humanity
mourning for its dead and questioning its immortality took possession of
him. Gradually the poem became an expression, first, of universal doubt,
and then of universal faith, a faith which rests ultimately not on reason
or philosophy but on the soul's instinct for immortality. The immortality
of human love is the theme of the poem, which is made up of over one
hundred different lyrics. The movement takes us through three years, rising
slowly from poignant sorrow and doubt to a calm peace and hope, and ending
with a noble hymn of courage and faith,--a modest courage and a humble
faith, love-inspired,--which will be a favorite as long as saddened men
turn to literature for consolation. Though Darwin's greatest books had not
yet been written, science had already overturned many old conceptions of
life; and Tennyson, who lived apart and thought deeply on all the problems
of his day, gave this poem to the world as his own answer to the doubts and
questionings of men. This universal human interest, together with its
exquisite form and melody, makes the poem, in popular favor at least, the
supreme threnody, or elegiac poem, of our literature; though Milton's
_Lycidas_ is, from the critical view point, undoubtedly a more artistic
work.
_The Idylls of the King_ ranks among the greatest of Tennyson's later
works. Its general subject is the Celtic legends of King Arthur and his
knights of the Round Table, and the chief source of its material is
Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_. Here, in this mass of beautiful legends, is
certainly the subject of a great national epic; yet after four hundred
years, during which many poets have used the material, the great epic is
still unwritten. Milton and Spenser, as we have already noted, considered
this material carefully; and Milton alone, of all English writers, had
perhaps the power to use it in a great epic. Tennyson began to use these
legends in his _Morte d'Arthur_ (1842); but the epic idea probably occurred
to him later, in 1856, when he began "Geraint and Enid," and he added the
stories of "Vivien," "Elaine," "Guinevere," and other heroes and heroines
at intervals, until "Balin," the last of the _Idylls_, appeared in 1885.
Later these works were gathered together and arranged with an attempt at
unity. The result is in no sense an epic poem, but rather a series of
single poems loosely connected by a thread of interest in Arthur, the
central personage, and in his unsuccessful attempt to found an ideal
kingdom.
Entirely different in spirit is another collection of poems called _English
Idyls,_[236] which began in the _Poems_ of 1842, and which Tennyson
intended should reflect the ideals of widely different types of English
life. Of these varied poems, "Dora," "The Gardener's Daughter," "Ulysses,"
"Locksley Hall" and "Sir Galahad" are the best; but all are worthy of
study. One of the most famous of this series is "Enoch Arden" (1864), in
which Tennyson turns from mediæval knights, from lords, heroes, and fair
ladies, to find the material for true poetry among the lowly people that
make up the bulk of English life. Its rare melody, its sympathy for common
life, and its revelation of the beauty and heroism which hide in humble men
and women everywhere, made this work an instant favorite. Judged by its
sales alone, it was the most popular of his works during the poet's
lifetime.
Tennyson's later volumes, like the _Ballads_ (1880) and _Demeter_ (1889),
should not be overlooked, since they contain some of his best work. The
former contains stirring war songs, like "The Defence of Lucknow," and
pictures of wild passionate grief, like "Rizpah"; the latter is notable for
"Romney's Remorse," a wonderful piece of work; "Merlin and The Gleam,"
which expresses the poet's lifelong ideal; and several exquisite little
songs, like "The Throstle," and "The Oak," which show how marvelously the
aged poet retained his youthful freshness and inspiration. Here certainly
is variety enough to give us long years of literary enjoyment; and we need
hardly mention miscellaneous poems, like "The Brook" and "The Charge of the
Light Brigade," which are known to every schoolboy; and "Wages" and "The
Higher Pantheism," which should be read by every man who thinks about the
old, old problem of life and death.
CHARACTERISTICS OF TENNYSON'S POETRY. If we attempt to sum up the quality
of Tennyson, as shown in all these works, the task is a difficult one; but
three things stand out more or less plainly. First, Tennyson is essentially
the artist. No other in his age studied the art of poetry so constantly or
with such singleness of purpose; and only Swinburne rivals him in melody
and the perfect finish of his verse. Second, like all the great writers of
his age, he is emphatically a teacher, often a leader. In the preceding
age, as the result of the turmoil produced by the French Revolution,
lawlessness was more or less common, and individuality was the rule in
literature. Tennyson's theme, so characteristic of his age, is the reign of