crown of Shakspeare, and we will venture and lingers in the memory like the melodies to say that it is challenged, though on imper- that visits us in dreams :-in the perfect balfect and far inferior grounds, by the present lad of The Lady of Shalott, in the Enone, laureate of England. the Lotus-Eaters, the Dream of Fair Wo We have shown, so far as we deemed it men, the Morte d' Arthur, the Ulysses, the expedient, Tennyson's reach into the domain Godiva, the Day-Dream, the Sir Galahad, of the future; and it is still easier to exhibit and the dreamy luxury of the Fragment of the subservience of the past to his magic Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere. To wand, and the happy harmony of each with many of these we shall have occasion to rethe present in his felicitous conceptions. It turn, referring to them at present only for is with a kindly sympathy for the distant the sake of exhibiting that felicitous involuyouth of civilization and for the romantic tion of the past in the present, that happy emprize of its early maturity that he looks blending of reminiscences with realities, back into the gloom of ages, further remov- which constitutes one of the characteristics ed by feelings than even by years from our of the higher order of poetry. own. And it is with a racy humour, and a This two-fold tendency of the Tennysogenial perception of the incompatibility of nian Muse, sometimes prospective and somerude romance and uncultured chivalry with times retrospective; and often, like the twothe over-refined art of our complicated and faced statue of Janus-Janus bifrons-lookfactitious life, that he recalls the former time ing both backwards and forwards, to the past to contrast it with our own day, and to amuse and to the future, we conceive to be its us by the contrast. But there is no ridicule, highest merit, as also the evidence of its true nor bitterness, nor sarcasm, in the invoca- inspiration. It is a fresh exemplification of tion there is no contempt in this playful the earlier functions and qualities of the proterophany, or panorama of the buried popular poet, vates or seer; explaining and world; but there is compassionate and cor- being confirmed by the remarks of a most dial appreciation, and an affectionate benev- competent writer, that vates originally olence which embraces the former genera- meant a seer.' 'It was the name,' he protions in a common bond with the present, ceeds, 'given to the Tuscan expositors of without overlooking the character or the extent of the great differences which interpose like a chasm between them. * prodigia, and to the precentors of the Salian priesthood, in the same way that the leader of the dance was called præsul.' These marked and eminent characteristics Vates, then, became the most ancient term are quaintly and forcibly exhibited in the for poet among the Romans, and even at a quiet point of the 'Recollections of the Ara- subsequent period was a more honourable bian Nights; and in the more racy and ex- designation than poeta, a word which Luciliuberant humour of Amphion,' which latter us and Varro found it necessary to explain.' poem seems to be the prototype whence It may not be out of place to mention a Halleck caught the graceful infection which curious coincidence, lending to illustrate this interpenetrates with wit his admired rhapso- this half-prophetic, half-philosophical penedy on Alnwick Castle. O had I lived when song was great In days of old Amphion, And ta'en my fiddle to the gate, Nor cared for seed or scion! And had I lived when song was great, And fiddled in the timber! The more pathetic and serious aspects of the past, under types intelligible and acceptable to the present, are skilfully displayed in the touching, tender and weird-like Ballad of Oriana, whose music haunts the ear tration, which is furnished by a comparison Even now we hear with inward strife, with the equally significant but less poetic * Classical Museum. No. xxiv. Art. xiii., p. 145. July, 1849. Jam Deus adsurgit melior. glomeramina coca Review, to whom we have before referred, sees in the quaint and fantastic poem of The Princess, which has been judiciously term We thus find Tennyson occupying, with ed a Medley by its author, a typification or respect to the perplexing uncertainties of symbolization of the struggle now waging our impending future, the same position ap- against all authority, and considers that the parently maintained by the great Nolan phi- general tenor of the tale furnishes an allelosopher, in his poetic ministrations, with re- gorical representation of the existing war of spect to the then future aspects of our mod- Intellect against Religion. This he regards ern intellectual system. In both cases, as the central thought, and he suspects raththough with diverse success, the imaginative er than perceives that the details group faculty has anticipated the functions of the themselves around this nucleus. large discourse of reason, looking before and after.' The Princess does, indeed, exhibit in striking combination and contrast many of the The union of the twin but dissimilar ten- highest excellences and most serious defects dencies of the Tennysonian poetry is most of Tennyson. It wants the liquid melody of strongly, but most provokingly exhibited in the Tennysonian rhyme, which fills the ear The Princess, that strange Medley, which is and haunts the imagination like the castanets utterly unintelligible or insignificant, if test- of the Hindoo Bayaderes; and it suffers from ed by any merely literal interpretation, but the absence of that modulated luxury of which is so curiously suggestive if we wel- metrical expression, which elsewhere lends come with cordial apprehension all the quick- such sensuous music to the poetry. Yet it ening inspirations of the allegory. The in- has an art and a variety peculiarly its own. sufficiency of the meaning, and the unsatis- There are also profundity of thought and factory character of the fanciful imagination, exuberance of fancy linked with playful wit which are deeply felt on any careless peru- and genial humour The philosophy, which sal of the poem, have necessitated a recur- is veiled in allegory, is rarely obtrusive rence to allegorical interpretation, and have though often perplexing, and is not frittered forced upon the minds of the more critical away by the caprices of the imagination: readers the propriety of seeking far below while, at the same time, the poetic concepthe surface a profounder import than is re- tion and the artistic utterance are less injurvealed on the upper current of the song. ed than might have been anticipated by the Indeed, many scattered hints throughout the latent and more serious import of the poem. Medley intimate the presence of a hidden It is pre-eminently apposite to the present sense, and lighten up sufficiently for ordina- time in any of its many-sided aspects; it is ry recognition, if not for the penetration of so in its more immediate significance, as well all, that haze and vapour of prophetic feel- as in its more recondite meanings. Throughing, which invest the whole fiction with a out, the current age is perspicuously and circumambient cloud of significant obscurity. truthfully presented to us: but dressed in The intentional escape of these occasional the fantastic garb of antique finery, and glimpses of the latent fire attracted attention provident of future change. Those higher to the divinity behind the cloud, and tempt- and rarer characteristics of poetry, on which ed the ingenuity of the critics. But they we have been dilating, are all combined in have perhaps given too definite and sym- The Princess; and the development of the metrical an exposition of the allegory, and tale, though frequently tantalizing us by its have almost uniformly failed to perceive that elaborate artifice of allegory, fulfils the prothe same mystery pervades all Tennyson's mise of the Prologue: more elaborate pieces, and is characteristic But one that really suited time and place Were such a medley, we should have him back A Gothic ruin, and a Grecian house, A talk of College and of ladies' rights, A feudal knight in silken masquerade, And there, with shrieks and strange experiments, For which the good Sir Ralph had burnt them all, which it was nurtured, not the substance of The nineteenth century gambols on the grass. which it was composed. A single allegory All the heterogeneous and incongruous el- to be tolerable, requires the most delicate ements, which enter into the composition of management, but an allegory within an alleour present civilization, are blended or hud- gory is a grievous offence against good taste, dled into one picture, with a due intimation and such a remote possibility that it should of their historical descent, and an admirable not be lightly conjectured. We suspect the manifestation of their actual and reciprocal North British Critic of looking somewhat too antipathies. But, though a genial and affec- deep for a secret; and searching for veins of tionate regard for the current time breathes gold when they are to be discovered only as through the whole poem, in just accordance the precious metal was wont to be found in with the spirit of him, who had sung, the crucible of the alchemist, after having been placed there bodily by the operator. A dash of Delphic mystery does, indeed, interpenetrate The Princess, as well as other poems of the author, but it is scarcely compatible with true poetry to clothe profound and systematic philosophy, and purely didactic speculation, with so strict and perfect a vesture of allegory as is thus supposed. It would certainly not to be in keeping with Tennyson's procedure elsewhere. Such minute analysis of its own inspiration, and cool-headed self-consciousness, are at variance with the spirit of genuine poetry, and with the general character of Tennyson's poems, in which the vaticinations and the oracular suggestiveness are blended with the current of natural and spontaneous thought, so as to reveal the access of an unseen divinity of whose approach he was only dimly sensible. But, notwithstanding the harmony of all Under these circumstances, we have been times and the fusion of all tendencies, which disposed to welcome The Princess with a may be easily enough discovered in The less scrutinizing admiration, and a less anaPrincess, we think that the North British lytic pleasure than the Scotch critic. We Reviewer is perhaps too penetrating and sa- have not treated it altogether like an Egypgacious when he professes to detect in the tian hieroglyph, and taken it curiously to allegory a distinct representation of the sub- pieces, in order to recombine and reconstruct sisting warfare between Intellect and Reli- it in a new and dissimilar language. We region. It is true that such an interpretation cognize in the allegory a pointed but kindly may be sustained by the plausible evidence satire of the modern neoterisms in favour of of many passages, and even by the names Female Education and Female Emancipaand relations of several of the personages; tion, which are shown, by the development but, if such an idea was really present to of true poetic sentiments in a truly poetic the mind of Tennyson during the composi- form, to be incompatible with the nature, tion of his romaunt, it was not the central functions, and destiny of woman, and with idea. A vague and undefined sentiment the necessary play of the natural instincts of the sort may very probably have brooded and passions of the sex. We acknowledge the over the chaos of thought which preceded underflow of a deeper, broader, and more the creation of expression; but it irradiat- mysterious tide of thought; but the philosoed rather than determined the development phy which it bears along is rather felt than of the poem. It was the atmosphere in shown, and springs in the Poet's mind rather from the incumbent sense of the connection plated and executed is a presumption against of this libertine movement in regard to wo- a new attempt of the same sort on the part man with the excessive liberalism of the age of the same poet; and this is more especiin all other respects, than from any distinct ally the case when the later effort is obviously apprehension of the disordered relations be- deficient in the point and precision which tween Intellect and Faith, or rather, from belong to the earlier. It may explain the any determinate purpose to expose them. cognizable presence of the same general Thus may be explained whatever mistiness, tone of thought as a concomitant of another vagueness, want of unity and connection utterance, but it is hardly compatible with may pertain to the poem. That its main the supposition of a new repetition of an exbearings are upon the question of Woman's periment already successful, and achieved in Rights-a question of immediate and pres- the first instance with infinitely greater power ent interest is we think abundantly demon- and propriety. And, moreover, The Palace strable from the speech of Lilia in the Pro- of Art, when construed in this way, has the logue, from Lady Psyche's lecture, the reply merit of presenting only a single and simple of the Princess to the rash declaration of the allegory, while The Princess by any such Prince, her outburst after the discovery of process of interpretation would be converted, the sex of the intruders into the secret clois- as we intimated before, into a double, involvters of the beautiful viragos, and from many ed, and complicated allegory. pointed but isolated passages. If, as we sus- We have dwelt so long on this important pect from the internal evidence, the Prologue poem-the longest and most elaborate hithwas written after the poem, and designed as erto produced by Tennyson, unless we rean artistic apology for its dreamy and capri- gard the separate links of the chain of In cious fancy, we might consider the question Memoriam as constituting in their dependenas sufficiently decided by that spirited intro- ces only a single poem, that we have not duction. But, that there is something more time to develope further our views in regard implied than merely a refutation of the Wo-to the latent characteristics of the Poet Lauman's Rights' delusion, is unquestionable. reate. We shall only mention, as an exemThis is the ostensible and appropriate mean- plification of that affectionate yearning toing of the allegory; but the poetic form and wards the past, which in him accompanies the poetic spirit are instinct with more sub- the quick appreciation of the present and the lime but undeveloped significances, which assume shape and colour from the minds in which they may be reflected. anxious gaze into the future,—a coincidence which has not been observed before,-that the whole conception and plot of The PrinIt is but right to remark also, as an offset cess appear to have been borrowed from the to our criticism on the North British Review, story of Taj-elmolouk and the Lady Dunia, that the interpretation of The Princess ad- in the Arabian Night's Entertainments-but vocated by him, acquires some, and at first how changed, and sublimated, and glorified blush, very strong confirmation from the un- the same elements are in the new poet's deniable design of The Palace of Art. This hands! admirable poem, one of the best in Tenny- Space is not left us to enter into the exson, and one of the master-pieces of modern amination of the excellences of detail which poetry, receives the plenitude of its power are so profusely scattered through the poems and the pregnant solemnity of its impressive of Tennyson. We cannot cull and dilate stanzas from the unmistakeable design of upon the beauties of his expression, though representing that very conflict between Rea- no one in modern times is likely to bequeath son and Religion, between science and faith, to posterity more graceful gems. The housewhich are supposed to be detected in The hold words of our language, which have been Princess. This meaning cannot possibly be so copiously enriched at all times by the disoverlooked in any subsequent perusal of the jecta membra poetarum, will receive large ac poem after its presence has been once sug- cessions from his own sweet utterances; but gested. But the very fact that such an al- we must pass them by for the present. We legorical delineation has been once contem- cannot dilate upon the constant melody of rhythm, the exquisite and varied modula- Tennyson is by no means the poet of royalty; tions of the music, and the unrivalled per- though the graceful and elaborate finish of fection of finish which constitute the high his language address themselves to the culartistic merits of Tennyson. We would tivated and fastidious tastes of an aristocracy, rather say nothing on these important topics, he is no minstrel of the nobles; but like the than do injustice to them by a hasty and Troubadours and Minnesingers of the Midinsufficient consideration. We may yet make dle Ages he claims his place in Palace Court them the subject of another paper. They and Castle Hall as the mouth-piece of the are the most obvious of his claims to popu- people, and gives utterance to their sentilar favour, and are those excellencies which ments, to their rights, their wrongs, and their have most attracted the attention of the end- aspirations, with a cordial appreciation which less swarm of his imitators. But those points belongs only to the poet who feels himself to which our observations have been directed one with themselves. Unquestionably this are those most likely to escape notice, and admirable and most popular characteristic yet they are those in which the highest pow- springs from that same insight into the future ers of the poet are revealed, and with which and appetency for its coming glories, which the highest functions of poetry are connect- we have already indicated as his loftiest exed. Moreover, we deem it absolutely essen- cellence; but it is no less memorable on that tial to recognize and comprehend the mani- account, and is not therefore a less but a festations of this more divine faculty of song, greater title to public favour in America, and which embraces the past and reaches into among all people who already inhale the the future, before Tennyson can be fully felt, breath of the coming air. He is the poet of justly appreciated, or even intelligently ad- sedate, gradual, but universal renovation, mitted into our favour. Independent of such significances, there is, indeed, much to charm the ear, to kindle the imagination, to awaken the sentiments, but only a few chords of his lyre are heard until we are able to catch the subdued and mystic music from the other and more melodious strings. It is the partial and imperfect apprehension of Tennyson which is the sole bar to his general re- he also recognizes, that cognition as one of the greatest of modern poets; and we have deemed it an indispensable preliminary to an estimation of his poetry to remove this obstruction, or, if we say no more on the subject, we have thought it more important to withdraw the veil from But the change which he anticipates is his beauties, than to expatiate on the beau- one in full accordance with the rights and ties themselves which could not be fairly demands of industry and enterprise. He seen until the veil was withdrawn. Not clinging to some ancient saw; Not mastered by some modern term; Listening the lordly music flowing from The old order changeth, yielding place to new, shows no favour to the pretensions and the There is one incidental topic to which we haughty disdain of nobles; and there is no think it expedient to call the attention of our sterner rebuke any where administered, or readers before concluding the present obser- uttered with more point, pathos, force and vations. This is the singular congeniality of beauty, in reprehension of the selfish heartTennyson's poetry with the rising spirit of lessness and pampered pride of an old aristhe time, its harmony with what is apparently tocracy than is contained in the exquisite to be the tone of sentiment in the coming ballad of Lady Clara Vere de Vere. It degenerations, its cordial sympathy with hon- serves to be placed by the side of Burns' est endeavor and the claims of industry, and "A man's a man for a' that," as the protesits peculiar applicability to a democratic age, tation of outraged nature and indignant huand the free citizens of a great republic. manity against antiquated patents and "the Though he is the poet-laureate of England, claims of long descent." The solitary de VOL. XIX-83 |