In politics, and in religion. Artistic reverence. sees that "the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns," but is not the man to lead a reform, or to disturb the pleasant conditions in which his lot is cast. No personal wrong has allied him to the oppressed and struggling classes, yet he is too intellectual not to perceive that such wrongs exist. It must be remembered that Shakespeare and Goethe were no more heroic. Just so with his religious attitude. Reverence for beauty would of itself dispose him to love the ivied Church, with all its art, and faith, and ancestral legendary associations; and therefore, while amply reflecting in his verse the doubt and disquiet of the age, his tranquil sense of order, together with the failure of iconoclasts to substitute any creed for that which they are breaking down, have brought him to the position of stanch Sir William Petty (obiit 1687), who wrote in his will these memorable words: "As for religion, I die in the profession of that Faith, and in the practice of such Worship, as I find established by the law of my country, not being able to believe what I myself please, nor to worship God better than by doing as I would be done unto, and observing the laws of my country, and expressing my love and honor unto Almighty God by such signs and tokens as are understood to be such by the people with whom I live, God knowing my heart even without any at all." So far as the "religion of art" is concerned, Tennyson is the most conscientious of devotees. Throughout his work we find a pure and thoughtful purpose, abhorrent of the mere licentious passion for beauty, "such as lurks In some wild Poet, when he works WORDSWORTH UPON SCIENCE AND POETRY. 193 conformed discovery. In my remarks upon "In Memoriam " I have shown that in one direction he readily keeps pace with the advance of modern thought. A leading mission of his art appears to be that of hastening the transition His verse of our poetic nomenclature and imagery from the old to modern or phenomenal method to one in accordance with progress and knowledge and truth. His laurel is brighter for the fact that he constantly avails himself of the results of scientific discovery, without making them prosaic. This tendency, beginning with "Locksley Hall" and "The Princess," has increased with him to the present time. If modern story-writers can make the wonders of chemistry and astronomy the basis of tales more fascinating to children than the Arabian Nights, why should not the poet explore this field for the creation of a new imagery and expression? There is a remarkable passage in Wordsworth's preface to the second. edition of his poems; a prophecy which, half a century ago, could only have been uttered by a man of lofty intellect and extraordinary premonition of changes even now at hand: "The objects of the poet's thoughts are everywhere; though the eyes and senses of men are, it is true, his favorite guides, yet he will follow wheresoever he can find an atmosphere of sensation in which to move his wings. Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge, it is immortal as the heart of man. If the labors of the men of science should ever create any material revolution, direct or indirect, in our condition, and in the impressions which we habitually receive, the poet will sleep then no more than at present; he will be ready to follow the steps of the man of science, not only in those general indirect effects, but he will be at his side, carrying sensation Words worth upon the future relations of Poetry. Science and See also page 15. Taine's analysis: into the midst of the objects of the science itself. The remotest discoveries of the chemist, the botanist, or mineralogist will be as proper objects of the poet's art as any upon which it can be employed, if the time should ever come when these things shall be familiar to us, and the relations under which they are contemplated by the followers of the respective sciences shall be manifestly and palpably material to us as enjoying and suffering beings. If the time should ever come when what is now called science, thus familiarized to men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the Being thus produced, as a dear and genuine inmate of the household of man." It is not unlikely that Tennyson was early impressed by these profound observations; at all events, he has seen the truths of science becoming familiar "to the general," and has governed his art accordingly. The poet and man of science have a common ground, since few discoveries are made without the exercise of the poet's special gift, — the imagination. This faculty is required to enable a child to comprehend any scientific paradox: for instance, that of the rotation of the Earth upon its axis. The imagination of an investigator advances from one step to another, and thus, in a certain sense, the mental processes of a Milton and a Newton are near akin. A plodding, didactic intellect is not strictly scientific; nor will great poetry ever spring from a merely phantasmal brain: "best bard because the wisest," sings the poet. M. Taine's chapter upon Tennyson shows an intelligent perception of the Laureate's relations to his time, TAINE'S ESTIMATE OF HIM. 195 and especially to England; but though containing a fine interlude upon the perennial freshness of a poet and the zest which makes nature a constant surprise to him, declaring that, the poet, in the presence of this world, is as the first man on the first day, — with all this excellence the chapter fails to rightly appreciate Tennyson, and overestimates Alfred de Musset in comparison. M. Taine's failure, I think, is due to Its defects. the fact that no one, however successful in mastering a foreign language, can fully enter into that nicety of art which is the potent witchery of Tennyson's verse. The minute distinction between one poem and another, where the ideas are upon a level, and the difference is one of essential flavor, a foreigner loses without perceiving his loss. Precisely this delicacy of aroma separates Tennyson from other masters of verse. An English school-girl will see in his work a beauty that wholly escapes the most accomplished Frenchman: the latter may have ten times her knowledge of the language, but she "hears a voice he cannot hear" and feels an influence he never can fairly understand. Again, M. Taine does not allow credit for the importance of the works actually produced by Tennyson. Largeness and proportion go for something in edifices; and although De Musset, De Musset. the errant, impassioned, suffering Parisian, had the sacred fire, and gave out burning flashes here and there, his light was fitful, nor long sustained, and we think rather of what one so gifted ought to have accomplished than of what he actually did. But Taine's catholicity, and the very fact that he is a foreigner, have protected him, on the other hand, from the overweening influence of Tennyson's art, that holds us Wherein the French critic has succeeded. Tennyson and Byron: A contrast. "Above the subject, as strong gales Hold swollen clouds from raining"; have made him a wiser judge of the poet's intellectual and imaginative position. In this matter he is like a deaf man watching a battle, undisturbed by the bewildering power of sound. His remarks upon the limitations of a "comfortable, luxurious, English" muse are not without reason; all in all, he has a just idea of Tennyson's representative attitude in the present state of British thought and art. He has laid too little stress upon the difference between Tennyson and Byron, by observing which we gather a clearer estimate of the former's genius than in any other way. Tennyson is the antithesis of Byron, in both the form and spirit of his song. The Georgian poet, with all the glow of genius, constantly giving utterance to condensed and powerful expressions, never attempted condensation in his general style; there was nothing he so little cared for; his inspiration must have full flow and break through every barrier; it was the roaring of a mighty wind, the current of a great river, — prone to overflow, and often to spread thinly and unevenly upon the shoals and lowlands. Tennyson, though composing an extended work, seeks the utmost terseness of expression; howsoever composite his verse, it is tightly packed and cemented, and decorated to repletion with fretwork and precious stones; nothing is neglected, nothing wasted, nothing misapplied. You cannot take out a word or sentence without marring the structure, nor can you find a blemish; while much might be profitably omitted from Byron's longer poems, and their blemishes are frequent as the beauties. Prolixity, diffuseness, were |