ALFRED TENNYSON. THE POETRY OF

SORROW.*

"BEFORE I had published, I said to myself, 'You and I, Mr. Cowper, will not concern ourselves much with what the critics say of our book.'” This was a brave, but a hasty resolve, which Mr. Cowper very soon abandoned, and stood before the judge of the chief review in a most uncomfortable state of shiver. He was improved by the suffering. An ingenious person of the last century, the Rhymer of the Leasowes, compared criticism to a turnpike on the road to fame, where authors, after being detained for a few minutes, and relieved of some trifles of baggage, are permitted to proceed on their journey. Of late this critical turnpike has been very carelessly attended. Authors, finding it left on the jar, or wide open, have daringly carried through it any amount of luggage, contraband or plundered, without question or interruption. The public are not the only losers by this neglect. Few people, intellectually or morally, are benefited by having their own way. A true critic is a physician of the mind, and his treatment strengthens the constitution of an author.

Perhaps of modern poets Mr. Tennyson has met with fewest obstacles on the high-road to reputation. The

* In Memoriam. Fourth edition; 1851

ENGLISH ELEGIES.

39

famous horseman of Edmonton did not find his gate thrown back with a more generous abandonment of the tax. It is well that the critical result has not been equally unfortunate with the equestrian. Mr. Tennyson, retaining all his packages, grotesque and beautiful, has grown into the most resolute mannerist in England, except Mr. Carlyle. His faults of taste and language are stereotyped, and he now writes his affectations in capitals.

Our present remarks upon his errors and his merits will be confined to the latest production of his pen. The book of verses bearing the title of In Memoriam is a tribute to the genius and virtues of a most accomplished son of Mr. Hallam, the historian. Let the acknowledgment be made at once that the writer dedicated his thoughts to a most difficult task. He has written 200 pages upon one person-in other words he has painted 120 miniatures of the same individual, with much happiness of expression, great bloom and freshness of landscape illustration, and many touching scenes of busy and indoor life. English literature possesses no work which, in compass and unity, can be justly compared with In Memoriam.

This interesting field of fancy had not, indeed, been left untilled. Two of the most eminent and dear of our poets-Spenser and Milton--have bound up their names with the poetry of sorrow. Spenser's elegies are carefully elaborated, but look more like the exercises than the fruitfulness of his pen. Certainly his theme was not always suggestive. The life of Lord Howard's daughter furnished few opportunities of poetical decoration; but the glory and exploits of Sidney

might be supposed to be ample enough to tax the utmost power of the author. Neither of his offerings is worthy of the minstrel of Faëry Land. With the exception of some delicious rhymes, such as

"To hear him speak and sweetly smile,
You were in Paradise the while,"

which are bathed in the colours and dew of his sunniest hours, the lamentation for the hero as for the lady is only a sparkling network of conceits, woven after the pattern of Ovid or Marino. For example, he thus accounts for the death of Sidney :-Mars, being dazzled by the flash of his armour, instantly makes an iron tube and loads it with thunder. The volley is fatal; the knight falls, and a phoenix, which had built its nest in an English cedar, carries up the news to Jupiter, and makes his ascent in a brilliant explosion of fireworks. But in one charm of verse Spenser seldom disappoints his reader. He is the most musical of poets; and, even in these colder strains of his ingenious learning, the melody flows with a clear, limpid, running murmur, that refreshes and soothes the ear, like a waterbrook in a green wood. He was the most accomplished master of what Pope called the "style of sound." What a tune there is in these lines :

"A gentle shepherd born in Arcady,

Of gentlest race that ever shepherd bore,
About the grassy banks of Hæmony,
Did keep his sheep, his little stock, and store;
Full carefully he kept them day and night,
In fairest fields; and Astrophel he hight."

MILTON'S LYCIDAS.

41

And these also,—

"Did never love so sweetly breathe
In any mortal breast before?
Did never muse inspire beneath
A poet's brain with finer store?"

His tears at least were melodious; and it was ever a true harp that hung on the willow tree.

Milton, in every way, surpassed the Serious Teacher whom he loved. He wept his friends with a more winning sorrow. His Latin elegy on Deodati contains two or three exquisite touches of natural description and tenderness. But the full tide of his imaginative regret flowed into the memorial of another friend, Mr. King. Lycidas is one of the noblest efforts of an author who heard few strains of a higher mood. As a whole, the composition is beyond praise, whether we regard the beauty of the allegory, the solemn lights of the fancy, or the organ-like symphony of the verse, which, however, has in it nothing monotonous. quisitely does the writer say

"He touched the tender stops of various quills."

Ex

For at one moment the grandeur and torrent of his inspiration overbear us, and then a sweet, gleeful note calls us to the shade of trees, or the field-side, when the plough moves or the husbandman reposes. The Doric lay variegates the chant, and we step out of a cathedral into a flower garden.

Only one discord in Milton's poetry of grief grates upon the ear and offends it. His anti-church invective

reads like an interpolation by Mr. W. J. Fox, or a stray note for Mr. Binney's sermon. It is worth a remark that the chief spot in the elegy on Deodati has likewise a religious connexion. Having placed his friend among the blessed spirits, with a crown about his head and a palm in his hand, he desecrates the scene by a headlong Bacchanal and the tossing of the thyrsus. At a considerable distance from Lycidas, in the Poetry of Sorrow, we might mention Dryden's tribute to Oldham as being among the most manly and dignified utterances. that ever flowed from his full mouth.

It will be seen that Spenser and Milton agree in giving a pastoral tone to their mourning. Their framework is bucolic. With what skill and pathos the similitude is managed in Lycidas every reader of it knows. But the interest of the style must always rise out of the handling. We admire the poem not so much because, as in despite of, its plan. The pencil of Claude turns a crook into a sceptre, and makes it kingly. We cannot but think that Johnson's objection was essentially sound, if only he had confined it to the parabolical form of the poem, without shutting his eyes to the grace of the execution. We regard it as a most happy judgment of Mr. Tennyson, that he resolved to forget Lycidas, and to place the charm of his own longer elegy in its biographical passages and domestic interiors. We hear nothing of Damon, and are thankful for the silence. The age, whether for better or worse, has left the pastoral behind it. Corydon is for ever out of the question with people who have anything to do; the close of the 18th century witnessed his burial. That rather insipid shepherd-swain, whom Pope patronized,