CHAPTER VI Poetry.-Tennyson. I. Talent and work-First attempts-Wherein he was opposed to preceding poets-Wherein he carried on their spirit. II. First period-Female characters-Delicacy and refinement of sentiment and style-Variety of his emotions and of his subjects-Literary curiosity and poetic dilettantism-The Dying Swan-The Lotos-Eaters. III. Second period-Popularity, good fortune, and life-Permanent sensibility and virgin freshness of the poetic temperament - Wherein he is at one with nature-Locksley Hall-Change of subject and style-Violent outbreak and personal feeling-Maud. IV. Return of Tennyson to his first style-In Memoriam-Elegance, coldness, and lengthiness of this poem-The subject and the talent must harmonise— What subjects agree with the dilettante artist―The Princess-Comparison with As You Like It-Fanciful and picturesque world-How Tennyson repeats the dreams and the style of the Renaissance. V. How Tennyson repeats the freshness and simplicity of the old epic-The Idylls of the King-Why he has restored the epic of the Round TablePurity and elevation of his models and his poetry-Elaine-Morte d'Arthur -Want of individual and absorbing passion-Flexibility and disinterestedness of his mind-Talent for metamorphosis, embellishment, and refine ment. VI. His public-Society in England-Country comfort-Elegance-Education— Habits-Wherein Tennyson suits such a society-Society in FranceParisian life-Pleasures-Representation-Conversation-Boldness of mind -Wherein Alfred de Musset suits such a society-Comparison of the two societies and of the tw: poets W I. HEN Tennyson published his first poems, the critics found fault with them. He held his peace; for ten years no one saw his name in a review, nor even in a publisher's catalogue. But when he appeared again before the public, his books had made their way alone and under the surface, and he passed at once for the greatest poet of his country and his time. Men were surprised, and with a pleasing surprise. The potent generation of poets who had just died out, had passed like a whirlwind. Like their forerunners of the sixteenth century, they had carried away and hurried everything to its extremes. Some had culled the gigan tic legends, piled up dreams, ransacked the East, Greece, Arabia, the Middle Ages, and overloaded the human imagination with tones and fancies from every clime. Others had buried themselves in metaphysics and morality, had mused indefatigably on the human condi tion, and spent their lives in the sublime and the monotonous. Others, making a medley of crime and heroism, had conducted, through darkness and flashes of lightning, a train of contorted and terrible figures, desperate with remorse, relieved by their grandeur. Men wanted to rest after so many efforts and so much excess. Quitting the imaginative sentimental and Satanic school, Tennyson appeared exquisite. All the forms and ideas which had pleased them were found in him, but purified, modulated, set in a splendid style. splendid style. He completed an age; he enjoyed that which had agitated others; his poetry was like the lovely evenings in summer: the outlines of the landscape are then the same as in the day-time; but the splendour of the dazzling dome is dulled; the re-invigorated flowers lift themselves up, and the calm sun, on the horizon, harmoniously blends in a network of crimson rays the woods and meadows which it just before burned by its brightness. II. What first attracted people were Tennyson's portraits of women. Adeline, Eleanore, Lilian, the May Queen, were keepsake characters, from the hand of a lover and an artist. The keepsake is gilt-edged, embossed with flowers and decorations, richly got up, soft, full of delicate figures, always elegant and always correct, which we might take to be sketched at random, and which are yet drawn carefully, on white vellum, slightly touched by their outline, all selected to rest and occupy the tender, white hands of a young bride or a girl. I have translated many ideas and many styles, but I shall not attempt to translate one of these portraits. Each word of them is like a tint, curiously deepened or shaded by the neighbouring tint, with all the boldness and success of the happiest refinement. The least alteration would obscure all. And there could not be too much of an art so just, so consummate, in painting the charming prettinesses, the sudden hauteurs, the half blushes, the imperceptible and fleeting caprices of feminine beauty He opposes, harmonises them, makes them, as it were, into a gallery Here is the frolicsome child, the little flirting fairy, who claps her tiny hands, who, So innocent-arch, so cunning-simple, From beneath her gather'd wimple Poems by A. Tennyson, 7th ed. 1851; Lilian, 5 Then the thoughtful fair, who thinks, with staring large blue eyes: 'Whence that aery bloom of thine, Like a lily which the sun Looks thro' in his sad decline, Anew the ever varying Madeline,' now smiling, then frowning, then joyful again, then angry, then uncertain between the two: 'Frowns perfect-sweet along the brow Like little clouds sun-fringed.' 2 The poet returned well pleased to all things, refined and exquisite. He caressed them so carefully, that his verses appeared at times far-fetched, affected, almost euphuistic. He gave them too much adornment and polishing; he seemed like an epicurean in style, as well as in beauty. He looked for pretty rustic scenes, touching remembrances, curious or pure sentiments. He made them into elegies, pastorals, and idyls. He wrote in every accent, and delighted in entering into the feelings of all ages. He wrote of St. Agnes, St. Simeon Stylites, Ulysses, Enone, Sir Galahad, Lady Clare, Fatima, the Sleeping Beauty. He imitated alternately Homer and Chaucer, Theocritus and Spenser, the old English poets and the old Arabian poets. He gave life successively to the little real events of English life, and the great fantastic adventures of extinguished chivalry. He was like those musicians who use their bow in the service of all masters. He strayed through nature and history, with no preoccupation, without fierce passion, bent on feeling, relishing, culling from all parts, in the flower-stand of the drawing-room and in the rustic hedgerows, the rare or wild flowers whose scent or beauty could charm or amuse him. Men entered into his pleasure; smelt the graceful bouquets which he knew so well how to put together; preferred those which he took from the country; found that his talent was nowhere more easy. They admired the minute observation and refined sentiment which knew how to grasp and interpret the fleeting aspects. In the Dying Swan they forgot that the subject was almost threadbare, and the interest somewhat slight, that they might appreciate such verses as this: 'Some blue peaks in the distance rose, One willow over the river wept, And shook the wave as the wind did sigh; Poems by A. Tennyson, 7th ed. 1851; Adeline, 33. Ibid. Madeline 15 Chasing itself at its own wild will, The tangled water-courses slept, Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow." But these melancholy pictures did not display him entirely; men accompanied him to the land of the sun, toward the soft voluptuousness of southern seas; they returned, with an involuntary fascination, to the verses in which he depicts the companions of Ulysses, who, slumbering in the land of the Lotos-eaters, happy dreamers like himself, forgot their country, and renounced action: 'A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke, They saw the gleaming river seaward flow From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops, Three silent pinnacles of aged snow, Stood sunset-flush'd: and, dew'd with showery drops, There is sweet music here that softer falls Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. Here are cool mosses deep, And thro' the moss the ivies creep, And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep. Lo! in the middle of the wood, The folded leaf is woo'd from out the bud Lo! sweeten'd with the summer light, The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow, All its allotted length of days, The flower ripens in its place, Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil, Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil. ... But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly, How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly), ... Poems by A. Tennyson, 7th ed. 1851; The Dying Swan, 45. With half-dropt eyelids still, Beneath a heaven dark and holy. To watch the long bright river drawing slowly To hear the dewy echoes calling From cave to cave thro' the thick-twined vine- Only to hear were sweet, stretch'd out beneath the pine.'1 III. Men liked to Was this charming dreamer simply a dilettante? consider him so; he seemed too happy to admit violent passions. Fame came to him easily and quickly, at the age of thirty. The Queen had justified the public favour by creating him Poet Laureate. A great writer had declared him a more genuine poet than Lord Byron, and maintained that nothing so perfect had been seen since Shakspeare. The student, at Oxford, put Tennyson's works between an annotated Euripides and a manual of scholastic philosophy. Young ladies found him amongst their marriage presents. He was called rich, venerated by his family, admired by his friends, amiable, without affectation, even unsophisticated. He lived in the country, chiefly in the Isle of Wight, amongst books and flowers, free from the annoyances, rivalries, and burdens of society, and his life was easily imagined to be a beautiful dream, as sweet as those which he had pictured. Yet the men who looked closer saw that there was a fire of passion under this smooth surface. A genuine poetic temperament never fails him. He feels too acutely to be at peace. When we quiver at the least touch, we shake and tremble under great shocks. Already here and there, in his pictures of country and love, a brilliant verse broke with its glowing colour through the calm and correct outline. He had felt that strange growth of unknown powers which suddenly arrest a man with fixed gaze before revealed beauty. The specialty of the poet is to be ever young, for ever virgin. For us, the vulgar, things are threadbare; sixty centuries of civilisation have worn out their primitive freshness; we perceive them only through a veil of ready-made phrases; we employ them, we no longer comprehend them; we see in them no more magnificent flowers, but good vegetables; the luxuriant primeval forest is to us nothing but a well-planned, over-known, kitchen garden. On the other hand, the poet, in presence of this world, is as the first man on the first day. In a moment our phrases, our reasonings, all the trappings of memory and prejudice, vanish from his mind; things seem new to him; he is astonished and ravished; headlong stream of sensations oppresses him; it is the all-potent Poems by A. Tennyson, 7th ed. 1851; The Lotos Eaters, 140. |