The complete poetical works of Alfred, lord Tennyson, poet laureate

Front matter

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II

Alfred Tennyson, as he grew up toward manhood, found other and stronger inspirations than Thomson's gentle Seasons. Byron's spell had fallen on his generation, and for a boy of genius it must have been absolute and overmastering. Tennyson was soon to find his own voice, but meanwhile he began to write like Byron. He produced poems and verses in profusion and endless abnndance : trying his wings, as people say, before starting on his own strong flight. One day the news came to the village — the dire news which spread across the land, filling men's hearts AviHi consternation — that Byron was dead. Alfred was then a boy about fifteen.

" Byron was dead ! I thonght the whole world was at an eiul," he once said, speaking of these bygone days. "I thought everything was over and finished for every one — that nothing else mattered. I remember I walked out alone, and carved ' Byron is dead' into the sandstone."

I have spoken of Tennyson from the account of an old friend, whose recollections go back to those days, which seem perhaps more distant to us than others of earlier date and later fashion. Mrs. Tennyson, the mother of the family, so this same friend tells me, was a sweet and gentle and most imaginative woman ; so kind-hearted that it had passed into a proverVj, and the wicked inhabitants of a neigliboring village used to bring their dogs to her windows and beat them in ord(,'r to be bribed to leave off l)y th(i gentle lady, or to make advantageons bargains by selling her the worthless curs. She was intensely, fervently religious, as a poet's mother sliould be. After her husband's death (he had added to the rectory, and n)ade it suitable for his large family) slie still lived on at Somersby with her children and their friends. The daughters were growing i\\), the elder sons were going to college. Frederick, the eldest, wont first to Trinity, Cambridge, and his brothers followed him there in turn. Life was opening for them, they were seeing new asjjects and places, making new friends, and bringing them home to their Lincolnshire rectory.

"In Memoriam" gives many a glimpse of the old home, of wliich the echoes still reach, us across half a century.

"O ponucl to loiU the brood of cares, The sweep of scythe in morning dew, The gust thnt, round the garden flew, And tumbled half the mellowing pears!

"0 bliss, wlien all in circle drawn About him, heart and ear were fed To hear him, as he lay and read The Tuscan poet on the lawn:

"Or in the all-golden afternoon A guest, or happy sister, sung. Or here she bionght the harp and flung A ballad to the brightening moon."

Dean Garden was one of those IViends sometimes spoken of who, with Arthur Hallam, the reader of the Tuscan poet, and James Spedding and others, used to gather upon the lawn at Somersby — the young men and women in the light of their yonth and high spirits, the widowed mother leading her quiet life within the rectory walls. Was it not a happy sister herself who in after-days once described how, on a lovely stammer night, they had all sat up so late talking in the starlight that the dawn came shining unawares; but the yoitng men, instead of going to bed, then and there set ofl' for a long walk across the hills in the sunrise,

"And, suck'd from out the distant gloom, A l)reeze began to tremble o'er The large leaves of the sj'camore,* And fluctuate all the still perfume,

" And gathering freshlier overhead,

Rock'd the full-lbliaged elms, and swung The heavj'-folded rose, and Bung The lilies to and fro, and said

" ' The dawn, the dawn,' and died away ; And East and ^\■est, without a breath, Mixt their dim lights, like life and death, To broaden into boundless day."

III

One thing which cannot fail to strike us when we are looking over the records of these earlier days is the remarkable influence which Alfred Tennyson seems to have had from the very first upon his contemporaries, even before his genius had been recognized by the rest of the world. Not only those of his own generation, but his elders and masters seem to have felt something of this. I remember long ago hearing one of Tennyson's oldest friends, who has the best right of any to recall tlie fact, say that " Whewell, who was a num himself, and who knew a man when ho saw him," used to pass over in Alfred Tennyson certain informalities and forgetfulness of combinations ;is to gowns, ami ])laces, ;ind times, which in another he would never htive overlooked.

Whewell ruled a noble giMieration — a race of men born in the beginning of the century, whose i)riiise and loyid friendship were indeed worth hiiving, ami whose good oi)iui()n

* The sycamore has been cut down, and the lawn is altered to another shajje.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

Tennyson himself may have been proud to possess. Wise, sincere, and witty, tliese contemporaries of his spolve with authority, with the modesty of conscious strength. Those of this race whom I have known iu later days — for they were many of them my father's friends also — have all been men of unmistakable stamp, of great culture, of a certain dignified bearing, and of independence of mind and of character.

Most of them have succeeded iu life as men do who are possessed of intellect and high character. Some have iu)t made the less mark upon their time because their names are less widely known ; but each name is a memorable chapter in life to one and another of us who have known them from our youth. One of those old friends, Avho also loved my father, and whom he loved, who has himself just passed away, one who saw^ life with his own eyes, described Alfred iu his youth, in a pamphlet or book w^hich has been privately printed, and which is a remembrance, a sort of waking dream, of some bygone days and talks. How many of us might have been glad to listen to our poet, and to the poet who has made the philosophy of Omar Khayam known to the world, as they discoursed together ; of life, of boyish memories, of books, and again more books, of chivalry — mainly but another name for youth — of a possible old age, so thoroughly seasoned with its spirit that all the experience of the Avorld should serve not to freeze but to direct the genial current of the soul! and who that has known them both will not recognize the truth of this description of Alfred in those early days —

"A man at all points, of grand proportion aud feature, siguirtcant of that inward chivalry becoming his ancient and honorable race; when himself a 'Yonge Squire,' like him in Chaucer, 'of grete strength,' that could hurl the crowbar farther than any of the neighboring clowns, whose humors, as well as of their betters —knight, squire, landlord, aud lieutenant — he took quiet note of, like Chaucer himself; like Wordsworth on the mountain, he too when a lad abroad on the world, sometimes of a night with the shepherd, watching not only the flock on the greeusward, but also

' the fleecy star that bears Andromeda far off' Atlantic seas,'

along witli those other Zodiacal constellations which Aries, I think, leads over the field of heaven."

Arthur Hallam has also written iu some lines to E. J. Teunant of

"a friend, a rare one, A noble being full of clearest insight,

. . . whose fame Is couching now with pantherized intent, As who shall say, I'll spring to him anon, Aud have him for my own."

All these men could understand each other, although they had not then told the world their seci-ets. Poets, critics, men of learning — such names as Trench and Monckton Milues, George Stovin Venables, the Lushingtons and Kinglake, need no comment;

many more there are, and deans and canons,

and the Master of Trinity himself —

"a band Of youthful friends, on mind aud art, Aud labor, aud the changing mart, Aud all the framework of the laud ;

" When one would aim an arrow fair. But send it slackly from the string ; And one would pierce an outer ring, Aud one au inner, here aud there ;

"Aud last the master-bowman, he, Would cleave the mark."

The lines to J. S. were written to one of

these earlier associates ;

"And gently comes the world to those That are cast iu gentle mould."

It was the prophecy of a whole lifetime. There were but few signs of age in James Spedding's looks, none in his charming companionshij), when the accident befell him wliich took him away from those who loved him. To another old companion, the Rev. W. H. Brookfield, is dedicated that sonnet which flows like an echo of Cambridge chimes on a Sabbath morning. It is in this sonnet that Tennyson speaks of "him the lost light of those dawn-goldeu times," who was himself one of that generation of which I have been writiug.

IV

Arthur Hallam was the same age as my own father, and born in 1811. When he died ho was but twenty-three ; but he had lived long enough to show what his life might have been.

In the preface to a little volume of his collected poems and essays, published some time after his death, there is a pathetic introduction. "He seemed to tread the earth as a spirit from some better world," writes his fiither ; aud a correspondent, who, I have been told, is Arthur Hallam's aud Tennyson's common friend, Mr. Gladstone, and whose letter is quoted, says, with true feeling : " It has pleased God that in his death, as well as in his life and nature, he should be marked beyond ordinary men. When nuich time has elapsed, when most bereavements will be forgotten, he will still be remembered, aud his place, I fear, Avill be felt to be still vacant; singularly as his mind was calculated by its native tendencies to work powerfully aud for gootl, in an age full of import to the nature and destinies of man."

How completely these words have been carried out must strike us all now. The father lived to see the youug man's unconscious influence working through his friend's geuius, and reachiug a whole generation unborn as yet on the day when he died. A lady, speaking of Arthur Hallam after his death, said to Mr. Tenuysou, "I think he was perfect." "And so he was," said Mr. Tenuysou, " as near perfection as a mortal

ALFRED TENNYSON.

THE MEETING OF THE SEVERN AND WYK.

mail can bo." Aitliiu- Hallam was a rnau of leniaikalile intellect. He could take in the most (lifflcult and abstruse ideas with an extraordinary rapidity and insight. On one occasion he began to work one afternoon, and mastered a ditiicnlt book of Descartes at one single sitting. In the preface to the Memorials Mr. Hallam speaks of this peculiar clearness of perception and facility for acquiring knowledge ; but, above all, the father dwells on his son's undeviating sweetuess of disposition and adhereuc(^ to his sense of what was right. In the quarterlies and reviews of the time his opinion is (inoted here and there with a respect wiiich shows in what esteem it was already held.

At the time Arthur Hallam died, he was engaged to he married to a sister of the poet's. She was scarcely seventeen at the tinu3. One of the sonnets, addres.sed by Arthur Hallam to his betrothed, was written when he began to teach her Italian.

" Lady, I bid thee to a sunny dome, Ringing witti echoes of Italian song; Henceforth to thee these magic hnlls belong,

And all the pleasant place is like a home.

Hark, on the right, with full piano tone. Old Dante's voice encircles all the air; Hark yet again, like Hute-tones mingling rare

Comes the keen sweetness of Petrarca's moan.

Pass thou the lintel freely ; without fear Feast on the music. I do better know thee Than to suspect this pleasure thou dost owe me

Will wrong thy gentle spirit, or make less dear That element whence thou must draw thy life— An English maiden and an Knglish wife.''

As we read the pages of this little book, we come upon more than one happy moment saved out of the i)ast, hours of delight and peaceful friendship, saddened by no foreboding, and comjilete in themselves.

"Alfred, T would that yon beheld me now, Sitting beneath an ivieil, mossy wall. .... Above my head Dilates immeasurable a wild of leaves, Seeming received into the blue expanse That vaults the summer noon."

There is something touching in the tranquil ring of the voice calling out in the sum-

ALFRED TENNYSON.

mir noontide with all a young man's ex^mnsion.

It seemed to be but the beginning of a beautiful happj' life, when suddenly the end came. Arthur Hallani was travelling with his father in Austria when he died very suddenly, with scarce a warning sign of illness. Mr. ilallam had come home and found his son, as he supposed, sleejjiug upon a couch ; but it was death, not sleep. "Those whose eyes must long be dim with tears" — so writes the heart-stricken father — "brought him home to rest among his kindred and in his own country." They chose his resting-place in a tranquil spot on a lone hill that overhangs the Bristol Channel. He was buried in the chancel of Clevedon Church, in Somerset, by Clevedon Court, which had been his mother's early home.

"The Danube to the Severn gave

The darken 'd heart that beat no more : They laid him by the |)leasant shore, And in the hearing of the wave.

"There twice a day the Severn fills ; The salt sea-water passes by, And hushes half the babbling Wye, And makes a silence in the hills."

In all England there was not a sweeter place than the sunny old Court upon the hill, with its wide i)roHpects and grassy terraces, where Arthur Hallam must have played in his childhood, whence others of his kiudred, touched with his own bright and beautiful spirit, have come forth. His brother Harry, a gentle and delightful person, used to be constantly at the house of their cousin, Mrs. Brookfield. He too was carried off in his youth of fullest promise. When Mr. Hallam, after a life of repeated sorrows, at last went to his rest with his wife and his children, it was Alfred Tenuj'sou who wrote his epitaph, which may still be read in the chancel of the old church. Tlie lovely old house was burned in 1883.

V

Once in their early youth we hear of the two friends, Tennyson and Hallam, travelling in the Pyrenees. This was at the time of the war of early Spanish independence, when man}' generous young men went over with funds and good energies to help the cause of liberty. These two were taking money, and letters written in invisible ink, to certain conspirators who were then revolting against the intolerable tyranny of Ferdinand, and who were chiefly hiding in the Pyrenees. The young men met, among others, a Senor Ojeda, who confided to Alfred his intentions, which were to conpcr la {/ovffe a tons Ics curl's. Senor Ojeda could not talk P^nglish or fully explain all his aspirations. " Mais vons connaissez vioii coeur," said he, effusively ; and a pretty black one it is, thought the poet. I have heard Alfred described in those days as "straight and with a broad breast," and when he had crossed over from the Continent and was coming back, walking through Wales, he went one day into a little way-side inn, where an old man sat by the tire, who looked up, and asked many questions. "Are you from the army ? Not from the ai'my ? Then where do you come from ?" said the old man. " I am just come from the Pyi'enees," said Alfred. " Ah, I knew there was a sometliing," said the wise old nntn.

John Kemble was among those who had gone over to Spain, and one day a rumor came to distant Somersby that he was to be tried for his life by the Spanish aiithorities. No one else knew much about him except Alfred Tennyson, who started before dawn to drive across the country in search of some person of authority who knew the consul at Cadiz, and who could send letters of protection to the poor pi'isoner.

CLEVEDON COURT.— After an unpuWisIiel sketch by W. M.Thackeray.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

BURLEIGH HOUSE, BY STAMFORD TOWN.

It was a false alarm. John Keinlile came home to make a name for himself iu other fields. Meanwhile Alfred Tenuysou's owu rei)utation was growiug, and wheu the first two vokimes of his collected poems were published in 1842, followed by The Frincess in 1847, his fame spread throughout the land.

Some of the reviews were violent and antagonistic at first. One iu particular had tasted blood, and the " Hang, draw, and (Juurterly," as it has beeu called, of those days, having lately cut up Endymion, now |)roceeded to demolish Tennyson.

But this was a passing phase. It is curious to note the sudden change iu the toue of the criticisms — the absolute surrender of these knights of the pen to the irresistible and brilliant advance of the unknown and visored warrior. The visor is raised now, the face is familiar to us all, but the arms, though tested in a hundred fights, are shining and uncoiiquered still.

William Howitt, whom we have already quoted, has written an article upon the Tennyson of these earlier days. It is fanciful, suggestive, full of interest, with a gentle mysterious play and tender appreciation. Si)eaking of the poet himself, he asks, with the rest of the world of that time: "You may hear his voice, but where is the man? He is wandering iu some dream-laud, beneath the shade of old and charmed forests, by far-off shores, where

'all night The plinigiufr seas thaw backwaril from the land Their nioon-lert waters while;'

by the old mill-dam, tiiinkiug of the merry miller and his pretty daughter; or wandering over the open wolds where

'Norland whirhviiids blow.' From .all these places — from the silent coi'- ridor of an ancient convent, from some shrine wliere a devoted knight x'ecites his vows, from the drear monotony of ' the moated grange,' or the forest beneath the ' talking oak' — comes the voice of Tennyson, rich, I dreamy, passionate, yet not impatient, musical with the airs of chivalrous ages, yet uungling in his song the theme and the spirit of those that are yet to come."

This article was written many years ago, when but the first chords had sounded, before the glorious Muse, passing beyond her morning joy, had met with the soitow of life. j But it is well that as we travel on through later, sadder scenes we should still carry in our hearts this joyous and romantic music. j One must be English born, I think, to know ' how English is the spell which this great j enchanter casts over us ; the very spirit of the land falls upon us as the visions he evokes come closing round. Whether it is j the moated grange that he shows us, or I Locksley Hall that iu the distance overlooks ; the sandy tracts, or Dora standing in the corn, or the sight of the brimming wave that , swings through quiet meadows round the mill, it is all home in its broadest, sweetest I aspect. Take the gallant wooing of the , Lord of Burleigh :

"So she goes bj' him attended, 1 Hears him lovingly converse,

I Sees whatever fair and splendid

Lay betwixt his home and hers ; Parks with oak and cheslnut shady, j Parks and order'd gardens greai,

Ancient homes of lord and lady, Built for pleasure and for state. I All he shows her makes him dearer:

Evermore she seems to gaze i On that, cottage growing nearer,

Where they twain will spend their days. I O but she will love him truly I

I lie shall have a cheerful liome ;

She will order all things duly,

Wlieii beneath his roof they come. Thus her heart rejoices gi-eatly.

Till a gateway she discerns With armorial bearings stately, 1 And beneath the gate she turns ;

Sees a mansion more majestic Thau all those she saw before."

' But one might go on (pioting forever.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

Another critic, writing even before this time, bad said of Tennyson, " He imitates nobody ; in him we recognize the spirit of his age." It would not be easy for a gener- \ ation that lias grown up to the music of j Tennyson, that has in a manner beaten time : to it with the pulse of its life, to imagine i what the world would be without it. Even the most original amongst us ninst needs ! think of things more or less in the shape in which they come before us. The mystery of the charm of words is as great as that by which a wonder of natural beauty comes Jironnd us, and lays hold of our imagination. It may be fancy, but I for one feel as if summer-time could scarcely be summer without the song of the familiar green books.

VI

In Memoriam, with music in its cantos, belonging to the school of all men's sad hearts, rings the awful Be Profundis of death, faced and realized as far as may be by a human soul. It came striking suddenly into all the sweet ideal beauty and lovely wealth which had gone before, with a revelation of that secret of life which is told to each of us in turn by the sorrow of its own soul. Nothing can be more simple than the form of the poem as it flows.

" Short swallow-flights of song, that dip Their wings iu tears, aucl skim away,"

the poet says himself, bnt it is something else which we can all acknowledge — something which has given words and ease to many of those who in their lonely frozen grief perhaps felt that they are no longer quite alone, when such a voice as this can

reach them :

" Peace : come away : the song of woe Is after all au earthly song": Peace ; come away : we do him wrong To sing 80 wildly: let us go."

And as the cry passes away, come signs of

peace and dawning light:

" Be neither song, nor game, nor feast ;

Nor harp be touch'd, nor flute be blown ; No dance, no motion, save alone What lightens iu the lucid east

" Of rising worlds by yonder wood. Long sleeps the summer in the seed ; Kuu out your measured arcs, and lead The closing cycle rich in good."

And the teacher who can read the great book of nature interprets for us as he turns the page.

With In Memoriam, which was not published till 1850, Alfred Tennyson's fame was firmly estaljlished; and when Wordsworth died, April 23, its author was appointed by the Queen Poet Laureate. There is a story that at the time Sir Robert Peel was consulted he had never read any Tennyson, but he read " Ulysses " and warmed up, and acknowledged the right of this new-come poet to be England's Laureate.

The home at Somersbj^ was broken up by this time, by mai-riages and other family events. Alfred Tennyson had come to live in London. He was poor ; he had iu turn to meet that struggle with wholesome poverty which brings the vagueness of genius into contact with reality, and teaches, better, perhaps, than any other science, the patience, the forbearance, and knowledge of life which belong to it.

CAERLEON UPON USK.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

The Princess, with all her lovely court and glowing harmonies, was born iu London, among the fogs and smuts of Lincoln's Inn, although, like all works of true art, this poem had grown by degrees in other times and i)]aces. The poet came and went, free, unshackled, meditating, inditing. One of my family remembers hearing TiMinyson say that " Tears, idle Tears," was suggested by Tintern Abbey ; who shall say by what mysterious wonder of beauty and regret, by what seuse of the "transient with the abiding" ?

In Memoriam was followed by the tirst part of the JdiiUs, and the record of the court King Arthur held at Camelot, and at " old Caerleon upon Usk " on that eventful Whitsuntide when Prince Geraint came quickly flashing through the shallow ford to the little knoll where the queen stood with her maiden, and

.... "listen'd for the distant hunt, And chiefly for the baying of Cavall."

If /*) Memoriam is the record of a human soul, the Idjilh mean the history, not of one man or of one generation, but of a whole cycle, of the faith of a nation failing and falliug away into darkness. "It is the dream of man coming into practical life, and ruined by one sin." Birth is a mystery, and death is a mystery, and iu the midst lies the table-land of life, and its struggle and performance.

The first " Idyll " and the last, I have he.iid Mi Tlnn^'^()n sa^,alc intentionally moH aichiK tliaii the otlui^ H( once told us that the song of the knights nuirching past the king at the marriage of Arthur was made one spring afternoon on Clapham Common as he walked along.

" Blow trumpet, for the world is white with May ; Blow trumpet, the loii^ uioht hatti roll'd away ! Blow through the living world — 'Let the King reign.'"

So sang the young knights in the first bright days of early chivalry.

"Clang battle-axe, and clash brand! Let the King reitrn .

The King will follow Christ, and we the King."

And then when the doom of evil spread, bringing not sorrow alone, but destruction in its train, not death only, but hoi)elessuess and consternation, the song is finally changed into an echo of strange woe ; we hear no shout of triumph, but the dim shocks of battle,

"the crash Of battle-axe on shatter'd helms, and shrieks Afier the Christ, of those who falling down Look'd up for heaven, and only saw the mist."

All is over with the fair court; Guinevere's golden head is low ; she has fled to Almesbury —

" Fled all night long by glimmering waste and weald, And heard the Spirits of the waste and weald Moan as she fled, or thought she heard them moan : And in herself she moan'd, 'Too late, too late !' Till in the cold wind that foreruns the morn, A blot in heaven, the Eaveu, flying high, Cioak'd, and she thought, 'He spies a field of death.'"

And finally comes the conclusion, and the "Passing of Arthur," and he vanishes as he came, in mystery, silently floating away

AL.MIisUUKV.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

upon the barge toward the East, whence all religions are said to come.

I have heard them all speak of these London days when Alfred Tennyson lived in poverty with his friends and his golden . dieams. He lived in the Temple, at 58 Lincoln's Inn Fields, and elsewhere.

It was about this time that Carlyle introdnced Sir John Simeon to Tennyson one night at Bath Honse, and made the oftenquoted speech, "There he sits upon a dungheap snrroimded by innnmerable dead dogs ;" by which dead dogs he meant " Qinone " and other Greek versions and adaptations. He had said the same thing of Landor and his Hellenics. " I was told of this," said Mr. Tennyson, "and some time afterward I relieated it to Carlyle: 'I'm told that is what you say of me.' He gave a kind of gntt'aw. 'Eh, that wasn't a very Innunons description of you,' he answered."

The story is well worth retelling, so completely does it illnstrate the grim humor and unaifected caudor of a dyspeptic man of genins, who Hung words and epithets without malice, who neither realized the pain liis chance sallies might give, nor the indelible flash which branded them upon people's memories.

The world has pointed its moral finger of late at the old man in Iiis great old age, accusing himself in the face of all, and confessing the overpowering irritations which the suffering of a lifetime had laid upon him and upon her he loved. That old caustic man of deepest feeling, with an ill temper and a tender heart and a racking imagination, speaking from the grave, and bearing unto it that cross of passionate remorse whicli few among us dare to face, seems to some of us now a figure nobler and truer, a teacher greater far, than in the days when all his pain and love and remorse were still hidden from us all.

Carlyle and Mr. Fitzgerald used to be often with Tennyson at that time. They used to dine together at the " Cock" tavern in the Strand among other places ; sometimes Tennyson and Carlyle took long solitary walks late into the night.

The other day a lady was describing a bygone feast given about this time by tlie poet to Lady Duff Gordon, and to another young and beautiful, lady, a niece of Mr. Hallam's. Harry Hallam was also asked. Mr. Tennyson, in his hosiiitality, had sent for a carpenter to change the whole furniture of his bedroom in order to prepare a proper drawing-room for the ladies. Mr. Brookfield, coming in, was in time to suggest some compromise, to which the host reluctantly agreed. One cau imagine that it was a delightful feast, but indeed it is always a feast-daj- Avhen one breaks bread with those one loves, and the writer is glad to think that she too has been among those to sit at the kind board where the salt has not lost its savor in the years that have passed, and where the guests can say their grace not for bread and wine alou(!. May she add that the first occasion of her having