VR /'I/O CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE.. SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE Cornell University Library PR 5562.B81 1910 A commentary on Tennyson's In memoriam, 3 1924 013 559 491 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92401 3559491 BY A. C. BRADLEY. SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY. Lec- tures ON Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. Second Edition. 8vo. 12S. 6d. net. OXFORD LECTQRES ON POETRY. 8vo. I2S. 6d. net. LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO. LTD. A COMMENTARY ON TENNYSON'S IN MEMORIAM MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited LONDON . BOMBAY ■ CALCUTTA • MADRAS MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY BOSTON - CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO NEW YORK DALLAS A Commentary on Tennyson's In Memoriam By A. C. Bradley Formerly Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford Third Edition, Revised MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1920 COPYRIOHT. First Edition 1901. Second Edition 1902. Reprinted 1907. Third Edition 1910. Reprinted 1916, 1920. GLASGOW : PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSB AND CO. LTD. TO THE BELOVED MEMORY OF GEORGE GROVE PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. In the interest of possessors of the Second Edition, it has seemed best to leave the Com- mentary unchanged (save for the removal of two or three misprints), and to place the additions and corrections which distinguish this Edition in an Appendix by themselves. They are occasioned, for the most part, by the appearance of the present Lord Tennyson's edition of In Memoriam (1905), which contains, together with matter already used in the preparation of this Commentary, a number of notes written or dic- tated by the poet himself, and others contributed by the editor. The former are referred to in my Appendix as 'the Author's notes.' Generally, they must be taken as decisive, though it should be borne in mind that, as was natural, the poet in his later years did not in all cases remember his original meaning accurately (see e.g. the note on v"i Preface to the Third Edition 'the sea-blue bird of March' on p. i86 of the Commentary). With one or two exceptions, I have referred only to such notes in Lord Tennyson's edition as confirm, correct, or illustrate my own interpreta- tions. There are many other interesting notes, which the reader should consult. April, 191 o. PREFACE TO THE ISSUE OF 1915. See two additional notes on p. 251. May, 1915. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. As most readers of a book are said to ignore the Preface, I will beg anyone who may intend to use this Commentary to read, for his own sake, the first two of the following paragraphs. The stanzas beginning Strong Son of God, with which In Memoriam opens, are called in these pages the ' Prologue ' ; the stanzas at the end, beginning O true and tried, the ' Epilogue ' ; the 131 intervening pieces are called ' sections,' or, where the word could not be misunderstood, ' poems.' The sections are referred to by Roman numerals, their lines by Arabic: thus 'XL. 10' means ' section XL., line i o.' I found it indis- pensable to refer usually to lines, not stanzas. In the case of the shorter sections this will give the reader no trouble, but he will find it convenient to number the lines of a few longer ones. I am sorry that in referring to many of Tennyson's other poems I was unable to guide the reader to the passage in question, as the lines are not numbered. X Preface to the First Edition The text used is of course the copyright text, which has remained unaltered, I believe, since 1884. The changes made up to that time are noted where they occur, and are also printed in a list at the end of the book. Two of them are important. In the fourth edition, 1851, section LIX., Sorrow, wilt thou live with me, appeared for the first time. In 1870 section XXXIX., Old warder of these buried bones, was added. Readers who use one of the first three editions, or again an edition later than the third and earlier than 1872, must modify my references accordingly; but they will find it simpler to buy the present text for sixpence. The purpose of this book is strictly limited. My main object is to be of use to such readers as care to study In Memoriam closely, by showing the bearing of the sections on one another, and by dealing with many of the difficulties of interpreta- tion which I have encountered in my own reading of the poem, in conversation, in teaching,'- and in books on the subject. The quotations of parallel passages are sometimes meant to serve this latter purpose, sometimes merely to gratify literary 1 The book had its origin in lectures given in 1884 at University College, Liverpool. Preface to the First Edition xi curiosity regarding the point discussed at the end of the Introduction. I have abstained almost wholly from ' aesthetic criticism,' chiefly because, although of course it interests me more than the kind of comment to which this book is restricted, I do not think the two kinds harmonise well. I ought perhaps to say a few words to those readers who, without objecting on principle to all commentaries on English poetry, may naturally feel doubts about this particular book. To those who think all commentary on In Memoriam superfluous, I will venture to reply that they can never have studied the poem. If they do so they will certainly find that the meaning of many passages is doubtful, and that a few are extremely obscure ; the cause of these defects being sometimes excess in the Tennysonian virtue of conciseness, sometimes an excessive or unfor- tunate use of periphrasis or decoration. Others will think that, at any rate, many lines which I have annotated are quite perspicuous. I agree with them ; but I believe I have attempted to explain nothing that I had not found misunder- stood by myself or someone else ; and there are hosts of misapprehensions which I have left un- noticed. The exasperated reader should try the experiment of questioning himself and a few other Xll Preface to the First Edition intelligent persons on the meaning of every line in a dozen sections taken at hap-hazard from the poem. I have more- difficulty in meeting the possible charge that I often insist on finding a definite meaning where there is none; for this charge raises a question too wide to discuss in a Preface. I can only say that, while I have no doubt it may be true as regards some passages, I question the presupposition on which it rests. Apart from defects, fine poetry, I think, is indefinite, in the sense that its language has a vague suggestiveness, on which its virtue largely depends and which disappears in a paraphrase. But this suggestive- ness, or untranslateable ' meaning,' attaches to a definite mental matter, namely images and thoughts, the outlines of which should be clear to us, however little we may be able to exhaust their significance. We read for the most part half-asleep, but a poet writes wide-awake. His thoughts may be unlike logical statements, and his images may conflict, but they are there and all alive ; and our business is to recreate them. We are much mistaken when we foist upon him the misty generalities which his words may at first convey to us. There is no poetry in this indefiniteness, there is simply feebleness of imagination. Preface to the First Edition xiii Lastly, I may be told that in any case it is idle to trouble oneself about those puzzles whose solu- tion would bring hardly any poetical profit, and absurd to write pages on ' God shut the doorways of his head.' Perhaps. But, to go no further, there are people who cannot be content to live with such puzzles in a poem that they love. I shall be satisfied if nly book helps them to read In Memoriam without a check, or saves them from spending on its difficulties one hundredth part of the labour I have spent. I am under obligations to the following among books which I have consulted : Lord Tennyson's Memoir of his father, first edition, in two volumes ; Mr. Churton Collins's Illustrations of Tennyson ; Dr. Gatty's Key to In Memoriam, fourth edition ; Mr. J. F. Genung's Tennyson's In Memoriam : its Purpose and its Structure ; Miss E. R. Chapman's Companion to In Memoriam ; Mr. E. C. Tainsh's Study of Tennysoris Works, new edition, 1893 ; Mr. James Knowles's article in The Nineteenth Century for January, 1893. Where I was con- scious of a particular obligation I have specially acknowledged it, but I may not always have remembered my debts, and I should like to say that, though I differ from him constantly, I think Mr. Genung's book has not met with full recognition. xiv Preface to the First Edition I am greatly obliged to Mr. C. E. Benham, of Colchester, who lent me the manuscript of his able paraphrase of the poem. Some of his inter- pretations are quoted in my notes. My friend Mr. Beeching's edition of In Me- moriam was not published till my work, was practically complete and partly in type. His name is mentioned where I have made changes or additions after reading his book, but I may have left references to ' the commentators ' which do not apply to him. Finally, I owe thanks to my friends Messrs. MacLehose for the care with which they have printed a troublesome manuscript, and to many other friends for help given to me in preparing the Commentary ; not least to my brother-in-law, the late Sir George Grove, who brought to the study of the poem that enthusiasm and genius in appreciation, to which so many thousands of lovers of music are indebted. Among several reasons why I regret a long delay in the publication of my book the chief is that he cannot see the pages to which he would have given so eager a welcome. London, May, 1901. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. For this edition not many changes have been made in the Introduction, but a great many in the Commentary. Notes or parts of notes on a few lines have been omitted as needless. I have added explanations of other passages which I had supposed to require none. And in the notes on some of the specially troublesome lines I have made alterations or additions, either to support my opinion, or to show why I have changed it, or to mention interpretations which, without having convinced me, seem to me not improbable. Where the new matter takes the form of a note on the old it is often printed within square brackets. For the convenience of owners of the first edition I give a list of the passages where important changes have been made in the Commentary, without noticing the minor improvements which occur on almost every page: II. ii, 12; III. 6, xvi Preface to the Second Edition lo; XIII. 1-4; XXIV. 15, 16; XXXIX. 8-12; XLiii. II, 12 ; XLiv. 4 ; XLV. 9 ; XLVi. ; LVi. 28 ; Lxxxi; Lxxxv. loi ; Lxxxvi. 13-16; xcii. 13; xciii. 5-8 ; xcv. 36, 37 ; xcvi. 22 fif. ; xcix. 9 ; cxviii. 16 ; cxix. 4 ; cxxii. ; cxxv. 2. For a good many of the alterations so far men- tioned I am indebted, wholly or in part, to others. I have consulted Mr. Robinson's edition of the poem, and Mr. Jacobs's Tennyson and In Me- moriani. Mr. H. W. Eve and Mr. Walter Larden sent me valuable suggestions. Two reviews of my first edition have been of use to me in pre- paring the second, that of Professor Beeching in the Guardian of September II, 1 901, and that of Mr. Cecil Nolan Ferrall in the Weekly Register of November 29, 1901 ; and Mr. Ferrall has also most kindly helped me by giving me his opinion on a number of doubtful passages. These obliga- tions are acknowledged in detail in the notes. Finally, I owe thanks not least to the comments of several relatives and friends. In addition to these changes I have consider- ably increased the number of references to parallel passages. And here I have to thank for their help several correspondents, including some of the persons already mentioned, and especially the Bishop of Derry, who lent me his copy of In Preface to the Second Edition xvii Memoriam, in which a very large number of in- teresting parallels are noted. Those which I have used are marked with his initials (G.A.C.), and I should have liked to quote a great many more, but I have thought it best to abide by the rule of giving only such passages as I thought might not improbably have influenced Tennyson. I must add that my insertion of a parallel does not necessarily mean that I think there was such influence ; and the question whether there was or not has, for me, merely a biographical or psychological interest. It appears to me as absurd to fancy that Tennyson's mastery of phrase is called in question by his reminiscences of other men's phrases as to suppose that Milton's mastery is impugned by the delightful collection of parallels in Warton's edition of the Minor Poems. In the Preface to the first edition I mentioned, out of a regard for University College, Liverpool, that this book had its origin in lectures given there in 1884. I am anxious to guard against a misapprehension to which this statement has given rise. My book, in much that it contains and much that it omits, is very different from those lectures, and it is far from representing the kind of matter which, in my judgment, a teacher of English ^'viii Preface to the Second Edition Literature should offer to his students. To abstain almost wholly from literary discussion of a poem, and to dwell at length upon its most obscure passages, would be, I should say, the very way not to ' teach literature.' June, 190X CONTENTS PAGB Introduction i Commentary - 77 Changes in the Text of ' In Memoriam ' 240 Appendix ■ 245 INTRODUCTION I. THE ORIGIN OF IN MEMORIAM. ' It must be remembered,' writes Tennyson in a note on In Memoriam, ' that this is a poem, not an actual biography. . . . The different moods of sorrow as in a drama are dramatically given, and my conviction that fear, doubts, and suffering will find answer and relief only through Faith in a God of Love. " I " is not always the author speaking of himself, but the voice of the human race speaking through him.'^ This being so, it would seem that, in order to understand the poem, we need know nothing of the circumstances which occasioned it, any more than we require a knowledge of the lives of Shakespeare or of Gray in order to understand Hamlet or the Elegy. But In Memoriam is not ' Memoir, I. p. 305. A 3 In Memoriam quite like Hamlet or Gray's Elegy ; it rather resembles such a poem as Adonais. Just as Adonais contains allusions which would not be fully intelligible to a reader ignorant of the literary history of the time, so In Memoriam contains references which can be understood but imper- fectly from the poem itself; and as in this case the persons and events referred to belong chiefly to private life, the reader cannot be assumed to have any knowledge of them at all. It is desir- able, accordingly, to summarize the necessary information at once, and in the notes on particular sections or passages the reader will be asked to turn for explanation to this summary. To it will be added a few remarks on Arthur Hallam's character and writings. The poem was written ' In Memoriam A. H. H. Obiit MDCCCXXXf II.' A. H. H. was Arthur Henry Hallam, son of Henry Hallam the historian. He was born on February i st, 1 8 1 1 , and was thus about eighteen months younger than Tennyson (born August 6th, 1809). They formed, at Trinity College, Cambridge, an intimate friend- ship which lasted nearly five years. They travelled together on the Rhine and in France. Hallam visited Tennyson's home, and became engaged to the poet's sister Emily. After leaving The Origin of In Memoriam 3 Cambridge he began to read for the bar, living in his father's house in London (67 Wimpole Street). In the summer of 1833 he made a tour on the Continent with his father ; and at Vienna, on September 15 th, died very suddenly and unex- pectedly of a stroke of apoplexy. His body was brought by sea from Trieste to England, and was buried at Clevedon, on the Bristol Channel, on January 3rd, 1834; Clevedon Court being the residence of Sir Abraham Elton, Baronet, Hallam's grandfather on the mother's side. The poem contains references to many of these facts, and also to some matters not directly con- nected with Arthur Hallam, Thus the marriage tour, in 1836, of the poet's brother Charles was the occasion of section XCVIII. Edmund Lushing- ton, who became Professor of Greek at Glasgow, was the friend addressed in "LXXXV., and the Epilogue celebrates his marriage with the poet's sister Cecilia in 1842. Tennyson's early home, the rectory of Somersby, half-way between Horn- castle and Spilsby in Lincolnshire, is referred to in xxviii.-xxx., Lxxviii., Lxxxix., xcv. The family left Somersby in 1837 (C.-CIII.), and settled at High Beech, Epping Forest (civ.-CV.). To describe a character in lyrical verse which scrupulously avoids prosaic expressions must be 4 In Memoriam a most difficult task. Perhaps Tennyson felt this, for the sections of In Memoriam which attempt to fulfil it come late in the poem and seem to be introduced chiefly in order to portray certain characteristics of the ideal humanity of the future. Nor can they be said to convey a vivid idea of Arthur Hallam to those who never saw him. The chief impressions left by them are of a very unusual completeness of character, of an equally rare absence of defects, and of a promise which seemed to his friends almost boundless. But the image is vague, and there is some excuse for those who, judging merely from the poem, have sus- pected Tennyson of greatly over-estimating his friend. The suspicion makes little or no differ- ence to their appreciation of In Memoriam, but it is probably groundless. The accounts of Arthur Hallam given by his other contemporaries closely resemble Tennyson's. Their estimate is the same; and to say that similar estimates may be found in any memoir of a promising youth who died pre- maturely is quite untrue. His college friends ' invariably agreed that it was of him above all his contemporaries that great and lofty expectations were to be formed.' ^ His school-fellows thought • Remains in Verse and Prose of Arthut Henry Hallam, New Edition, 1863. The Origin of In Memoriam 5 that it was rather he than Gladstone that was to be the great man. His father, one whose sobriety of judgment would not be overwhelmed by affection or grief, described him as an ' extra- ordinary young man ' ; and the sentence, ' He seemed to tread the earth as a spirit from some better world,' does not sound exaggerated among the testimonies of Hallam's friends. To the end of his days Tennyson retained the opinion he had formed in youth. Mr. Gladstone, in an extremely interesting article written late in life,^ spoke of Hallam thus : ' Among his contemporaries at Eton ... he stood supreme . . . and the long life through which I have since wound my way, and which has brought me into contact with so many men of rich endowments, leaves him where he then stood so far 'as my estimation is con- cerned. ... It is the simple truth that Arthur Henry Hallam was a spirit so exceptional that everything with which he was brought into rela- tion . . . came to be, through this contact, glorified by a touch of the ideal. ... It is a true case of ostendent terris hunc tantum fata : he resembled a passing emanation from some other and less darkly chequered world.' Such testi- monies as these are irresistible, and they go far to 'It was published in The Daily Telegraph for January 5, 1898. 6 In Memoriam explain what has been criticised as the excessive humility of some parts of In Memoriam. One passage in Mr. Gladstone's article has a special interest when placed side by side with the section of In Memoriam which describes Hallam's probable attitude towards the political movement of the time (cxill.). ' It is evident/ Mr. Glad- stone writes, 'that the great and sudden augmenta- tion of liberty in a thousand forms places under an aggravated strain the balance which governs humanity both in thought and conduct. And I have never . . . known a man who seemed to me to possess all the numerous and varied quali- fications required in order to meet the growing demand, and even its fullest breadth, in anything like the measure in which Arthur Hallam exhi- bited these budding, nay, already flowering gifts.' But Tennyson writes of the dangers of political progress, and Mr. Gladstone has in view those of progress in thought. These are, indeed, alluded to in In Memoriam, CXIV. : but while the poet seems to have considered that Hallam's sphere was likely to be that of public life, the statesman looked to his fulfilling a similar function as a writer on philosophy or theology. Any estimate of the volume of Remains would lead us too far from our purpose, but a few The Origin of In Memoriam 7 passages in it are of immediate interest to readers of Tennyson. Some phrases recall similar phrases in his poems, though we cannot say whether the similarity is due to coincidence, or to unconscious reminiscence on the part of the poet, or even to the use by Hallam of expressions caught from the talk of his friend. Thus the lines (p. 56), My own dear sister, thy career Is all before thee, thorn and flower', and the lines (p. 84), Still am I free to dose my happy eyes. And paint upon the gloom thy mimic form, recall In Memoriam, XLVI. 2, and LXX. 2. When we find Chaucer described as ' our beautiful morn- ing-star' we remember the opening stanza of the Dream of Fair Women} The words, ' that indeed is in the power of God's election, with whom alone rest the abysmal secrets of personality ' (p. 359), remind us of the words in T/ie Palace of Art, God, before whom ever lie bare The abysmal deeps of Personality. Tennyson's references to the early history of ' I do not mean to imply that no one had used the phrase before. It occurs, for instance, in Denham. 8 In Memoriam the earth are paralleled by the following lines to Ben Lomond (p. 1 2) : Oh, if thy dread original were not sunk r th' mystery of universal birth, What joy to know thy tale of mammoths huge, And formings rare of the material prime, And terrible craters, cold a cycle since ! 1 Like the poet, too, Hal lam seems to have had a strong feeling of the utter insignificance of the earth in the 'immense scheme' (p. 360). As we know from the Memoir, Tennyson did not by any means fully share his friend's appre- hensions about the political future, but some words of Hallam's {Remains, p. 1 44) might be taken as a commentary on In Memoriam, CXXVII. : ' Looking then to the lurid presages of the times that are coming ; believing that amidst the awful commo- tions of society, which few of us do not expect — the disruption, it may be, of those common bonds which hold together our social existence, neces- sarily followed by an occurrence on a larger scale of the same things that were witnessed in France forty years ago. . . .' The two friends must often have talked together of that belief in love as the central meaning of things which with Hallam was evidently partly ' ' Cycle ' is common in Tennyson : ' material prime ' occurs in The Two Voices. The Origin of In Memoriam 9 due to his study of Plato, Dante, and Petrarch, and which took a curious shape in his Theodicaa Novissima ; and such sentences as the following (and there are not a few of the kind) have much of the spirit of parts of In Memoriam : ' But it was not in scattered sonnets^ that the whole mag- nificence of that idea could be manifested, which represents love as at once the base and the pyra- midal point of the entire universe, and teaches us to regard the earthly union of souls, not as a thing accidental, transitory, and dependent on the condition of human society, but with far higher import, as the best and the appointed symbol of our relations with God, and through them of his own ineffable essence' (p. 130). This 'idea' is, in essentials, the same as ' that solemn idea which alone solves the enigma of our feelings, and while it supplies a meaning to conscience, explains the destination of man' (p. 170. The student of In Memoriam will find it worth while to read the whole passage down to p. .177). I do not intend to imply by these remarks that, of the two friends, Hallam had the more original and influential mind. We have little evidence, and it is quite possible that many of the ideas in the Remains were not merely common to the two, 'He is referring to Dante. lo In Memoriam but passed from Tennyson to Hallam. What seems nearly certain is that Hallam was more inclined to philosophical and theological specula- tion than his friend then was, and much more inclined to formulate the results of such specula- tion than Tennyson ever became. II. THE COMPOSITION OF IN MEMORIAM. When was In Memoriam written ? We know that its occasion was the death of Arthur Hallam in 1833, and that it was pubh'shed first in 1850.^ Do we know anything of the date of its composi- tion beyond the fact that it came into being during those seventeen years? In considering this question we must be on our guard against inferences drawn from what may be called the internal chronology of the poem. It will be shown presently that the author almost certainly intended to produce the impression that the 131 sections cover a period of about three years. But In Memoriam is ' a poem, not an actual biography.' The poet who speaks in its ^Without sections xxxix. and Lix. of the present text. See notes on these. " In Memoriam various sections is not precisely the same person as the author who composed and arranged them.' And if the latter thought it well to convey the idea that the 'progress of sorrow' portrayed in his work was complete within a certain time, this gives us no ground for supposing that the like progress in his own life was of the same duration, and still less for imagining that the dates of the composi- tion of the various sections correspond to the posi- tions of those sections in the internal chronology of three years. Turning then to the evidence, we find the fol- lowing indications : (i) Statements as to date by Tennyson himself. {a) The Prologue is dated 1849. {b) The Epilogue (9, 10) contains a direct statement which cannot refer to the internal chronology. After an allusion to the ' dark day' of his friend's death the poet goes on, Tho' I since then have number'd o'er Some thrice three years. This gives the date as about 1842, and this was the year of the marriage of Edmund Lushington • with Cecilia Tennyson, which, the poet himself says, was the occasion of his Epilogue. . (0 In a letter to Aubrey de Vere, Tennyson writes : ' With respect to the " Elegies," I cannot The Composition of In Memoriam 13 say that I have turned my attention to them lately. I do not know whether I have done any- thing new in that quarter since you saw them, but I believe I am going to print them ' {Memoir, I. 282). The date is apparently 1848. His corre- spondent first met the poet in 1841 or 1842 {ib. 207), but there is nothing to show when he had last seen the " Elegies." (d) In CXXVII. the phrase ' the red fool-fury of the Seine' does not refer to 1848, as it was ' probably written long before '48.' ^ {e) Finally, the following sentences may be quoted from Tennyson's note on In Memoriam in the Memoir (l. 304, 305) : ' The sections were written at many different places, and as the phases of our intercourse came to my memory and sug- gested them. I did not write them with any view of weaving them into a whole, or for publication, until I found that I had written so many.' (2) Statements as to date by the present Lord Tennyson. (a) In the Memoir we are told that the first- written sections of the poem were the following (I have inserted the numbers) : •Authoritative words in Gatty's Key, p. 138. I suppose they apply to the whole section. 14 In Memoriam Fair ship that from the Italian shore (ix). With trembling fingers did we weave (xxx.) When Lazarus left his charnel cave (xxxi.) This truth came borne with bier and pall (Lxxxv.)i It draweth near the birth of Christ (xxvill., now 'The time draws near'); that the ' earliest jottings of the " Elegies " were begun in 1833'; and that the sections just named (which, I presume, are the '• earliest jottings ' ) are found in a manuscript book containing also the earliest version of The Two Voices, which 'was begun under the cloud of this overwhelming sorrow.' ^ [b) It is also stated that ' the sections of In Memoriam about Evolution had been read by [Tennyson's] friends some years before the publi- cation of the Vestiges of Creation in 1844' {ib. 223). Unfortunately the sections are not " If the reader remembers that this is the retrospective section ot thirty stanzas addressed to Edmund Lushington, he will be startled to learn its date. Certainly, if we had only internal evidence to rely on, a suggestion that this poem was written soon after Hallam's death would be considered almost absurd ; see, for instance, lines 61 ff. It is difficult not to suspect that the section, as we have it, has been greatly changed ; or even that the first stanza alone is early. Observe the break between that stanza and the second. "^Memoir, I. 109, 297; of 139. The likeness of some of the ideas and expressions in sections xliii.-xlvii. and in The Tim Voices may be significant. The Composition of In Memoriam is specified ; but LV., LVI., cxviil., and cxxiii. are presumably among them. (3) Statements from which dates may be in- ferred. Either from the Memoir or from authori- tative insertions in Gatty's Key we gain the following results. {a) Section xcvill. refers to an event of 1836, the marriage-tour of Charles Tennyson and his bride. (J)) Sections C.-Clil. allude to the removal of the Tennysons from Somersby in 1837. (t) Sections civ.-v. allude to their new home at High Beech, Epping Forest. {d) Section LXXXVI. was written at Barmouth, and Tennyson was at Barmouth in 1839, while the Memoir does not, I think, mention any pre- vious visit to that place.^ {e) Edmund Lushington's notes, referring to Christmas 1 84 1, contain the statement; 'the number of the memorial poems had rapidly in- creased since I had seen the poet, his book containing many that were new to me ' ; and he appears to have seen the poet last in the summer of 1840 {Memoir, I. 201, 202). He mentions vi. ' Nor have I found any reference in the Memoir before 1844 to a visit to Gloucestershire, which Tennyson mentions among the locali- ties in which the poems were written (Memoir, I. 305). i6 In Memoriam as though it were one of these new poems, and he says that LI. was 'just composed.' if) Even after 1841 new sections seem to have been added, for Lushington says that in 1 84 5 Tennyson 'showed [him] those poems of In Memoriam which were finished and which were a perfectly novel surprise to [him] ' ; ^ and the words, ' he had then completed many of the cantos in In Memoriam' would naturally imply that other cantos are later than 1845 {ib. 203). C^) It would appear from Rawnsley's Memories of the Tennysons, page 121, that CXXI. was com- posed shortly before the publication of In Memoriam. (4) Indications in the poem. A few passages seem not quite consistent with the internal chronology, and these may point to a compara- tively late date of composition, [a) Section LXVIII. refers to the poet's grief as the trouble of his youth : It is the trouble of my youth That foolish sleep transfers to thee. {b) The section which describes the visit to Cambridge (lxxxvii.), and contrasts the 'boys that crash'd the glass and beat the floor ' with the > He writes as though he had seen none of the poems before 1845. Can a word like 'just ' have been omitted before ' finished ' ? The Composition of In Memoriam 17 friends who once held debate in the same room, seems to imply a considerable lapse of time since the poet's Cambridge days, (c) The pathetic lines in xc, Ah dear, but come thou back to me : Whatever change the years have wrought, I find not yet one lonely thought That cries against my wish for thee, and (d) the phrase in CXIX., ' think of early days and thee,' appear to point in the same direction ; as does (/) the tone of a good many of the con- cluding sections of In Memoriam. In addition it may be observed (/) that, where a section shows a marked resemblance in idea or phrase to a passage in The Princess (1847), this may be significant as to date, and (^) that, if the resem- blance in XLI. to a passage in Zanoni is not a coincidence, that section must be as late as 1842. On the other hand, in the Prologue we have the lines, which in strictness should refer to the whole poem. Forgive these wild and wandering cries, Confusions of a wasted youth ; and the Epilogue (1842) speaks of that change Which makes appear the songs I made As echoes out of weaker times (21, 22). Our results, it must be confessed, are meagre. B i8 In Memoriam We know that certain sections were written soon after Arthur Hallam's death. We have good grounds for believing that certain others belong to the years 1836-37. One or two we can date about 1840, and we have reason to think that a good many fall between that year and the publication of the poem. But the natural inference from the words in the Prologue and the Epilogue is that the bulk of In Memoriam belongs to a time separated by some distance from 1849 and even from 1842. Beyond this we cannot go. We have no right to assume that a section which comes early in the poem was written early, or that a section which comes late was written late ; though we can hardly help thinking it improbable that many of the last thirty or forty sections were composed within a few years of Hallam's death. Nor is our ignor- ance of the least consequence for the understand- ing of the poem. What is of consequence is the order in which the sections now stand. For although the poet 'did not write them with a view of weaving them into a whole,' he found that when they were written they were capable of being thus woven into a whole ; and it seems quite clear that he endeavoured, by arrangement and probably by writing new pieces, to give the The Composition of In Memoriam 19 collection a certain amount of definite and signi- ficant structure. The result is that In Memoriam, though not one poem as Lycidas is one poem, is more than mere 'Fragments of an Elegy' (the title once thought of by the author, Memoir, I. 293), and justifies the name by which he sometimes referred to it, ' The Way of the Soul ' {ib. 393). To fail to observe the changes in this ' Way ' is to miss a great part of the meaning and beauty of In Memoriam. III. THE STRUCTURE OF IN MEMORIAM. I. The most obvious sign of definite structure in In Memoriam consists in the internal chrono- logy, and it will be well to begin by making this clear. Tennyson 1 himself tells us {Memoir, I. 305) that the divisions of the poem are made by the Christmas-tide sections (XXVIIL, LXXVIII., CIV.). That the first of these refers to the first Christmas after the death of the friend in autumn is evident from XXX., 14-16 : We sung, tho' every eye was dim, A merry song we sang with him Last year : ^ ' It will be understood that generally, both in this Introduction and in the Notes, when I speak of 'the poet' I mean the poet who speaks in the poem. I refer to the author who composed the poem as 'Tennyson' or 'the author.' ^ These lines are decisive, and their evidence is not weakened by the fact that some poems referring to the burial precede this The Structure of In Memoriam 21 and we certainly receive the impression from the other Christmas poems that the second refers to the Christmas of the next year, and the third to that of the next again. Thus, when we have reached section CIV., we are distant from the death of the friend about two years and a quarter ; and there is nothing in the sections after CIV. to make us think that they are supposed to cover any length of time. Accordingly, the time imagined to el apse in the , poem may beset d own as ratherj[fis&-than— three-- years. These results are confirmed by other facts. Between the Christmas poems there come occa- sional sections indicating the progress of time by reference to the seasons and to the anniver- saries of the death of the friend ; and between two Christmas poems we never iind a hint that more than one spring or one summer has passed, or that more than one anniversary has come round. After the third Christmas we have a spring poem (CXV.), but after this no sign of summer or of the return of the anniversary of the friend's death. first Christmas section, whereas the burial of Arthur Hallam did not really take place until after Christmas, 1833. The author did not choose to make the internal chronology coincide with the actual order of events. 22 In Memoriam The unmistakable indications of the internal chronology are shown in the following table: Section xi. Early Autumn. XV. Later, xxvili.-xxx. Christmastide. xxxvin.-ix. Spring. LXXii. Anniversary. LXXYIIJ. Christmastide. LXXXlll. Delaying Spring.* LXXXVI., Lxxxvm. Spring. LXXXIX., xcv., xcvill. Summer. XCIX. Anniversary. CIV., cv. Christmastide. cvi. New Year's Day. CVII. Winter, cxv., cxvi. Spring. Against all these indications there seems nothing to be set except the few passages already noted, where a phrase or the tone of a section appears to be not quite in harmony with this internal chrono- logy. That these passages are so few is a proof of the care taken by the author to preserve the clearness and consistency of the scheme. And it is undoubtedly of use in giving the outlines of a structure to the poem, and of still greater use in providing beautiful contrasts between the sections which deal with the recurring seasons and anni- versaries ; though it is somewhat unfortunate that 'That this is not a New Year's Day poem is shown in the Notes. The Structure of In Memoriam 23 the contents of some of the final sections imply a greater distance of time from the opening of the series than is suggested by the chronological scheme. II. If we describe in the most general terms the movement of thought and feeling in In Memoriam, the description will be found to apply also to Lycidas or Adonais. In each case the grief of the opening has passed at the close into triumph : at first the singer thinks only of loss and death, and at last his eyes are fixed upon the vision of a new and greater life. But in Lycidas and Adonais this change is expressed in one con- tinuous strain, and is therefore felt by the reader to occupy but a few hours of concentrated experi- ence ; and in Adonais especially the impression of passionate rapidity in the transition from gloom to glory is essential to the effect. In In Memoriam a similar change is supposed to fill a period of some years, and the impression of a very gradual and difficult advance is no less essential. It is conveyed, of course, not only by the indications of time which have just been considered, but by the mere fact that each of the 131 sections is, in a sense, a poem complete in itself and accordingly felt to be the expression of the thought of one particular time. H In Memoriam In many cases, however, we soon observe that a single section is not really thus independent of its predecessor and successor. On the contrary, some are scarcely intelligible if taken in isolation ; and again and again we discover groups which have one subject, and in which the single sections are devoted to various aspects of this one subject. The poet in his progress has come upon a certain thought, which occupies him for a time and is developed through a series of stages or contrasted ' with a number of other thoughts. And even in cases where we cannot trace such a close connec- tion in thought we often find that several con- secutive sections are bound together, and separated from the poems that surround them, by a common tone of feeling. These groups or clusters corre- spond with single paragraphs of Lycidas, or with single stanzas or groups of stanzas in Adonais \ and their presence forms a second means by which a certain amount of structure is given to the poem. There are many readers of In Memoriam who have never read the poem through, but probably everyone who has done so has recognised to some extent the existence of groups. Everyone remarks, for instance, that near the beginning there are a number of sections referring to the coming of the The Structure of In Memoriam 2$ ship, and that there are other consecutive poems which deal with Christmastide. But perhaps few readers are aware of the large part played by these groups. The fact is that, taken together, they account for considerably more than one-half of the poem ; and in this estimate no notice has been taken of mere pairs of connected sections, such as XIX., XX. ; XLViii., XLix. ; Lvn., LViii. ; CXV., CXVI. ; or of parts of the poem where the sections, though not so closely connected as to form a distinct group, are yet manifestly united in a looser way. If these additions are made to our estimate, it will be found to include nearly lOO poems out of the total of 1 3 1 . Of the remaining sections (a) a small number may properly be called occasion al poems, though the positions which they occupy in the whole are always more or less significant. Such are LXXXVII., which describes the visit to Cambridge ; XCVIII., on the brother's tour to Vienna ; the long retro- spective poem, LXXXV. ; or the poem on Hallam's birthday, evil, (i) Others at once remind us of preceding sections suggested by a like occasion, and in this way bring home to us the change which has taken place in the poet's mind during the interval. The Christmas poems are the most prominent instance; the later spring poems recall 26 In Memoriam the earlier ; the second ' Risest thou thus ' brings back the first ; the two sections beginning, ' Dark house,' and the two poems on the Yew-tree, form similar pairs, (c) Lastly, we find that the sections which immediately follow connected groups are often of one and the same kind. The subject which has occupied the poet's thoughts being dis- missed, there follows a kind of reaction. He looks inward, and becomes more keenly conscious of the feeling from which his attention had been for the time diverted {e.g. XXXVIII.), or of the feeling in which his thoughts have culminated {e.g. LVII.). Not seldom this feeling suggests to him some reflection on his own songs : his singing comforts him on his dreary way, or he feels that it is of no avail, or that it expresses nothing oi his deepest grief. And not only thus at the close of groups, but at various other points throughout In Memoriam there occur sections in which the poet's songs form the subject, pointing backwards and forwards to one another, and showing the change which passes over his mind as time goes on {e.g. v., XXI., LVIII., cxxv.). In these various ways, as well as by the presence of definite groups, some kind of connection is established between section and section almost throughout the whole of the poem. The Structure of In Memoriam 27 III. We are now in a position to observe the structure of this whole, reserving for the Com- mentary the fuller characterisation of particular parts. The ' Way of the Soul ' we find to be a journey from the first stupor and confusion of grief, through a growing acquiescence often dis- turbed by the recurrence of pain, to an almost unclouded peace and joy. The anguish of wounded love passes into the triumph of love over sorrow, time and death. The soul, at first almost sunk in the feeling of loss, finds itself at last freed from regret and yet strengthened, in affection. It pines no longer for the vanished hand and silent voice ; it is filled with the con- sciousness of union with the spirit. The world, which once seemed to it a mere echo of its sorrow, has become the abode of that immortal Love, at once diviae and human, which includes the living and the dead. Is it possible to find in this ' Way ' any turning- point where grief begins to yield to joy, — such a turning-point as occurs in Adonais when indig- nation rouses the poet from his sorrow, and the strain suddenly rises into the solemn affir- mation, ' Peace; peace ! he is not dead, he doth not sleep.' 28 In Memoriam If so, In Memoriam may be considered to fall into two fairly distinct parts, though the dividing- line would not necessarily come, any more than in Adonais, at the centre of the poem. It might seem natural to take the long section Lxxxv. as marking such a line of division, for here the poet himself looks back over the way he has traversed, and when he renews his journey the bitterness of grief seems to have left him. But the passing away of this bitterness has been already clearly observable before section lxxxv. is reached, and the change of tone after that section does not seem sufficiently decided to justify us in regarding it as a central point in the whole. More tempting would be a proposal to con- sider section LVII. as marking the centre of In Memoriam. In these verses the most troubled and passionate part of the poem reaches the acme of a climax, while after them there is, on the whole, a steady advance towards acquiescence. But in reality the distress which culminates in section LVli. is characteristic only of the group which closes with that section ; it is not a distress which has deepened from the outset of the poem; indeed, many tokens of advance have been visible before that group is reached, and the main direc The Structure of In Memoriam 29 tion of the movement towards it is definitely upward.^ If a turning -point in the general feelin g of In Memoriam is to be sought at all, it must certainly be found not in section LVII., nor in section LXXXV., but in the second Christmas poem, LXXVIII. It seems true that, in spite of gradual change, the tone of the poemso_far is, on the whole, melancho ly^ while after LXXyiLt the predominantjtonej;an_scaTcelj^ be caned_eyen_s^ Jtjs-jcather. the feeling of spring- emergiBg-skwady and with difficulty from the glooin__QL_wiiiter. AfiH'TF'is probable that Tennyson himself in- tended this change to be associated with the second coming of Christmas, since the first and the third coming also announce a definite change, ' I am not converted, therefore, by Mr. Beeching's words, which have appeared since the above was written : ' Here the poem, as at first designed, seems to have ended. The 57th elegy [S8th in the copyright text] represents the Muse as urging the poet to a new beginning ; and the 58th [Sgth] was added in the fourth edition, as though to account for the difference in tone between the earlier and later elegies ' (Introduction, p. x). Apart from the objection urged above, the first sentence here seems to be scarcely consistent with Tennyson's own account of the composition of In Memoriam, nor can I believe that he ever thought of ending his poem in tones of despair. But it is certainly true that there is a more marked break at Section LVll. than at Lxxviii. or LXXXV. (The suggestion that the poem was originally intended to cease with LVII. was made in 1892 by Mr. Jacobs (p. 92), whose book was not known to Mr. Beeching. ) 30 In Memoriam and since he says that the divisions of In Memoriam are made by the Christmas sections. At the same time it is questionable whether the transition at section LXXVIII. is so marked as to strike a reader who was not looking for signs of transition ; and, this being so, it would seem to be a mistake to regard In Memoriam as a poem which, like Adonais, shows a dividing line clearly separating one part of the whole from the other. Its main movement is really one of advance almost from the first, though the advance is for a long time very slow. Falling back, then, on the divisions pointed out by the author, we may attempt to characterise the four parts into which the poem will fall, to show the groups contained in each, and to indicate the principal changes in the course of ideas through which the mind of the poet moves. Part I. To the First Christmas. SECTIONS i.-xxvn. The general tone of this part, which is sup- posed to cover a space of about three months, is that of absorptionjn^^rief ; but the poet gradually rises Trom mere suffering to a clearer conviction that 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all, The Structure of In Memoriam 31 and that love may, and ought to, survive the loss of the beloved. There is throughout scarcely any refe renc e t o th e eefttmued existence of— the lost friend. This part contains two distinct groups : (1) Sections IX.-XVII. (or xx.),^ referring to the coming of the ship (or to this and to the burial). (2) Sections XXII.-XXV., a retrospect of the years of friendship. Part II. I'o the Second Christmas. SECTIONS XXVIII.-LXXVII. This part of the poem has some marked char- acteristics, (a) From beginning to end the idea of the continued life of the dead is prominent, far- more prominent than in any of the other three parts, {b) It is through reflection on this idea and on the problems suggested by it that the poet wins his way forward ; so that this is the part of In Memoriam which contains most semi-philosophic speculation. (c) Hence this part consists almost wholly of distinct groups with intervening sections, and there are but few ' occasional ' poems. ' Here, as in a few other cases, It is a matter of doubt, and even of indifference, at which of two sections the group is best taken to close. 32 In Memoriam The following brief analysis of the groups will indicate the course of the poet's thoughts : (i) Sections xxvill.-xxx. Christmastide. The thought of the continued life of the dead emerges in an hour of exaltation. (2) Sections xxxi.-xxxvi. This continued life is at once a ' truth revealed,' and a fact implied in the constitution of human nature. The group accordingly is concerned in part with the difference between two forms of faith in immortality. (3) Sections XL.-XLVII. Immortality being as- sumed, the question of future reunion is raised. This involves the question (which is the main subject of the group) whether the earthly life is remembered beyond death. Only an affirmative answer would satisfy the demand of love. (4) Sections l.-lvi. The poet's desire that the dead friend should remember him and be near him now (as well as in a future life) is followed by fears and doubts raised by the thought, first, of his own unworthiness, and then of all the pain, waste, and evil in the world. These doubts cannot be silenced by reason ; and the poet's hope that good is the end of evil, and love the ■ The Structure of In Memoriam 33 law of creation, is sustained only by blind trust. (5) Sections LX.-LXV. The poet returns to his desire that his friend should think of him now. His hopes and fears on this subject are free from the distress of the preceding group, and issue in the acceptance of ignorance, and in faith that love cannot be lost. Here, and in the remainder of Part II., there is a gradual advance towards quiet regret, sympathy with others, and a peaceful recognition of the beauty of the past and the influence of the lost friend. (6) Sections LXVII.-LXXI. On Night, Sleep, and Dreams. (7) Sections LXXIII.-LXXVII. On Fame. The poet writes of his friend's loss of fame on earth and gain of fame in another world, and of the brevity of any fame which his own songs could win for his friend. Part III. To the Third Christmas. SECTIONS Lxxvni.-cm. Of the four parts this contains the greatest number of sections which may be called 'occa- 34 In Memoriam sional.' The idea of the future life retires again' into the background. (1) The prevailing tone of sections LXXIX.- LXXXIX. (not to be considered a group) is that of quiet and not unhappy retrospec- tion, and a sense of new and joyful life begins to appear. (2) Sections XC.-XCV. form a closely connected group on the possible contact of the living and the dead. The idea is considered from various sides, and appears to be realised in' the trance recorded in XCV. (3) Sections C-CIII. form a group which has for its subject the poet's farewell to the home of childhood. He begins to turn his eyes from the past. Part IV. From the Third Christmas. SECTIONS CIV.-CXXXI. Throughout this part, even when the poet is thinking of the past, he is looking forward into the future. Regret is passing away, but love is growing and widening. The dead friend is re- garded not only as a friend, but as a type of the nobler humanity to come, and as mingled The Structure of In Memoriam 35 with that Love which is the soul of the universe. (i) Sections CIV.-CVI. form a group dealing with Christmas and New Year in the new home. (2) Sections CVII., CVIII. express the poet's resolve to turn from the grief of the past. (3) Sections CIX.-CXIV. describe the character of « the dead friend, and incidentally the dangers of the progress of mankind. (4) Sections CXVII.-CXXXI. are not so closely con- nected as to form a group, but they are united by their expression of faith in the future both of the individual and of humanity. In form many of them are retrospective^ the poet looking back to the struggles through which he has won his way to entire faith in the omnipotence of love.' ^In conversation with Mr. James Knowles, Tennyson gave a division of In Memoriam into nine parts, as follows: (i) l.-vili. ; (2) IX.-XX. ; (3) XXI.-XXVII. ; (4) XXVIII.-XLIX. ; (5) L.-LVin. ; (6) Lix.-Lxxi. ; (7) Lxxn.-xcviii. ; (8) xcix.-ciii. ; (9) civ.- cxxxi. As nothing is said of this arrangement in his notes on In Memoriam printed in the Memoir, it is to be supposed that he was not satisfied with it. It ignores the Second Christmas poem. IV. THE 'WAY OF THE SOUL.' It is a fashion at present to ascribe the great popularity of In Memoriam entirely to the 'teaching' contained in it, and to declare that its peculiar position among English elegies has nothing to do with its poetic qualities. This is equivalent to an assertion that, if the so-called substance of the poem had been presented in common prose/ the work would have gained the same hold upon the mass of educated readers that is now possessed by the poem itself. Such an assertion no one would make or consciously imply. The ordinary reader does not indeed attempt to separate the poetic qualities of a work from some other quality that appeals to him ; much less does he read the work in terror of 'This, in strictness, is an impossible supposition. Anything that could be so presented would not be really the substance of the poem. 36 The ^ Way- of the Soul ' 37 being affected by the latter ; but imagination and diction and even versification can influence him much as they influence the people who talk about them, and he would never have taken In Memoriam to his heart if its consoling or uplifting thoughts had not also touched his fancy and sung in his ears. It is true, however, that he dwells upon these thoughts, and that the poem is often valued by him for its bearing upon his own life ; and true again that this is one reason why he cares for it far more than for elegies certainly not inferior to it as poems. And perhaps here also many devotees of poetry may resemble him more than they suppose. This peculiar position of In Memoriam seems to be connected with two facts. In the first place, it alone among the most famous English elegies is a poem inspired by deep personal ' feelings. Arthur Hallam was a youth of extra- ordinary promise, but he was also ' dear as the mother to the son.' The elegy on his death, therefore, unlike those on Edward King or Keats or Clough, bears the marks of a passionate grief and affection ; and the poet's victory over sorrow, like his faith in immortality, is felt to be won in a struggle which has shaken the centre of his being. And then, as has been observed already. 38 In Memoriam the grief and the struggle are portrayed in all their stages and phases throughout months and years ; and each is depicted, not as it may have appeared when the victory was won, but as it was experienced then and there. In other elegies for example, scarcely anything is to be found re- sembling the earlier sections, which describe with such vividness and truth the varied feelings of a new grief; scarcely anything, again, like the night- poems (lxvii. ff.), or the poem of the second anniversary (XCIX.), or those of the third spring- time (CXV., CXVI.). Stanzas like these come home to readers who never cared for a poem before, and were never conscious of feeling poetically till sorrow opened their souls. Thus much of In Memoriam is nearer to ordinary life than most elegies can be, and many such readers have found ? in it an expression of their own feelings, or have looked to the experience which it embodies as a guide to a possible conquest over their own loss. 'This,' they say to themselves as they read, 'is what I dumbly feel. This man, so much greater than I, has suffered like me and has told me how he won his way to peace. Like me, he has been forced by his own disaster to meditate on "the riddle of the painful earth," and to ask whether the world can really be governed by a law of love, and The ' Way of the Soul ' 39 !s not rather the work of blind forces, indifferent to the value of all that they produce and destroy.' A brief review, first of the experience recorded in In Memoriam, and then of the leading ideas employed in it, may be of interest to such readers, and even to others, as it may further the under- standing of the poem from one point of view, although it has to break up for the time that unity of substance and form which is the essence of poetry. The early sections portray a soul in the first anguish of loss. Its whole interest is fixed on one thing in the world ; and, as this thing is taken away, the whole world is darkened. In the main, the description is one of a common experience, and the poem shows the issue of this experience in a particular case. Such sorrow is often healed by forgetfulness. The soul, flinching from the pain of loss, or apprehensive of its danger, turns away, at first with difficulty, and afterwards with increasing ease, from the thought of the beloved dead. 'Time,' or the incessant stream of new impres- sions, helps it to forget. Its sorrow gradually perishes, and with its sorrow its love ; and at last 'all it was is overworn,' and it stands whole and sound It is not cynical to say that this is a 40 In Memoriaih frequent history, and that the ideas repelled in section XC. are not seldom true. Sometimes, again, the wound remains unhealed, although its pain is dulled. Here love neither dies nor changes its form ; it remains a painful longing for something gone, nor would anything really satisfy it but the entire restoration of that which is gone. All the deeper life of the soul is absorbed in this love, which from its exclusively personal character is unable to coalesce with other interests and prevents their growth. In neither of these extreme cases is there that victory of which the poet thinks even in the first shock of loss, when he remembers how it has been said That men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things. In the first case there is victory of a kind, but it is a victory which in the poet's eyes is defeat; the soul may be said to conquer its sorrow, but it does so by losing its Icve ; it is a slave in the triumph of Time. In the second case, the ' self refuses to die and conquers time, but for that very reason it is bound to the past and unable to rise to higher things. The experience portrayed in In Memoriam corresponds with neither case, but it resembles each in one particular. Sorrow is The ' Way of the Soul ' 41 healed, but it is not healed by the loss of love : ' for the beloved dead is the object of continual thought, and when regret has passed away love is . found to be not less but greater than before. On the other hand regret does pass away, and love does not merely look forward to reunion with its object but unites freely with other interests. It is evident that the possibility of this victory depends upon the fact that, while love does not die, there is something in the soul which does die. The self ' ' rises ' only on the basis of a ' dead self.' In other | words, love changes though it does not perish or; fade ; and with the change in it there is a corre- 1 sponding change in the idea of its object. The' poem exhibits this process of two-fold change. At the beginning love desires simply that which was, the presence and companionship of the lost friend ; and this it desires unchanged and in its entirety. It longs for the sight of the face, the sound of the voice, the pressure of the hand. These doubtless are desired as tokens of the soul ; but as yet they are tokens essential to love, and that for which it pines is the soul as known and loved through them. If the mourner attempts to think of the dead apart from them, his heart remains cold, or he recoils : he finds that he is thinking of a phantom ; ' an awful thought ' 43 In Memoriam instead of 'the human-hearted man he loved'- 'a spirit, not a breathing voice.' This he does not and cannot love. It is an object of awe, not of affection ; the mere dead body is a thousand- fold dearer than this,— naturally, for this is not really a spirit, a thinking and loving soul, but a ghost. As then he is unable to think of the object of his love except as ' the hand, the lips, the eyes,' and 'the meeting of the morrow,' he feels that what he loves is simply gone and lost, and he finds his one relief in allowing fancy to play about the thought of the tokens that remain (see the poems to the ship). The process of change consists largely in the conquest of the soul over its bondage to sense. So long as this bondage remains, its desire is fixed on that which really is dead, and it cannot advance. But gradually it resigns this longing, and turns more and more to that which is not dead. The first step in its advance is the ' perception that love itself is of infinite value and may survive the removal of the sensible presence of its object. But no sooner has this conviction been reached and embraced (XXVII.) than suddenly the mourner is found to have transferred his interest from the sensible presence to the soul itself, while, on the other hand, the soul is no The ' Way of the Soul ' 43 longer thought of as a mere awful phantom, but has become what the living friend had been, something both beloved and loving (xxx.). This conquest is, indeed, achieved first in a moment of exaltation which cannot be maintained ; but its result is never lost, and gradually strengthens. The feeling that the soul of the dead is something shadowy and awful departs for ever, and step by step the haunting desire for the bodily presence retires. Thought is concentrated on that which lives, the beauty of the beloved soul, seen in its reniembered life on earth, and doubtless shown more fully elsewhere in a life that can be dimly imagined. At last the pining for what is gone dies completely away, but love is found to be but stronger for its death, and to be no longer a source of pain. It has grown to the dimensions of its object, and this object is not only distant and desired, but also present and possessed. And more — the past (which is not wholly past, since it lives and acts in the soul of the mourner) has lost its pang and retained its loveliness and power : ' the days that are no more ' become a life in death instead of a ' death in life ' ; and even the light of the face, the sound of the voice, and the pressure of the hand, now that the absorbing desire for them is still, return in the quiet inward world. 44 In Memoriam Another aspect of this change is to be noticed. So long as the mourner's sorrow and desire are fixed on that which dies they withdraw his interest from all other things. His world seems to depend for its light on that which has passed away, and he cries, ' All is dark where thou art not.' But as ! his love and its object change and grow, this exclusiveness lessens and its shadow shrinks. His heart opens itself to other friendships ; the sweet- ness of the spring returns ; and the 'mighty hopes' for man's future which the friend had shared, live again as the dead friend ceases to be a silent voice and becomes a living soul. Nor do the reviving activities simply flourish side by side with love for this soul, and still less do they compete with it. Rather they are one with it. The dead man lives in the living, and ' moves him on to nobler ends.' It is at the bidding of the dead that he seeks a friendship for the years to come. His vision of the ideal man that is to be is a memory of the man that trod this planet with him in his youth. He had cried, ' All is dark where thou art not,' and now he cries, Thy voice is on the rolling air ; ( I hear thee where the waters run ; Thou standest in the rising sun. And in the setting thou art fair. The ' Way of the Soul ' 45 For the sake of clearness little has been so far said of the thoughts of the mourner regarding the life beyond death. These thoughts touch two main subjects, the hope of reunion, and the desire that the dead friend should think of the living and should even communicate with him. The re-^ current speculations on the state of the dead spring from this hope and this desire. They recur less frequently as the soul advances in its victory. This does not mean that the hope of reunion diminishes or ceases to be essential to the mourner's peace and faith ; but speculation on the nature both of this reunion and of the present life of the dead is renounced, and at last even abruptly dismissed (evil., cvill.). The singer is content to be ignorant and to wait in faith. It is not quite so with the desire that the dead friend should now remember the living, and should even communicate with him. True, this desire is at one moment put aside without unhappiness (LXV.), and it ceases to be an urgent and disturb- ing force. But long after the pining for the bodily presence has been overcome, it remains and brings with it pain and even resentment. It seems to change from a hope of ' speech ' or ' converse ' to a wish that the dead should in some way be ' near ' to or ' touch ' the living ; and thus 46 In Memoriam it suggests the important group of sections XC-XCV. /' Here the poet even wishes at first for a vision ; and although he at once reflects that neither this nor any other appeal to sense could convince him that the dead was really with him,* he does not surrender either here or later (cxxil.) the idea of some more immediate contact of souls.^ On the other hand, he is not sure that the idea is realised, nor does his uncertainty disturb his peace. What he desires while he remains on earth is contact with 'that which is,' the reality which is half revealed and half concealed by nature and man's earthly life, and which, by its contact, convinces him of the reason and love that rule the world ; and, as now he thinks of his friend as 'living in God,' he neither knows nor seeks to know whether that which touches him is to be called the soul of his friend or by some higher name. It appears then that the victory over sorrow portrayed in the poem is dependent upon a ' His reflections on the difficulty or impossibility of any such proof are expressed in xcn. with a conciseness which is charac- teristic of Tennyson and conceals from many readers the full force and bearing of his thoughts. 'This idea is not confined to In Memoriam. Tennyson, we are told, thought ' that there might be a more intimate communion than we could dream of between the living and the dead, at all events for a time' (Memoir, I. 320). The ' Way of the Soul ' 47 change in the love felt by the living for the dead, and upon a corresponding change in the idea of the dead. And some readers may even be inclined to think that the change is so great that at last the dead friend has really ceased to be to the living an individual person. He is, they will say, in some dim fashion ' mixed with God and Nature,' and as completely lost in ' the general soul ' as is Adonais in Shelley's pantheistic poem : and so the poet's love for him has not merely changed, it has perished, and its place has been taken by a feeling as vaguely general and as little personal as the object to which it is directed. As my purpose is neither to criticise nor to defend the poet's ideas, but simply to represent them, I will confine myself to pointing out that the poem itself flatly denies the charge thus brought against it, and by implication denies the validity of the antitheses on which the charge rests. It is quite true that, as the poet advances, he abandons all attempts to define the life beyond death, and to form an image of his friend, ' whate'er he be. ' It is quite true also that he is conscious that his friend, at once human and divine, known and unknown, far and near, has become something ' strange,' and is ' darklier understood ' than in the old days of earthly life. But it is equally clear 48 In Memoriam that to the poet his friend is not a whit less himself because he is 'mixed with God and Nature,' and that he is only 'deeplier loved' as he becomes ' darklier understood.' And if the hope of reunion is less frequently expressed as the sense of present possession gains in strength, there is nothing in the poem to imply that it becomes less firm as the image of reunion becomes less definite. The reader may declare that it ought to do so ; he may apply to the experience here portrayed his customary notions of human and divine, personal and impersonal, individual and general ; and he may argue that whatever falls under one of these heads cannot fall under the other. But whether his ideas and his argument are true or false, the fact is certain that for the experience portrayed in In Memoriam (and, it may be added, in Adonais also) they do not hold. For the poets the soul of the dead, in being mingled with nature, does not lose its personality; in living in God it remains human and itself; it is still the object of a love as ' personal ' as that which was given to the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still. THE IDEAS USED IN IN MEMORIAM.^ An understanding of the poem may be furthered, and the necessity for detailed explanations of particular passages may be avoided, if we now raise the questions : How does Tennyson habitu- ally think of the soul and its future, and on what does his faith appear to be based ? Here certain cautions must be borne in mind. In the first place we must distinguish between that which is all-important and that which is of secondary interest/" For example, it is evident that to Tennyson the fact of immortality was both certain and essential ; but his ideas as to the precise nature of the future life or lives stand on ^ In the following pages I have not attempted to maintain the distinction between ' Tennyson ' and ' the poet ' who speaks in his poetry ; but it must be remembered that one has not in strictness a right to regard as an author's own opinion any statement he may make in a poem. D 49 so In Memoriam another level. It is useful to review these ideas, because they show us the world in which his imagination was accustomed to move ; but they were not to him matters either of certainty or of great practical import. And, in the second place, we have to remember that Tennyson neither was nor professed to be a philosopher, and we must not expect from him either the exactness of language or the form of consecutive reasoning which are required in philosophy. In one section of In Memoriam (XLVIII.) he disclaims the intention of dealing fully or even seriously with the problems on which he has touched. Up to the time when he finished the poem he does not appear to have made any study of philosophers ; and though a few of his later poems bear marks of some reading of this kind, and even employ terms too technical for poetry, in general the language remains that of imagination, and the form of argumentation or strict statement is never adopted. The reader, therefore, must not expect system or definition ; he must not press hardly on single phrases or sentences, but must use them in order to feel his way into the poet's mind. (i) If we try to picture the soul's history, as Tennyson habitually imagines it, our first question The Ideas used in the Poem 51 must be : When did this history begin ? Some- times, we find, he imagines a previous existence, or more than one, in which the soul was either embodied or else ' floated free ' ; and certain strange longings and dim visions which haunt its earthly life are regarded as faint recollections of a previous state (so, e.g., in Tke Two Voices, The Ancient Sage, Far, far away). But much more often, and in In Menioriam probably always,^ the earthly life is thought of as the first life of the soul, which is then figured as coming from the ' deep ' of a larger spiritual being, or as detaching itself, or being detached, from the ' general soul.' This process is coincident with, or the spiritual complement of, certain changes in matter which issue in the body of the soul ; ^ and later, through experience gained by means of this body, the soul developes into self-consciousness or personality (XLV.). That which is deepest and most real in it is sometimes spoken of as will or free-will, to Tennyson the ' main-miracle, apparently an act of self-limitation by the Infinite, and yet a revelation by Himself of Himself ^ > The life on earth need not be considered here. At death the union of soul and body is dissolved. 1 See on XLiv. '' See on cxx. ^Memoir, I. 316. Cf. Dt Profundis, and cxxxi. 5? In Memoriam The idea that thereupon the soul passes at once tc a final state of bliss or woe, is on the whole foreign to the poet's mind, and is repudiated (in Th Ring). So is the idea that at the end of the earthly life the soul at once remerges intp the general soul so as to lose its individuality (XLVli.). And again the idea that at death the soul falls into a long sleep from which it will awake unchanged, though entertained as a possibility in XLIII., is j evidently not habitual with the poet. He habitu- |ally imagines the soul as entering on a second individual life immediately after death. The new life is almost always, if not always, thought of as implying a new embodiment ; and sometimes, perhaps generally, this embodiment is supposed to take place on some other world or 'star.' The soul's second life, if it lived well on earth, is re- garded as free from many of the limitations and defects of the first. Though occasionally described as though it were an existence of merely con- templative happiness, it is generally imagined as a life of activity in which the soul takes part in some common work and so advances on the path of progress. Usually, though not always, the poet thinks of the soul as remembering its past and its earthly companions ; occasionally he imagines it as being, at least for a time, peculiarly ' near' to The Ideas used in the Poem 53 the beloved on earth and perhaps even able to ' touch ' them without the intervention of sense ; as a rule, and in In Memoriam habitually, he thinks of a reunion and recognition, in the next life, of souls dear to one another in this. The second life is supposed to be succeeded by death, on which follows a third embodied life ; and this process is repeated again and again for ages, the soul in each embodiment reaching a higher stage of being, and approaching more and more nearly to God.^ The union with God in which this progress would presumably terminate, the poet naturally does not attempt to imagine ; but it is noticeable that, if we may judge from XLVII. and the phrases quoted in Memoir, I. 319, the idea of an ultimate ' absorption into the divine ' was not, like the idea of an immediate absorption, repugnant to him ; and perhaps with this we may connect the fact that in the trance-experience which he several times described, ' the loss of personality (if so it were) ' seemed to him ' no extinction but the only true life' {Memoir, I. 320). Of the future of souls which grew worse with time in their earthly state he does not write, but, as his later poems show, he could not entertain the belief that any soul would in the end be excluded from ^See, e.g., De Profundis. 54 In Memoriam a God of love. The 'larger hope' of LV,, and perhaps the one far-off divine event To virhich the vi^hole creation moves (Epilogue), are phrases which refer to the final reconciliation or union of alj, souls with their divine source. (2) How many of the ideas just summarised were to the poet matters of belief and of essential importance we do not know; and therefore, in turning to the question of the basis of his belief in immortality, we must dismiss the greater part of them, and must understand by 'immortality' simply the conscious and indefinitely pTolonged life of the soul beyond death. For this was to him undoubtedly a matter of fixed belief, and of an importance so great that life without the belief in it seemed to him to have neither sense nor value. We must remember also that immortality was to his mind a fact of the same order as the existence of a God of love, so that what is said of the grounds of his faith in the one may often be taken to apply also to the grounds of his faith in the other ; and where the two ideas are not regarded as thus coordinate, the belief in im- mortality is considered as a consequence of belief in God, so that the basis of the latter is indirectly also the foundation of the former. The Ideas used in the Poem 55 In the first place, then, it is clear that God and immortality are to the poet matters not of know- ledge or proof, but of faith. Concerning them We have but faith : we cannot know ; For knowledge is of things we see. V We embrace them ' by faith, and faith alone,' Believing where we cannot prove. (Cf. cxxxi.) y' This position is maintained throughout Tennyson's poetry, and is set forth most fully and maturely in the following lines from The Ancient Sage : Thou canst not prove the Nameless, O my son, Nor canst thou prove the world thou movest in. Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone. Nor canst thou prove that thou art spirit alone, Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one : Thou canst not prove thou art immortal, no Nor yet that thou art mortal — nay my son. Thou canst not prove that I, who speak with thee, Am not thyself in converse with thyself, For nothing worthy proving can be proven. Nor yet disproven : wherefore thou be wise. Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt, And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith I The ideas of God and immortality, in the next place, are not for the poet thej^esult of reasoning upon the phenomena of external Nature. He appears to have held consistently throughout his life, that if we did not bring them with us to the 56 In M emoriam , examination of Nature, but simply used our reason upon it without taking into account the evidence derived from our own nature, we should not believe either in God or in immortality. As an undergraduate he voted No on the question raised in the Apostles' Society, Is an intelligible First Cause deducible from the phenomena of the universe ? i {Memoir, I. 44.) He would say, on , looking through the microscope, 'Strange that ' these wonders should draw some men to God and repel others. No more reason in one than in the other' {lb. 102). And so the poet in In Memoriam declares : I found Him not in world or sun. Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye. (cxxiv.) Nay, in his dark hour, it even seems to him that the message of Nature is a terrible one ; that, ' red in tooth and claw with ravine,' she 'shrieks against his creed ' ; that the world is a process of cease- less change, in which individual existences arise to pass without return ; that its forces show no token that they value life more than death, good more than evil, or the soul more than a grain of sand. And though these are but ' evil dreams ' bom of •And 'an intelligible First Cause' is less than a ' God of love, or 'something that watches over us' (Tennyson's words to Mr. Knowles). The Ideas used in the Poem 57 his distress,^ and Nature appears to him far other- wise when he views it, as he habitually does, in the light of ideas derived from another source, he is still constant to the position that Nature, regarded by itself, would not convince him of immortality or God. So far all is clear. And the positive question. Whence then, according to the poet, is the faith in these ideas derived ? admits of an easy answer in general terms. ' Such ideas,' he says, ' we get from ourselves, from what is highest within us' {Memoir, i. 314). But when we proceed to ask. What is this ' highest within us ' ? we find diffi- culties, and it is certainly not safe to found an answer, as is often done, upon three or four lines in a single section of In Memoriam. Our best plan will rather be to collect and place in order some crucial passages from various poems, and then to elicit a result from them. 'The lines referred to, and similar lines, are often completely misunderstood. It is absurd to quote them as expressing Tennyson's habitual view of Nature, or as his description of the universe regarded by ' cold reason.' They describe the world as regarded by a reason which is turning away from all the evidence afforded by human nature, and which is, moreover, being used hurriedly and in alarm. It is no less a misunderstanding to suppose Tennyson to say or hint that, even with all the evidence before it, reason draws con- clusions hostile to the ideas of God and immortality : what he says is that reason cannot prove the truth of these ideas. 58 In Memoriam (a) tn The Two Voices one voice pleads that the senses tell us ' the dead are dead.' The poet answers : Who forged that other influence, That heat of inward evidence, By which [man] doubts against the sense? He owns the fatal gift of eyes, That read his spirit bhndly wise, Not simple as a thing that dies. Here sits he shaping wings to fly : His heart forebodes a mystery : He names the name Eternity. That type of Perfect in his mind In Nature can he nowhere find. He sows himself on every wind. This does not mean that he imposes his own fancies on the universe ; rather, these inward evidences are regarded as the witness of the power which reaches ' through Nature moulding men,' and ' revealing ' itself ' in every human soul ' {Memoir, II. 420). (b) They are often said to come through feel- ing, or are called feeling. God, to the Ancient Sage, is That which knows And is not known, but felt thro' wljat we feel Within ourselves is highest. And, in particular, as love is the highest we feel, we must believe that God is Love {Memoir, ll The Ideas used in the Poem 59 377). So in In Memoriam (CXXIV.) the "evil dreams ' which Nature lends are opposed by feel- ing or the heart : A warmth within the breast would melt The freezing reason's colder part, And like a man in wrath the heart Stood up and answered ' I have felt ' ; and, in his distress, the poet cries to what he ' feels is Lord of all.' In In Memoriam, again, it is chiefly (though not solely) the presence of love within himself that makes the poet declare ijthat, '^'Tvithout immortality, life would be valueless, and man a monster, because combining the contra- dictory attributes of love and mortality : and in Vastness the similar passionate assertions that nothing in the world could matter if man were doomed to perish, are suddenly broken off with the words : Peace, let it be ! for I loved him, and love him for ever : the dead are not dead but alive. (c) Finally, in The Two Voices the poet appeals to mysterious intimations : Heaven opens inward, chasms yawn, Vast images in glimmering dawn, Half shown, are broken and withdrawn. Moreover, something js or seems, That touches me with mystic gleams, Like glimpses of forgotten dreams. 6o In Memoriam So in the Holy Grail and the Ancient Sage refer, ence is made to the inward evidence of exceptional moments when everything material becomes un- real or visionary, yet there is in the soul 'no shade of doubt, But utter clearness,' and man feels he cannot die, And knows himself no vision to himself, Nor the high God a vision.' And so, in In Memoriam, not only is this trancelike experience one in which the soul comes ' on that which is,' and for a moment seems to understand the riddle of the world (xcv.), but the cry of distress to what is felt as Lord of all is immediately followed by the vision of the reality behind appearances : And what I am beheld again What is, and no man understands. (CXXIV.) If now we consider these various passages, what answer do they give to our question concerning the basis of the poet's faith ? They show at once that it does not suffice to take the stanza ending ' I have felt,' and to reply :' Tennyson thinks that the emotions or ' heart ' cannot be^satisfied without a belief in God and immortality, and that is the sole ground of his belief For this account of the '^Holy Grail, sub fin. I omit the following words, 'nor that One Who rose again,' because the speaker is King Arthur, and because this idea does not appear to be used as a source of evidence elsewhere. The Ideas used in the Poem 6i matter, even if it were satisfactory for one passage, evidently does not apply to others, The ' highest within us ' seems to be generally accompanied by emotion, but not always, or even generally, to be an emotion. Often it is love, but it is obviously not so in the lines quoted from The Two Voices, nor apparently in those from the Holy Grail and the Ancient Sage ; and love, to which the appeal is made in In Memoriam, XXXIV., xxxv., is coupled with other high activities and achievements in LVI., and is not referred to at all in the lines from xcv. or the last Hnes of CXXIV. The 'highest within us ' means many things, and its meaning could be further extended if we went beyond our list of passages. Nor is the use made of this consciousness of a higher always the same. * It seems to be of two distinct kinds. Sometimes the poet, looking at that which he feels to be highest in himself, finds it to point beyond earthly experience ; and on this characteristic of it he founds what is, in effect, an argument in favour of immortality or the divine origin of the soul. So it is with the shaping of wings that yet can never fly on earth ; or the presence of the ideas of eternity and perfection which cannot be derived from mere nature nor realised here ; or the mysterious intimations of 62 In Memoriam The Two Voices. So it is also with love, which appears to the poet to imply in its very nature the immortality both of itself and of its object To him the existence of these tokens of immor- tality in man, if it were coupled with the fact of mortality, would make man an inexplicable ' monster,' and deprive both his life and the history of the earth of all their meaning. This then is one way in which his consciousness of the best within him yields a basis for the poet's faith'; and when he replies to the freezing reason ' I have felt,' the feeling he appeals to is not the desire to be immortal, nor yet a feeling that he is immortal, but the feeling of love, which he points to as a fact inconsistent with the theory of the world put forward in his dark mood by his reason. But there is another way. When King Arthur says that there are moments when he feels he cannot die ; when God is said to be felt through what we feel within ourselves is highest ; when the poet speaks of that which he feels is Lord of all, there is a more direct appeal to something called feeling.^ Here the poet does not point to ' With these passages, cf. the famous speech beginning ' Misshor ' mich nicht' in the scene Marthens Garten in Faust, Part I., and also the contrast of feeling and ' the reasoning power ' in The Excursion, Book IV., towards the end (' I have seen A curious child,' etc.). The Ideas used in the Poem 63 something within him which seems to imply immortality or God, and from which therefore these may be inferred ; the feelings of which he speaks are, or give, an immediate assurance of God or of immortality. It would probably be vain to attempt to define these ' feelings ' more exactly, or to ask whether the poet's meaning was simply that at certain moments, recognised by him as his highest, he was unable to doubt the exist- ence of God and immortality, or whether he meant that at these moments he appeared to himself to have a direct and positive apprehension of the soul as immortal, and of God as Love.^ What is clear is that, on the one hand, these feelings are not merely what we generally call emotions, since a certainty of God and immortality is conveyed in them ; and that, on the other hand, the assurance they convey is direct or immediate, not dependent on reasoning or ' proof Such phrases, in the descriptions of the trance-like state, as ' came on that which is,' ' beheld what is,' ' knows himself no vi'sion,' are evidently meant to indicate this same immediate certainty. It is on the second of these two kinds of ' This certainly does seem to be implied or asserted in some of the phrases quoted, and especially in some which describe the trance- like experience. But these phrases do not refer, at any rate explicitly, to immortality; nor is it safe to lay weight on them. 64 In Memoriam ' inward evidence ' that the poet seems to lay most stress. And the reason of this doubtless is that the first kind obviously involves a process of reasoning, and that to him this process is not accompanied by the conviction of certainty. It falls short of ' proof Thus in The Two Voices the presence in the soul of certain ideas, activities, and feelings, was taken to point to the divine origin and the immortality of that soul, but it did not give the ' assurance ' for which the poet longed, and which came later when, at the sound of a mysterious inner voice which whispered hope, From out [his] sullen heart a power Broke, like the rainbow from the shower, To feel, altho' no tongue can prove, That every cloud, that spreads above And veileth love, itself is love. In the same way it seems clear to him that a being who can love as he loves, and who yet is doomed to perish, is a ' monstef,' a ' dream,' a ' discord ' ; but this does not give him assurance that the soul is not such a monstrosity. On the other hand the ' feelings ' of which he speaks in the passages quoted, like the experience of the trance-like state, involve for him no process of inference, do not pretend to ' prove,' and do carry with them the ' assurance ' he requires. The Ideas used in the Poem 65 Indeed, the language used of these feelings and experiences is of such a kind that one is tempted to ask why, after all, the poet should declare that We have but faith : we cannot know ; For knowledge is of things we see : since the immediate certainty claimed for these feelings would appear to be, or to justify, some- thing more than faith or a believing of what we cannot prove. Perhaps he distrusted what he could not suppose to be the common possession of mankind. Or perhaps his answer would be found in Wordsworth's lines which tell us that it is the most difficult of tasks to keep Heights which the soul is competent to gain. She gains them, he might say, in exceptional moments ; and the experience of these moments, when she is conscious of being at her best, be- comes the light of her life. But they come rarely, and they pass quickly away, or, it may be, are ' stricken thro' with doubt ' (xcv.). The soul sinks back and loses its contact with reality, and in the long intervals between these visits must rely on memory and hope, living in the assurance, not of vision or feeling, but of faith in what it once saw and felt. This faith is not an adherence to something which reason declares false, but it is 66 In Memoriam an adherence to something which reason cannot prove to be true ; for that which can be ' known ' or proved is always a limited and subordinate truth, while the ' systems and creeds ' which strive to render intelligible to the soul the experience of her highest moments, lack on the one hand the ' assurance ' of those moments themselves, and on the other hand the certainty of the lower truths which can be proven and are not 'worthy proving.' VI. A FEW words may be added on two purely literary matters. One of these is the metre of In Memoriatn. It is uncommon, and, so far as I am aware, no example of it has been found in English poetry prior to the Elizabethan Age. From that time down to Tennyson's it was occasionally used, how rarely may be judged from the brevity of the following list of instances, either of the metre itself or of a four-line four-accent stanza with the same disposition of rhymes : Sidney, Astrophel and Stella^ Second Song (trochaic, with double rhymes in lines i and 4), and Psalm xxxvii. (double rhymes in lines 2 and 3) ; Shakespeare, The Phoenix and Turtle (trochaic) ; Jonson, Un- derwoods, xxxix. {An Elegy), and Catiline, Chorus in Act II.; Carew, Separation 0/ Lovers (trochaic); Sandys, Paraphrase of the Psalms, Psalms 14, 30, 44, 74, 140 ; Lord Herbert of Cherbury, An Ode upon a Question moved whether Love should con- 67 68 In Memoriam tinuefor ever; George Herbert, The Temper (lines I and 4 have five accents) ; Harvey's Synagogue, 1640 (I have not seen this); Marvell, Daphnis and Chloe (trochaic) ; Prior, To the Hon. Charles Montague, Esquire (version quoted in Thackeray's HumouristsY ; Som&rvWe, Fable wni.; Langhorne, An Ode to the Genius of Westmoreland; Robert Anderson, The Poor Prude (Poems, Cariisle, 1820; I have not seen this); Landor, Ima- ginary Conversations, vol. 3, 1828, two stanzas in ' Landor, English Visiter, and Florentine Visiter.'* Stanzas in two or three of these poems faintly recall Tennyson's cadences to the ear, and there have been theories as to the source whence he derived the metre. He himself stated that he believed himself the originator of it, until after In Memoriam came out, when some one told him that Ben Jonson and Sir Philip Sidney had used it {Memoir, i. 305). This is decisive as to Tennyson's belief, though not as to the possibility of his having reproduced the metre of some poem which he had forgotten. * I have failed to find this version in editions of Prior. The two usually printed have alternate rhymes. If Thackeray made the version himself, it is doubtless later than In Memoriam. 'For the greater part of this list I am indebted to various sources, notably Schipper's Englische Metrik. D. G. Rossetti's My Sister's Sleep was published before /« Memoriam, but after You ask me why and Love thou thy land. The Metre 69 More interesting than the question where the metre came from is the fact that in the early poems we can see Tennyson feeling his way towards it. It appears, though not in an inde- pendent form, in the volumes of 1830 and 1833. Thus we find it in the second half of each stanza of Mariana and Mariana in the South : e.g., The broken sheds looked sad and strange: Unlifted was the clinking latch ; Weeded and worn the ancient thatch Upon the lonely moated gprange. And the peculiar effect of the In Memoriam stanza is quite perceptible in the following lines from the poem beginning. Clear-headed friend : Low-cowering shall the Sophist sit ; Falsehood shall bare her plaited brow ; Fair-fronted Truth shall droop not now With shrilling shafts of subtle wit Nor martyr-flames, nor trenchant swords Can do away that ancient lie ; A gentler death shall Falsehood die, Shot thro' and thro' with cunning words. Even earlier, in Alfred Tennyson's contributions to the Poems by Two Brothers (1827), passages in this metre occur ; for example : The vices of my life arise, Pourtray'd in shapes, alas ! too true ; And not one beam of hope breaks through. To cheer my old and aching eyes (p. 20 : cf. p. 23). lo In Memoriam Again : Or had he seen that fatal night When the young King of Macedon In madness led his veterans on. And Thais held the funeral light, Around that noble pile which rose Irradiant with the pomp of gold, In high Persepolis of old, Encompass'd with its frenzied foes (p. 64: cf. p. 66). Once more : The great, the lowly, and the brave Bow down before the rushing force Of thine unconquerable course ; Thy wheels are noiseless as the grave (p. 114). The other subject on which a few words seem to be required is Tennyson's indebtedness to othef poets. I do not refer to such general influences as that of Dante and, still more, Petrarch on the ideas and sentiment of parts of In Memoriam, an influence which Mr. Collins has pointed out and which seems to be indisputable. No one would criticise the poet on this score. But there are a large number of phrases in In Memoriam which recall the phrases of other poets, a larger number than we should probably be able to find in the same amount of verse by any other famous English author except Milton and Gray. It js on the ground of these apparent borrowings that Parallel Passages 71 Tennyson has been criticised ; and he seems to have been sensitive to such criticism. It is essential to distinguish the possible causes of the similarities of phrase here in question. Sometimes a poet adopts the phrase of an earlier writer knowingly, and with the intention that the reader should recognise it ; and if the reader fails to recognise it he does not fully appreciate the passage. Milton and Gray often did this, and Tennyson does it to beautiful effect when he re- produces phrases of Virgil or Theocritus ; and so in In Memoriam, when he writes ' change their sky ' or ' brute earth ' he means the Horatian phrases to be recognised. Sometimes, again, the similarity of phrase is due to mere coincidence : the second poet never read the words of the first, but he invents for himself what the first had in- vented for himself. A third cause is unconscious reproduction : a phrase is retained in memory perhaps for years, and is reproduced without any consciousness that it is not perfectly original. Lastly, a poet may use the words of a prede- cessor, knowing what he is doing but not intend- ing the origin of the phrase to be observed. This is plagiarism, and it is the only one of the four cases in which any discredit attaches to the poet. We may dismiss the first and the last of these 72 In Memoriam cases. The interesting question is whether most of the 'borrowings' in Tennyson's poetry are to be regarded as coincidences or as reminiscences. The poet himself seems to have considered them to be the former, and scarcely to have realised that such a thing as unconscious reproduction exists. Probably in some minds its limits are well defined ; but with other writers this is not so, and many a man of letters has often to endure the vexation of finding that a phrase which seemed particularly appropriate and came particularly easily was not his own property at all. Such writers are equally apt to reproduce phrases of their own without any suspicion that they are repeating themselves ; and in general it is certain that unusual retentiveness of verbal memory may be combined with unusual unconsciousness that memory is being employed. Now some of Tennyson's ' borrowings ' are doubtless cases of mere coincidence, but it seems to me beyond doubt that a greater number are reminiscences, and that he was more than com- monly subject to this trick of memory.* The ' Sometimes he may have been aware of the reminiscence at the time of writing and have forgotten it afterwards. It is observable that in the Poems by Two Brothers he is scrupulous in acknowledg- ing obligations (or boyishly anxious to show knowledge) : e.g. he notes his debt to ' that famous chorus in Caractacus ' (p. 1 16), or to Parallel Passages 73 extent of his ' borrowings ' is in favour of this view : why otherwise should his language happen to coincide with that of other poets so much more often than does the language, say, of Shelley or Keats? Again, when there can be little doubt that he had read the passage of an earlier poet in which the phrase occurs, it is more probable that he reproduced this phrase than that he invented it. For example, if the words To seek the empty, vast, and wandering air occurred in Middleton or Tourneur, we might naturally take Tennyson's Drops in his vast and wandering grave for a mere coincidence ; but when we consider that the first of these lines comes from one of the most famous speeches in Shakespeare, we can have little doubt that the writer of the second had read this speech and was unknowingly borrowing from it. If a reader of the Prologue to In 'the songs of Jayadeva, the Horace of India' (p. 165). When [ib.) he adds to the line, And in th' ambrosia of thy smiles the god of rapture lay, the note, 'Vide Horace's ODB — "Pulchris excubat in genis,"' he is not acknowledging an obligation but asking the reader to enjoy his line the more because it recalls Horace's word (our first case above). The reader of these poems of boyhood will soon convince himself that, from the first, Tennyson had a poet's feeling for phrases, and a very retentive memory of them. 74 In Memoriam Memoriam were reminded of only one passage in Herbert's Temple, he might be content with the hypothesis of coincidence ; but when he is re- minded of five distinct passages, and when in other parts of In Memoriam he is again reminded of Herbert, he can hardly doubt that he is dealing with reminiscences. Or, to take an example from Crossing the Bar, it is surely far more likely that the word ' moaning ' in the line, And may there be no moaning of the bar, is unconsciously due to Kingsley's And the harbour bar be moaning, than that Tennyson had never read a song so famous as The Three Fishers and independently hit on the same word. This view, lastly, is greatly strengthened by the fact that Tennyson reproduces his own expressions. The following commentary may convince the reader of this fact, and I have no doubt that a Tennyson lexicon would make it still more patent. It is scarcely credible that most of these reproductions were conscious.1 It is even probable that a poet so careful and so sensitive to criticism would have ' Those from poems unpublished or withdrawn may of course be so. For example, Tennyson seems to have used phrases from his early poem, Tlu Lover's Tale, somewhat freely. Parallel Passages 75 altered any passage in which he discovered that he had repeated himself. To take the view taken here is not to bring a charge against Tennyson or to cast doubts on his originality. Indeed, to doubt his originality in the creation of poetic phrases would be to show the extreme of critical incapacity. It is quite possible to hold that in respect of thought and inventive imagination he was not among the most original of our poets ; but if ever poet were a master of phrasing he was so, and the fact that he was so is quite unaffected by the further fact that he was sometimes unconsciously indebted to his predecessors. COMMENTARY. PROLOGUE. For purposes of study, this famous poem is best read after the sections of In Memoriam have been traversed ; and the later sections, in particular, will be found the best commentary on it. Its connection with the whole work, however, may be indicated here. In the first shock of grief the poet felt that the love within him was his truest self, and that it must not die. He clung to it through all his sorrow, and its demands formed a test by which he tried the doubts and fears that beset him. At the end he found that it had conquered time, out- lived regret, and grown with his spiritual growth. A like undying love he ' embraced,' even in his darkest hours, as ' God indeed ' and ' Creation's final law.' He embraced it, however, through ' feeling ' and by ' faith ' : he did not reach it by studying Nature, nor could he prove its existence. But~at the end, when the love within him had reached its full stature, his faith in Love as the King and Lord of the universe had only become more fixed. And his friend, while ' deeplier loved,' 79 So In Memoriam PROLOGUE had become mingled with this immortal Love, ' known and unknown, human, divine.' In the Prologue this result of the poet's experi- ence is summed up, and the connection of thought in the first eight stanzas may be shown, with the explicitness of prose, as follows. In stanza i, immortal Love is addressed as the Son, or revela- tion, of God ; invisible, unproveable, embraced by faith alone. The next stanzas tell us what, to this faith, immortal Love is. It is more than human, being the origin and the lord of all : of the world, of life, of death, — death, which it made and will annul (st. 2, 3). It is not merely divine, but human, and the perfection of humanity ; not only, therefore, the origin and master of man's life, but the supreme end of his desire and will (st. 4). We cannot ' know ' it — for its white light is refracted in our minds — but it is, we trust, the source of the knowledge that we have (st. 5, 6). And, therefore, our knowledge (which is not ours) should be mingled with reverence and humility (St. 7, 8). It seems probable that Tennyson had been reading George Herbert shortly before writing these stanzas, for some of the coincidences of thought and phrase, pointed out by Collins, can hardly be accidental Herbert's Love, for example, opens thus : Immortal Love, Author of this great frame. Sprung from that beauty which can never fade, How hath Man parcell'd out Thy glorious name. And thrown it on the dust which Thou hast made. PROLOaUE Commentary 8i Cf. again with stanzas 2 and 3 the lines : Whether I fly with angels, fall with dust, Thy hands made both {The Temper), and My God hath promised ; He is just (The Discharge). I. ' To enquiries as to the meaning of the words " Im- mortal Love" in the Introduction to In Memoriam, he explained that he had used " Love " in the same sense as St. John (i John, chap, iv.)': Memoir, I. 312. Cf. Epilogue, 141. 4. Cf. LIV. 13, 14, LV. 17-20, cxxxi. 9, 10, and many passages in other poems; e.g. the lines quoted above, p. 55. 5. ' orbs of light and shade ' : orbs, such as earth, half light, half shade. Cf. ' This whole wide earth of light and shade,' Will Waterproof, and Gabriel's song in the Prologue to Faust. The ' light ' and ' shade ' are, however, not merely physical : Life is light. Death (as often in Tennyson) shadow. Both are ' thine.' 7f. 'and lo,' etc.: and art lord of Death (cf. Macbeth's ' way to dusty death '). Line 9 continues the thought. There is probably a reminiscence of Rev. x. 2, a chapter which Tennyson 'would quote with boundless admiration' {Memoir, I. 279.) II. Cf. LVI. 8-20, and see Locksley Hall Sixty Years After for the idea that the hope of immortality is well-nigh universal. 12. 'thou art just.' And would it have been just to make him merely that he might die? Is 'dust' to be his wages (see Wages) ? Or perhaps, as has been suggested to me, the idea is rather : To make him such that he thinks himself immortal when he is really not so, would be unjust. The idea of a duty of submission to mere omnipotence is quite foreign to Tennyson, in whom Jowett remarked 'a strong desire to vindicate the ways of God to man, and, perhaps, to F 82 In Memoriam prologue demonstrate a pertinacity on the part of man in demanding of God his rights ' {Memoir, II. 464). Cf. ' redress ' in LVI. 27, CVI. 12, 'sense of wrong' in LXXI. 7, 'wrath' in LXXXll. 14, 'bitterness' in LXXXIV. 47 ; also By an Evolutionist. 13-16. The thought seems to be: As 'immortal Love' is not only divine (lines 5 £F.), but the perfection of that humanity which is imperfect in us, it is to us the ideal or supreme will with which we have to identify our wills. 'We know not how': for Tennyson's feeling about the 'main miracle' of free will see on cxxxi. Cf. Browne, Rel. Med. I. 36, ' Thus we are men, and we know not how,' and the context. 19. The metaphor is that of refraction, as in the famous simile in Adonais : Life, hke a dome of many-coloured glass. Stains the white radiance of eternity. Until Death tramples it to fragments. Tennyson often employs it: e.g. in Will lVaterproo/,'Tea thousand broken lights and shapes. Yet gUmpses of the true'; cf. TAe Higher Pantheism, where he has also the image of the ' straight staff bent in a pool.' When he calls Christ ' that purest light of God' {Memoir, I. 169), the meta- phor in ' purest ' is the same. 25-28. Cf cxiv. and notes. 'As before': 'before the growth of knowledge disturbed their union,' rather than simply ' as hitherto.' 31. 'to bear': to bear 'thy light,' i.e. the light of know- ledge (23, 24), instead of supposing it to be their own and so feeling a foolish pride. The notion of pride has suggested the epithet in line 32 (cf. CXiv. 9). 32. ' worlds ' : Tennyson generally speaks as though he believed in a number of inhabited worlds. 33-36. ' sin ' surely does not refer specially to his grief (37), nor ' worth ' to his love (40). The meaning is more general, as ' since I began ' proves. ' What seemed ' is an expression of ignorance : ' what rightly or wrongly I distinguished as my defects and my merits.' The latter equally need forgive- PROLOGUE Commentary 83 ness ; for though there is ' merit ' as between man and man, there is none as toward God. 37. Cf. Lxxxv. 61, 62. 39. Cf. Epilogue, 140, and cxxix., cxxx. ; also xxxu. 5-8, 14. 41. Cf. 'Wild words wander here and there,' A Dirge. 'Wild and wandering' occurs in Troilus and Cressida, I. i. 105 (Beeching). Cf. LVII. 4 (Robinson). 42. Cf. ' These dark confusions that within me rest,' Vaughan's Dressing (Collins). There is a curious coincidence with ' meos libros, seu verius confusiones,' Luther, Preface to vol. I. of his Works, 1545 (G. A. C). 'Wasted' : 'desolated,' surely, not ' squandered.' 44. 'Thy' is emphatic. There is a reminiscence (doubt- less unconscious) of CIX. 24. SECTIONS I.-IV. There is a distinct, though not very close, connection in these sections.c ^ The poet will not suppress his grief lest he should suppress love too (l.)?' This grief, however, in the phases de- scribed in II., III., IV. proves to be sullen, morbid, or weakening. He questions its worth (ill.), and then rouses himself against it (iv.). It is not sorrow like this that must be cherished for the sake of love. 'Loss may in the end be gain, but not if the gain be snatched at prematurely. To stifle sorrow at first would be to stifle love, and the final result would be the mere death of the old self, not its death into life.' A main idea of the 84 In Memoriam sections poem, that love is the supreme good and can defy time, is expressed at once in the opening section. I -4. Tennyson in his later years believed that he had alluded here to Goethe. He might easily have been familiar in youth with the famous lines in Faust, ' Entbehren soUst du,' etc., and during the thirties Carlyle was writing, in connection with Goethe, on the idea of ' self-annihilation,' more than once quoting the sentence, ' It is only with Renunciation that Life, properly speaking, can be said to begin ' (see e.g. Sartor, 11. ix.). With line 2 cf Tennyson's remark to Prof. Sidgwick, * Goethe is consummate in so many different styles ' {Memoir, II. 392). 3, 4. For the metaphor Gatty compares St. Augustine, ' De vitiis nostris scalam nobis facimus, si vitia ipsa calcamus,' which suggested Longfellow's Ladder of St. Augustine, pub- hshed in 1858. The image with Tennyson is that of a stair: cf. Par. Lost, v. 509-12 (Tainsh), VIII. 591, and lines from The Princess quoted on LV. 16. The use of 'stepping-stone' for ' step ' seems to be very rare : the only other instance I know is in Guy Mannering, ch. LIIL, where Meg Merrilies is the speaker. With 'dead selves' cf. The Princess, in., ' We touch on our dead self, nor shun to do it. Being other.' 7. Cf Tiresias, ' Their examples reach a hand Far through all years.' 8. Cf Richard III. IV. iv. 321 (G. A. C.) : The liquid drops of tears that you have shed Shall come again, transformed to orient pearl, Advantaging their loan with interest Of ten times double gain of happiness. Cf. also Lucrece, 1797, and Sonnets 31 and 74. 10. Cf 'the raven down of darkness,' Comus, 251. 12. 'beat the ground': in dancing. Cf cv. 17, and Horace's ' pulsanda tellus,' already translated in Comus, 143. There is an allusion, of course, to the Dance of Death. 13-16. The idea is that Time, years hence, having worn r., n. Commentary 85 away both the grief and the love of the poet, would boast of his conquest, and laugh at the miserable outcome of so long a love. With ' long result ' cf. Locksley Hall, ' the long result of time.' For the conquest of time by love cf. Lxxxv. 65-8, CXXXI. 7, and in the Memoir (l. 307) a poem, originally cxxvil. of In Memoriam, on the ' far-famed Victor Hours That ride to death the griefs of men ' : Behold, ye cannot bring but good. And see, ye dare not touch the truth, Nor Sorrow beauteous in her youth. Nor Love that holds a constant mood. II. The poet sees in the yew-tree among the graves an image, which fascinates him, of stubborn absorption in the thought of death. Through a thousand years, it seems to him, while flowers and animals and men arose and perished, it has main- tained its unchanging gloom, never blossoming or even altering its hue. He is abandoning himself to sorrow, though this sorrow is at the opposite extreme to the intoxica- tion described in the preceding section. The ideas expressed are those of his sorrow, as in the next '.iection, and they come from a ' lying lip.' See accordingly the second poem on the yew (xxxix.). 4. Cf. Job, viii. 17 : ' His roots are wrapped about the heap, and he seeth the place of stones ' (G. A. C). 7. 'the clock' of the church-tower behind the yew. Cf. Love and Death, and The Two Voices : I found him [death] when my years were few, A shadow on the graves I knew, And darkness in the village yew. 86 In Memoriam SECTIONS 10. 'gale' seems to mean here a breeze in spring. This does not make the yew brighten in colour by flowering (5) or putting forth new shoots. ' Gale ' without an adjective means in our older poetry simply a wind, not a strong wind ; and such phrases as ' gentle gales ' are common. Tennyson generally follows this use. 11, 12. Nor does the summer sun brand it so that its colour, at the end of summer, becomes burning or fiery (cf xcix. 12, CI. 4). This interpretation, which has been suggested to me, seems much better than my former one, that the summer sun does not darken the foliage. 13. ' thee, sullen ': first ed. :' the sullen.' Evidently a mere misprint. 14. I take 'for,' with Gatty, to mean 'with desire for,' as in such a phrase as ' sick for home.' The word might, of course, mean ' because of,' the ' stubborn hardihood ' of the yew being regarded with horror ; and so, presumably, it is taken by Beeching, who understands this poem and the next to present the alternatives, suggested in the opening section, of stoicism and of yielding to sorrow. [Mr. Beeching now agrees with my interpretation.] III. His sick sorrow, as in II., distorts the truth, and he now hesitates to yield to it further. Here first appears the doubt, so often mentioned later, whether the world is not the meaningless and transitory product of blind necessity. I. 'fellowship' : so in Demeter, 'a far-off friendship,' for 'friend.' 5. Cf. ' Planets and Suns run lawless thro' Ae sky,' Essay on Man, i. 252. 6. This line may be taken with 5 : ' the stars, instead of moving in ordered courses, run blindly across the sky, weaving a tangled web ' : or it may be taken (more probably) II.-1V. Commentary 87 by itself to signify that the meaning of things is dark to us, 'the eternal Heavens' being hidden by woven clouds. Cf. CXXII. 4, LXXII. 8. 7. 'waste places' of the universe, not merely of the earth. The idea seems to be that of the pain in the world. 8. ' dying ' : probably an inference from the nebular hypo- thesis, so often referred to by Tennyson. Cf. cxvill. 4. 10. ' the music ' : first ed. : ' her music' 1 1. ' my ' : everyone naturally takes this to refer to the poet, whereas the quotation-marks compel us to refer it to Sorrow. But doubtless their insertion was an error in punc- tuation, as is suggested by Mr. Beeching and Mr. Ferrall. II, 12. 'hollow': Tennyson is very fond of this word; e.g. ' Hollow smile ind frozen sneer,' The Poefs Mind. Cf. LXX. 4, Lxxill. " ', and Virgil's ' cava sub imagine formae,' Aen. vi. . , _,. 14, 15. 'natural good' : so she seemed at first (section I.); but this sorrow seems rather born of diseased blood. With 'vice of blood' cf. LIV. 4 ; also Othello, I. iii. 123, ' I do con- fess the vices of my blood' (G. A. C). IV. Asleep he is enslaved by the dull stunned sense of loss ; waking he resolves to master it. Later {e.g. LXVIII. LXX. LXXi.) he dreams of the dead : here he is aware only that his heart has been so paralysed by the loss of something fanpiliar and dear that he wishes to die. 4f. Cf. Aug. Conf. IV. 4, of the time after his friend's death : ' I became a great puzzle to myself, and asked my soul why she was so sad and why she so exceedingly disquieted me, but she knew not what to answer to me' (G. A. C.) 6. ' fail from thy desire ' : rather ' lose the power of desiring' than 'lose the object desired.' With 'fail from' ( = 'die away from') cf. II. 15, Lxxxiv. 36. In Memonam SECTTOWS 10. As the friendship did not begin in childhood, ' early years ' may be intended to emphasise the confusion of the dreaming mind. But it is barely possible that the phrase is an oversight, marking a late date of composition. 11, 12. 'Water can be lowered in temperature below the freezing point, without solidifying ; but it expands at once into ice if disturbed ; and the suddenness of the expansion breaks [may break ?] the containing vessel ' (Gatty). With the metaphor of tears freezing cf xx. ii, 12, and Byron ('There's not a joy'), 'That heavy chill has frozen o'er the fountain of our tears.' 15. 'the will': cf. 2, and Lxxxv. 37-40. V. The first of those sections which deal with the poet's verses and their relation to his grief (see p. 26). Here his poetry is regarded merely as an anodyne : contrast XXXVIII. 9. ' weeds ' : garments, as often in the older poets. II, 12. Cf. Hamlet, i. ii. 85 : But I have that within which passeth show ; These but the trappings and the suits of woe. VI. That loss is common to the race does not make his own loss less bitter. Contrast the tone of XCIX. Even here, however, his mood softens as he describes the sorrows of others. A passage in Taylor's Holy Dying, quoted by Gatty, may have suggested the section. On its date cf. p. 1 5. 2. Cf Hamlet, I. ii. 72 : Thou know'st 'tis common : all that lives must die nr.-vii. Commentary 89 7, 8. Collins compares Lucr. ll. 578-80 : Nee nox uUa diem neque noctem aurora secuta est, Quae non audierit mixtos vagitibus aegris Ploratus. 15, 16. These magnificent lines are hardly injirred by the reminiscence of Richard III., I. iv. 37 : but still the envious flood Kept in my soul, and would not let it forth To seek the empty, vast and wandering air. 23, 24. The inverted commas were added late. 26. ' ranging ' : a favourite word with Tennyson, appear- ing often in his early poems, though not often in this sense. Cf. ' the bee would range her cells,' Two Voices. 41-4. Cf- the last four stanzas of LXXXV. VII. He visits his friend's house (see p. 3). Contrast with the utter desolation of this poem the less striking but scarcely less beautiful later section, CXIX. 4. Cf. Break, break, break : ' But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand.' 7. For the idea cf. Maud, II. iv. st. x. : And on my heavy eyelids My anguish hangs like shame. (This section of Maud was, in its original form, written not later than 1834.) For the phrase see Hamlet, I. i. 148 ; ' And then it started like a guilty thing.' But see also Wordsworth's Immortality Ode, IX., and an article on Associated Reminiscences by A. B. Cook in the Classical Review, October, 1901. 9. 'far away,' in busier streets. 90 In Memoriam SECTIONS VIII. This section, by its softer. tone, helps to effect a transition to the group which follows. Like V. it refers to his poems, but these are now cherished for his friend's sake. The first two stanzas, as Mr. Collins notices, may have been suggested by the Lover's Journey of Crabbe. 5- Cf. ' And flung a magic light on all her hills and groves,' Coleridge, France. 8. Cf. 'And Lycius' arms were empty of delight,' Keats, Lamia. With the absence of rhyme in 'light,' 'delight,' cf. XIV. 1,4, 'report,' 'port'; xxxv. s, 8, 'here,' 'hear'; XLl. 17, 2o, 'moor,' 'more' ; LI. 14, 15, 'hours,' 'ours.' 9. Cf. Aug. Conf. IV. 4 : ' My native country was a torture to me, and my father's house a wondrous unhappiness ; and whatever I had enjoyed with him, wanting him, turned into a fi-ightful torture. Mine eyes sought him everywhere, but he was not granted them, and I hated all places because he was not in them ' (G. A. C). 12. 'where thou art not' : see on xxil. 19. 21. Cf. c. 17, and the line quoted on vn. 4. SECTIONS IX.-XVII. These sections form a group, connected by reference to the ship that brings the body of the dead from ' the Italian shore ' to England. It is probably not an accident that the number of stanzas in the sections is uniform. In thinking of the ship, and of the burial which will follow its arrival, the poet finds relief from his absorption in the sense of loss. The viii., IX. Commentary 9> peace and beauty of some of the descriptions, the freer play of fancy, and the much fuller expression of love — a love which is extended to the ship that carries the dead friend and to the earth that will receive him — give to this group a tone of sweetness and tenderness which contrasts with that of most of the preceding sections. The group must be supposed to cover several weeks (xvil. 7). IX. For the date of this section see p. 1 4. The final lines are the first expression of tender- ness in the poem. ' With Section IX. should be compared Horace, Ode iii., lib. i., and Theocritus, Idyll vii. 53 sqq., which plainly inspired it ' (Collins). Perhaps ' so ' (S), the comparative ' ruder,' and the use, not always happy, of ' ocean-plains,' ' remains,' ' favour- able speed,' ' lead . . . his urn,' ' prosperous,' and ' perplex,' may be due to the associations of Latin poetry, though the last two words are common in Milton. 9. ' ruder ' than the air which by day gave such a speed as ruffled the mirror'd mast : or possibly ' too rude,' like ' nobler ' in LX. I. (so Beeching). 10. 'Phosphor': the morning star. Cf. cxxi. 13. He goes back to the ' night ' of line 9. ' Sphere ' : cf. Enoch Arden, ' Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven.' Cf. Virgil's ' magnum glomerantur in orbem.' 17 f. I cannot doubt that the words of Constance (A'/wf /oin. III. iv. 88) were echoing in Tennyson's mind. There 9* In Memoriam sections are indications in In Memoriam of other reminiscences of the same scene. i8. Repeated xvil. 20, where this group of poems ends. 20. This line becomes the occasion of LXXix. S. 'bring'st': first ed. 'bringest,' which, though at once changed, reappeared in some editions. g. ' So ' : gently and safely, as in ix. 5. 10. ' This look of quiet ' in the ship as he imagines it. It is an ' idle dream ' that this quiet can matter to the dead, a 'home-bred fancy' that makes us wish that the dead should 'rest' in earth and not be 'tossed' in the roaring sea; but he yields to the dream and the fancy. Cf. XVm. 5-8. 14. 'takes' : a favourite word with Tennyson. Cf. xvi. 5. 15, 16. The chancel where the villagers receive the sacra- ment. 17. 'wells.' This word is used by Tennyson in peculiar ways. If the present passage stood alone, 'wells' might be due to a recollection of Scotfs Pirate, ch. xxxviil., 'The wells of Tuftiloe can wheel the stoutest vessel round and round ' ; where ' wells ' means whirlpools in the sea, and pro- bably represents an Orcadian word (see Jamiesou, j.*.). Or if Tennyson knew the English dialectic ' wed ' or ' weal,' an eddy, whirlpool, or pool, in a river, he might (wrongly) have supposed it to be the dialect form of the standard 'well.' But from the use of ' wells ' in The Princess, v. : Or by denial flush her babbling wells With her own people's life ; in The Two Voices : in Oetwne : To-day I saw the dragon-fly Come from the wells where he did lie ; Idalian Aphrodite, beautiful, Fresh as the foam, new-bathed in Paphian weUsf IX.-KI. Commentary 9j and in CVlll. 8, 'dive below the wells of Death,' it seems most likely that, in all the passages under review, Tennyson uses the standard ' wells ' for waters that have issued from a well-spring, whether of fresh water or of sea water (cf. ' the fountains of the great deep,' Gen. vii. ii). I have to thank Dr. J. A. H. Murray for information about standard * well ' and the other word or words. 19. Cf. The Princess, vi. : 'hands so lately claspt with yours.' 20. ' Tangle' : sea-weed. Tennyson speaks of ' sea-tangle ' in a letter {Memoir, I. 173). XI. The spirit of calm and beauty which is breathed by the two preceding sections culminates in this exquisite poem. The time is the early morning of an autumn day, the scene a Lincolnshire wold, from which a great plain sweeps to the eastern sea. The sight of the sea carries the poet's mind to the Mediterranean, the ship, and its freight, by a transition of wonderful dignity and pathos. 2. 'calmer' than mine (see I J, 16) ; or perhaps generally 'grown more calm.' S. ' that twinkle into green and gold,' as the dew-drops on them catch the sun. 11. The church-towers, a striking feature of Lincolnshire landscapes, are mentioned again in xv. 7. 12. 'bounding' : limiting, as in xvii. 6. IS, 16. With this uncertainty cf. his bewilderment at the apparent change in his feelings (XVI.), and the dream-like strangeness described in XIII. 13-20. 17. ' silver sleep ' : cf. Epilogue, 116. 20. Cf. Byron, Bride of Abydos, li. xxvL : ' His head heaves with the heaving billow ' (G. A. C). 94 In Memoriam SECTIONS XII. The calm of the preceding poems gives place to a wild unrest, in which the poet's soul seems to leave his body and fly to meet the coming ship. The restless movement of the verse is in strong contrast with the rhythm of XI. 6. 'mortal ark.' Gatty seeks to explain this strange phrase by reference to ' our earthly house of this tabernacle' (2 Cor. V. i), but the phrase appears again in The Two Voices in a context which shows that the poet imagined the ark as a vessel at sea ('Who sought'st to wreck my mortal ark'). Here at any rate it seems certain that the association of the dove and the ark in the story of the Flood suggested the phrase. 9. At each stage of the flight the sea appears below as a vast circular mirror. So in Enoch Arden the ship moves ' Thro' many a fair sea-circle day by day.' From the first Tennyson's poems show a special fondness for circular or spherical appearances in landscape : cf. ix. 13, xxiv. 15, 16 XXXIV. 5, LXXXVI. s. ' ' 12. 'the marge' : the horizon opposite to the point where the sails are seen rising. Cf. XLVI. 7, 16. It seems to be imagined as a kind of beach, and perhaps 'rounded' in 9 may mean convex as well as circular. 19. ' the body ' : the ' weight of nerves without a mind.' XIII. This section and the next describe the dreamy stupor of a mind exhausted by grief and unable to realise the loss which has stunned it. In such a mood fancy can flit around the ship, almost forgetful of the burden it carries. 1-4. The stanza is frequently misunderstood. It is taken to describe the widower's sudden and overwhelming realisa- xn., xiii. Commentary 95 tion of his loss in the moment when, waking from sleep, he 'feels her place is empty,' and knows that he has only dreamed of her. But the fourth stanza shows that this is not so, and that everything described in the first stanza, the dream, the doubt, the movement, and the weeping, takes place in sleep, or, at any rate, before a full awakening. So the poet's consciousness of his loss has the strangeness and uncertainty of a dream, or of a state between sleeping and waking. The source of the difficulty lies in the second and third stanzas, which seem to express such a clear con- sciousness of the nature of his loss as would come to the widower when fully awake. [I am not sure that this inter- pretation is right. It is perhaps as probable that the usual understanding of the first lines is correct, and that there is some want of connection between the first three stanzas and the last two.] 3, 4. Cf. Aeschylus, Ag. 420 f. ; Ovid, Her. X. 9 ff. ; Pope, Eloisa to Abelard, 235 ff. 9-12. This stanza also is sometimes, and strangely, mis- understood. He weeps the comrade of his choice, now become an awful thought, a life removed ; he weeps the human-hearted man he loved, now become a Spirit. See Introduction, pp. 41, 42. 13. First ed. : ' Come Time, and teach me many years ' : whence ' many years ' was construed as = ' during many years.' 16. For the idea, that at this stage of grief tears fall only when the full meaning of loss is not felt, cf. IV. 11, 12, xix. 9 ff., XX. Contrast XLIX., a later stage. The idea in 'leisure' and 'time' (17) seems to be that, if he realised the truth, he would not yield to grief but would exert his will ; cf. LXXXV. 37-40. 19, 20. With the peculiar effect of these lines, due to the alliteration on b and the repetition of sharp final consonants cf. VII. 12. 96 In Memoriam sections XIV. Addressed, like IX., X., XV., XVII., to the ship. The last line, by recalling xiii. 15, strengthens the sense of connection. The poem is technically remarkable as forming a single sentence, like LXIV., LXXXVI., cxxix., cxxxi. XV. This fine poem must be read in connection with its predecessors. The storm from the west at sunset contrasts with the windless calm of the sunny morning in XI. The half-delusive calm of spirit expressed in IX., x., XI. continues ; and there- fore, in spite of the storm at home, the ship is still imagined as moving over a glassy sea. But something of the ' wild unrest ' of XII. is also present, and it would sympathise with the storm but for fears that after all the ship too may be in tempest. 1. 'begin': first ed. : 'began.' The mixture of tenses remains in the next stanza, unless 'crack'd,' 'curl'd,' and ' huddled ' are to be taken as participles. 2. ' dropping day ' • Virgil's ' Oceani finem juxta solemque cadentem,' Aen. IV. 480 ? Or Shakespeare's ' drooping west,' 2 Hen. IV., Ind. ? 3. Cf. XI. 3, 7, 14. The time is later. ' the last red leaf : cf. ' the one red leaf, the last of its clan,' Christabel. 7. 'tower' : cf XI. 11. II. 'molten glass': Jjollancz compares 'a molten looking- glass,' y In. MemoFia'm section children^ saying to my wife about her baby: " Perhaps your babe will remember all these lights and this splendour in future days as if it were a memory of another life.'" This is exactly the idea of the present section turned round. (5) As to the ' doorways,' the reference to an anatomical fact, and the use of an elaborate periphrasis, are both highly characteristic of Tennyson, and could easily be paralleled. {b) It is possible, though I have not met with the view, to take lines 2-8 to refer to pre-existence. The argument will be : Here on earth a man grows, but forgets the life that preceded this ; and yet at times he has experiences which are really reminiscences of it : and so, in the life that follows his earthly one, he may have forgotten it and yet have experiences which are really reminiscences of it. ' The days before,' etc., will be the days before his first death, i.e. the death that closed his pre-earthly life, in which he was, as on earth, body as well as soul, and had a head with sense-organs in it. In favour of this view it may be said that the idea of pre-existence is not infrequent in Tenny- son, and is prominent in The Two Voices, a poem written not long after Hallam's death. Further, in that poem (see the thirteen stanzas beginning ' It may be that no life is found ') there are striking allusions to the phenomenon, mentioned here, of ' mystic hints ' and ' touches,' considered there as due to the forgotten experience of a xLiv. Commentary 131 previous life. These again would be equivalent to the intimations of Wordsworth's Ode, which might have suggested this poem. Perhaps also the interpretation of the ' doorways ' ^ is no stranger than Gatty's, while the fact that Tenny- son allowed Gatty's interpretation to pass, though he corrected several of his other interpretations, goes for little, since he passed many more which are unquestionably wrong.^ On the other hand, if Tennyson were alluding to pre-existence here, we should certainly expect him to allude to it elsewhere in In Memoriam, and especially in the neighbouring sections. But we do not find these allusions, and we do find that in the very next section he assumes that the earthly life is ^'e. first individual life, and the earthly death the second birth, not the third or any larger number. Cf too LXI. i and i o : and also Epilogue, 123 f, where there is no hint of pre- existence. These facts form a very strong objec- tion to view (3). Further (though I would not press this point if it stood alone), ' the hoarding sense ' (6) presents a difficulty, as, on this view, it would imply that the soul has senses in the interval between two embodiments. Finally, the poet seems in this section to be appealing to ^ [Those who so interpret ' doorways ' might appeal to a line in The Princess, . VI. : Or own one port of sense not flint to prayer.] '[Still, if he had not meant the sutures, surely Gatty's interpreta- tion would have startled him, even supposing he had forgotten what he ^o^ meant.] 132 In Memoriam section the analogy of some indubitable fact ; and he never speaks of pre-existence as such a fact. (c) The third view (if I understand it aright), like (b), takes stanza 2 to refer to pre-existence, but, like (a), understands by 'the days before,' etc., the infancy of the earthly life. This is the only interpretation I find in the commentators. Thus Gatty paraphrases : ' Here man continuously grows, but he forgets what happened . . . before the skull of the infant closed. Yet sometimes a little flash, a mystic hint, suggests the possibility of a previous existence.' And Genung : ' Our forgetfulness of infancy and pre-existence .... suggests a similar relation of the heavenly state to the earthly.' * This interpretation seems to me almost im- possible. It is open to the objections already urged against view {b), and in addition it makes ' the days ' of line 3 and ' the days ' of line 5 two distinct and separate periods, the first being the early months of earthly life, the second being a pre-earthly existence. This is surely a desperate expedient. I should say that two things at any rate are well-nigh certain about this passage : one, that 'the man' (2) and 'he' (3) are the same ' So apparently Beeching (in independence of his predecessors) : ' May not the dead forget the life here as we forget our babyhood ? Even so, as we seem to have hints of a pre-natal life, some dim recollection of earth may penetrate into the life beyond.' I suppose Genung and Beeching understand the ' doorways ' as Gatty does, but they do not say. [Mr. Beeching now thinks my interpretation correct.] xLiv. Commentary 133 man; the other, that ' the days ' (3) and 'the days' (S) are the same days. It is possible, however, to take a view resem- bling this in some respects but free from its fatal defect. We may boldly say that ' the days ' of line 3 are not distinct from, but a part of, and so in a sense identical with, the 'days' of line 5. Infancy, that is, is a part of pre-existence, not of earthly existence. Until the soul is self-conscious on earth its earthly life in the proper sense has not begun. For in the next section we learn that the baby is not at first a ' separate mind,' and therefore has no 'clear memory': he only acquires individuality and self-consciousness through isola- tion ; and his isolation grows defined by ' the frame that binds him in.' The closing of the sutures then will be merely the most striking example of this ' binding in.' And the life of the baby up to this point will belong to a pre-existent life, and hence will be no more remembered than that other part of the pre-existent life in which the soul was not connected (as it is in a baby) with an earthly body. The relations, however, of these two parts of pre-existence are troublesome, (i) Are we to suppose that the soul, before it was a human baby, lived a conscious life, in connection with a body, which body then suffered death ? This is the obvious idea. But if so, there is such a marked separation between the two parts of the pre-existence that ' the days ' of lines 3 and 5 '34 In Memoriam SECTION could hardly be spoken of as one period ; and so the fatal defect of view {c) reappears. (2) Or was the soul, before it became a baby, what is called in Tke Two Voices a 'naked essence,' which ' floated free ' from any body ? If so, and if it had any experience to remember (as ex hyp. it must have, though scarcely an experience of ' sense '), it was already a ' separate mind,' and could not need a 'frame' to make it one. (3) Or was the soul in its previous state merged in, or undifferentiated from, ' the general soul,' which particularises itself into an individual soul by connection with a frame or body (cf. XLVII. with XLV.) ? It appears to me quite likely that this is how Tennyson imagined the matter ; but then this is not what is generally meant by pre-existence, nor what Tennyson means by it in The Two Voices, nor, I presume, what the commentators mean ; nor would there then be any analogy, such as ought to be implied, between the earthly man's forgetfulness of his previous exist- ence, and the dead man's forgetfulness of his earthly existence. The reader will remember that, besides all this, the objections already brought against view {h) are equally valid against this modified form of view (c). I have suggested this modified view mainly in order to bring out the connection between the thought of section XLV. and the meaning, as I understand it, of XLIV. 3-6, for I do not believe that there is any reference in the section to pre-existence. I will end this discussion with a paraphrase xLiv. Commentary 135 intended, unlike the opening paraphrase, to give the full meaning of the section. ' Perhaps at death the soul does not fall asleep, but begins at once a new conscious life. And perhaps in that life it has no remembrance of its earthly life. But as on earth the grown man, who has forgotten the experience of his infancy, may yet at times receive obscure intimations of it, so the soul in its next life, even if it has forgotten earthly things, may receive dim hints of them. If such a hint should reach my friend, let it be to him the germ from which a complete recollection may arise.' 1. 'happy' does not suggest that the dead are 'perchance too happy to think upon the things of Time.' It excludes the idea of sleep (XLIII.), and consideration of the unhappy dead. 2. 'more and more': of. cxvill. 17, and Locksley Hall, 'the world as more and more' (Robinson). 4. 'doorways.' Whether this refers to the organs of sense, or to the sutures, it remains a very strange expression. The image of the body as a house is familiar, and Tennyson often uses it {e.g., in The Deserted House, The Lover's Tale, Aylmer's Field) ; nor is there anything very odd in the idea of the head as a house in which the soul sits. Then the eyes may be thought of as windows (as often in poetry), and the eyelids as eaves (LXVll. 11). And if Tennyson had been reading a book on the skull, in which he constantly met with words like ' arches,' ' walls,' ' roof,' he might easily go on to imagine the closing of the sutures as the shutting of folding- doors.^ But a doorway is a passage by which entrances, or ' I add this sentence because of a suggestion made to me by Prof. L. C. Miall that Tennyson was influenced by the word 'arches,' familiar to anatomists in the forties in consequence of Owen's use of it. Prof. Miall hence understood ' the days,' etc., to mean 'the days before the arches of his skull were closed.' 136 In Memoriam sections exits, or both, are made. Perhaps then, if the doorways are the sutures, we are to imagine that at first the general soul goes freely in and out by these doorways, while later, when they are shut, some part of it, left inside, is the ' separate mind.' Section XL v., stanza 3, when compared with XLVll., stanza i (where notice ' r^merging '), would seem to point to some such image. Or again, the baby-soul may be pictured as at first going freely in and out. I cannot help suspecting that Tennyson was influenced by ideas about the world-soul, derived perhaps from Stoic or Neoplatonic writers (Hallam certainly read the latter). This discussion has run to such monstrous lengths that I will not pursue the suggestion, but I cherish the hope that the riddle of this phrase and of the whole section will some day be solved by the discovery of a Greek equivalent of ' doorways of his head.' The phrase has all the air of a reminiscence, but I have searched for its origin in vain. [Prof J. A. Stewart has called my attention to a significant story told in Plutarch's De Genio Socratis, 22, about a man who entered the cave of Trophonius. His soul left his body, saw many wonderful things, and returned to it again. It left and returned through the sutures, the opening and closing of which caused severe pain. It is just possible that the meta- phor of 'door' was suggested by Aristotle's use of 6ifa.Ba> in a famous sentence, de gen. an., 736 b 28.] 10. If at death a similar forgetfulness occurs. C£ Two Voices : As old mythologies relate. Some draught of Lethe might await The slipping through from state to state. 12. 'ranging': cf xcill. 9. 14. The image is that of a man startled by some slight sound behind him or by a touch on the shoulder. If the friend turns, he will see the poet's guardian angel. With 'resolve the doubt,' cf LXVlil. 12. xLiv., xLv. Commentary 137 XLV. An objection to the supposition of XLIV. 'After all we can hardly suppose that the soul in the next life has forgotten this life. For in that case it would not recognise itself, but would have to repeat the process of acquiring indi- viduality and self-consciousness through which it went here. And in that case the purpose, or one purpose, of its embodiment here would be frus- trated ; for the use of the body was to form a self-conscious individual capable of clear memory. Hence the soul after death remembers itself, and therefore its past on earth. And so my friend can remember me.' Probably it was the mention of infancy in XLIV. that set the poet thinking on the gradual formation of self-consciousness and memory. The difficulty of the section is due to his describing this process without indicating the bearing of the description until the last stanza. In this poem, as in others down to the end of his life, Tennyson seems to imagine the soul as issuing from ' the general Soul ' or ' the Infinite ' or 'God,' as 'drawing from out the deep' {Crossing the Bar, De Prof uncus'), or 'from out the vast' (/« Mem. : Epilogue, 123), and 'striking its being into bounds ' {ib^. The ' bounds ' are due to the connection with ' matter,' ' the body,' ' blood and breath,' ' the frame ' ; and through it the soul gradually becomes 'a separate mind,' self-conscious, capable of memory, for memory deals ' but with 138 In Memoriam sections time, And he with matter' {Two Voices). Cf. on CXX. 12. 8. 'And other' : and am other. 9. 'rounds.' It seems impossible to make sure what metaphor is intended. The reverse process seems to be described in XLVll. 2, as ' moving his rounds,' for ' separate whole' must correspond to 'separate mind.' (i) 'Rounds he,' then, may mean 'becomes round, becomes an orb,' perhaps with the additional idea of detachment from the remaining nebular mass ; in which case 'move his rounds' would mean 'allow his circular form to disappear,' as he lapses back into the nebula. Cf. 'orb' in xxiv. 15, and ' round ' in Eleanore : As tho' a star, in inmost heaven set, Ev'n while we gaze on it, Should slowly round his orb, and slowly grow To a full face, there like a sun remain Fix'd — then as slowly fade again. And draw itself to what it was before ; and The Princess, 11., On the lecture slate The circle rounded under female hands. (2) Or, both in the present passage and in XL vil., 'rounds' may refer merely to movement in an orbit : ' moving round he gradually becomes a separate whole,' and ' should, as he moves round, fuse all the skirts,' etc. Cf LXill. 11. 'Round' is also used of movement, not change of shape, in Mariana in ttie South : And slowly rounded to the east The one black shadow from the wall. Cf. ' orbit of the memory,' in The Gardener's Daughter, and ' we . . . rounded by the stillness of the beach,' in Audley Court. And Milton often uses the substantive and the verb thus : e.g. Par. Lost, iv. 685, 862 ; vill. 125. But (3) the XLv., xLvi. Commentary 139 word need not have the same meaning in the two passages. 'Rounds he' may=' becomes round,' and 'move his rounds' may=' move round.' And I suspect this is the right inter- pretation, though, if so, it is strange that Tennyson, in writing the second passage, should not have noticed the difficuhy he was causing. II. Cf. XLIV. 4. 'frame' : used as in Epilogue, ii. 13. Cf. King John, iv. ii. 246, 'This kingdom, this confine of blood and breath.' 14. There seems to be a mixture of two constructions : 'This use may lie in blood and breath, which otherwise (but for this use) would not bear their due fruit,' and ' This use may lie in blood and breath, which would not bear their due fruit (would be useless) if man had to learn him- self anew.' XLVI. ' Here on earth our memory is imperfect, be- cause the interest of the present and future over- shadows the past. And this must be so, because otherwise our Hfe would be absorbed in the past, and we should not advance. But in the next life this reason for the imperfectness of memory will not exist. The past from birth to death will be seen clearly, and the five years of friendship will be seen as its richest field. Nay, let the whole of life, not only those five years, appear as the realm of Love.' I have paraphrased the section, but I am un- certain of the meaning of the last two stanzas. The sections of this group are otherwise so closely connected that we expect to find here something bearing on the question of memory in the next I40 In Memoriam section life, considered as a necessary condition of the poet's reunion with his friend. And in the first two stanzas we seem to find this. The poet in XLV. has persuaded himself that the dead re- member. Now the thought seems to occur to him that here on earth, though we remember the past, our memory is very imperfect, and that accordingly the memory of the dead also may be imperfect ; from which it would follow that his friend after all may not remember him. To this he answers that there is a good reason why memory on earth should be dim and broken, and that this reason does not hold of the next life. But the ' shall ' in line 7, and still more the next two stanzas, show that he is not thinking oi his friend's present state, but of some future time when in another life someone will look back on the earthly life and the five years of friendship. And it is not clear who this someone is — him- self, or his friend, or both of them ; and still less clear is the meaning of the last stanza, which appears to correct something said in stanza 3 (see the paraphrase above). Of the commentators, Genung says : ' The lifetime which Arthur remembers may perhaps show those five years of friendship as its richest period, lending radiance to all the rest.' But this interpretation seems impossible, not only for the reason given above, but also (i) because, according to it, Arthur is asked, in stanza 4, to regard in the light of Love, not only the five years of friendship xLvi. Commentary 141 which terminated his short life, but the preceding years in which he did not know the poet at all ; and (2) because on this view stanza 3 is the description of a life ended in youth, and it cer- tainly does not read like this. Miss Chapman thinks that the poet is speaking of himself throughout. Her paraphrase runs thus : ' He prays that his love for his lost friend may dwell with him to the very end of life — not sorrowfully, or his life's work could not be done — but still ever in his heart. So that, looking back upon this life from out the clearness and the calm of the other, it may appear all tinged with roseate hues of love — all — not the five rich years of friendship only.' Here the first stanza is certainly misinterpreted, and so the connection with the group is lost ; but otherwise the paraphrase appears to give the least improbable sense. I suppose Tennyson inserted the section here because the opening argument about memory deals with the question whether the dead can remember their earthly life, and in Spite of the fact that the argument is then applied to his own case, not Hallam's, and ends in an exhortation to himself regarding his present life. A less probable idea is that in the last three stanzas the poet is thinking of the time when he will rejoin his friend, and they will together look back on the past. This would explain the future ' shall,' and would provide a connection with XLVII. (see especially lines 8-10), the thought of re- 142 In Memoriam SECTIONS union in XLVi. suggesting the idea, ' But perhaps after all the soul loses its individuality at death.' Stanza 4 might then be taken somewhat as Miss Chapman takes it : ' let me see that, when we look back on our lives, the whok of my life shall show itself irradiated by Love ' ; or possibly ' Love ' might be the loving memory of the two friends, looking back not only to the five years, but to the whole of the poet's life. (Either in- terpretation would suggest that the dead friend is now aware of his friend's life on earth : of last stanza of XLIV.). [Robinson takes the person contemplating to be the departed friend, but the life contemplated to be the poet's. The last stanza would then meani: ' when he comes to look back on my completed life, may the whole of it appear irradiated by my love for him ' ; and this wish might suggest the thought, ' But, when that time comes, we shall look back together,' and so lead to XLVII. I had considered this interpretation, but had rejected it as too improbable. It has been suggested to me that the main contrast in the last stanza is not really between the five years and the whole life, but between memory and present love. In the next life there will be not only the recollection of the love that enriched a part of the past, but also a present feeling of love which will colour the view of the whole past. The first three stanzas say, ' we shall remember ' ; the last adds, ' we shall love one xtvii, xLvii. Commentary 143 another too.' If this interpretation is correct, I should suppose the poet was thinking both of himself and of his friend. It connects the section well with its successor, and it also leads back to the idea of XLII., last stanza^ and XLIII., last stanza — an idea from which the poet was diverted by his question, ' But do the dead remember the eajtthly life ? '] 2. See Introduction, p. 7. 3. Cf. one of Tennyson's earliest poems, Memory, in Poems by Two Brothers : Days of youth, now shaded By twilight of long years. ' growing hour ' : occurs also in Love thou thy land. 5 foil. Here, and in the next section, the second life seems to be thought of as simply a time of rest and fruition. This is not usual with Tennyson, but is necessary to the argument of this unfortunate section. 7. 'from marge to marge' : from birth to death. Cf. 16. 13, 14. The 'bounded field' must be the 'field' of 12. It has been suggested that ' O Love ' is an address to the dead friend ; but this does not seem to be in keeping with the tone of /« Memoriam, even in its most emotional passages, such as cxxix. XLVII. This section, which closes the group, rejects the ' vast ' but ' vague ' idea that after death the soul is remerged in ' the general Soul.' The soul will always retain its individuality, and the friends will know one another and be together for ever. Or if not this, yet the least that Love, as we know it on earth, demands is that, before we ' lose 144 In Memoriam SECTIONS ourselves in light,' we should meet again to say farewell. Here the appeal is to the demand of Love (cf XLVi. 13-16). A different ground of objec- tion is taken in the words recorded in the Memoir, I. 319: 'If the absorption into the divine in the after-life be the creed of some, let them at all events allow us many existences of individuality before this absorption, since this short-lived indivi- duality seems to be but too short a preparation for so mighty a union.' With the last words cf ■^ vaster dream ' (i i). See p. 53. The lines in the Dedicatory Poem to the Princess Alice, if what we call The spirit flash not all at once from out This shadow into Substance, seem at first to refer to this ' absorption into the divine,' but I think the idea is rather that, for a time after death, the soul may retain traces of its earthly existence, where it was surrounded by shadows or appearances, but that later it loses these traces and becomes wholly real or sub- stantial, without, however, losing its individuality. This notion of a gradual separation from earthly life appears elsewhere in Tennyson, e.g. in The Ring. 2-4. SeeonXLV. 9. 'Again' and 'remerging' imply the emergence from the general Soul described in XL v. 13. The ' last and sharpest height' corresponds to the last of the 'many existences of individuality.' Cf. 'From state to state the spirit walks ' (lxxxh. 6), and xxx. 27, 28. The xLvii., xLviii. Commentary 145 metaphor here is that of the topmost peak of a mountain surrounded with sunlight. ' Landing-place ' seems not to suit it. SECTIONS XLVIII.-XLIX. He breaks off and warns the reader neither to take his songs for a serious discussion of problems, nor to blame them for their fancifulness. His deeper thought and deepest sorrow are silent. There is a special reference to the group just concluded, and the ' doubts,' ' hopes,' and ' fears ' expressed in it. For the contrast of the deeper silent grief and the ' lighter moods,' cf XIX., XX. : for earlier sec- tions dealing with his poems, cf. v., Vlll., xxL, XXXVII., XXXVIII. XLVIII. 2. 'closed': 'concluded, disposed of,' or perhaps 'en- closed, contained,' as in The Princess, Conclusion, few words and pithy, such as closed Welcome, farewell, and welcome for the year To follow. In either case the poet implies that the doubts and answers of the foregoing sections make no claim to be proposed and discussed with the seriousness of philosophy. Cf. 7, and XLIX. 13. 5. ' part ' : analyse. . 7-9. Cf. cxxv. 8. As in XLII., XLIII., XLVI., XLVII. (Eve). Cf. Shake- speare, Sonnet 26, ' Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage ' (Beeching). 146 In Memoriam SECTIONS 10. The meaning seems to be, not : ' does better still when following a wholesome law, she holds it,' etc, but : ' is more true to a wholesome law when she refrains from drawing the deepest measure fi-om the chords than she would be if she did draw it.' Mr. Ferrall suggests another interpretation: ' True, Sorrow merely sports with words, but in doing so she at the same time serves a better purpose and observes a wholesome law ; and if she trifles, it is because she holds it,' etc., the use of 'better' being somewhat like Milton's in 'last in the train of night. If better thou belong not to the dawn,' Par. Lost, V. 167. 16. ' tears ' : this suggests the metaphor of the next section, with which cf. xvi. 5 flf. XLIX. I. ' the schools ' : of theology and philosophy. 5. 'lightest': the poet did not notice that he had used 'light' in 3. 8. 'crisp': 'curl,' 'ripple,' a verb. Cf. Par. Lost, iv. 237, ' the crisped brooks.' The word occurs often in Tennyson's early poems, e.g. 'To watch the crisping ripples on the beach' (Lotos-Eaters). 9. He addresses the traveller, as in xxi. 16. 'bases' : the metaphor seems to be changed. SECTIONS L.-LVI. These seven poems are united into a group by certain characteristics, (i) They start from, and return to (LVI. 26), the poet's desire for present communion with his friend, a desire which has scarcely appeared up to this point. (2) The main subject, however, is not this present communion xLviiL-L. Commentary 147 but the pain, defect, and evil in the world, and the doubts which they cast upon the faith that Love is ' Creation's final law ' and that man is not made to die. The problem is first suggested by the poet's consciousness of his own defect, is then rapidly generalised (LIV.), and finally concentrates itself again on the question of immortality (LV., LVI.). (3) Naturally, some of these poems are more passionate and ' wild ' (LVII., 4) than those of the preceding group, so that the apology of XLVIII., XLIX., would be inappropriate in reference to them. Some of theopening sections of Maud express dramatically, but with much less concentration, the mood described in this famous section. Cf also with stanza i the lines in The Two Voices : 'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, Oh life, not death, for which we pant ; More life, and fuller, that I want. 10. The summer-fly of Shakespeare and Milton {Samson, 676). 11. ' sting and sing.' The contemptuous rhyme is perhaps an unconscious reminiscence of Pope's couplet (Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnof, 309) : Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings, This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings. 14. 'point the term' : point to the limit. 15, 16. Cf. xcv. 63, 64. 148 In Memoriam SECTIONS LI. ' Though he shares that baseness of men which sometimes almost destroys his faith (l., st. 3), he still wishes his friend to be near him always. The dead, who see all, can make allowance for all.' On the date of composition, see p. 1 6. 10. 'Shall I who love him be guilty of a want of faith that would incur his blame?' not, I think, ' He will not blame a want of faith which arises from love' ; nor, 'Shall I ascribe to one who loves me a blameable want of faith?' nor, 'Shall I, owing to my want of faith, find something blameworthy in one who loves me?' The obscurity is due partly to the fact that 'love' recalls 'love' in 8, while 'blamed' recalls ' blame ' in 6. LII. 'His own imperfection, even the imperfection of his love, must not weaken his faith. No ideal can keep its worshipper wholly true to it, yet his worship remains in spite of defects. These will drop away one day : good is the final goal of ill.' i-S. The first lines seem at first to refer merely to his poems. ' It cannot be that I truly love thee, for if I did, my words would give a true image of thee instead of being mere words,' those records of superficial moods which he has so often declared them to be (the metaphor in 2 may be due to the image in XLIX.). But probably the meaning of lines i and 2 is more general : ' If I truly loved thee I should be more like thee, not so full of imperfection ' (see Ll.) ; and this suggests his poems, the most obvious instance of his failing to ' reflect the thing beloved.' 4. Collins quotes Persius, Sai. i. 104, ' Summa delumbe saliva Hoc natat in labris ' ; cf note on xviii. 3, 4. LL-Liii. Commentary 149 II. 'not,' etc. : not even the record of the highest ideal. 16. 'shell' and 'pearl': not 'flesh' and 'soul' (Gatty), but the worthless and the precious in him. LIII. ' Perhaps evil is even sometimes the way to good, though this doctrine may easily lead to evil rather than good.' For the sake of the connection I have emphasised the ' doctrine,' but what the poem emphasises is the danger of it. Perhaps the section was suggested by the metaphor of the last line of Lll., and the reflection, ' No shell, no pearl.' Cf. Love and Duty : Shall Error in the round of Time Still father Truth ? O shall the braggart shout For some blind glimpse of freedom work itself Thro' madness, hated by the wise, to law System and empire? Sin itself be found The cloudy porch oft opening on the Sun? and Measure for Measure, V. i. 444 f. (quoted by Robinson) : They say, best men are moulded out of faults, And, for the most, become much more the better For being a little bad. 5, 'fancy': first ed. : 'doctrine.' 'give' : yield. Tennyson is fond of this use of 'give.' 7. ' scarce had ' : first ed. : ' had not.' The alteration shows the poet's shrinking from the 'doctrine.' For the metaphor cf. 2 Henry IV., iv. iv. 54 (of Prince Henry), Most subject is the fattest soil to weeds. 9-12. The fear of doing harm by the public mention of subjects and ideas which (he considered) could only be ISO In Memoriam SECTIONS safely discussed by the few, was evidently a marked charac- teristic of Tennyson. 9. ' Or, if : first ed. : 'Oh, if (a late change). 13. ' Even if evil is sometimes the condition of good, that does not lessen the difference between them. Hold to the good, and make its nature clear to yourself This warning has not saved the author from being represented as trusting that ' error and folly and sin and suffering are " good, only misunderstood." ' 14. Cf. Comus, 476, ' divine philosophy,' and xxill. 22. LIV. ' We trust that good will be the final goal of all evil, and that in the end no life will prove to be wasted or destroyed. But we know nothing, we have but blind trust, or even less — blind longing.' He has been led on from his own defects to consider evil in all its forms. I. 'Oh yet' : though we hesitate to accept the 'doctrine' of LIII. (Ferrall). 3, 4. ' pangs of nature,' cf L. 5, 6 ; ' sins of will,' cf Ll. 3, 4, LIII. 6, 16 ; ' defects of doubt,' cf. L. and Ll. g, 10 : ' taints of blood,' cf. III. IS with L. 7-12. 7. Like the 'shell' of Lll. 16. He is returning to the problem of life beyond the grave (see LV.). 9-12. This stanza, in its connection with those that precede and follow it, implies a trust that in the end ' good shall fall to animals as well as men ; but I know no sign elsewhere in Tennyson's poems of an idea that animals may live again, or in some other way find their pain and death ' gain ' to them. Cf note on LV. 20. 12. 'but' : nierely. 13. Cf Prologue, 21. Lin.-Lv. Commentary 151 15. 'at last': at the 'far-off divine event' of the last lines of In Memoriam. Cf . Two Voices : He seems to hear a Heavenly Friend, And thro' thick veils to apprehend A labour working to an end. 18. Cf. cxxiv. 19. 20. Not able even to say what it is he cries for. For the simile cf. Herbert, T/ie Collar. LV. ' This desire that no life should fail beyond the grave seems to be a divine instinct in us, for Nature appears so careless of individual life that she lends it no support ; nay, her testimony seems so hostile that he can barely sustain a dumb trust in the divine Love which he feels to be Lord of all.' On the ideas of this section and the next see Introduction, pp. 5 5 ff., and Memoir, I. 312 ff. 7, 8. ' La nature s'embarrasse peu des individus, elle ne s'occupe que de I'esp^ce ' : Buffon. 14, 15. Cf Sophocles, Antig. 853. 16. ' darkness ' : cf. cxxiv. 23. Cf and contrast Princess, vil. : For she that out of Lethe scales with man The shining steps of Nature. 18. 'And gather dust and chaff'- in trying to reason. Cf Two Voices : ' a dust of systems and of creeds.' 19. Cf Prologue, stanza 2. 20. 'the larger hope': 'he means by "the larger hope" that the whole human race would through, perhaps, ages of suffering, be at length purified and saved,' Memoir, I. 321, Is this also the 'divine event'? 152 In Memoriam SECTIONS LVI. ' Nature seems to care for the kind no more than the individual, to produce life and death with equal indifference, to set no value on the spiritual achievement and possibilities of man, and there- fore to promise him only extinction. If so, his life is a hideous and futile self-contradiction. But there is no solution of this riddle for us on earth.' With the passionate distress of this section should be contrasted the tone of XXXIV., where the same subject was approached, but the con- fidence in immortality was undisturbed. 1. See Lv. 7. 2. Cliff and quarry are full of the fossils of extinct species. ' scarped ' : cut away vertically so as to expose the strata. 7. ' spirit,' and all that it does and promises (10-18). 9 if. For the poet's own beHef see cxvill. II.' wintry ' answers to ' fruitless ' in 12. Cf. LIV. 16. The idea, as the next stanza shows, is that the apparent fruitless- ness of his praises and prayers did not shake his faith. 20. Like any other fossil. 21. 'No more?' refers back to line 8, the idea of which must be taken to include the consequences drawn from it in stanzas 3-5. 'A monster,' etc. If all that we count highest in man ends in extinction, his nature is that of the monsters of fiction, or such an incongruous combination as occurs in a dream. The ' dragon ' of the first ages of the earth may seem horrible to us, but at least it was in harmony with itself. The point is not that man, if doomed to extinction, would be in discord with the rest of Nature, but that he would be in discord with himself The conclusion here, Lvi., Lvii. Commentary 153 also, is not that such a self-contradictory being is impossible, but that man's life, if he were such, would be as futile as we know it to be frail. With the dragon cf. the ' monstrous eft' of Maud, 1. iv. ; with 'prime,' The Princess, II., of primitive man, 'Raw from the prime.' 27. 'answer': cf. the conclusion of the Vision of Sin (Eve). ' Redress ' : for the injustice of this futile existence. Cf Prologue 12. 28. The general meaning of this line is not doubtful, but it is impossible to say what metaphor was in the poet's mind. He may have thought of ' the holy place within the veil, before the mercy-seat which is upon the ark,' Levit. xvi. 2, with which cf. Heb. vi. 19, 20. But it seems more probable that he refers to the inscription at Sais contain- ing the words, ' No one has lifted my veil ' : for cf. in the section of Maud just quoted, For the drift of the Maker is dark, an Isis hid by the veil ; and for the image of a veiled statue cf ciii. 12. In De Profundis the words, our mortal veil And shatter'd phantom of that Infinite One, seem to describe the world of space and time. See also note on Liv. 15 for a quotation from The Two Voices. In any case the idea is that the ' veil ' can never be removed in this life. LVII. As so often at the close of a group, the poet pauses to consider what he has just said. The wildness of his songs, he feels, is a wrong to the grave. They will not perpetuate the memory of his friend, since they will soon be forgotten ; and they only sadden those who hear them. He calls these fellow-mourners to 154 In Memoriam sections come away from the grave over which they have been singing. He will come too, but to the end of life he will always be silently repeating his farewell. On the position of this section in the elegy see Introduction, pp. 28, 29. In the Memoir, I. 306, there is printed a section called ' The Grave (originally No. LVII.),' which begins : I keep no more a lone distress, The crowd have come to see thy grave, Small thanks or credit shall I have. But these shall see it none the less. This stanza helps to explain the second stanza of the present poem, which was, I presume, substituted for The Grave. The contrast between the style of the first two stanzas and that of the last two is very effective. The former has no exact parallel in In Memoriam, but there is an approach to it in LXIX., parts of xcvii., XXX., stanzas 3, 4, S, which contrast with 6, 7- 2. Cf. xxxvn. 13 (Robinson). 4. 'wildly' : cf. Prologue, 41. 7, 8. ' richly shrined ' : in these poems. ' Methinks I have built a rich shrine for my friend, but it will not last' (authoritative correction in Gatty, p. 62). Cf. Lxxv., Lxxvi., LXXVll. 'fail': die away, as in 11. 15, xxvill. 7, XLVI. 4, LXXXIV. 36. 9f. G. A. C. compares 2 Henry IV., I. i. 102 : Sounds ever after as a sullen bell Remember'd tolling a departing friend. Lvii., Lviii. Commentary 155 14. 'greetings^: 'Ave' in the next line means 'greeting' or 'hail.' 15, 16. Catullus, at his brother's grave, 'Atque in per- petuum, frater, ave atque vale ' (c. lo) ; of which line Tennyson writes ; ' nor can any modern elegy, so long as men retain the least hope in the after-life of those whom they loved, equal in pathos the desolation of that everlast- ing farewell' {Memoir, II. 239). With the thrice-repeated Ave cf. Aen. VI. 506, 'et magna manes ter voce vocavi.' 'For evermore' in 16 does not go with 'Adieu,' as Gatty supposes, but with 'said.' The inverted commas, and the context from 9 onward, make this certain. Contrast with these lines CXXIII. 11, 12. LVIII. ' No, he will not leave the grave with this hopeless farewell, which only brings grief to others. Some day he will take a nobler leave.'- The distress of the sections preceding LVII. was continued in the deep sadness of that section. On the change in the tone of the poem from this point, see pp. 28, 29. I. 'those sad words' : the 'greetings' of the end of LVII. 3. Cf. The Lover's Tale : While her words, syllable by syllable. Like water, drop by drop, upon my ear Fell. 6, 7. The fellow-mourners or by-standers of LVll. ' Half- conscious ' : only half-conscious. 9. Possibly, as Robinson suggests, he thinks here of Urania (XXXVll. i), as of Melpomene in LVll. 2. II. 'here': by the grave. 156 In Memoriam SECTIONS LIX. This section was added in the fourth edition) 1851. Cf. with it LXVI. and contrast III. He attempts again to ' embrace ' Sorrow ' as his natural good ' (Robinson). Cf. Richard II., V. i. 93, and King John, III. iv. 34 (G. A. C.) ; also Shelley's Misery, be- ginning : Come, be happy, sit near me, Shadow-vested Misery, Coy, unwilling, silent bride ; and the Song to Sorrow in Endymion, IV. I, 5. 'Wilt thou': if thou wilt. 6, 7. 'be,' 'put,' are imperatives. 'Harsher moods': re- peated, probably unconsciously, from XLVIII. 6. 13. ' set thee forth ' : deck thee out (unless the metaphor is dropped). SECTIONS LX.-LXV. This group of quiet and beautiful poems recalls in some ways the earlier group XL.-XLVII. ; but there the motive idea was that of future reunion, while here the poems deal with the present relation of the friends and the poet's desire that his friend should think of him now. This desire is alternately repressed and encouraged in the first five sections ; it comes to rest for a time in LXV. The mere connection of the poems may be shown in the following summary. ' How can he think of one so far below him (lx.)? Yet let him think of me ; for, inferior as I am, UX.-LXI. Commentary 157 not the greatest of the dead can love him more (lxi.). Still, if thinking of me holds him back, let him forget me (LXII.). But why should it hold him back (LXIII.)? Perhaps he may re- member me at long intervals and dimly — perhaps not at all (LXIV.). Whether he remembers me or not, our love on earth may still help him as it helps me (LXV.).' The growth of resignation in the series is seen also in the difference between the kinds of affection spoken of in the similes of the earlier and the later sections. The poems of this group are criticised by some readers on the ground that they are written in a tone of excessive and unnatural humility. The criticism is perhaps not totally unjustified, but such readers seem to forget that the poet's friend is almost throughout imagined as he is in that ' second state sublime ' which the poet conceives to be far superior to the earthly state in which he himself remains. Tennyson himself had to point this out in connection with XCVII. LX. I. 'nobler': not 'nobler than mine,' but 'veiy noble' (Beaching). This use of the comparative is a Latinism which was introduced by Spenser and other Elizabethans but has never become English. LXI. 1. 'state sublime': Robinson quotes Gray's Ode for Music, II., a passage which evidently influenced Tenny- son here. 2. ' ransom'd ' : cf. xxxvill. lo, ' spirits render'd free.' 158 In Memoriam sections 6. The metaphor of the flower (4) is continued. ' Char- acter'd': marked: see on XLill. 11. The word is not uncommon in Shakespeare ; e.g.. As You Like It, iii. ii. 6 : these trees shall be my books, And in their barks my thoughts I'll character. 9. ' doubtful ' : see XLIV. 14. Here there is the additional idea of darkness, coming from the preceding stanza. ID. See I. 'Where thou wast first embodied, and that in human form.' Cf. pp. 51, 131. 12. 'Shakespeare': the greatest of intellects and the devoted lover of a friend. LXII. 1. See LXI. 5. ' The' ' in effect = ' yet,' which was used four lines above. 2. ' blench ' : flinch ; ' fail ' : the idea is that of losing the power to advance, as in xlvi. 4. 3. ' Then ' : first ed. : ' So.' 4. Cf. Faust, Zueignung : Gleich einer alten, halbverklungnen Sage, Kommt erste Lieb' und Freundschaft mit herauf. 5. 'dechned' ; cf. Hamlet, I. v. 50 : To decline Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor To those of mine, and Locksley Hall, having known me, to decline On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine. LXIII. 10 fT. The metaphor is that of a planet with a larger orbit than the earth's. It may, but does not necessarily, imply that the soul of the dead is re-embodied on such a planet or ' orb ' (xxx. 28). For ' round,' see on XLV. 9 LXI.-LXV. Commentary 159 LXIV. Said by an old friend of Tennyson's to have been composed while the author was walking down the Strand. In Memoriam contains greater poems, but none perhaps more exquisitely imagined and written. For the structure, see note on XIV. 10. 'golden keys' of State office. Cf. Shelley, Hellas, ' Or bears the sword, or grasps the key of gold.' P^haps Tennyson had just read Macaulay's vivid description of the Duke of Devonshire (Lord Chamberlain) tearing off his gold key on receiving an insulting message from the King. (The Earl of Chatham, Edinburgh Review, Oct., 1844.) 25 f The pathetic effect is increased by the fact that m the two preceding stanzas we are not told that his old friend does remember him. LXV. Perhaps the first section of In Memoriam that can be described as cheerful or happy. The beauty of this happiness is the more felt because the reader expects the poet's doubts of being remembered to end in sadness. The ' point ' of the section is frequently missed. It is nowhere said or implied that 'the two friends, though separated, partake of the same hallowed remem- brance.' On the contrary the poet, dismissing his troubled doubts about remembrance, finds comfort in the thoughts, ' Love cannot be lost,' and ' Since the effect of our friendship works so strongly in me, it may work also in him.' i6o In Memoriam sections I. 'Sweet soul': cf. LVll. ll. 'Do with me': remember me or forget me. 4. Not even a little grain shall be spilt. For ' grain,' used of his love for his friend, cf. LXXXI. 5-7. 'painful phases' : the painful doubt of being remem- bered. ' Metaphor from butterfly and chrysalis ' (Beeching). II. 'a part of mine' : the idea seems to be, 'Since your influence on me remains so strong, perhaps some influence of mine on you may remain.' LXVI. Addressed to a friend who wonders at the change in him. He is like a blind man, who is kindly and pleased with trifles, though he dwells in a world of his own where the night of vision and the day of thought never change. The section is happily placed. By recalling LIX. it marks the close of the group which began with LX. ; while the picture of the blind man prepares for the inner world of dreams which is about to open. SECTIONS LXVII.-LXXI. These five sections do not deal with one subject or phase of feeling, but they are doubtless placed together because they refer to night, sleep, or dreams. They are all descriptive rather than reflective, LXVII. and LXX. being, in their very different ways, among the finest of the descriptive sections of In Memoriam. All or nearly all show the softening of sorrow, and the growing Lxv.-Lxviii. Commentary i6i sense of the beauty of the past. Contrast IV. and xiii. LXVII. See Introduction, p. 3, and sections xvili., xix. In Poems by Two Brothers there are some verses, doubtfully ascribed to A. T., On the Moonlight shining upon a Friend's Grave ; and passages in The Walk at Midnight and On Sublimity are also worth comparing with this section. 5. 'bright in dark' : cf. Shakespeare, Son. 43, 'And darkly bright are bright in dark directed ' (CoIHns). The moonlight is imagined coming through a narrow window. II. 'eaves': the metaphor recurs in Clear-headed friend and Tiresias (' the roofs of sight '), the word in ' Her eyelids dropp'd their silken eaves,' The Talking Oak. 15. 'dark church': first ed. : 'chancel.' 'I myself did not see Clevedon till years after the burial of A. H. H., Jan. 3rd, 1834, and then in later editions of " In Memoriam" I altered the word " chancel," which was the word used by Mr. Hallam in his Memoir, to " dark church." ' (Tennyson in Memoir, I. 305). The tablet is ' in the manor aisle ' {ib. 295). The inscription is given in the Memoir {ib. 296) and also in Gatty. The alteration improves the poem, as ' dark church ' recalls the picture of line ' 5. LXVIII. 2. Homer calls sleep the brother of death, //. xiv. 231. 5. Cf. ' In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,' Mariana. 6. 'path': cf. xxii. flf. 9. 'turn about': cf. XLIV. 14, where also 'resolve the doubt' (12 of this section) occurs. For the sense of con- fusion cf. IV. L ,62 In Memoriam sections 13. For the early waking of grief cf. vil. 15, 16. 'my youth': see Introduction, p. 16. For the idea 'of the dreamer's feeling 'ideally transferred' to the person dreamed of, cf. The Lover's Tale, II., end of para- graph beginning 'Alway.' LXIX. It is not likely that the reader is expected to interpret the details of the dream ; but the main idea evidently is that the poet's acceptance of sorrow, which seems folly to the world, is approved by higher knowledge. If nowhere else, yet in the crown of thorns itself, the winter which he thought eternal changes to spring (LIV. 16), and though he can hardly understand the words he hears (for they are in the language of another world), the voice is ' not the voice of grief For the crown, cf. the metaphor in cxvili. 18, 'crown'd with attributes of woe Like glories. It does not seem likely that the crown of thorns is 'the heritage of prophet and martyr,' or that it is transformed into 'a victor's crown' (Chap- man). There is a reference to his poems on his sorrow : cf. XXI. For the short sentences cf. note on LVII. 8. ' civic crown ' : a sign of honour. 14. Not simply ' I found an angel as I wandered in the night,' nor ' such an angel as comes to us in dreams,' but 'one of the angels of the night of sorrow,' 'the divine Thing in the gloom' (Tennyson's words to Mr. Knowles). 19,20. Cf. for the message of comfort, 'hard to under- Lxviii.-Lxxi. Commentary 163 stand,' the second voice, with its ' notice faintly understood,' of The Two Voices, and the mysterious close of the Vision of Sin. LXX. I f. Cf. Browne, Rel. Med. II. 6 : ' Whom we truly love like our own selves, we forget their looks, nor can our memory retain the idea of their faces ' (G. A. C). 2. See Introduction, p. 7. 4. 'hollow': empty, void of substance: cf. ill. 11, 12. ' Masks ' : false appearances, as in XVIII. 10. Cf. ' Her college and her maidens, empty masks,' Princess, ill. 8. Cf. TtotCKhi 8' oSois ^ibvTO, (ppovriSos TrXij/ois, Soph. O.T. 67 (see Mrs. Shelley's note to Prometheus Unbound). 13. 'beyond the will' : see 2. As the striving ceases and sleep comes on, there appear first the ' masks ' ; then, when sleep is complete, the image he could not picture. Cf iv. 2. LXXI. 2. ' madness : suggested by the ' masks ' of LXX. 4. See the lines In the Valley of Cauteretz. The year was 1830. ' In the summer my father joined Arthur Hallam, and both started off for the Pyrenees, with money for the insurgent allies of Torrijos. . . . He it was who had raised the standard of revolt against the Inquisition and the tyranny of Ferdinand, King of Spain' (Memoir, i. 51). Cf 1. II. 5. ' such credit ' : such acceptance as to produce an illusion so strong. 6. First ed. : ' So bring an opiate treble-strong.' 7. Even this dream had been troubled hke that of LXVIII. For ' sense of wrong ' cf. the last three stanzas of the next section, and LXXXll. 14. i64 In Memoriam sections 8. First ed. : ' That thus my pleasure might be whole." 15. I suppose, as they look up the torrent towards the bridge, the fall under the bridge appears to flash from the darker arch itself. Some construe : ' the cataract flashing as we watch it from the bridge.' But cf. Aylmer's Field {oi the noyades): 'naked marriages Flash from the bridge.' LXXII. The first anniversary of his friend's death (Sept. 15). Contrast XCIX. The effect of this splendid, if somewhat rhetorical, outburst of wrath, in which the day is pursued with invective through its monstrous life of criminal violence to its dull and shameful close, is enhanced by contrast with the calm of the fourteen preceding sections. The third stanza seems hardly in keeping with the tone of the poem. 3. ' white ' : by turning up the under-side of the leaves. So of the willow and the olive in The Lady of Shalott (st. 2) and The Palace of Art (st. 20). Cf Hamlet, IV. vii. 168. 5. 'Day': the word is repeated throughout the poem almost as if it were a term of reproach. ' crown'd ' : cf XXII. 6. 16. ' Along the hills ' : first ed. : ' From hill to hill.' ' yet look'd ' : and yet would'st have looked. 19, 20. For the moment he figures the world as ruled by a blind or malicious Fate. Cf perhaps 6. Contrast Lxxxv. 20, cxxiv. 23, 24. 27. ' Alludes to the hour of noon when the sun reaches it-s highest point ' (C. E. Benham). With Gatty, I should take the line with 28 as referring to sunset. 28. Cf Shakespeare, Sonnet 33, ' Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace.' Lxxi.-Lxxiii. Commentary 165 SECTIONS LXXIII.-LXXVII. The subject of this group is Fame. The passion of LXXII. dies away, but perhaps it is the lingering sense of wrong that turns the poet's thoughts to the fame lost to his friend by an early death. From this he passes to the shortness of any fame which he could give to his friend by his verses. Cf Lycidas, 70 ff. LXXIII. He does not complain because the earth has lost what his friend would have given it : some other world has gained by the loss. Nor does he accuse nature because his friend has missed the fame the earth would have given him : nature obeys her law. Nor will he regret this loss of earthly fame : it is a thing that dies, while the soul of the dead retains the force that would have earned it. 1-4. Cf. XXX. 25-28, XL. 17-20, Lxxxii. 9-12. 7. Perhaps a reference to LXXll. 12. Cf Lycidas, 8i ff. 13, 14. 'hollow' : see LXX. 4. In Tennyson's mind the ideas of immortality and of the highest worth seem to be inseparable. If love is the best of things it cannot die, and, conversely, that which dies or is lost through death cannot be of the highest value. Just as human life seems to him not worth having if the soul that lives it is not immortal, so the vanity of earthly fame seems to him to follow at once from its brevity. i66 In Memoriam SECTIONS 15, 16. Cf. Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington: < Gone ; but nothing can bereave him Of the force he made his own Being here. [Mr. Eve thinks there is an allusion to the idea of potential energy. If this were so, it would give a late date to the section.] LXXIV. He realises more and more the ' strength ' and ' force ' (lxxiii. 4, 1 6) which would have won for his friend a fame on earth like that of its great men of old. But he will not speak of that which was never fully shown here, and now brightens another world. This seems to be the idea expressed in the last stanza, and serving to connect the section with LXXIII. and Lxxv. (see LXXV. 13-20). 1-4. Gatty quotes Browne, Letter to a Friend, of some one recently dead [it is really of some one near death] : ' he lost his own face . . . and looked like his uncle.' 7, 8. Cf. LXI. ' Below ' surely means ' among the dead,' not ' now on earth.' 9. Refers to 6. Even yet he cannot reahse all the likeness and greatness. II, 12. Cf the famous soliloquy in Romeo andfuliet, V. iii. 74 ff. Collins compares Petrarch, Sonnet 80, Non pu6 far Morte il dolce viso amaro, Ma '1 dolce viso dolce pu6 far Morte. LXXV. 2. ' in a poem which is written only to relieve my sorrow,' rather than 'though to sing thy praise would bring me relief.' Cf. Lxxvil. stanza 4. LXXIII.-LXXVI. Commentary 167 9. ' these fading days ' : this transitory element of time : he does not refer to his own time in particular. ' Fading ' may be suggested by the 'dying' and 'fading' of LXXlll. 13, 14. 11. 'breeze of song': cf offpos i/ivay, Pindar, PytA. 4, 3 (Collins) ; and Aen. vil. 646, Ad nos vix tenuis famae perlabitur aura. 12. Gatty quotes from the Vision of Sin : All the windy ways of men Are but dust that rises up, And is lightly laid again. With which cf. Young, Night-thoughts, 11. : Since by life's passing breath, blown up from Earth, Light as the summer's dust, we take in air A moment's giddy flight, and fall again. 1 5. ' credits ' : perhaps simply ' believes ' ; but probably rather ' places to the credit of (the doer),' whence comes the further idea of holding in honour. Cf. Lxxx. 13. 20. Cf. The Dying Swan, ' the tumult of their acclaim.' LXXVI. This section develops the idea expressed in Lxxv., stanza 3. He realises the brevity of any fame which his verses could give to his friend. ' Consider the utter insignificance of the earth and man's life in the universe of worlds ; consider the immeasurable ages of the future ; and then reflect that thy deepest lays will be forgotten in much less than the life-time of a tree on that earth.' In the Epilogue to The Charge of the Heavy Brigade the thought of this section is repeated and more clearly expressed : The fires that arch this dusky dot — Yon myriad-worlded way — i68 In Memoriam SECTIONS The vast sun-cluster'd gathered blaze, World-isles in lonely skies, Whole heavens within themselves, amaze Our brief humanities ; And so does Earth ; for Homer's fame, Tho' carved in harder stone — The falling drop will make his name As mortal as my own. The other side is given in Parnassus : If the lips were touch'd with fire from off a pure Pierian altar, Tho' their music here be mortal need the singer greatly care? Other songs for other worlds ! the fire within him would not falter ; Let the golden Iliad vanish. Homer here is Homer there. Collins compares with the section Dante, Purg. XI. 9 1 - 1 1 7, which, he thinks, plainly suggested it (as well as LXXIII., stanza 3). Cf. also LXXV. 11-13 with lines 92 and 100, loi, of the passage in Dante. I. Cf. Adonais, XLVii. For the phrase Collins compares Petrarch, In Morte, Sonnet 82, ' Volo con 1' ali de' pensieri al cielo.' 3, 4. ' Where ' : at a height from which. Gatty compares Cymbeline, I. iii. 18, 'Till the diminution Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle.' 6. 'secular' : cf. xli. 23. 9. ' matin-songs,' etc. : the writings of the great early Poets (authorised interpretation in Gatty). II. Cf. 'But Song will vanish in the Vast,' Epilogue to The Charge of the Heavy Brigade, 13. ' these ' : yew and oalc LXXVI.-LXXVIII. Commentary 169 16. Cf. Merlin and Vivien, lines 3, 4 : Before an oak, so hollow, huge, and old. It look'd a tower of ruin'd masonwork. LXXVII. Though his songs will soon die, he will sing none the less. He does not sing for fame. ■i-i,. The idea (suggested by Lxxvi. 1-6) seems to be that, when we look back across the tract of time at objects lying in it, their dimension in the line of vision appears immensely contracted ; and so it will be with modern rhyme. Cf. Queen Mary, iii. 5 : How many names in the long sweep of time That so foreshortens greatness. For the word ' foreshorten'd ' cf. Marvell, First Anniversary, 139, ' Foreshortened Time its useless course would stay.' ' Tract of time ' occurs in Par. Lost, v. 498. II. 'then changed to something else,' e.g. the joy of re- union, in the ' long-forgotten mind.' 13. Cf. xxxvill. (Eve). 15, 16. Collins compares Petrarch, In Morte, Sonnet 25 : E certo ogni mio studio in quel temp' era Pur di sfogare il doloroso core In qualche modo, non d' acquistar fama. Pianger cercai, non gik del pianto onore. -7^ LXXVIII. With this section begins the Third Part of In Memoriam. See Introduction, p. 29. The second Christmas-eve after his friend's death. See xxXi throughout. There is a great I70 In Memoriam SECTIONS change : -tlie-,g ilence and d earness of windless frost instead of the rainTwind^^d cloud : a calm and quiet sense of Iqss, with no outward sign of grief and no ';pi-eten<;e'^of gladness, no 'awful sense of one mute Shadow' and no ecstasy of prophecy. It might almost seem that regret is dead, but in truth it is diffused through the whole substance of life. 5. 'Yule-clog': 'clog ' = ' log' is a dialect-word used in Scotland, some of the northern counties of England, and north Lincolnshire {Dialect Dictionary). 11. Tableaux vivants. 12. 'hoodman-Wind': blindman's buff. Cf. Hamlet, ill. iv. 77. 14. 'mark': first ed. : 'type.' 18, 19. 'No': cf. cxv. 18, and contrast Epilogue, 17; ' mystic frame,' ' deep ' : repeated from xxxvi. a ; ' relations ' : with everything else in the mystic frame. SECTIONS LXXIX-LXXXIX. Many of these eleven sections are occasional poems, having little connection with one another beyond a certain unity of tone. The ' calmness ' which is the note of LXXVIII. is maintained. There is much of quiet retrospection, and, in some poems, of thoughts of what might have been : in three sections (lxxxiii., lxxxvi., lxxxviii.) there is the sense of new life and joy, and the last poem is quite happy. The idea of immortality and the hope of reunion appear but rarely, the centre of Lxxviii.-Lxxx. Commentary 171 interest being shifted to the present life of the poet enriched by love for the dead. LXXIX. This section, addressed to one of the poet's brothers, refers back to the last line of IX. 4. ' fee ' : full possession ; cf. Milton, Sonnet vil. 7, and Wordsworth's Sonnet On the Extinction of the Venetian Re- public, ' Once did she hold the gorgeous East in fee.' 7 f. Cf. C, CI. 9. Cf Crabbe, Delay has Danger {Tales, xiii.) : And the cold stream curl'd onward as the gale From the pine-hill blew harshly down the dale. 18. Cf. ex. 17. LXXX. Here, as in LXXXI. and LXXXIV., the poet is fancying what might have been if his friend had not died. ' If he had lived and I had died, he would have turned his grief into gain. Let his fancied example, then, bring help and comfort to me.' 2, 3. 'holy,' 'kindly.' Contrast his feeling towards the death that took his friend : LXXll., st. 5. 8. 'stay'd': the idea is that the grief is not allowed to separate itself from 'peace with God and man,' but is 'propped' and so held fast in this peace. For the word cf Princess, VII., ' stays all the fair young planet in her hands.' 13. 'His credit': that with which I credit him (in the ' fancy' of 5-12). Cf Lxxi. 5, lxxv. i 5. ' Free ' : suggested by 'burthen' : 'help me to turn my burthen into gain.' ,72 In Memoriam section LXXXI. ' If he had lived, my love for him would have continued to grow. Yes; but the same growth was brought suddenly by his death.' The poem appears at first unintelligible, 'Could I have said' being naturally read as meaning ' If I could have said,' and ' Love, then, had hope' as meaning 'Love, then, would have had hope.' The result is nonsense. ' Could I have said ' is a question. Accordingly a note of interrogation must be supplied at the end of the first stanza, which should be printed thus : Could I have said while he was here, " My love shall now no further range ; There cannot come a mellower change, For now is love mature in ear"? Line 5 means : ' [No, I could not have said this; and] Love, therefore, had hope of richer store.* ' But this,' he goes on to say, ' is a painful thought, for it suggests that I have lost the increase of love which would have come if he had lived longer.' Stanza 3 alludes to the fact that under certain conditions a sudden frost will ripen grain. The 'grain,' of course, is his love. Cf LXV. 4. The fact that this interpretation of the section involves a change of punctuation need not weigh against it ; for there are frequent instances in In Memoriam, and in Tennyson's other works, of defective punctuation, and, in particular, of a Lxxxi. Commentary 173 defective use of the note of interrogation. For example, LXXXIV. last line, LXXXVil. last line, XCIX. 16, and probably xcili. 8, should have this note instead of a full stop : in xxxv. 5 and 7 the colon and note should change places. The whole of LXIV. is one interrogative sentence ; it therefore requires a note of interrogation at the end (in addition to a note within the inverted ^ comma). CXiir. 4 should end with a note of ex- clamation or interrogation. The note in CXIV. 1 3 should come after ' power ' in 15. CXXII. 8 perhaps should have the same note. The note of interro- gation has been supplied since the first edition in XXIX. 8, and other places. For the implied 'no' in line 5 cf XXIV. 3, and also xcill. 5, if the sentence is not interro- gative. [I doubt if the interpretation given above is right. It assumes that ' richer store ' means ' a store richer than it already was,' or (in other words) ' a store richer than the existing store ' ; and, with this meaning, it is impossible to take ' could I have said ' and ' love had hope ' as pro- tasis and apodosis of a conditional sentence. But this is not impossible, if the ellipsis implied in ' richer ' is otherwise filled up, and if ' store ' is taken to be the grain laid up in garners after Hallam's death. The meaning of lines 1-5, ex- pressed prosaically, will then be : 'If, while he was alive, I had ever been able to say, " My love for him is now fully ripened," I should in that case 174 Ifi Memoriam sections have been able to anticipate a more valuable store of love, on his death, than the store I could have hoped for on his dying while my love was still un- ripe.' The full stop after ' ear ' in line 4 should then be changed into a comma. I owe this idea to some remarks by Mr. Ferrall. It avoids the violence to language involved in my interpretation of line 5. I may mention that Tennyson, late in life, endorsed that interpretation, and this of course is a strong argument in its favour ; but I do not consider it decisive.] LXXXII. The following summary is intended merely to show the connection with LXXXI. ' Death has not injured my love, which is my best life (LXXXI.) ; nor do I believe he has injured my friend's life. What he has done is to put our lives apart' 5, 6. Cf. XXX. 25 f., LXI. I. ' From state to state ^ recurs in The Two Voices and in Demeter and Persephone, line 7. 7. ' these ' : the changed ' form and face ' of line 2. 10. Did Tennyson know that he was translating Aristotle's XP^tris T?s ifertfi ? r 11, 12. Cf. LXXIII. 1-4, LXXV. l8-20. 14. 'garners' : stores itself. Cf. Othello, iv. ii. 57 : But there where I have garner'd up my heart. Tennyson's use of the verb as intransitive seems peculiar to him. 15, 16. Cf. LXXXV. 83, 84. Even this complaint is heard no longer towards the close of In Memoriam. For the long survival of 'wrath' (which seems somewhat peculiar) cf. LXXll. and XCVlll. LXXXI.-LXXXIII. Commentary 175 Lxxxrii. The poet calls on the new year to hasten its coming, to bring the joy and beauty of spring and summer, and to melt his frozen sorrow into song. The section is, in effect, a spring poem, and should be contrasted with XXXVIII. and com- pared with CXV., CXVI. If he were thinking of New Year's Day there would be no meaning in the reference to the ' northern shore ' reached by spring later than southern shores. Cf. CXVI. 3, where ' the year ' begins in April, and the first version of The Millers Daughter : I heard . . . The low voice of the glad New Year Call to the freshly flower'd hill. 5. 'from the clouded noons': not 'from bringing the clouded noons of April,' but, 'from the noons, which are therefore still clouded.' 6. 'proper' : own. Cf. xxvi. i6, cxvil. 2. 10. The germander speedwell. 11, 12. 'fiery,' 'fire.' The repetition is, of course, inten- tional. Perhaps the famous phrase in 12 suffers from it. The colour is more truly described in the poem To Mary Boyle : And all the gold from each laburnum chain Drop to the grass. (' Golden-chain ' is a dialect-name for the laburnum-blossom in the Midlands and South of England.) Mrs. Hemans writes of the ' laburnum's dropping gold ' (G. A.C.). 15. Cf. CXV. 17-20, 176 In Memoriam SECTIONS LXXXIV. This section, which deals again with what might have been, is perhaps separated from Lxxx. and LXXXi. because it brings no thought of consola- tion. In spite of some fine phrases it is scarcely in Tennyson's happiest style, and it is unfortunate that the finest lines (19, 20) recall Lamb's exquisite ' Dream Children.' For the biographical references see Introduction, p. 2. I. 'contemplate' : for the accentuation cf. cxviii. i. 5. ' crown'd ' : cf. LXXII. 5. 15. G.A.C. quotes Taylor, Holy Dying, i. i. : 'and changes his laurel into cypress, his triumphal chariot to an hearse,' and Romeo and Juliet, iv. v. 89 : ' Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse.' 41. 'Arrive' is used as sometimes by Shakespeare and Milton. 46. 'backward': retrospective, like Shakespeare's 'record , , . with a backward look ' (Sonnet 59). LXXXV. The poem is addressed to Edmund Lushington, whose marriage with the poet's sister, Cecilia, is celebrated in the Epilogue (cf. its first line with LXXXV. 5). For the date of composition, see Introduction, p. 14. See also p. 28. Opening with a repetition, which gives the key- note, of the words which closed XXVII., the poem proceeds to answer the two questions of stanza 3, and so looks both backward and forward, glancing at the moods and subjects of many preceding sections, and showing the stage at which the poet Lxxxiv., Lxxxv. Commentary \^^ has arrived in his ' progress of sorrow,' and how he seeks a new friendship, though it cannot be like the old. Collins compares this section with Petrarch's 42nd sonnet ; stanzas 1 8 and foil, with Sonnet 1 1 ; and the latter part of the section with Canzone 6. Of the last there seem certainly to be reminis- cences, and much of the section is Petrarchian jn tone. 21. The pure Spirits, 'whom the vulgar call Angels' (Dante, Con. II. 5), who preside over or guide the nine Heavens. Cf. Farad. ll. 131, xxvill. ^^, and Longfellow's notes. Cf. Par. Lost, v. 407, ' those pure intelligential substances,' and VIII. 180. Throughout this section the idea that at death the soul passes into a state which, though higher than the earthly, is still imperfect and gives way to further states, is in abeyance. 22. Cf. The Princess, Conclusion : ' That range above the region of the wind.' 28. ' in the cycled times ' : in period after period of earthly progress. 33. 'equal-poised'.: metaphor from a yoke (Beeching). Cf. The Princess, Vll., ' yoked in all exercise of noble end.' 35. 'other': 'second,' which would probably have been written if the lines had not already been full of sibilants, to which Tennyson had an aversion. Cf Aen. VI. 713 : ' animae quibus altera fato Corpora debentur.' 37 f. The sense goes on from line 32 : ' Yet I knew that the will within us (cf. CXXXI.) demands from us action, not absorption in feeling nor works of weakness.' Cf. iv. 15, 16. ' By which,' etc. : through obedience to which we dare to face either life or death. There is no reference to the thought of suicide. Cf Essay on Man, iv. 4 : ' For which we bear to live or dare to die.' M 178 In Memoriam sections 43. Cf. LXV. 10. 49. The sense goes on from line 44. 54. ' spiritual strife' : e.g. as to immortality or the meaning of evil in the world. Metrically this word is used in three different ways in In Memoriam : (i) as here, (2) as in XCII. 14, (3) as in cxxxi. 3. 60. Tennyson seems {Memoir, I. 321) to have quoted the words in a way that would identify these ' mighty hopes ' with the ' larger hope' of LV. 20. But he may not have had the whole passage in mind ; and, considering the context, it seems more natural to include, at any rate, in the 'mighty hopes' hopes for the future of the race on earth (cf. LXXI. 9-1 1). 63. Cf Aug. Con. IV. 6 : 'I felt that my soul and his soul were one soul in two bodies, and therefore was my life a horror to me, because I would not live halved' (G.A.C.). 64. 'had': would have. 67. 'all-assuming' : that take to themselves, devour, every- thing : Shakespeare's ' Cormorant devouring Time.' 69. 'steaming' r cf Par. Lost, v. 185 : ' Ye mists and exhalations that now rise From hill or steaming lake." ' Floods,' rivers : cf LXXXVI. 7, cm. 20. 81, 82. Cf the doubts of XXXVIII., XLlll. foil., LXI. foU. But his resignation in ignorance appears again in 93-6. 85,86. 'nature': earthly nature; 'free': cf xxxvill. 9, 10 'l take the stanza to mean, ' Do the dead, then, feel pain (for sympathy must be pain)? Or is their sympathy pain- less ? ' But it has been pointed out to me that the idea of the last two Unes need not be an alternative to that of the first, the meaning of the stanza being : ' Can the life of the dead be clouded by sympathy, doubtless painless, with the living. In either case the stanza touches on a difficulty as to memory in the dead which has not previously been alluded to. 90. Cf LXix. 20. 91. 'conclusive' : the bliss of the ' final goal' (liv. 2) or Lxxxv., Lxxxvi. ' Commentary 179 'divine event' The dead friend is supposed to see, where the poet can only trust. Cf. CXXVII. 20. 95. 'symbols': thoughts which signify figuratively a truth which they do not accurately express. loi. ' If, with love as true, if not so fresh, I,' etc. ' If is forced ungrammatically to do double duty. [But this would be a strange mistake, and Mr. Ferrall is probably right in taking the sentence to be independent of the preceding stanza : ' with love as true, if not so fresh (as my first love for my dead friend), I aver,' etc.] 105. ' apart ' : in a place which no other 'powers' can occupy. 106. 'golden hours' : cf xxxix. 6. 107. Cf. VI. 43, 44, and ' deep as first love ' in Tears, idle Tears. 112. Cf. VII. 3, 4. 113. 'widow'd': cf. IX. 18. 119. The Evening Primrose, according to many readers; but surely Tennyson meant the feeble or imperfect flowers sometimes put forth by the common primrose in autumn and early winter. LXXXVI. This wonderful poem, written in spring (6, 10) 'at Barmouth,' famed for the sunsets over its estuary, 'gives pre-eminently his sense of the joy- ous peace in Nature, and he would quote it in this context along with his Spring and Bird songs ' {Memoir, I. 3 1 3). It is the answer to the prayer of LXXXIII., and comes most appropriately at this point, breathing the ' full new life ' which is be- ginning to revive in the poet's heart, and to dispel the last shadow of the evil dreams which Nature seemed to lend (lv.) when he was under the sway i8o In Memoriam SECTIONS of the ill brethren Doubt and Death. The rhythm of the one long sentence, the pauses of which are not allowed to coincide with the breaks between the stanzas, seems the very echo of the spirit of the poem. See further, on this section, the remarks on cxxii. ; and cf with it a passage at the beginning of The Lover's Tale, in. : A morning air, sweet after rain, ran over The rippling levels of the lake, and blew Coolness and moisture and all smells of bud And foliage from the dark and dripping woods Upon my fever'd brows that shook and throbb'd From temple unto temple. For the date of composition see p. 1 5. I. 'ambrosial' : a favourite word with Milton and Tenny- son, who uses 'ambrosial gloom' in a very early fragment {Memoir, I. 24), and again in The Princess, iv. 6. 3, 4. Cf. cxxn. 4. 5. ' rapt ' : the word does not imply quick or violent motion with Tennyson. Cf. The Day-dream : And, rapt thro' many a rosy change. The twilight died into the dark. 6. 'dewy': from the showers. Q,i.C\\.\'2,w\&. The Princess, I. : 'In the green gleam of dewy-tassell'd trees.' 7. ' shadowing' : cf cvn. 14, and 'Little breezes dusk and shiver,' Lady of Shalott. ' Horned flood ' : see on LXXXV. 69. 'Horned' probably means not 'branching' but 'wind- ing,' and so 'indented.' Cf The Dying Swan, 'And the wave-worn horns of the echoing bank.' Cf 'horned flood' in Par. Lost, XI. 831, and Virgil's 'Corniger Hesperidum fluvius regnator aquarum,' Aen. viil. 77. 138". 'The west wind rolling to the Eastern seas till it meets the evening star ' : Tennyson's words to Mr. Knowles, I had always taken the lines to mean that fancy accom- Lxxxvi., Lxxxvii. Commentary i8i panics the west wind as it streams eastward from cloud-belt to cloud-belt in the crimson sky, or from belt to belt of crimson cloud. Such uses of ' sea ' are, of course, common, and cf. LXXXIX. 47, cm. 55, The Ancient Sage, The last long stripe of waning crimson gloom. 1 cannot help suspecting some misunderstanding on Mr. Knowles's part, or even a forgetfulness of his meaning on Tennyson's, not so much because it is hard to imagine what ' Eastern seas,' except the Red, would look from above like ' belts,' as because any Eastern sea would be dark when sunset was visible from the west of England, a fact which Tennyson would be the last poet to forget. With the whole stanza cf. the last stanza of the Alcaics to Milton. 14. 'odour': caught from 'brake and bloom and meadow' and ' dewy-tassell'd wood.' Cf. xcv. 9. LXXXVII. A retrospect of Cambridge days, not marked by the sense of loss. See p. 1 6. 6. 'high-built,' in reference to the position of the organ above the screen (Gatty). 7. Cf. a fine description at the end of The Princess, 11. 8. ' prophet ' : first ed. : ' prophets.' The change was not made till 1884. 15. 'long walk of limes,' in Trinity College. Cf. Sonnet To the Rev. W. H. Brookfield: How oft with him we paced that walk of limes, Him, the lost light of those dawn-golden times. 39, 40. ' These lines I wrote from what Arthur Hallam said after reading of the prominent ridge of bone over the eyes of Michael Angelo : " Alfred, look over my eyes ; surely I have the bar of Michael Angelo 1"' Tennyson, quoted in Memoir, i. 38. ,82 In Memoriam sections LXXXVIII. As in the bird's song, so in his own, joy seems to break from the midst of grief. I The 'wild bird' is generally and naturally taken to be the' nightingale, whose song seems to some 'most melan- choly,' and to others joyous, and to the poet both. Cf. a passage near the end of the Gardener's Daughter, and, earlier, Recollections of the Arabian Nights : The living airs of middle night Died round the bulbul as he sung ; Not he : but something which possess'd The darkness of the world, delight. Life, anguish, death, immortal love, Ceasing not, mingled, unrepress'd. Tennyson elsewhere uses both 'warble' and 'liquid' of the nightingale's song. 'quicks': the quick-set hedge-row; cf. CXV. 2. Ihe 2. Z. 4UH.K.3 . I."-- vju.w* — o word is used by country folk in various parts of England. 3 f What is that centre where the diverse passions so mingle that, when they radiate from it, each has a tone of the others? •• ,, . 5. 'fierce extremes': occurs in King John, v. vu. 13. Par. Lost, vn. 7.72. <■,/,„„! 6. 'darkening,' as night comes on: first ed. : dufeking, often used by Tennyson of twilight. The change was perhaps made because of ' dusk ' in Lxxxix. 2. II. 'the sum of things': occurs in Par. Lost, VI. 673 (G.A.C.). LXXXIX. An entirely happy retrospect of his friend's visits to the poet's home. For the biographical references see pp. 2, 3. It will be found that (if we omit the long section LXXXV.) sections ot Lxxxviii.jLxxxix. Commentary 183 hope and of retrospect are made to alternate in this part of the poem : LXXXIII., LXXXVI., LXXXVIIL, with LXXXIV., LXXXVII., LXXXIX. I. ' counterchange ' : chequer. Cf. LXXll. 15, and Re- collections of the Arabian Nights : A sudden splendour from behind Flushed all the leaves with rich gold-green, And, flowing rapidly between Their interspaces, counterchanged The level lake with diamond-plots Of dark and bright. 4. 'sycamore': cf xcv. 55. 7. 'liberal air': cf Byron, Manfred, i. i, 'pipes in the liberal air.' 8. Cf Horace, Odes, III. xxix. 12, 'Fumum et opes strepitumque Romae ' (Collins). 12. 'dusty': first ed. : 'dusky.' 16. 'winking' of course refers to the tremulous appear- ance of the heated air. 27. G.A.C. compares Hallam's Remains, p. 71 : Sometimes I dream thee leaning o'er The harp I used to love so well. 36. Arthur Hallam was an enthusiastic reader of Plato. 45. 'glooming': Tennyson is fond of 'gloom' and its congeners. He uses 'glooming' as a substantive in the Gardener's Daughter ('the balmy glooming crescent-Ut' ; cf 'gorgeous gloom of evening,' LXXXVI. 2), and 'gloom' as a transitive verb in The Letters and elsewhere. Cf Epilogue, Ii8. Cf with the whole line Horace, Odes, 11. xi. 18 (G.A.C). 47, 48. These lines, which surely mar a beautiful passage, mean : ' Before Venus, surrounded by the crimson of sunset, had set after the sun.' Cf cxxi. i, 2. According to the nebular theory, Venus, like the other planets, was formed by the condensation of a zone thrown off from a mass of nebula, the remains of which, condensing towards the centre, i84 In Memoriam sections formed the sun. The sun, as representing the whole original nebula, is figured as the father of Venus. Cf. Lady Psyche in The Princess, ll. : This world was once a fluid haze of hght, Till toward the centre set the starry tides, And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast The planets, 'crimson-circled': for 'crimson' cf. cm. 55 (of cloud), and perhaps LXXXVI. 13. 52. Cf. CI. 8. SECTIONS XC.-XCV. A group of closely connected sections on the present communion or contact of the living and the dead. It opens with the expression of desire for such communion, and closes with the descrip- tion of an experience in which this desire seems to be fulfilled. So far the thought of such present communion has occupied the poet but little. He trusts to meet his friend beyond the grave ; he has hoped that his friend watches him from afar; he has even cried to him ' Be near me.' But he has accepted the fact of their present separation, and the one deed for which he has been unable to forgive Death is that He put our lives so far apart We cannot hear each other speak (Lxxxn.). Now, with the desire for communion, comes the thought that after all it may in some form be possible even in this life. The connection of the sections is shown in the summaries which follow. Lxxxix-xci. Commentary 185 xc. ' Come back to me ! ' The idea is quite general : he does not ask in what way his friend is to return to him. 1. He who first suggested the ideas expressed in stanzas 2-5 never loved with all his soul, and never knew love at its highest. With these stanzas cf. The Lotos-Eaters, vi., where the phrase ' confusion worse than death ' recurs. 15, 16. G.A.C. quotes from Sadi's Gulistan : 'Oh ! if the dead man might come again among the members of his race and his kindred, the return of his inheritance would be harder to the heir than the death of his relation.' 17. 'these' : the sons mentioned in stanzas 2, 3, 4. 22. See Introduction, p. 17. XCI. ' Come back to me in visible form ! ' The visible form is the ' point ' of the section. He calls on his friend to appear ; in spring-time, wearing the semblance worn in the spring-tide promise of his life on earth (1-8); in summer, in the ' after form ' which betokens his maturer life elsewhere (9-16). (Genung alone among the analysts has perceived the structure of the poem, and the beauty of the descriptive phrases probably conceals it from many readers.) 2. 'rarely.' The 'rarely' of Shakespeare and of Scott's Sweet Robin sits on the bush. Singing so rarely. 4. ' sea-blue bird of March ' : the kingfisher. Cf. The Progress of Spring : And in her open palm a halcyon sits Patient — the secret splendour of the brooks. i86 In Memoriam SECTIONS The phrase is fully explained in the following passage : ' As. to " sea-blue birds " &c. defendant states that he was walking one day in March by a deep-banked brook, and under the leafless bushes he saw the kingfisher flitting or fleeting underneath him, and there came into his head a fragment of an old Greek lyric poet [Alkman], " dXwrip^u/jos efapos 6pf«," " The sea-purple or sea-shining bird of Spring," spoken of as the halcyon. Defendant cannot say whether the Greek halcyon be the same as the British kingfisher, but, as he never saw the kingfisher on this particular brook before March, he concludes that in that country, at least, they go down to the sea during the hard weather, and come up again with the Spring, for what says old Belon : " Le Martinet-pescheur fait sa demeure En temps d'hiver au bord de I'oc^an, Et en est^ sur la rivifere en estan, Et de poisson se repaist k toute heure." You see he puts " estd," which I suppose stands for all the warmer weather.' Letter of Tennyson to Duke of Argyll, 1864, Memoir, II. 4. The letter is perfectly decisive, yet by i8go these details had faded from Tennyson's mind, and, though he 'supposed' the bird was the kingfisher, he was willing to believe it was the blue tit (see Rawnsley's Memories of the Tennysons, p. 109). 6. 'in time' : in the earthly life. Cf XXVII. 6. 16. 'light in light.' Cf ' another night in night,' Recollec- tions of the Arabian Nights. XCII. ' No : it is no visible appearance that I desire, nor any communication through sense. I should not be convinced.' Reflection destroys the wish expressed in XCI. For, if the vision came, it might be counted a mere hallucination. Even if xci., xcii. Commentary 187 it spoke, and spoke of events in the lives of the friends on earth, this might be counted the pro- duct of his own memory. Nay, if it foretold something which actually happened a year later, the prophecy might seem to be merely his own presentiment. Contrast this section with xiv. 3. Cf. Maud, II. iv. 8 : Get thee hence, nor come again, Mix not memory with doubt. 'Tis the blot upon the brain That will show itself without. 13. 'They' seems to have nothing to refer to except ' months.' But, probably, as several correspondents suggest, the sense is, ' It might not seem thy prophecy,' but Tennyson, writing ' prophecies,' put ' they ' by a kind of attraction from that plural. The line is thus equivalent to, ' Thy prophecies might not seem thy prophecies.' 14. ' spiritual ' : ' in my own spirit,' or, ' such as often come into the mind ' (Ferrall). 15. 16 do not give another hypothesis, but repeat 14 (he says ' And,' not ' Or '). ' Refraction,' as in mirage. Gatty quotes from Coleridge's translation of the Death of Wallen- siein, V. i. : As the sun. Ere it is risen, sometimes paints its image In the atmosphere, so often do the spirits Of great events stride on before the events, And in to-day already walks to-morrow. The context makes it probable that there is here a reminis- cence of this passage. Cf. Coleridge's Statesman's Manual, Appendix B, and Table Talk, May i, 1823 (G.A.C.). i88 In Memoriam SECTIONS XCIII. ' But a direct contact of soul and soul is possible. Therefore come ! ' 1-4. 'See' is emphatic. Understand 'But' before 'Dare,' or 'then' after 'Dare I.' The poet abruptly and finally dismisses the idea that the dead will appear in visible form, but hesitates to assert that no soul ever returned to earth. 5-8. He affirms that it is possible that the soul of the dead— not a visual shade, but the soul itself— may come to the soul of the living without the mediation of any sense, or on condition that all the senses are in abeyance (' all ' in 7 excludes more than the ' see' of i, unless the line means, ' When the nerve of sight is wholly numb,' when cf. Par. Lost, XI. 415, 'the visual nerve'). Such words as 'No, I dare not say this. Rather ' must be understood before the beginning of line 5. Cf. the omission of ' No, I could not have said this ' in Lxxxi. 5 (on one interpretation). But the passage from doubt or musing ('Dare I say?') to positive assertion is here so abrup.t that perhaps stanza 2 was really meant to be a continuation of lines 2-4 of stanza i ; i.e. to be a part of that which the poet doubts whether he dare say : ' dare I say, not indeed that the visual shade may come, but that the spirit himself may come?' In that case, line 4 should end with a colon or semi-colon, and hne 8 with a note of interrogation. On Tennyson's defective use of this note, see remarks on LXXXI. If this suggestion be correct, the summary given at the head of the section will run : ' But is not a direct contact of soul and soul possible ? If so, come ! ' A third interpretation has been suggested to me as con- ceivable : ' I shall not see thee. No spirit (dare I say this ?) ever came back to the world of sense : none ever appeared as a shade : but a spirit may return to the inner world of another spirit.' XCIII.-XCV. Commentary 189 8. Cf. Aylmer's Field : Star to star vibrates light : may soul to soul Strike thro' a finer element of her own ? So, — from afar, — touch us at once ? These lines, however, refer to two living people, one at the point of death. (In the lines that follow there is another instance of the omission of the note of interrogation). 9. ' thy sightless range ' : the place where thou rangest invisible. For 'range' cf XLIV. 12, LXXXV. 22 : for 'sight- less' (used as in Macbeth, I. v. 50, vii. 23) CXV. 18. 10. Cf. Comus, II. 13. Cf cxxii. II. 15. 'frame' ; body, as in XLV. 11 (but not as in xxxvi. 2). Cf.7. XCIV. He reflects, and realizes what is required in his own soul for such communion. Cf. the way in which LI., Lll. follow on L. Cf. Taylor's Twenty- five Sermons preached at Golden Grove, Sermon iv. (Collins). 6. shows a curious coincidence with a line in Young's Night-thoughts, IV. : To drink the spirit of the golden day. 10. (They haunt) imaginations. 14. 'doubt': see xcv. 44. If this connection was intended (which seems very questionable) the doubt in XCV. was regarded as blameable. 15. 'gates': cf 'enter,' xcill. 13. 16. For the metaphors of this stanza cf. Herbert, The Family. XCV. After a peaceful evening in the garden formerly visited by his friend, the poet, left alone in the I90 In Memoriam SECTION summer night, reads again the letters of the dead, and suddenly his wish is, in some sense, fulfilled. For the ' trance,' and Tennyson's own experi- ences and opinions, see Introduction, pp. 46, 53, 60 ; the passages quoted in the note on line 39; Memoir, I. 320, 321, and Mr. Knowles's article, p. 169. Tennyson's experience seems to have resembled that of Plotinus (see Enn. iv. viii. i). On this section see further the notes on CXXII. I. The scene of Lxxxix., and therefore the happy memories of the past, are recalled by the opening reference to the lawn, and the later mention of the brook, the sycamore, and the elms. 9. ' fragrant ' : cf. Lxxxvi. 14. 10. 'Ht': alighted; 'the filmy shapes,' etc. : night-moths (authorised interpretation in Gatty, who adds that the ermine moth answers to the description). 22. 'that glad year,' as the metaphor of the next line shows, is the whole time of the friendship. 25 f. The strangeness of the dead man's seeming to be then and there speaking, expressed in 'silent-speaking' and ' dumb cry,' prepares for what follows. 34. 'touch'd' : the word was used in xcili. 13. 36, 37. 'The living soul,' 'And mine in this' : till about 1878, 'His living soul,' 'And mine in his.' On 'the living soul' Tennyson remarked to Mr. Knowles : 'per- chance of the Deity. ... My conscience was troubled by "his."'i ' What was it that troubled his conscience ? A doubt whether it had really seemed to him that Hallam's soul was flashed on his ? Rather, I suppose, a doubt whether the soul that seemed to be flashed on his, and seemed to be Hallam's, was Hallam's. If so, xcv. Commentary 191 ' living,' in antithesis to ' dead ' (34). ' Flash'd,' to describe instantaneous motion or action. Cf. XLI. 12, LXXVi. 5. 39. ' that which is ' : the ultimate reality, as distinguished from that half-deceptive appearance which we commonly call the real world. Cf. cxxiv. 22 ; The Higher Pantheism ; the grand conclusion of the Holy Grail, where ' vision ' (appearance) is distinguished from reality ; and especially the Ancient Sage. 41. He is able to perceive the law and harmony in what at other times appears unintelligible ; cf. CXXll. 8. ' Aeonian ' : cf. XXXV. II. 42, 43. Cf Milton, On Time, ' Triumphing over Death and Chance and thee, O Time.' 45-8. ' My description of that which I became during the trance and in its cancelling is vague ; but how can it be otherwise?' It might seem at first more natural to take 'that which I became' to refer to the time after the can- ceUing of the trance. In that case the meaning of the stanza will be : My description of the trance and its cancelling is vague, but to describe the state that followed would be even more difficult. Accordingly he does not attempt to describe it. But is it likely that his state, after ■ the trance was cancelled by doubt, would be even further removed from ordinary experience than his state during the trance ? ' matter-moulded ' : the forms of speech, being moulded by and meant to express our sensible experience, are inadequate to describe a higher experience. Such words, for example, as 'Descend, and touch, and enter' (XCIII. 13), his scruple seems needless, for he had never said that it was Hallam's (see 35) ; he had said that his trance was cancelled by doubt (44) ; and, if he referred to it in cxxii., he had again spoken doubtfully of Hallam's presence. Probably at the moment of the experience he did think his friend's soul was present, but thereafter never felt any certainty on the subject ; and, considering the language of such a poem as cxxx., his uncertainty seems almost inevitable. 192 In Memoriam sections properly apply to something material, and not to the soul. And equally inadequate will be the language which describes the trance. Collins compares with the stanza Paradiso, xxxill. 55-7. 49. ' doubtful ' : cf. LXI. 9. The last four stanzas form surely, if taken alone, one of the most wonderful descriptive passages in all poetry ; but in their context they have an indescribable effect, the breeze seeming to recall the coming and passing of the wind of the Spirit in the trance, and the minghng of the dim lights of East and West being seen as that meeting of life and death which has just been experienced as the precursor of an endless union to come. 63. Cf Herbert, The Search. Ci. The Ring, And past and future mix'd in Heaven, and made The rosy twilight of a perfect day. 'Dim lights of life' occurs in Pope's Elegy to the Memory, etc., 19. XCVI. This section has no connection with the pre- ceding group, unless through the mention of 'doubt' in XCIV. 14, and xcv. 30, 44. Line 11 however at once recalls XCV. 29, 30 ; and hence it seems not unlikely that in XCVI. also the poet is describing his friend. It is true, as Genung observes, that neither the lines in XCV. nor CIX. 6 imply that Hallam had to ' fight his doubts.' But a sonnet by Hallam, printed in the Remains, p. 75, refers to a period when doubt ' made an unkind December of [his] spring ' ; and cf. the Preface to the Remains, p. xxxi. Mr. Ferrall thinks the poet is referring to him- self, and to that conquest over doubt on which the experience described in XCV. has set the seal. xcv.-xcvii. Commentary 193 The interest of this question is merely bio- graphical, and the reference need not be either to Tennyson or to Hallam. With the section cf. XXXIII. 18 foil. : cf. cxxiv. 2, 4, 23. 22 {. The same passages from Exodus, xix. and xxxii. are referred to in a poem of doubtful authorship in Poems by Two Brothers. The last two lines seem chiefly intended to complete the picture of the scene suggested by 21, 22, without much regard to their bearing on the main subject of (the section : for if anything now corresponds to the trumpet ) then, there would seem to be no more excuse for doubt now than for turning to strange gods then. This addition of almost irrelevant details in a simile is classical. Cf for it the last two lines of ' Clear-headed friend.' It may be, how- ever, as has been suggested to me, that the ' cloud ' answers to intellectual uncertainty, the 'trumpet' to the feelings so often referred to as giving what intellect cannot give, and the ' making of gods of gold ' to that misconduct into which the doubter did not fall, though he was perplext in faith (see line 9). XCVII. This section recalls LX. See note on the group which opens with that section. The short, simple, unconnected sentences recall the style of LXIX. I if. The first stanza is prefatory. The poet's love finds an lecho of itself in the common things of nature (l), in her more mystical appearances (2, 3), in fact everywhere (4), and so in 'two partners of a married life' (5). Cf LXXXV. 69-76. For ' he ' cf CXXVlll. 2. The preface, however, seems too fine for what follows, the style of the rest of the poem being some- what plain for Tennyson, though in harmony with the substance. 194 In Memoriam sections 2, 3. The allusion is to the spectre of the Brocket!. [A correspondence in the Spectator for Sept. 21 and 28, 1901, shows the necessity of explaining that the 'spectre' is the observer's shadow thrown on a bank of mist. If the bank is near him his shadow may appear enormously extended and, so, ' vast.' He sees a halo round its head, but not round the head of any fellow-observer's shadow.] 7- Cf. 3. 1 5. ' earnest ' : pledge. 16. Cf. LX. 13, 14. 21. Cf. Pope, Rape of the Lock, 11. 139, 'Some thrid the mazy ringlets of her hair ' ; and The Princess, IV., 'to thrid the musky-circled mazes.' XCVIII. To friends about to visit Vienna, where Hallam died. The feeling of reconciliation with death is disturbed. For the occasion and date of the section see Introduction, p. 15. 3. ' When I was there with him ' : in July, 1832. 7, 8. • wisp •' : Will o' the wisp ; ' in the eyes of : watched by. II. The author kept his word. 17. 'gnarr': snarl. Cf. Spenser, F.Q., i. v. 34, 'felly gnarre ' (of Cerberus), and Shakespeare's ' gnarl ' : ' For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite,' R. II., i. iii. 292. 25. ' mother town ' : metropoHs. XCIX. The second anniversary of his friend's death : Sept. 15. The poem opens with the same words as LXXII., to which it forms a beautiful contrast. 5. 'Darkling red' probably describes the fading of rosy clouds towards blackness, not the deepening redness of a clear sky. Such fading is a sign of coming rain. Cf. xcvii.-xcix. Commentary 195 'dimly' (i), 'swollen' (6). Most readers seem to imagine a morning sunny as well as calm and soft, but there is nothing to indicate the former. 9. ' foliaged ' : the word ' murmurest ' suggests the foliage of trees, so that 'foliaged' may mean 'overshadowed by leafy trees ' : but it is more likely that it is used as in Alastor, ' foliaged lattice.' Cf. V Allegro : And at my window bid good morrow, Through the sweet-briar or the vine Or the twisted eglantine. Mr. Ferrall, to whom I owe the observation about 'mur- murest,' suggests that ' foliaged eaves ' may even mean ' eaves of foliage,' the foliage being that of trees overshadowing the lawn. And I have seen ' eaves ' so used in poetry. 12. 'fiery' : cf. ci. 4. 13-20. Contrast vi., st. 2. The expansion of feeling here prepares us for the poems about to follow. 13. 'balmy breath': cf. Othello, v. ii. 16: 'Ah, balmy breath, that dost almost persuade Justice to break her sword.' 17. 'those' of 16. 18. Cf. 'AH things that move between the quiet poles,' Marlowe, Dr. Faustus, opening soliloquy. SECTIONS C.-CIII. The poet leaves the home which has so many associations both with his childhood and with his friend. Loving retrospect is mingled with the impulse forwards to a larger life. This group forms a transition to the last Part of In Memoriam. The reader has been prepared for it by the descriptions in LXXIX, LXXXIX, XCV., and XCIX., so that he seems to be familiar with the home that has to be left. 196 In Memoriam sections For the occasion and date see Introduction, p. IS. c. In leaving the old home he seems to lose his friend again ; but the original feeling of loss is reproduced faintly and peacefully, and the memories recalled are not poignant but 'gracious' and tender I. 'I climb the hill': first ed. : 'I wake, I rise': whid failed to indicate the point of view. For 'the hill' cf LXXXix. 30. 9, 10. The time is autumn, between the times of xcix. anc CIV. 13. Cf. 'the tinkling rills,' Pope, Eloisa to Abelard, 158 and Marvell, Clorinda and Damon, Near this, a fountain's liquid bell Tinkles within the concave shell. 17. Cf. VIII. 21. CI. He turns, in this exquisite poem, from thf associations of the home with his friend to ifc associations with his own childhood. 3. 'beech': cf. xxx. 9. 4. Cf. II. II, xcix. 12. 8. Cf. LXXXIX. 52. 9 f. The brook seems to have been an object of specia affection. Cf. Lxxix. 9, 10, Lxxxix. 43-5, xcv. 7, xcix 5, 6, c. 14-16. The present lines seem to be the germ c The Brook. II, 12. 'or when,' etc. The pole-star, one of the stars i the ' lesser wain,' or ursa minor, forms the apparent axis c that constellation. The periphrasis seems needlessly elabc rate, but it presumably recalls the boy's pleasure in watching c-cii. Commentary 197 this constellation, with the sound of the unseen brook coming to him from time to time. Collins quotes Sophocles, Track. 130, &PKTOV (rTpo4>a,des K4\ev8oi. Cf. Lay of the Last Minstrel, I. xvii. : Arthur's slow wain his course doth roll, In utter darkness, round the pole. 15. Cf. XLIX. 3, 4. 18. 'blow,' like a flower. 21. 'the labourer,' who does not move away, but belongs to the landscape. Oil. Love for the home of childhood (CI.), and love for the home associated with the dead (c), are beautifully figured as rivals in a game in which both must lose. As he goes, they unite. Cf. Petrarch, In Vita, Sonnet XLIV. (Collins). 1-4. The reader will recall a famous passage in Cowper's lines On the Receipt of my Mother's Picture, but Tennyson owes nothing to it. 7, 8. ' referring to the double loss of his father and of his friend ' {Memoir, I. 72) : but of course this does not imply that the one ' spirit ' is his father and the other his friend ; and indeed no one could have guessed from the poem that there was any reference to the former. See cv. 5. 12. 'tassel-hung' : cf. Lxxxvi. 6. 19. G. A. C. compares Queen Mab, iii. : for kings And subjects, mutual foes, for ever play A losing game into each other's hands. 22. Cf. Virgil, Eel. 1.3:' Nos patriae fines et dulcia linquimus arva.' 24. Perhaps the idea is that it is the pain of regret that unites them. 198 In Memoriam section cm. His sadness at leaving the old home is changed to content by a dream. In interpreting this dream we must remember that, even if its record is affected by waking imagination, it is not likely to form an entirely consistent allegory, and also that the dream, though primarily about the poet's life, is also about human life in general. The river fed from hidden summits is life on earth. The sea is eternity, .or the life beyond (this image is habitual with Tennyson : cf. CXXV. 1 3 ; The Passing oj Arthur, where the 'great water' opens on the Ocean ; the passing of Galahad in The Holy Grail; Crossing the Bar). The maidens, Tenny- son believed (Gatty), stand for ' the Muses, Arts, etc' ; but, in so far as the dream concerns the individual life of the poet, they must rather stand for the corresponding aspirations and activities within him ; especially for his poetry, and, perhaps, eminently the poems about his friend ; otherwise their growing and departing with him would be meaningless. They sing to the statue, for the poet's friend is both the centre of his love and a type to him (see the coming sections) of the ideal humanity of the future, already realised in the other life. Their ignorance (12, 13), their wailing (18), and their reproaches (45 -48), appear to indicate that, though aspiring to the ideal, they recognise it only in its earthly forms, and so take the poet's departure to be a desertion of these forms and of them. Their cm. Commentary 199 passing with him to the other life means that 'everything that made Life beautiful here, we may hope may pass on with us beyond the grave' (authorised interpretation in Gatty). Stanzas 7-9 typify the broadening and deepening of life, and the spiritual expansion which will fit the poet to meet his friend again ; also ' the great progress of the age ' (Tennyson to Mr. Knowles). The growth of love for the friend into love for mankind — or, rather, for the divine humanity to which mankind is advancing — is seen in this section, and becomes prominent later. 5, 6. Cf. the ' mystic mountain-range ' in The Vision of Sin, and The Ancient Sage : This wealth of waters might but seem to draw From yon dark cave, but, son, the source is higher, Yon summit half-a-league in air — and higher. The cloud that hides it — higher still, the heavens Whereby the cloud was moulded, and whereout The cloud descended. Force is from the heights. Cf. also The Poets Mind. 8. Cf Geor. 11. 1 57, ' Fluminaque antiquos subterlabentia muros.' 14, 15. 'I loved, and love For ever.' The words are almost repeated in the last line of Vastness. 20. ' flood ' : river : cf LXXXVI. 7. 24. ' golden reed ' ; this does not appear to be the popular name of any plant. The Branched Bur-reed, Sparganium Ramosum, seems most likely to be the plant intended. It has been suggested that 'iris' means the purple iris, and ' golden reed ' the yellow one, but the purple one does not grow in the situation required. 30. Cf Epilogue, 19, 20. zoo In Memoriam sections 33-36. For this 'Vision of the World' cf. cxvill. 14, Epilogue, 128 ff., Locksley Hall, Locksley Hall Sixty Years After. SECTIONS CIV.-CVI. With these sections begins the Fourth Part of In Memoriam. See p. 34. Christmastide and New Year in the new home. The poet turns away from the past and its private grief, and looks to the future and his hopes for mankind. This is the third Christmas since his friend's death. See XXVIII.-XXX., LXXVIII. For the localities and date see Introduction, p. 1 5. The church of CIV. 3 is Waltham Abbey. CIV. I, 2. Repeated from xxvill. i, 2. The remainder of the section forms a detailed contrast with XXVIll. II. 'breathes' : a favourite word with Tennyson as with Milton. Cf. (in this part of the poem) XCIX. 7, C. 3. 12. 'unhallow'd' : contrast xcix. 8. CV. Christmas Eve. See xxix., xxx., and LXXViii. I, 2. First ed. : This holly by the cottage eave, To night, ungather'd, shall it stand. The change was probably made because 'eave' and 'eve' do not rhyme. Yet see on vili. 5, 8. 4. ' strangely ' : contrast ' sadly,' xxx. 4, and ' calmly,' Lxxviii. 4. ciii.-cvi. Commentary 201 6. There is a reminiscence, perhaps unconscious, of LXXVIII. 3. 7, 8. Cf. Moschus, Idyll Hi. loo. 9. ' abuse ' : in the old sense of ' wrong.' Cf xxx. 6. 10. Cf. LXXVIII. II foil. 12. 'use' : cf. XXIX. ii. 14. ' proved ' : tried. 17. 'beat' : in dancing : cf I. 12. 24. ' what,' etc. : ' such motion of rising stars as lightens,' etc. The idea of the stars dancing is common in Milton ; e.g. Par. Lost, III. 580, V. 178. 'East': cf xxx. 29-32 (Robinson). 27. 'Complete the allotted number of your revolutions.' Cf. CXVll. 12. 28. ' the closing cycle ' or period : cf CIII. 35, cvi. 28, Epilogue, 128 ff. Tennyson uses the language of the Roman poets, e.g. Horace in the Carmen Saeculare, or Virgil, Eel. IV. 4, Ultima Cymaei venit jam carminis aetas. Time is said to have been divided in the books of the Cumaean Sybil into cycles or saecula, and Virgil makes the golden age return with the closing cycle. CVI. New Year's Eve. The mood of the last poem is continued and heightened ; the bells sound wild and jubilant, as though the ' closing cycle ' were already beginning ; and the poet turns from ' the grief that saps the mind ' to hopes for the futu re of man. In this section it should be observed that the powers that work for good are especially those which unite- men ; and so_the fe elin g that his grieLisolat^s^im and is useless to others stirs~the-- poet to overcome \XA^V\X^~ 202 In Memoriani sections 9, 10, 19, 20. Cf. Prologue, 37 fE, Lxxxv. 61, 62, and Epilogue, 21 ff. 12. Cf. Prologue, 12. 27. Cf. cm. 33. 32. ' My father expressed his conviction . . . that the forms of Christian religion would- alter, but that the spirit of Christ would still grow from more to more "in the roll of the ages," Till each man find his own in all men's good. And all men work in noble brotherhood. " This is one of my meanings," he said, " of Ring in the Christ that is to be : when Christianity without bigotry will triumph, when the controversies of creeds shall have vanished, and Shall bear false witness, each of each, no more. But find their limits by that larger light, And overstep them, moving easily Thro' after-ages in the Love of Truth, The Truth of Love."' {Memoir, I. 325, 6). For the antithesis with 'the darkness of the land' cf XXX. 29-32. CVII. The friend's birthday (Feb. i) shall be kept cheerily, as though he himself were there. The change in the poet's attitude, seen in his dismissal both of grief and of speculation about the dead, is strongly marked. In writing this section, Tennyson doubtless remembered not only Horace, Odes, I. ix., but the fragment of Alcaeus on which that Ode is based. 8. Cf. The Progress of Spring : from all the dripping eaves The spear of ice has wept itself away. ' sharpen'd ' : by the ice on them. cvi., cvn. Commentary 203 9. The icy bushes and thorns point like bristles towards the moon. Cf. Walking to the Mail : There by the hump-back'd willow : half stands up And bristles. II. 'grides . . . together' : makes grate together. 'Gride' originally meant 'pierce,' without any reference to sound, and there does not appear to be any such reference in Spenser's or Milton's use of the word {e.g. P.L., vi. 329). It is prob- able that Tennyson was influenced by Shelley, Prom. Unb., III. i. : Hear ye the thunder of the fiery wheels Griding the winds? for he uses the word of thunder in ' The heavy thunder's griding might,' Chorus in Poems (1830). ' clangs . . . together ' : cf. Boadicea : Till her people all around the royal chariot agitated, Madly dash'd the darts together, writhing barbarous linea- ments, Made the noise of frosty woodlands, when they shiver in January. 12 'iron' may refer to sound as well as to the stiffness of the ascending branches. 13, 14. 'drifts ' : Gatty says, ' drifts of snow, which falling into water immediately blacken before they dissolve,' and readers seem usually to take the passage thus. But it is difficult to reconcile this interpretation with the ' purple- frosty bank,' ' bristles,' the ' hard crescent,' and the sounds of the wood : and it seems more likely that the drifts are violent squalls of wind (cf. 6, 7) which are seen to strike and darken the moon-lit rollers (cf. LXXXVi. 7). The only objec- tion to this is that Tennyson apparently does not elsewhere use ' drift ' of mere wind or anything else invisible. He uses the word of snow {Progress of Spring, III.), rain {Ulysses), smoke {Co?ning of Arthur), sleet of diamonds ( Vision of Sin), flickering spectres {Demeter and Persephone), and ' drive ' of 204 In Memoriam section sunlight {Rosalind, in.) and hail {Sir Galahad) : cf. LXX. ic Drifts = winds, is, however, not very far from 'drift-winds' ii The Two Noble Kinsmen, v. iii. 99, ' waters that drift-wind force to raging.' 15. 'breaks': cf. Ode on the Death of the Duke Wellington, as quoted on cxxill. 23. ' Whate'er he be' : cf CXXIX. and CXXX. 5, and con trast with the frequent speculations on the subject earlier ii In Memoriam. Perhaps here Tennyson remembered thi ' Permitte Divis cetera ' of Horace's Ode. CVIII. ' He wrill no longer live alone with sorrow brooding on the past and the mysteries of deatl and the future life. He will gather from his sorrow some fruit of wisdom for himself and other; here on earth.' 5, ' faith ' : fidelity (C. E. Benham), but the more obvioui sense (faith opp. works) suits the next lines better. 8. 'wells' : see on x. 17. 9-12. The usual interpretation, that the meditations jus referred to must be untrue, because he simply reads his owi thoughts or fancies into the universe, seems to me to disturl the drift of the section. The main point is that these medi tations are ' barren^ ' vacant,' supply no food (4), yield n< fruit (13), because they shut him from his kind within th( circle of his private grief, and give no wisdom applicabl( under human skies. 12. 'face': his own, of course. Ci.Alastor: His eyes beheld Their own wan light through the reflected lines Of his thin hair, distinct in the dark depth Of that still fountain ; as the human heart, Gazing. in dreams over the gloomy grave. Sees its own treacherous likeness there. cvii.-cix. Commentary 205 14. ' human skies ' : in contrast with 7, 8, and in reference also to I. The poet probably did not notice that ' human ' occurs in 12. 15. 'wise' : wisdom is one of the 'fruits' of 13. He is now returning to the idea of section i. 16. Sorrow may bring me wisdom, though not the wisdom you would have brought me if you had lived (that this is the meaning is clear from CXill.). The line recalls CVII. 23. There, and throughout this section, there is a touch of roughness in the references to the subjects from which he is turning away. The mood is exaggerated, and soon softens. Contrast, for instance, not only cix. 24, but CXXlll. 9 foil. SECTIONS CIX.-CXIV. In his search for wisdom, the ' fruit ' of sorrow, he turns to contemplate the character of his friend. The poems of the group attempt to describe this character, a task from which he formerly shrank (see e.g. LXXV.). He finds in it the qualities most required to meet the dangers of political and scientific progress, as in the Epilogue he sees in it a type of the humanity of the distant future. For the connection of this group with the preceding poem through the idea of wisdom, cf cviii. 15 with CIX. 24, cxii. I, cxiii. I foil., cxiv. 22 foil. CIX. He dwells on the completeness of his friend's character : original, yet critical ; logical, yet im- passioned in logic ; loving good, yet not ascetic ; 2o6 In Memoriam SECTIONS loving freedom, but an ordered freedom ; uniting the strength of a man with the grace of a woman. 2. ' from household fountains ' : not ' imported from an intellectual home' (Gatty), nor, I think, defining the talk as about domestic subjects (C. E. Benham), but 'springing from within,' ' original.' Cf. the similar use of oIkoBcv. 6. Cf xcv. 29, 30, and xcvi. 13. 13. 'rarely' : as in xci. 2, I presume. 16. Cf cxxvii. 7 : and, for an exaggerated dramatic ex- pression, the ' Tory member's elder son ' in the Conclusion of the Princess. 24. Almost repeated in the last line of the Prologue. ex. This section refers more specially to the in- fluence exerted on others through social inter- course by the character drawn in CIX. 2. ' younger and elder alike.' ' Rathe ' is ' early.' 7. ' the serpent,' accuser and liar. 8. Virgil's ' Unguis micat ore trisulcis,' Gear. III. 439. ' double ' : first ed. : ' treble.' 13. 'nearest': first ed. : 'dearest.' 17. 'Nor': first ed. : 'Not.' CXI. I ff. Cf The Princess, IV. : the clown, Tho' smock'd, or furr'd and purpled, still the clown. 3. ' To him who grasps ' : first ed. : ' To who may grasp.' 9. ' act ' : play a part. 10. ' memories ' of mine. CIX.-CXII. Commentary 207 13. 'Best seem'd the thing he was' : first ed. : 'So wore his outward best.' 15, 16. Cf. Guinevere: For manners are not idle, but the fruit Of loyal nature, and of noble mind. 18. 'villain': used in reference to ' churl,' the opposite of ' gentle ' and ' gentleman ' in the technical sense. 20. Cf. LXXXVII. 36-8. CXII. The drift of this obscurely written poem appears to be as follows. The poet is criticised by a wise friend because, although he is not dazzled by men of glorious but unevenly developed powers, he thinks little of men of the opposite kind, who have moulded narrower powers into a comparatively perfect whole. But, the poet answers, the reason why a nature of the latter kind appeals little to him is his love for his dead friend, in whose soul new powers constantly sprang into being, and the material fashioned by thought and will was at once so completely fashioned and so vast that it was impossible to hope too much for his future development. The section is almost invariably misunderstood, because the phrase ' glorious insufficiencies ' is (naturally) taken to apply to the poet's friend, and then the poet is supposed to be explaining his admiration for such glorious insufficiency. Yet it is plain (i) that 'gaze with temperate eyes on ' does not mean ' admire ' ; and (2) that the 2o8 In Memoriam SECTIONS character described in the last two stanzas is not one of insufficiency, however glorious, but one that is neither ' insufficient ' nor ' narrow,' but both ' glorious ' and ' perfect.' The poet, in short, answers ' high wisdom ' by saying : I do not admit that I must choose between glorious in- sufficiency and narrow perfectness ; I reject both, for I knew a man who had the virtues of each and the defects of neither. 2. ' with temperate eyes ' : the interpretation given above (' undazzled ' or 'without much enthusiasm') seems to me the most natural : but it is possible to construe, ' I who tolerate the faults of the great ' (C. E. Benham).i In neither case can the phrase refer to Hallam. 4. 'set light by' : make light of, slight. 8. ' lesser lords of doom ' : men who, having strong wills, can make the most of the material of their nature, and so control their lot, but who are lesser (than the poet's friend or even the 'glorious insufficiency') because the material is thin. With the phrase cf ' Men at some time are masters of their iaXes,' Julius Ctssar, I. ii. 139. 13. The material is abundant, and it is ordered. 15, 16. Metaphor from tides and moon. Cf. Cowley, On the death of Mr. William Hervey (a poem which In Memoriam often brings to mind) : So strong a wit did Nature to him frame, As all things but his judgment overcame ; His judgment like the heavenly moon did show. Tempering that mighty sea below. * So also Beeching, ' I who make allowance for the weaknesses of men of genius.' cxii.-cxiv. Commentary 209 CXIII. He imagines his friend entering public life and becoming a great statesman, steadfast in the revolutionary convulsions that may be coming. Cf. LXIV. and Introduction, pp. 6, 8, which also refer to CXIV. I, 2. See cviii. 1 5, 16. 7, 8. He interrupts his question and changes it into an assertion. 14. ' has birth ' : comes to birth. With the following lines cf. LXXI. II, cxxvil., and the poem (in In Memoriam metre) Love thou thy land. 17. 'thousand': first ed. : 'many.' CXIV. He turns from the dangers of the political movement to those of the movement in pursuit of knowledge. Here too what is most needed he finds in his friend. The gist of the section is repeated in the Prologue, stanzas 5, 6, 7, where, however, it is said of knowledge, here described as ' earthly,' And yet we trust it comes from thee [Immortal Love]. For the distinction of knowledge and wisdom Collins compares Love and Duty, The drooping flower of knowledge chang'd to fruit Of wisdom ; Locksley Hall (' knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers'); and Cowper's Task, VI. 88-99 (where, 2IO In Memoriam sections however, the distinction is not identical with Tennyson's). Cf. Par. Lost, VII. 1 26 ff. For the division or union of knowledge and reverence (28) cf. Prologue, 25, 26, the Princess, VII., and Love thou thy land: Make knowledge circle with the winds; But let her herald, Reverence, fly Before her to whatever sky Bear seed of men and growth of minds. For the condemnation of knowledge sought 'for power' (15, 26) cf. the Pn^^c^J.?, VII., where Ida confesses that she 'sought far less for truth Than power in knowledge.' 4. 'The pillars of Hercules represented the farthest boun- dary of the ancient mariners ' (Beeching). 9. ' vain.' Cf. Prologue, 32 ; Maud, I. iv. St. vii. 10. Because she cannot prove a life beyond death: she is ' of things we see.' 12. Allusion to the myth of Pallas springing from the brain of Zeus. Cf. with the condemnation of intellect severed from 'love and faith,' the idea of poetic fancy 'without a conscience or an aim' and so yielding mere 'fantastic beauty' (xxxiv. 5-8). 17. 'A higher hand': that of wisdom (20). The latter word has to Tennyson religious associations ultimately derived from Alexandrian philosophy. Cf. XXXVI. 4, 9. 27. ' by year and hour ' : first ed. : ' from hour to hour.' CXV. ' Spring comes once more, and with the beauty of the world his regret also awakes and blossoms.' Cf XXXVIII. and Lxxxiii. cxiv.-cxvi. Commentary 211 2. ' maze of quick ' : tangled hedge. For ' quick ' of. Lxxxvm. 2. 3. ' squares ' : fields. Cf. The Gardener's Daughter : All the land in flowery squares . . . Smelt of the coming summer. 7. Cf Goethe's An die Entfernte : Wenn in dem blauen Raum verloren Hoch iiber ihn die Lerche singt. ' living ' : cf Milton's ' living sapphires.' The word v/as a great favourite with Gray and with Shelley, who often uses it of light and colour. 8. ' sightless song ' : cf. Shelley's lines To a Skylark, and Gray's ode on Vicissitude, 15, 16 ; for 'sightless,' cf xcill. 9. 14. 'greening gleam' : out on the sea. 15. 'change their sky': Horace's 'coelum mutant,' Ep. I. xi. 27. 18, 20. Cf Lxxxiii. 13-16, and also the budding of the crown of thorns (lxix.). CXVI. • No, not only regret, but life and faith and longing for the friendship to come.' 3. 'the year,' regarded as beginning in spring. Cf lxxxiii. 5. ' stirring ' : with the life of insects. 9. Cf LXX. II. First ed. : The dear, dear voice that I have known Will speak. The original lines seem better than the later version, in which ' once ' accentuates the awkwardness of ' have known ' used for ' knew.' 212 In Memoriam sections CXVII. ' He can think cheerfully of the years that separate him from that friendship, for they will only enhance its delight.' Cf Shakespeare, Sonnet 56. 2. Cf. Lxxxni. 6. 10. ' steals' : cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 77, 'thy dial's shady stealth.' 11. ' wheels,' of the clock. 12. Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 59, 'five hundred courses of the sun.' Tennyson uses the plural because he refers to the stars as well as our sun. Cf. cv. 25-28. CXVIII. This section is connected with CXVII. in so far as it alludes to man's future life, and in so far as both, in a sense, deal with the ' work of Time ' (see line i of each section) preparatory to that life. For the date of composition see Intro- duction, p. 15. ' Do not believe that man's soul is like mere matter, or has been produced, like lower forms in the earlier ages of the earth, only to perish. Believe that he is destined both to advance to something higher on the earth, and also to develope in some higher place elsewhere, if he repeats the process of evolution by subduing the lower within him to the uses of the higher, whether in peaceful growth or through painful struggle/ Such seems to be the general meaning, but cxvii., cxviii. Commentary 213 the section is obscure in parts and it is probably impossible to arrive at certainty as to their bearing. Several thoughts about evolution seem to be in the poet's mind: (i) that there is a radical difference between human love and truth and any earlier product, and that, while the latter arose and perished (as it seems to us) by chance, man is born to develop^ both as a race on the earth, and individually in another life ; (2) that nevertheless in this progress the law of the earlier stages still holds good, that the higher must be reached by the subordination of the lower, only now this must take place within man ; and that hence (3) his progress depends in some degree on himself (whence the 'if of line 16 and the imperatives of the last stanza). I. 'Contemplate' : cf. LXXXIV. i, for the accent. 4. ' as perishable, like the constituents of the body ' (strictly, of course, 'like the body of which earth and lime are constituents'). Cf. Two Voices; Before the little ducts began To feed thy bones with lime. 6. 'ampler day': Virgil's 'largior aether,' Aen. vi. 640 (Beeching). Cf. Wordsworth, Laodamia, ' An ampler ether, a diviner air.' 9. See on LXXXIX. 47 ; and cf. the early Supposed Con- fessions of a Second-rate Sensitive Mind: As from the storm Of running fires and fluid range Of lawless airs, at last stood out This excellence and solid form Of constant beauty. 214 In Memoriam sections lo, II. 'seeming' implies that the appearance of chance and of bHnd destruction is probably delusive. 12. Cf. LVI. 9. ' Cyclic storms ' : periodic cataclysms. 13. 'throve,' etc: instead of being the prey of cyclic storms. 14. 'a higher race': the 'great' or 'crowning race' oi cm. 35, Epilogue, 128 ff., and many passages elsewhere, e.g. The Making of Man in Tennyson's last volume. In spite of the antithetic 'himself in 15, the idea is not, I think, of a non-human higher race, as in Maud, I. iv. st. vi. 15. ' higher place ' : than the earth. 16. 'type': represent, be an instance of. Cf. XXXIII. 16 for the substantive. For the verb cf. Princess, vil. : Dear, but let us type them now In our own lives. There the thing ' typed ' is in the future : here it is in the past, so that 'type' almost = ' repeat.' For this use cf. On one who affected an effeminate Manner : I prize that soul where man and woman meet, Which types all Nature's male and female plan. The passage beginning with line 16 is very obscure. According to my interpretation two possible ways by which man can repeat the work of time within himself, and so advance on earth and elsewhere, are mentioned ; one is that of steady thriving and adding 'more to more'; the other that of painful struggle (lines 18 fF.). The word 'so' in 16 would refer to line 13, or ' If so ' may be taken together as = ' if so be that.' In the first edition, however, line 18 read, not ' Or, crown'd,' but ' And, crown'd ' : and this (unless ' and ' was a mere miswriting or misprint) may indicate that, when Tennyson wrote the passage, he had no such sharp distinction in mind as is implied in the above interpretation, and that 'Or' is equivalent, as several correspondents suggest, to a phrase like 'Or, to put it otherwise.' With this interpretation 'if cxviii., cxix. Commentary 215 so' is best taken as = 'if so be that.' But the interpretation does not seem to account for the change of ' And' into ' Or.' Beeching's note oh ' Or,' etc., gives a possible sense : ' To some self-cultivation is possible ; others who are at the mercy of circumstances, may yet transfigure their woes into glories, and forge their character out of calamity.' C. E. Benham paraphrases : ' if he repeats in his own nature the work of evolution which produced him, or if he so lives combating pain and trouble as to prove that his life is not unwilling to be sublimed.' This is nearer to the text, but surrenders in the last three stanzas the analogy with the ' work of time ' which seems to be the main subject of the section. 17. 'from more to more' • cf. XLIV. 2. 1 8. Cf. LXix. 21. 'central gloom' : cf. cxxiv. 23, 24. 24. Cf xcv. 42. 25-8. Cf. cxx. II, Epilogue, 133, The Making of Man, The Dawn, By an Evolutionist, The Ancient Sage (towards the end). 25. ' use ' : e.g. the use of the ' ends ' of 7. 26. 'sensual feast' : occurs in Shakespeare^ Sonnet 141. 28. ' die ' : like the ' forms ' of 10. CXIX. Visiting again the street in which his friend lived, he remembers him happily and ' with scarce a sigh.' The section forms a beautiful contrast to vii., which is recalled not only by obvious repetitions like those of lines i and 1 2, but by a number of little echoes, such as ' once more,' ' sleeps,' ' street, ' long,' ' early.' 2i6 In Memoriam SECTIONS Line 8 points to a late date of composition. 4. Gatty understands a reference to country carts bringing hay, clover, etc., into London. Perhaps the meaning is rather that the silence, the chirping, and the light-blue lane so remind him of the country that he seems to 'smell the meadow in the street.' And, again, it is possible, as I am told by a correspondent, that the poet may actually have caught at day-break in London the smell of newly-mown grass wafted from miles away. But I fancy that, if Tennyson had ever had this experience, he would have alluded to it more fully or more than once. 7,8. 'early': the repetition of the word is, no doubt, intentional. CXX. The poem now becomes mainly retrospective. He returns to the thoughts of CXVIIL, but also, owing to the intervention of CXix., recurs to his own ' spiritual strife,' and to the ideas expressed in various parts of the poem regarding the destiny of man (see e.g. XXXIV. and LVI.). 3. 'magnetic': cf. cxxv. 15. 4. I Cor. XV. 32. The mention of 'beasts' in a section which opposes man to 'the greater ape' seems to confuse some readers. 7. Cf. Vastness, where he asks what all the sciences are worth if there is nothing beyond death. The idea is not, as some readers suppose at first, that science in proving us to be machines would prove us to be something that could not produce science. 8. Cf. XXXIV. 9 ff. and Epilogue to Tiresias : What life, so maim'd by night, were worth Our living out? Not mine to me. For an emphatic assertion of Tennyson's to somewhat the same effect see Nineteenth Century, Jan. 1893, P- 169. CXIX.-CXXI. Commentary 217 12. ' born ' : first ed. : ' born.' The change was made be- tween 1875 and 1878. But for it the stanza would present no difficulty ; but what is the meaning of the emphasis on 'born'? (i) Is the poet still speaking ironically, and does he mean, ' No doubt, everything is settled for us and nothing by us, and it was settled for me at birth that I should not live like the greater ape'? (2) Or is the emphatic born meant to be antithetical to 'springs' in 9? Reference to such passages as cm. 6f, Epilogue, 122 ff.. The Coining of Arthur, De Profundis, Crossing the Bar, will show that Tennyson thought of birth and what precedes it as, on the one side, a series of physical events, but, on the other side, as the coming of something out of a spiritual 'deep' (cf. Introduction, p. 51, and notes on XLIV. f.). 'Springs' then may be meant to denote the first of these aspects alone, as the only one recognised by materialism ; and ' born ' to emphasise the second : ' the man of the future may consider himself to arise like a mere body, and may act accordingly ; but I for my part am a soul which came from God and will live for ever, and I shall act differently.' Cf. Epilogue, 126, 'be born and think. And act and love' ; and By an Evolutionist, ' If my body come from brutes ' (but of course the present poem could not possibly refer, as Gatty supposes, to the Darwinian hypothesis, which had not yet appeared, and to which, when it did appear, Tennyson felt no repugnance). (3) Mr. Ferrall suggests that Tennyson means to emphasise the idea that science exists for man, not man for science. ' If future men choose to sacrifice their human birth-right to science, let them : I was born a man, and will not make myself an ape.' CXXI. Hesper, the evening star, which follows the setting sun and watches the fading light and ending life of day, is also Phosphor, the morning- 2i8 In Memoriam SECTIONS star, which precedes the i\in and sees the dawn of Hght and life. They are the same ' planet of Love ' (Maud), which does but change its place. And so the poet's past and present are in substance one thing (Love), which has merely changed its place in becoming present instead of past. Cf. CXXVI. I. The poem might well have been prompted by the contrast of CXIX. with VII. The idea, as is observed in the Temple Classics edition, may have been suggested by the epigram attributed to Plato and translated by Shelley, 'Aa-T^p irpiv /lev eXa/xTrey, etc. Cf. Paradiso, VIII. 12, and Gary's note. For the date see Introduction, p. i6. I. Cf. Lxxxix. 47, 48. 5. ' wain ' : in some editions ' Wain,' a mere misprint. 9. Cf. IX. 10, II. II. 'wakeful bird' : cf. Par. Lost, in. 38. 12. 'greater light' : cf Genesis, i. 16. 18. 'what is one': Love. The next words may be intended to recall, ' I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last,' Rev. i. 1 1. 19. 'like my present': 'who art like,' etc. Gatty takes the poet's sad present to correspond to the time of Hesper, and his happy youthful past to correspond to the time of Phosphor. But, considering the tone of this part of In Memoriam, it seems quite certain that the poet is regarding the past as sad and the present as bright. [It is not, however, necessary to suppose that the poet asked himself to which part of his life Hesper answered, and to which Phosphor.] cxxi., cxxii. Commentary 219 CXXII. The poet calls upon the soul of his friend to visit him again. This section raises perplexing and probably unanswerable questions, (i) The poet refers to some former occasion when his friend appeared to be with him. What is this occasion ? (2) In referring to it, he speaks of a time or occasion still earlier (' again,' ' once more '). What is this earlier time? It is easy and convenient to answer that these two occasions have not been mentioned in the poem : and of course this may be true. But it is surely unlikely that the first of them, at any rate, would be spoken of as it is in this section, unless the reader had heard of it before. It is conceivable, again, that the reference is not to any particular occasions, but (i) to the unhappy time after Hallam's death, and (2) to the poet's youth before that calamity. But the language in lines i, 2, 9, 10, 15, seems to convey almost irresistibly the impression that, at any rate, one specific occasion is in the poet's mind ; and it seems strange that, immediately after cxxi., the poet should write as if he were less conscious of his friend's presence now than he was in the years of pain. I assume, therefore, that these lines refer to one particular time, and pass to the questions raised. (i) The obvious answer to the first of them is that the poet refers to the group of sections 220 In Memoriam section XC-XCV., and particularly to the trance of XCV. (so Genung and C. E. Benham). For there he called on his friend to come, and his friend did seem to be with him, so that the grave did not divide them ; he did ' descend and touch and enter' (cf ii with XCIII. 13); and thereupon the poet did seem to perceive the agreement of the motions of the worlds with law (cf. 7, 8 with XCV. 39-43, and 'imagination' in 6 with 'imagination' in XCIV. 10, and 'thought' in XCV. 38). Cf also IS, 16 with XCV. 36, 63. But there is a diffi- culty ; for though the first eleven lines of the present section at once recall the ' trance ' of XCV., the phrase 'placid awe' (5) seems scarcely appro- priate to it, and the last nine lines (in spite of the resemblances in 15, 16) seem so inappropriate, and descriptive of an experience so much less solemn, that one hesitates to identify the trance of XCV. with the occasion alluded to. Is there then any other section which can be taken to deal with that occasion ? It seems to me that the last nine lines recall LXXXVI. almost as strongly as the first eleven recall XCV. And when we examine LXXXVI. we find, beside this general resemblance, some curious similarities of word and phrase. Cf. e.g. line 1 1 with LXXXVI. 8, 'fan my brows'; 'fuller' (12) with 'the full new life'; ' fancy' (17) with 'let the fancy fly'; the collocation of ' gloom ' and ' bare the eternal Heavens' with lines 2-5 of LXXXVI.; the dis- missal of thoughts of life and death (16) with the cxxii. Commentary 221 like dismissal of Doubt and Death in LXXXVI. But again there is a difficulty ; for the first eleven lines of this section, though some of the similari- ties occur in them, seem just as little appropriate to the occasion of LXXXVI. as the last nine do to that of XCV. Our result, so far, is that the first part of the section recalls XCV., and the second part LXXXVi. ; and further that these two parts appear to be somewhat incongruous, an impression which many readers must have received who have never troubled themselves with the point under dis- cussion. Is it possible, then, that the key to this problem lies in the vagueness of the account of the trance in XCV. ? The poet himself refers to the difficulty of describing it ; perhaps what he felt in it and after it was much more like what he felt on the evening described in LXXXVI. than we at first suppose ; and in the same way the experience in LXXXVI. was perhaps more ' m3'stic ' than we at first imagine on reading that poem (which the reader should now re-read in the light of this suggestion).^ If so, the apparent inappropriateness of the last nine lines of our sec- tion to the experience of XCV. is explained ; the reminiscences of Lxxxvi. are also to some extent explained ; and we need not hesitate to hold that CXXII. refers throughout to XCV. ' So ' Tears, idle tears ' was an expression of the mystic longings alluded to in Far, far away and The Ancient Sage (statement to Mr. Knowles) ; but do most readers understand the poem so ? 222 In Memoriam SECTION (2) What then is the time or occasion, prior to the trance of XCV., that is referred to in ' again ' and 'once more' (4, 5)? At first sight it is obvious to reply : it is the occasion described in LXXXVI., the poet's feelings on that occasion being ex hypothesi not unlike those of the trance ; and here we have the full explanation of the resemblance of parts of CXXII. to LXXXVI.^ The alternative is to suppose that in ' again ' and ' once more' he is thinking of his youth before his friend's death. And on the whole this seems to me the likelier interpretation. It suits the strange phrase, 'like an inconsiderate boy,' and, if the expressions in lines 5-8 seem too strong for a description of a state supposed to be habitual in the poet's youth, we may remember that he was a poet and what he says in The Poet : He saw thro' life and death, thro' good and ill, He saw thro' his own soul, The marvel of the everlasting will, An open scroll, Before him lay. I do not profess to feel much confidence in these speculations, but the reader who thinks them needless will remember that he has still to explain the apparent incongruity of the two parts of the section. ' One might even go further and suggest that in the second half of CXXII. the poet is actually referring to Lxxxvi., the 'former flash of joy' (15) meaning the one that preceded the time when he ' rose up against his doom ' (2) ; so that the first half of the section would alhide to xcv., and the second half to lxxxvi. But I cannot believe this. cxxii. Commentary 223 [The above is reprinted with a few changes from the first edition, but I feel even less confidence in it than before. I had never doubted, from the time when 1 first read the section, that it referred to the occasion of XC.-XCV. ; and partly, no doubt, for this reason I could not believe that it refers to no specific occasion. But now that I have become accustomed to the idea mentioned above, and held by Mr. Beeching and Mr. Ferrall, that the poet is speaking of the time of distress and struggle after Hallam's death, and that in ' again ' and ' once more ' he refers to his youth before Hallam's death, it no longer seems to me, on the whole, unnatural. And it is strongly supported, I think, by the juxtaposition of this section and its prede- cessor. That says, ' Love was with me in the years of gloom, and is with me now in the revival of joy ' : this says, ' If you were with me in the years of gloom, be with me now in the revival of joy.' On the other hand, I still feel the old objections to this view : (a) it does not explain the incongruity between the language of 5-8 and the language of 1 3-20, which are supposed to describe the experi- ence of one and the same period ; and {b) I cannot bring myself to believe, as it requires, that ' the former flash of joy ' means a period of years, even when I remember that this period is perhaps looked back to over ten or fifteen years of sadness. But a suggestion has been made to me, which at any rate goes far to remove these difficulties, {a) In the earlier and later parts of the section the poet 224 III Memoriam section is referring to two distinct moods which he knew in the time before Hallam's death — one mood, a more intellectual, in which he saw the unclouded Heavens of law and order ; another, in which he felt the joy of life and sense, and of the play of fancy. And he says to his friend, ' As you were with me in my effort to regain the first, so be with me in the return of the second, and hallow it too." {V) ' The former flash of joy' is not a description of the poet's youth ; it means, ' the joy that I used to know in former years,' ' flash of joy ' being used generically. These suggestions give an interpre- tation of the section which seems to me more acceptable than that to which I had found myself driven. But in reconsidering this matter I have become more fully satisfied of the truth of the idea that the experiences described in LXXXVI. and XCV. are nearer akin than appears at first sight. And in support of this idea I may call attention to some further similarities, without discussing their bear- ing on the interpretation of CXXII. (a) Though the first part of CXXII. reminds one chiefly of XCV., and the second chiefly of LXXXVI., yet two of the striking resemblances already noticed are between lines in XCV. and in the second half of CXXII., and between lines in LXXXVI. and in the first half of CXXII. Note also {V) the meeting of East and West, common to the final stanzas both of LXXXVI. and of xcv. ; (c) the agreement of the last line of LXXXVI. with the insistence ovi. peace, in cxxii. Commentary 225 the last two stanzas of XCIV. (cf. 'placid' in cxxii.) ; (d) the opposition in both passages between this peace and doubt ; {e) the idea of escape from, or victory over, the thought of death in Lxxxvi. 1 1 ff, XCV. end, and cxxil. 16 ; (_/) the appearance in the last line of XCV. of the feeling of triumphant joy more obviously expressed in LXXXVI. and the end of CXXII. None of these resemblances taken alone would seem significant, but, when they are taken together and added to those already pointed out, they become highly significant. And now compare with these three sections some lines from the passage in The Ancient Sage, where Tenny- son speaks of those appearances in Nature which especially woke in him the mystic feeling (also expressed in Far, Far Away, and Tears, Idle Tears), and brought him ' gleams of more than mortal things ' : The first gray streak of earliest summer dawn, The last long stripe of waning crimson gloom, As if the late and early were but one ; and compare with the first of these lines the end of XCV. and also of L. ; with the second LXXXVI. 13, and with that the last stanza of cm. ; with the third the similarities noted under {b) above, and the beautiful stanza about the ' first beam ' and 'the last' beam in Tears, Idle Tears. Note finally that this passage in The Ancient Sage is immediately followed by a description of the ' trance ' condition, just as in XCV. the ' trance ' is immediately followed by the description of the 226 In Memoriam sections dawn in which the lights of East and West mingle. The result must surely be a conviction that in many passages where Tennyson speaks of dawn and sunset, with their lights, colours, odours, breezes, winds, setting stars, rising stars (cf. CV. end), we fail to imagine as he imagined, if we do not catch the mystic tone in his voice— that tone which cannot fail to be heard in many of his references to rivers, the deep sea, mountain ranges, where indeed his images often become consciously symbolic] 1. If the punctuation is right, ' wast thou' = ' if thou wert' in 9. If a question is intended, there should be a note of interrogation at the end of 8. There is nothing unlikely in the omission of this note (see on LXXXi.), but perhaps the first interpretation is the more probable. 2. ' my doom ' : of grief. Cf. LXXII. 6. 3. ' yearn'd ' : first ed. : ' strove.' 4. Cf. III. 6. 13-20. Cf. cxvi. 1-8. 15. 'flash': cf. xcv. 36. 16. 'slip': not 'give free rein to,' but 'dismiss, escape from.' 17. Cf the opening lines of Recollections of the Arabian Nights. 18. He sees prismatic colours in all the dew-drops. 19. The reference may possibly be to the Aurora Borealis, not to an exceptional appearance, heightened by fancy, of lightning in the ordinary sense. CXXIII. ' The transitoriness of Nature's forms shall not shake his faith in immortality and re-union.' cxxii., cxxiii. Commentary 227 As in cxviii. and CXX., he recurs to the thoughts which occupied him when he ' fought with death.' Cf. LVi., and with 4-8 cf. xxxv. 10-12. This is one of many passages in Tennyson which testify to the great effect upon him of the study of geology. Cf the fine Hnes in the Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington : For tho' the Giant Ages heave the hill And break the shore, and evermore Make and break, and work their will ; The' vporld on world in myriad myriads roll Round us, each with different powers. And other forms of life than ours. What know we greater than the soul ? For the date see p. 15. 1-8. G.A.C. compares Job, xiv. ii, 18,19: "The waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and dryeth up. . . . The mountain falling cometh to nought, and the rock is removed out of his place : the waters wear the stones ; thou washest away the things which grow out of the dust of the earth " : and 2 Henry IV. in. i. 45 : O God ! that one might read the book of fate. And see the revolution of the times Make mountains level, and the continent, Weary of solid firmness, melt itself Into the sea ; and, other times, to see The beachy girdle of the Ocean Too wide for Neptune's hips ! With which cf. Sonnet 64. 5, 6. ' flow,' ' nothing stands ' : cf irixTO. f)eT, oiSh fievei. 9. ' my spirit ' : which testifies to permanence. II, 12. Contrast LVll., last stanza. 228 In Memoriam SECTIONS CXXIV. In this great poem he still thinks of the spiritual conflict of the past. ' That Nameless to which we call, divined everywhere but not to be understood, where did I find him ? Not in evidences drawn from Nature, nor in questions which the intellect raises and seeks to answer j but when the heart felt and cried upon him like a child I beheld him, and saw that through Nature he moulds man.' On the ideas used here see Introduction, pp. 54 foil. 2. The context seems to show that the meaning is, ' Present alike in our dearest faith and our ghastliest doubt,' rather than merely, ' Obiect alike of both.' Cf. xcvi. 3. That Nameless of which we think as one person and as more than one, as the unity in all things and as all things together. Cf. Akbar's Dream : that Infinite Within us, as without, that All-in-all, And over all, the never-changing One And ever-changing Many. With ' They ' cf. De Profundis : ' They said " Let us make man " ' ; but there ' they ' is presumably a reference to the plural in Gen. I. 26. 5-8. As the stanza is often misunderstood, it should be observed that the poet does not say that He is not to be found in Nature or in thought, but that it was not there that the poet found Him. After He is found elsewhere He is seen also in Nature (see last stanza) ; and so too ' our little systems ' are seen to be ' broken lights of Him (Prologue) just as Nature 'half conceals and half reveals the Soul within ' (v. 3, 4). cxxiv., cxxv. Commentary 229 14. ' reasons ' ; the reason has been arguing that the world is merely a process of meaningless change (10-12). 16. See p. 62. 17 f. See Liv., Lv. I understand the meaning to be : ' No, my heart was like a child crying blindly in doubt and fear. But my blind crying made me wise {i.e. I saw that the cry was really, though my heart did not know this, a cry to a father) ; so that I became like a " child that cries," etc' As Gatty points out, there is perhaps in the phraseology a reminiscence of Herbert's Collar: But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild At every word, Methought I heard one calling, 'Child' : And I replied, ' My Lord.' 18. ' wise' : gave me 'wisdom,' though not ' knowledge.' 21. 'am': first ed. : ' seem,' which was in antithesis to ' is ' in C2, and impHed that ' I ' is phenomenal. Cf. cxxxi. i, 2, and, for ' beheld what is,' xcv. 39. CXXV. ' Looking back at all his songs, he sees that Love was present in them all, even in the saddest ; and it will abide with him till he goes to meet his friend.' The poet returns to the idea of cxxi., and in the next section (CXXVI.) he developes it till it almost coincides with one of the main ideas of the Prologue, while others among the following sections lead towards other ideas expressed in that poem. It should be noticed also that the Love spoken of here and in CXXI. is indirectly referred to in CXVIII., CXX., CXXlli., CXXIV., which touch on the conquered doubt whether God is love indeed, And love Creation's final law. 230 In Memoriam sections 1. 'said' : in conversation with friends (C. E. B.). 2. One naturally takes this to be the principal clause of a sentence ; when line 5 will be the principal clause of another sentence. But, if this were so, it seems almost impossible that the second sentence could begin with ' Yea, tho' ' : and I cannot help thinking that the first five lines form only one sentence, of which line 5 is the principal clause. In that case line 2 may be a parenthesis explaining line I, or it may possibly be an ungrammatical way of say- ing, ' Whatever bitter notes my harp might give,' ' which ' being understood after ' notes.' 7. Cf XLViii. 7-9. ' play'd,' etc. : ' played gracefully with lies.' Perhaps the idea that his friend had forgotten him might be an example. 13, 14. Cf cm. 1 5. ' electric ' : cf CXX. 3. CXXVI. ' Love is his King. He waits in Love's court on earth, and his friend is elsewhere ; but from end to end of Love's kingdom, which is the universe, pass messages and assurances that all is well' I. Cf cxxv. 12. 3, 4. Cf. Herbert, Holy Commicnion : While those to spirits refined, at door attend Despatches from their friend. 10-12. First ed. : That moves about from place to place, And whispers to the vast of space Among the worlds, that all is well. cxxv.-cxxvn. Commentary 231 CXXVII. ' All is well even on earth, though the forms of faith and the social order may perish in the con- vulsion in Wfhich one age ends and another and better begins.' The first words, and the last lines, of the section link it to its predecessor. ' All is well ' is thus equivalent to ' Love is Lord,' even in the con- vulsions of human progress, which lead onwards to that ' great race ' of which the poet's friend was a type. On this section see p. 8, and cf Love thou thy /«««? (written by 1834, Memoir, I. 141): For all the past of Time reveals A bridal dawn of thunder-peals. Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact. Ev'n now we hear with inward strife A motion toiling in the gloom— The Spirit of the years to come Yearning to mix himself with Life. * ♦ # ♦ * If New and Old, disastrous feud. Must ever shock, like armed foes. And this be true, till Time shall close, That Principles are rain'd in blood. For the date of the section see p. 13. I. 'faith and form' : cf xxxill. 3, 4 (where the reference, however, is to religious faith and forms alone). The forms in which faith had embodied herself are deserted by her and become mere 'simulacra' (to use a favourite word of Carlyle, whose writings are recalled by this section). Cf 232 In Memoriam SECTIONS The Ancient Sage, ' And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith,' etc. 7, 8. Cf. cix. i6; Hands All Round va. Memoir,\. 346; and the speaker in Locksley Hall Sixty Years Aftet--. France had shown a light to all men, preach'd a Gospel, all men's good ; Celtic Demos rose a Demon, shriek'd and slaked the light with blood. The present lines probably refer to the ' Three glorious Days of July,' 1830, which led to the disappearance of Charles X. 9 ff. ' ill for him ' : first ed. : ' woe to him.' ' But it is not so with those whose hearts are set merely on temporal glory, or who are spiritually diseased and destitute' (C. E. B.) : or perhaps the kings and diseased beggars may be taken to stand for those, at the top and bottom of the social scale, who, from being considered useless to society, are likely to suffer in the period of convulsion here imagined. With this passage cf cxiii. 13-20, and a letter on the darkness of the times, 1832 {Memoir, I. 99). There are some similar lines in The Princess, iv. : But trim our sails, and let old bygones be. While down the streams that float us each and all To the issue, goes, like glittering bergs of ice, Throne after throne, and molten on the waste Becomes a cloud : for all things serve their time Toward that great year of equal mights and rights. (This 'great year' is of course not the 'great ^on' of i6, but the ' closing cycle' of CV. 28). II, 12. The 'crags' are, apparently, mountain-tops 'sus- taining ' spires of ice. Cf Prom. Unb. II. iii. : And far on high the keen sky-cleaving mountains From icy spires of sunlike radiance fling The dawn, and the application in the lines that follow. cxxvii., cxxvin. Commentary 233 15. ' brute' : ponderous : from Horace's Odes, I. xxxiv. 9, ' Quo bruta tellus . . . concutitur.' Cf. Comus, 797 (Collins). 16. 'great' ; first ed. : 'vast.' The change to 'gieat' was made in the fourth edition, which still read 'vast of space' in cxxvi. 1 1. '.lEon' : cf. xxxv. 11, xcv. 41. 17- 'fires ofHell' : the phrase re-appears in ThePrincess,\. 18-20. To recall CXXVI. CXXVIII. ' His faith in progress on earth is comrade of the love that was undismayed by death (Cf. CXVIII. 14, IS). The two meet in trust that good shall be the final goal of ill, even of ills that threaten to shake this trust.' 2. ' he ' : as in xcvii. 2 f. 3. ' lesser,' because man's life on earth ofiers to faith no obstacle so formidable as death. 5, 6. Cf. Locksley Hall Sixty Years After : Forward then, but still remember how the course of Time will swerve, Crook and turn upon itself in many a backward streaming curve. G. A. C. compares Coleridge's Friend {Introduction, after Second Landing-place) : ' The progress of the species neither is nor can be like that of a Roman road in a right line. It may be more justly compared to that of a river, which, both in its smaller reaches and larger turnings, is frequently forced back towards its fountains by objects which cannot otherwise be eluded or overcome.' There are other indications that this Introduction influenced Tennyson. 7. ' throned races ' : races now highest. 2.34 In Memoriam SECTIONS 8 f. Yet there is progress, not a mere repetition of old results that only look like new ; such repetition as is described in 13 ff. 14- ' glorious lies ' : Collins quotes the phrase from Cra- shaw, To Mistress M. R. Perhaps Horace's 'splendide mendax ' was in the poet's mind. 16. While pretending to produce a new idea. 17. While pretending to abolish it. 18. He narrows himself, but discovers nothing new. 19. 20. Additions which bring no life into what is dead. Bareness ' was misprinted ' baseness ' in first ed. 23. ' all ' : even the eddies of 5 and the degenerations of 7. 24. Cf. Two Voices : He seems to hear a Heavenly Friend, And thro' thick veils to apprehend A labour working to an end. SECTIONS CXXIX. AND CXXX. His friend has become to him so mingled with all that he loves and worships in the universe that he no longer knows how to imagine him, yet only loves him the more and is the more certain that he can never lose him. These beautiful poems are almost one ; but the position of the former, just after CXXVII. and CXXVIII., seems to show that the ' dream of good ' in which he mingles all the world with his friend, is a dream of the future of man, while CXXX. refers more specially to the ' mingling ' of the friend with Nature. Since to the poet Nature and the humanity of cxxviii.-cxxx. Commentary 235 the future reveal Immortal Love, we may compare the two poems with the lines in the Prologue : I trust he lives in thee, and there I find him worthier to be loved. But much of the beauty of these sections lies in the expression of an intense affection which has only become deeper as its object has beconx^ darklier understood. Cf Introduction, pp. 47, 48. CXXIX. For the structure see note on XIV. I. 'far off.' This was once the one thing he could not forgive (cf. e.g. Lxxxii.) ; ' desire ' : object of desire. Cf. Catullus, II. 5, ' Quum desiderio meo nitenti,' of Lesbia. 3,4. 'O loved the most,' etc. : and so loved most when felt to be nearest to the highest. Cf lo and cxxx. 10-12. 5. ' Known ' corresponds to ' human,' ' unknown ' to ' divine.' ' Divine ' : because ' mix'd with God,' or ' living in God' (Epilogue, 140), the 'Immortal Love' (which on its part is human as well as divine. Prologue, 13). 7. 'that canst not die' : like 'hand and lips and eye.' 9. ' Strange ' : cf XLi. 5, cxxx. 5. This was prepared for in CVll. 23. CXXX. Compare the famous stanzas XLli. and XLiii. of Adonais. I. ' rolling ' : cf Lxxxvi. 2. Tennyson is very fond of the word. 3. A reminiscence of Rev. xix. 17, as developed in Par, Lost, m. 621 f .? 9. Cf xxxn. 14. 13. Cf CXXIX. 2. 236 In Memoriam section cxxxi. The ' living will ' invoked in this section is probably interpreted by nearly all readers as the divine will, or the divine love regarded as will. But Gatty's words, 'the Deity,' received the authoritative correction, ' free will in man ' {Key, 141), and in Memoir, I. 319. we read: 'In the same way, "O living will that shalt endure" he explained as that which we know as Free-will, the higher and enduring part of man.' Cf. Di Profundis, ' this main miracle, that thou art thou, With power on thine own act and on the world,' with Prologue, 15, 'Our wills are ours, we know not how.' Hence this will has to unite itself with the divine will ; Prologue, 16, ' Our wills are ours, to make them thine ' ; and hence the divine will is spoken of in line 8 of the present poem as working witfi the human will. For the contrast of this enduring will with 'all that seems,' cf. Tke Ancient Sage : But thou be wise^in this dream-world of ours, Nor take thy dial for thy deity, But make the passing shadow serve thy will. At the same time, it must be remembered that, on the ordinary interpretation of 'living will,' the divine will is regarded in the poem as working in man ; and that the poet's ' Free-will in man ' is regarded by him as ' Heaven-descended ' ( Will), and as not only ' apparently an act of self-limitation by the Infinite,' but also ' a revela- tion by Himself of Himself {Memoir, I. 316). cxxxi. Commentary 237 See also note on line 3. Indeed, it is abundantly evident that in the region of these final poems and of the Prologue ' human ' and ' divine ' are not regarded as mutually exclusive terms. Cf Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, ' Forward, till you see the highest Human Nature is divine.' For the structure see note on XIV. I, 2. The living will ' is,' and therefore endures : cf. on XCV. 39, and CXXIV. 21. 'Wiir must not be taken in a narrow sense : the poet did not think, e.g., that ' human love and truth ' would not endure (cxvill. 3). 3. ' spiritual rock ' : quotation from i Cor. x. 4. Hence the line can hardly mean merely, ' rise in our natures,' but must imply that the will which rises in them springs from a divine source. Cf. 12. Perhaps, as Robinson suggests, there is a reference to John, iv. 14, and the phrase 'living water' (cf 'living' in line i). 5. ' dust ' : the dust of our perishable nature. Cf. Pro- logue, 9. 7. 'conquer'd years' : cf. LXXXV. 65 f. Contrast I. 13. 10 Cf Prologue, 4, 21. II, 12. 'all we loved' lives in ' all we flow from.' EPILOGUE. For the occasion and date of this epithalamium see Introduction, pp. 3, 12. Its purpose is indicated by Tennyson in his remark about In Memoriam to Mr. Knowles : ' It begins with a funeral and ends with a mar- riage — begins with death and ends in promise of a new life — a sort of Divine Comedy, cheerful at 238 In Memoriam EPILOGUE the close.' But most readers probably feel that this purpose was already achieved in the final sections of In Memoriam, while parts of the Epilogue are unfortunately written in Tennyson's most mannered style. Miss Chapman gives an excellent summary of the poem : ' Fitly the Poet closes with a marriage- song. For his grief is turned to hope, his weep- ing into tranquil joy. Regret is dead, but love remains, and holy memories, and healthy power to work for men. In the union of a beloved sister with a dear friend, the Poet finds a bright, harmonious note on which to end his singing. For such a marriage is the very type of hope and of all things fair and bright and good, seeming to bring us nearer to the consummation for which we pray— that crowning race, that Christ that is to be. This perfected manhood towards which we strive was foreshadowed in him to whom the Poet sings — that friend who lives and loves in God for ever.' I. Cf. LXXXV. 5. l^. See Lxxviii. 18, and cxvi. 9 ff., for the gradual change. 23, 24. The image seems to be that of a brook played on by sun and shade. Cf. xlix. With 'dying songs' (14) cf. Lxxvi., Lxxvii. : with the depreciation expressed here the more serious hnes, Prologue, last stanza. 39, 40. Cf. A Dedication in the Enoch Arden volume. 52. Some particular words must surely be referred to, but they cannot be any words in the service preceding the questions and answers of the next stanza. Possibly Tenny- son remembered the Blessing, which follows these questions and answers and contains the words, 'that ye may so live EPILOGUE Commentary 235 together in this life that in the world to come ye may have life everlasting.' But perhaps it is more probable that he refers to the question of the Priest, ' Wilt thou have this man,' etc. 59. Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 8i, ' Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read.' 72. Cf. the beautiful passage in the Excursion, Book 5, on the graves as seen from the north and from the south. 77-79- ' genial spirits,' ' drooping ' • cf. Samson, 594, ' So much I feel my genial spirits droop.' ' Drooping spirits ' occurs also in Browne, Rel. Med. I. 32. ' A whiter sun ' : brighter days : ' white ' is used like 'albus' : cf Catullus, vill. 3, 'Fulsere quondam candidi tibi soles.' 85-8. Contrast xxx. 6-8. III. ' the shining vapour ' : see 107. 118. 'tender gloom': cf. Thomson, Castle of Indolence, I. Ivii. (Collins). 123 f. See on XLV. and cxx. 12. 125. Allusion to the stages in the life of the embryo which appear to represent lower forms of animal life. Cf perhaps De Profundis, ' And every phase of ever-heightening life.' 128. Cf. cm. 35, cxvill. 14. ' The crowning race ' recurs in T^e Princess, vil. 129. The poet here probably does not mean that the crowning race will understand the mystery of the universe, or be able to prove the truths that can never be proved. The ' knowledge ' must be taken in reference to the next lines. 133 f. Cf cxviii. 140. Cf Prologue, 39. 142. ' element,' in which all things move. 143. Cf Liv. 14, 15, LV. 20, and T/ie Making of Man (but in the present passage the poet speaks of the whole crea- tion, not only of the earth). 240 In Memoriam U 1) 0) C u •« ai fe O ^ « ^ H I - "^ ' t ^ w ^ —• a, c 00 -a C_,5-(-'™C'3 OoJ W c " ^ § •§ § |8 ^ S I «-^^S S lis 1 ^ -M § o JJ « . ^ y - ^ ^ ? ° ^ ^ : ^ A° '^ !«! rt D 7: JJ . . ^ Changes in the Text 241 S 15 2 .2 bo .5 tJ o -a "« S "3 ^ So " t; !i^ ^ t3 * § g I .s I g I s .s .s I ^ ON . ir-, r^ o> >i X X X ^ > > X X X X X 242 In Memoriam J3 > S « u z JS > — . --• 3 bo « Q ijrt 1—1 ,— ,r_,0^ « c E 2 .S .S c .2 ^ „ a>g S^^ ^^> „•" "J?{J ►JJ^J HaKjH:; jSx 06 o Changes in the Text 243 o a H H bo c J3 o s 3 m K > 3 1- O rt 00 00 j3 60 'S a, 0) OJ o 2 ^ 4-. a U TO bo.^ 1=1 ;? H 5 H a H tn to rt & •s m u 'o .. > O TO O - S S rt CO ^ Ah o g « > s: l-H ►-I 1^ !»! X X Q2 APPENDIX. Prologue. 5. 'orbs of light and shade': according to the Author's note, ' sun and moon.' II. 3. The Author's note cites vexiuv aiievqvb. Kipijua, Od. X. 521, etc. VI. 16. In Crabbe's Tales of the Hall, iv., the sea is called the ' moving grave ' of the drowned. XIX. The opening statement in my note is confirmed by Lord Tennyson. XXV. I. The Author's note confirms my interpretation. XXXIII. 8. The Author's note cites Statins, Silv. I. iii. 22 : ceu placidi veritus turbare Vopisci Pieriosque dies et habentes carmina somnos. XXXVII. 23. 'the master's field': the Author's note, 'the province of Christianity (see xxxvi.),' makes it probable that ' master ' stands for Christ, though it does not make this quite certain, since the ' field ' would equally be ' the province of Christianity' if 'master' meant 'the dear one dead' (see 18). XXXIX. 8-12. The Author's note confirms my interpre- tation. XLI. 16. The Author's note, 'the eternal miseries of the Inferno,' confirms, I think, my suggestion that ' forgotten ' means ' forgotten by Heaven.' The sufferings are eternal because the judge, after condemning the sinner, never thinks of him again. 246 In Memoriam XLin. lo. Prof. Moore Smith has suggested to me that ^garden of the souls ' may be due to recollection of the word Paradise. XLIV. The Author's note on this much-discussed section confirms my interpretation, summarised on p. 135. As to the metaphor ' the doorways of his head,' it has occurred to me that Tennyson may probably have met with the idea, found in the Upanishads, that the universal soul, or Brahman, enters the body through one of the sutures. The suture is hence called the ' Brahman-orifice,' and again the 'gates of emancipation,' since the soul leaves the body by it at death, and since the body is figured as a house or castle with a number of doors or gates. Thus in the Aitareya Upanishad {Sacred Books of the East, vol. i. 241-2) we are told that the soul, or Brahman, after creating the body, meditates as follows (the italics are mine) : He thought : How can all this be without me? And then he thought : By what way shall 1 get there? Then, opening the suture of the skull, he got in by that door. (See further Dcussen, The Philosophy of the Upanishads, tr. Geden ; e.g. pp. 172, 182 fif., 195, 283-4, 359, 394, 407. The reader will find at p. 283 that the soul at death is said to abandon the body, or rather the gross body, as the mango-fruit leaves its stalk, — a simile which recalls In Mem. Lxxxil. 7. ) It will be seen that these ideas correspond with the notion, occurring in XLV., XLVli. (see pp. 134, 137), of the general soul individualising itself by connection with the body. I have not attempted to examine the English books about Indian philosophy that Tennyson might have seen before 1850, but I notice that the passage quoted above is translated by Colebrooke in a paper on the Vedas (1805), reprinted in Essays on the Religion and Philosophy of the Hindus, vol. i., 1837. Colebrooke uses the words ' route,' ' way,' not 'door' or 'gate,' but he has a footnote: 'the Hindus believe that the soul . . . enters the body through the sagittal suture.' Appendix 247 I have to thank Mr. M. Hirianna, M.A., who wrote an interesting letter to me from Mysore City on this subject, though, as it happened, after my reading of Deussen's book had led to the above remarks. XLVI. 15. ' Love, a brooding star' : the Author's note, ' as if Lord of the whole life,' confirms the usual interpretation ; but the difficulties of the section remain unresolved. XLVII. 12-16. The underlying idea is that the souls, whose ultimate nature is light, grow less material and more trans- parent with each life, and finally melt into pure light. Cf XLI., and ' broken lights ' in Prol. 19. The rise through life after life is imagined also as the ascent of a mountain, stair after stair. Hence perhaps the use of 'landing-place' for the resting-place at the top. Cf. the use of the word in The Friend. I owe these remarks to Prof. A. Carruthers, of the University of Toronto. XLVlll. 10. My note should be cancelled. Prof Moore Smith's interpretation seems clearly right ; ' but, by thus sporting with words, the better serves a law of our mental health,' viz. the law not to express sorrow to the utmost. L. 2. Collins quotes The Cenci, iv. i., sub Jin. : My blood is running up and down my veins ; A fearful pleasure makes it prick and tingle. LV. II. ' Fifty' should be 'myriad,' says the Author's note (but he did not make this change in the text). LVii. 10. Prof Carruthers observes that the effect of ' set ' (sounding at regular intervals) is re-inforced by that of ' drop by drop ' in LVIII. LXI. 9. ' doubtful ' : I think the interpretation suggested by the passage quoted by Lord Tennyson (shadowy, phantas- mal, opp. substantial, true) suits the preceding stanza better than mine ; for in that stanza there is no suggestion of diffi- culty or uncertainty in discerning the friend on earth. LXIV. The statement in the first sentence of my note is confirmed, or rather enlarged, by Lord Tennyson's note. LXVll. 14. ' a lucid veil' : the phrase occurs in reference to 248 In Memoriam St. Kilda, as Wordsworth imagined it, in No. xxxv. of his Poems composed or suggested during a tour m the summer of iSj^. If this were a case of unconscious" reminiscence, Lxvil. must be at least as late as 1835, when Wordsworth's volume appeared. LXVill. 2. The Author's note refers to Aen. vi. 278, not to the place in the Iliad to which I referred as the first appear- ance, known to me, of the idea. LXIX. My interpretation of the ' crown of thorns ' is con- firmed by the Author's note. LXXI. 4. The date of the tour given in Lord Tennyson's note seems to conflict with that given in the Memoir, on which I relied. I presume that the latter is correct. Lxxiii. 8. The Author's note refers to Zoroaster's saying, 'Nought errs from law.' LXXix. The brother addressed was Charles, says the Author's note. Lxxxi. 1-4. Lord Tennyson believes his father told him that a note of exclamation had been omitted at the end of the stanza. And this agrees with the fact which he men- tions, that in a pencil-note on the MS. oi In Memoriatn James Spedding interprets ' Could I have said' as ' I wish I could have said.' Assuming this interpretation to be correct, however, we have still to construe the second stanza. We may either take ' then ' in line 5 to mean ' at that time ' (so Lord Tennyson), and construe the rest of the stanza as on p. 172 of the Commentary. Or we may take 'then had' to mean ' would in that case have had,' and construe the rest with Mr. Ferrall. I incline to the former alternative. Lxxxvi. 7. 'the horned flood' : explained in the Author's note to mean the flood ' between two promontories.' Lxxxvii. 8. It is a curious question why ' prophets ' was changed to ' prophet.' Cambridge men seem always to think of King's Chapel in reading the stanza ; and Mrs. Verrall tells me that in each of the windows of that chapel there are two prophets, apart from one another and not grouped with Appendix 249 other figures. It is conceivable, therefore, that Tennyson, recalling the isolation of the figures, wished to mark it by the use of the singular. But it seems to me more likely that he wished to get rid of a sibilant, or even that the singular was a printer's error which escaped detection. Lxxxvm. is addressed 'to the Nightingale,' says the Author's note. XClll. 8. I incline to withdraw the suggestion that the note of interrogation at the end of 4 should be transferred to the end of 8. The third stanza seems to follow more naturally on a positive assertion. Mrs.Verralldraws myattention toaremarkable resemblance between this passage and the famous lines, Od xi. 601-603 '• TAc 5^ fier' ela-evdija-a. ^Irjv 'HpaKXrjelrjv, (tSu^oV airis Si jxer' i,Bav6,T0iai, BeoXinv TiptriTai. iv BaKlxit . . . With the second line of this cf. 'visual shade,' 'he, the Spirit himself,' 'with gods in unconjectured bliss.' These 'gods' had always seemed to me a little strange. With ripmrai, etc., cf. XLVII. 9, ID. 12. Lord Tennyson refers 'tenfold' to the ten heavens of Dante, Par. xxviii. xcv. As to the allusion to Plotinus on p. 190, see Mrs. VerralPs paper in the Modern Language Review for July, 1907, which deals with XCIV. as well as xcv. xcvi. The Author's note says that the poem refers to Arthur Hallam. Lord Tennyson's note on the last stanza is not intended, I presume, to interpret the last two lines. XCVIII. My note on the date and occasion of this section (p. 15) was based on a statement in the Memoir, i. 148. The Author's note, which says that 'you' in line i is imaginary, contradicts that statement, and, if later than it, may be due to a lapse of memory. cm. 55, 56. A note by the Author's wife says that 'the gorgeous sky . . typifies the glory of the hope in that which is to be.' 250 In Memoriam CVII. 13. 'drifts' : Lord Tennyson agrees with Gatty. cxil. 2, 3. According to the Author's note, 'glorious insufficiencies ' means ' unaccomplished greatness such as Arthur Hallam's.' ' Temperate ' must then be taken, with Benham and Beaching, to mean ' calm and indulgent ' (Lord Tennyson's phrase). CXIV. 4. The Author's note refers to Proverbs, ix. i. Add, at the end of line 2 of p. 210 of the Commentary : 'also Wordsworth, Excursion, iv., the latter part, and Musings near Aquapendente, last paragraph : e.g. : O grant the crown That Wisdom wears, or take his treacherous staff From Knowledge.' CXVIII. II. In Lord Tennyson's edition the first word is ' And,' not ' The.' As there is no note, this is perhaps a misprint. cxx. 9-11. The Author's note runs: 'Spoken ironically against mere materialism, not against evolution.' Perhaps then (I am developing a suggestion of Prof. Moore Smith's) line 12, still ironical, may mean : 'But I must be excused from acting in that fashion, as I happened to be born before materialism was in vogue.' cxxi. 1 7. The Author's note runs : ' The evening star is also the morning star, death and sorrow brighten into death and hope.' The second ' death ' here seems very strange. If it is right, and if the note truly represents the original idea, my interpretation of the poem, and especially of line 18, must, 1 presume, be mistaken. With 17, 18, cf Ibycus, fr. 42 (Bergk), 6 hh airbi i(>>