8817 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 5588.R28 
 
 Alfred Tennyson, poet laureate 
 
 3 1924 013 560 986 
 
The original of tiiis 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/cu31924013560986 
 
IFRED teENNYSON, 
 
 POET LAUREATE. 
 
 T. H. REAR DEN. 
 
 ' iHein fLirli crtont Bcr uiiftrhatiiitrn iKrngf : 
 iiir iScifall srlbst matfjt mcintm l^erjcii tanj." 
 
 FOR PRIVATE DLSTRIBUTION. 
 San Fkanci.sco, 1883. 
 
 @ 
 
/^CORNELL 
 UfMVERSITY 
 \ LIBRARY 
 
CHRONOLOGY 
 
 OF LITERATURE AND POLITICS, 
 
 PREPARED WITH REFERENCE TO THE BIOGRAPHY OF ALFRED 
 TENNYSON. 
 
 1809. August 5. Alfred Tennyson born. 
 
 In the same year were born William E. Gladstone, 
 Cardinal Manning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning{i8o7?), 
 Charles R. Darwin, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John 
 Stuart Blackie, Edgar Allen Poe, Lord Houghton 
 (R. Monckton Milnes), Bishop Selwyn. 
 
 Within the century, and to be regarded as contem- 
 poraries, were born Thomas Babington JIacaulay 
 {1800), George Bancroft (1800), Edgar Bouverie Pusey 
 (1800), John Henry Newman (1801), Hugh Miller 
 (1802), Harriet Martineau (1802), Victor Hugo (1802), 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803), Nathaniel Hawthorne 
 (1804), John Frederick Denison Maurice (1805), Bulwer- 
 Lytton (1805), Benjamin Disraeli {1805), John Sterling 
 (1806), John Stuart Mill (1806), John Greenleaf Whit- 
 tier (1807), Richard Chenevix Trench (1807), Henry 
 Wadsworth Longfellow (1807), Charles Tennyson 
 Turner (1808). 
 
 Within the decade succeeding Tennyson's birth were born 
 Henry Alford (1810), Alfred de Musset (1810), Arthur 
 Henry Hallam (February, 1811), William Makepeace 
 Thackeray (181 1 ), Robert Lowe (1811), John Bright 
 (1811), Robert Browning (1812), Charles Dickens 
 (1812), Norman Macleod (1812), Charles Reade (1814), 
 
iv Chronology. 
 
 Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815), Anthony TroUope 
 (1815), Charlotte Bronte (i8i6), Tom Taylor (1817), 
 James Anthony Froude [circa 1818), Her Majesty 
 Queen Victoria (1819), Prince Albert (1819), 
 Charles Kingsley (1819), James Russell Lowell {1819), 
 John Ruskin {1819), Herbert Spencer (1820), John 
 Tyndall {1820), Florence Nightingale (1820). 
 
 1821. Death of John Keats (born 1795). 
 Bishop Temple (Essays and Reviews) born. 
 
 1822. Death of Percy Bysshe Shelley (born 1792). 
 Alfred Tennyson writes a MS. tale. 
 
 1824. Death of Lord Byron (born 1788). 
 
 1825. Thomas Henry Huxley born. 
 
 1827. Death of Ugo Foscolo (born 1775). 
 
 "Poems by Two Brothers" published May 19. 
 First contemporary criticism of the Poems appeared in 
 "The Literary Chronicle.'' 
 
 1828. Death of Canning. 
 
 Alfred Tennyson writes ' ' The Lover's Tale " (not printed 
 
 till 1833). 
 The poet takes up his residence at Cambridge (Trinity 
 
 College). 
 The Poem "Timbuctoo" gains the Chancellor's 
 
 Medal. 
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti bom. 
 
 1829. Catholic ReUef Bill passed. 
 
 1830. "PoEM5 Chiefly Lyrical" published. 
 John Stuart Mill writes a favorable criticism on. 
 
 1831. Dr. George Clayton Tennyson, the poet's father, dies. 
 The present Lord Lytton (Owen Meredith) born. 
 
 A poem by Tennyson appears in "The Gem." 
 
 1832. Reform Bill passed. 
 
 January. Arthur Hallam leaves Cambridge. 
 
 Wilson (Kit North) publishes a review of Tennyson in 
 
 Blackwood . 
 Death of Sir Walter Scott (born 177 1). 
 
Chronology. v 
 
 Tennyson publishes sonnets in "The Yorkshire Liter- 
 ary Annual, " and in "Friendship's Offering"; a son- 
 net published by Edward Tennyson. 
 1832-3. Second Volume of Alfred Tennyson's poems pub- 
 lished by Moxon. 
 
 1833. Sept. 15. Arthur Henry Hallam DIES AT Vienna. 
 
 1834. Death of Coleridge (born 1772). 
 
 January 3. Hallam buried at Clevedon Church, 
 Somersetshire. 
 1837. Her Majesty Queen Victoria ascends the 
 throne. 
 
 Alfred Tennyson resident at Caistor, Lincolnshire, 
 where an uncle was vicar. 
 
 "St. Agnes'' published in "The Keepsake." 
 
 The lines in Maud, "O that 'twere possible," pub- 
 lished in "The Tribute." 
 
 1840. Marriage of Queen Victoria with Prince Albert. 
 
 1841. Birth of the Prince of Wales. 
 
 1842. Poems by Alfred Tennyson in two volumes pub- 
 
 lished. 
 
 1843. Death of Robert Southey, Poet Laureate (bom 
 
 1774). 
 
 Charles Algernon Swinburne born. 
 
 Wordsworth meets Tennyson. 
 
 Wordsworth writes eulogistically of Tennyson to Pro- 
 fessor Reed. 
 
 1844. Death of John Sterling. 
 
 1845. Tennyson receives n pension of ;^200 from Sir Robert 
 
 Peel, prime minister. 
 January 31. Tennyson dines at the poet Rogers'. 
 Death of Thomas Hood (born 1798). 
 1847. "The Princess, A Medley," published. 
 
 Sir John Franklin lost in the Arctic (born 1786). 
 
 1849. Death of Lady Blessington (born 1789). 
 
 1850. June 13. Tennyson married to Emily, daughter of 
 
 Henry Sellwood, Esq., of Horncastle (a niece of Sir 
 John Franklin). 
 
vi Chronology. 
 
 April 23. Death of William Wordsworth, Poet 
 
 Laureate (born 1770). 
 "In Memori am " published. Three editions appeared 
 
 the same year. 
 Death of Sir Robert Peel (born 1788). 
 Death of Henry Fitzmaurice Hallam. 
 Nov. 21. Tennyson gazetted Poet Laureate. 
 
 1 85 1. March 6. Tennyson attends the Queen's Levee. 
 The seventh edition of Tennyson 's poems appears. 
 September. Tennyson in France. 
 
 1852. Sept. 14. Death of the Duke of Wellington 
 
 (born 1769). 
 
 Death of Thomas Moore (born 1779). 
 
 In the course of this year several anti-Gallic or anti- 
 Napoleonic songs appeared, supposed to be by the 
 Laureate. (Two verses addressed to America omitted 
 in the later edition of "Hands all round.") 
 
 Hallam Tennyson born at Twickenham, where the poet 
 then resided. 
 
 1854. Death of Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd (born 1795). 
 John Wilson (Kit North) dies (born 1785). 
 Frederick Tennyson publishes a volume of poems. 
 Dec. 9. "The Charge of the Light Brigade'' appears 
 
 in "The London Examiner." 
 
 1855. The Poet Laureate is admitted to the honorary degree 
 
 of D. C. L. Oxon. 
 "Maud, and Other Poems," published. 
 Death of Mary Russell Mitford (born 1786). 
 Death of Samuel Rogers (born 1763). 
 
 1856. Death of Hugh Miller. 
 
 1857. Enid and Nemuc privately printed. 
 Death of Alfred de Musset. 
 Hawthorne sees Tennyson at Manchester. 
 
 Bayard Taylor visits Tennyson at the Isle of Wight. 
 1859. Death of Leigh Hunt (born 1784). 
 
 Death of Thomas Babington Lord Macaulay. 
 
Chronology. vii 
 
 Death of Henry Hai.lam (bom 1777). 
 Death of Thomas De Quincey (born 1785). 
 Death of Washington Irving (bora 1783). 
 July. "Idylls OF the King" published. 
 1861. Death of the Prince Consort. 
 
 Death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 1863. March 18. " Welcome to Alexandra " published. 
 Death of Thackeray. 
 
 Death of Richard Whately (born 1787). 
 
 1864. Mrs. Alfred Tennyson writes a song, "Alma River." 
 "Enoch Arden" published. 
 
 Death of Walter Savage Landor (born 1775). 
 Death of Nathaniel Hawthorne. 
 
 1865. Death of Edward Everett (born 1794). 
 Death of Lord Palmerston (born 1784). 
 
 Alfred Tennyson offered a baronetcy and declines it; 
 admitted to the Royal Society. 
 
 1866. Septimus Tennyson, a brother of the poet, dies at 
 
 Cheltenham. 
 Death of William Whewell (born 1795). 
 
 1867. Professor Selwyn publishes a Latin Version of "Enoch 
 
 Arden." 
 "The Window; or. The Loves of the Wrens,'' pri- 
 vately printed by Sir Ivor Guest. 
 
 1868. Alexander Strahan becomes the poet's publisher. 
 Death of Henry Hart Milman (born 1791). 
 Death of Sir David Brewster (born 1781). 
 "Lucretius " published in Macmillan's. 
 
 1869. The poet elected an honorary fellow of Trinity College, 
 
 Cambridge, removes to Surrey. 
 Death of the Earl of Derby (bora 1799). 
 
 1870. Death of Charles Dickens. 
 
 "The Holy Grail, and Other Poems," pub- 
 lished (4 new idylls). 
 
 1871. Death of Plenry Alford. 
 
 Death of George Grote (born 1794). 
 
viii Chronology. 
 
 "The Last Tournament" published in "Tlie Con- 
 temporary Review " for December. 
 
 1872. "Gareth and Lynette" published. 
 Death of Frederick Maurice. 
 
 Library edition in six volumes of Tennyson's poems. 
 
 1873. Death of Lord Bulwer-Lytton (born 1805). 
 Death of John Stuart Mill. 
 
 1S74. H. S. King and Co. become the poet's publishers. 
 
 1875. " Queen Mary " published. 
 
 1877. " Harold " published. 
 
 1878. Death of Earl Russell (born 1792). 
 
 Birth of Alfred Tennyson, the poet's grandson. 
 
 1879. Death of Charles Tennyson Turner. 
 "The Lover's Tale re-published. 
 
 "The Falcon'' performed at the St. James. 
 
 1880. "Ballads, and Other Poems,'' published, C. Kegan 
 
 Paul and Co. become the poet's publishers. 
 Death of Frank Buckland (born 1826). 
 Death of Tom Taylor. 
 Death of George Eliot. 
 "The Cup'' performed at "The Lyceum." 
 
 1881. Death of Thomas Carlyle (born 1795). 
 Death of Lord Beaconsfield. 
 
 Death of Mrs. S. C. Hall (born 1805). 
 
 1882. Death of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 
 Death of Ralph Waldo Emerson (born 1803). 
 Death of Charles R. Darwin. 
 
 Death of Anthony TroUope. 
 Death of Dante G. Rossetti. 
 "The Promise of May" performed at "The Globe." 
 
ALFRED TENNYSON, 
 
 POET LAUREATE. 
 
 Has a Californian, as such, any literary right to 
 discuss belles-lettres in print? And if yea, is a Cali- 
 fornian magazine discreet in publishing such discus- 
 sion? It has been a question with me, now that I 
 have sifted my facts and collated reviews extending 
 over a period of fifty years, whether there has not 
 been too much written by those better advised touch- 
 ing the Poet Laureate to warrant any addition to the 
 mass from this corner of the world. Common honesty 
 demands, at all events, that one should disavow any 
 pretence of originality, and say only that which may be 
 flanked by citation and supported by decisions; and 
 it is therefore with hesitancy that I approach the work, 
 and with a doubt as to its adding to the vigor or im- 
 pressiveness of our magazine.i One feels much as some 
 literary Gascon in the days of the Pleiad might have 
 felt in fumbling over questions of French language or 
 rhythm secluded from Parisian sympathy by his pro- 
 vincial exile. 
 
 But a poet's reputation is, after all, a sort of meteor- 
 
 1 Reprinted a.nd revised from the "Overland Monthly" for Janu- 
 ary, 1883. 
 
lo Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 
 
 ological fact, which may be said to require reported ob- 
 servations from a large expanse of surface; and in many- 
 stations these become the duty of unpretentious sub- 
 alterns; for the world of literature is no longer Paris 
 or London, but the "Great Globe itself" 
 
 Tennyson enjoys at least a titular popularity in 
 America. If that needed confirmation, the unremit- 
 ting piracy of his works would furnish it. In one 
 or more forms, they may be found in all polite house- 
 holds; charming ladies the world over will, if urged, 
 gratify you by singing his lyrics ; clever, penniless young 
 bachelors everywhere will, when jilted, mouth stanzas 
 of Locksley Hall ; and chaps with ill-balanced hearts, 
 who have become unhappily spooney about their 
 friends' wives, will half imagine themselves Lancelots 
 or Tristrams; while village Guineveres are as plentiful 
 as village Cromwells, and not always as guiltless in their 
 particular pose. Has not the poor, pale corpse of 
 the Lily Maid been bandied about among us of the 
 Pacific coast as recklessly as if it were a mummy in 
 a museum, or a "stiff" on an express train? Who 
 shall say that we do not know our poet intimately? And 
 what is there that a prosy essayist out here can tell us 
 in that behalf? 
 
 And yet, one feels that there is a certain sediment 
 of mefiance pervading the half-cultured strata of the 
 American reading public, which hinders the English- 
 man's verse from thorough assimilation with the popu- 
 lar American nature. It is almost as if a taste for 
 
Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. ii 
 
 Tennyson were an exotic, requiring greenhouse fas- 
 tidiousness to protect it from rude republican "north- 
 ers." 
 
 This literary symptom (not, however, exactly con- 
 fined to Tennyson) has been growing apparent in 
 the last twenty years. Former generations not only 
 courted British culture, but found it a necessity. To- 
 day there is arising an actual aversion to British ideas 
 — at least, in what may be called the superficial liter- 
 ary populace. 
 
 The fact is, Great Britain is becoming foreign to us. 
 Like the Irish, our literary state is conspiring for Home 
 Rule, and clamors for a parliament of its own. We 
 dislike to be thought to speak the English rather 
 than the American language. Even in our pronunci- 
 ation and modulation, there is a sibboleth apparent; 
 and we gird at the Britisher who has not our speech, 
 however provincial it be, just as country louts are 
 amused at a stranger's costume or special habits of 
 body. Usages once common to both lands are fast 
 wearing out with us; and a time would seem to be 
 coming when English and American, once identical, 
 will be to each other as Japanese unto Chinese. 
 
 An evidence of the divergence between the two 
 countries is furnished by the fading popularity (re- 
 gard being had to the increase of population and 
 relative greater percentage of general readers) of 
 English authors once as eagerly conned in America 
 as in the land of their domicile. This partly arises 
 from the confused ideas of superficially educated 
 
12 Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 
 
 Americans as to British customs, usages, and local 
 terms— a defect which renders the reading of British 
 writers a matter of painful thought, more or less 
 clogged with ignorance and uncertainty as to the allu- 
 sions. I do not think Scott as popular in America as 
 formerly; Burns is actually archaic; and Hogg re- 
 quires more than a glossary even to clever people 
 who are ordinarily swift to catch the slang current 
 in bar-rooms and mining camps, as crystallized in local 
 or humorous journalism. 
 
 All this is a weakness to be deplored. If our litera- 
 ture had become so broad and deep by reason of its 
 Longfellows, its Hawthornes, its Irvings, its Howellses, 
 and its Holmeses, there might be ground for national 
 pride in our literary progress; but the generation that 
 knows not Joseph also forgets Joseph's brethren and 
 sympathizers on this side the ocean; and is apt to be 
 satisfied with thought, poetry, or humor born of no 
 higher fancy than might be bred in the cabin of the 
 Arkansas Traveller. The literature chosen to supplant 
 Englisn models must be better, not worse, than what 
 has been cast upon us by British descent. 
 
 Then, too, it happens that, while we are moving 
 farther from British influence, we are drawing closer to 
 lands which foster the alienation. Our young folks 
 are running the risk of knowing more about Zola than 
 about Thackeray; and our a5sthetic ladies are more 
 interested in Mademoiselle de Maupin than in the 
 Vicar of Wakefield's Olivia. And yet they might 
 draw a personal benefit from the good taste and ele- 
 
Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 13 
 
 gance of Goldy, which their quavering knowledge of 
 a foreign tongue must ever "be a barrier to their find- 
 ing or appreciating in Gautier. 
 
 If, therefore, I sermonize a while about an author 
 whom all ought to appreciate, gentle or simple, rich or 
 poor, learned or ignorant, it is but to repeat an Old- 
 World echo of instruction which distance and a 
 murky literary atmosphere have almost weakened to 
 unintelligibility. I would like to discuss Tennyson 
 in the light in which cultivated people in his own 
 country regard him and his works, as shown by com- 
 mentators in magazines or published volumes. 
 
 The life of Alfred Tennyson has not been one of 
 startling events. There are no prominent facts in 
 his career hurtled about as literary gossip which 
 would render his biography a dramatic poem. Save 
 for the fact that he is a poet and poet laureate, his 
 existence has been passed in the elegant obscurity 
 affected by cultured Englishmen who keep out of 
 politics. 
 
 His poetry, in one sense, is not egoistic; and he 
 has shrunk from breaking up the privacy of his life 
 to build the materials into the structure of his poetic 
 reputation. 
 
 But nevertheless, everything that we need to know 
 or perhaps ought to wish to know of Tennyson is in 
 his writings, if we will but "read between the lines." 
 For that matter, I would challenge any man with the 
 slightest claim to frankness to write anything at all 
 
14 Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 
 
 without confessing some portion of his nature. I 
 remember how a gentleman of old California days 
 came to his death by shipwreck. His general repu- 
 tation had been of decidedly misanthropic acerbity. 
 None gave him credit for especial warmth of feeling. 
 Yet with death not a quarter of an hour away, he 
 attempted an autographic will of half a dozen lines, 
 which, by its kindness of tone towards children, 
 strangers to his blood, and towards collaterals, by the 
 preciseness of his chirography and punctuation, by the 
 aptness of terms, and the fact that one of them was 
 Scotch, gave indirectly the materials for a biography 
 of a frosty but kindly nature, bred in the Land o' Cakes, 
 in a lawyer's office, thence transferred to journalist 
 duties on a distant shore, of as heroic a soul as one 
 would expect to dwell in the breast of even the vieux 
 militaire who sank with him. In like manner, one 
 might compose a charming history of Tennyson by 
 stringing together verses from his poems; and one 
 might also branch out and show not only what has 
 been, but what might have been — a feature wanting 
 in most biographies. One might mistake a detail here 
 and there, it is true; but the general trutli would be 
 told. 
 
 Alfred Tennyson was born August sth, 1809, at 
 Somersby, a village in Mid-Lincolnshire. Even Ameri- 
 cans have heard of the Lincolnshire Fens; and every 
 poem of Tennyson's youth tells of some feature of 
 the scenery of the land, the verdure and foliage of 
 
Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 15 
 
 meadow, marsh, and wood, the brook that flows by 
 Somersby, the mill upon it, 
 
 ' ' The sandy tracts, 
 And the hollow ocean ridges roaring into cataracts. '' 
 
 For here the German Ocean has full sweep, and seems 
 to enjoy its gambols. It is in Lincolnshire that the poet 
 has laid the scene of his latest drama, " The Promise 
 of May." 
 
 Tennyson's father, Dr. George Clayton Tennyson, 
 was rector of the parish of Somersby. The poet's 
 mother was the daughter of the Rev. Stephen 
 Fytche. 
 
 Tennyson comes of gentle stock. Indeed, some of 
 the collateral branches must have been quite tenacious 
 and precise in the matter of their claims in that 
 regard. There are, I believe, extinct baronies lying 
 around, here and there, in the family history. 
 Those Englishmen are proud of nothing so much as 
 springing from an old county family ; and I have no 
 doubt but that Tennyson has a proper weakness that 
 way, befitting a man who need not be his own grand- 
 father, and who is grandfather to others. Of course, 
 he has his quiet thrusts at pride of birth; but behind 
 them remains, evidently, the feeling which, while cov- 
 ered by indifference to the pomps of heraldry, bor- 
 ders on satisfaction that he, also, might, had he willed 
 it so. 
 
 ** Somewhere beneath his own low range of roofs 
 Have also set his many-shielded tree." ' 
 
 ^ Aylmer's Field. 
 
r6 Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 
 
 The entire Tennysonian household were poets — 
 "a nest of nightingales," as one of their friends calls 
 them.^ There was Charles, who afterward took the 
 surname of Turner, Frederick, Septimus, Edward, 
 Horatio, and Arthur; and there were two sisters who 
 likewise made girlish attempts at verse. 
 
 One can readily picture the youth of the poet spent 
 in an English rectory, swarming with sisterly and 
 cousinly maidens; such, doubtless, as Trollope and 
 the artists who have illustrated Trollope have depicted 
 for us. No ordinary nature could pass through that 
 sort of training without a certain wincing softness that 
 would give tone to his whole after-existence. It may, 
 therefore, be noted that all of Tennyson's heroines, 
 of whatever race, time, or clime, are, morally, just 
 such people as one would likely meet in an English 
 country house on long, summer days, book in hand, 
 or in a parish church at Christmas-tide, helping the 
 curate with the evergreens, or flirting in demure style 
 with the lads home from college or London. 
 
 Tennyson's father was a man of accomplishments 
 — more, perhaps, than of scholarship or of theological 
 propensities. He was an athlete, a musician, a lin- 
 guist.^ It would seem that the poet learned Italian to 
 some extent — possibly induced by his father. In 
 those days, there was a breeze of revival of interest 
 in Italian letters, owing to the fact that England had 
 become a refuge for a number of lettered revolu- 
 tionists, such as Foscolo, Panizzi. and Rossettij and 
 
 1 S. C. Hall's Book of Gems. 2 Hewitt, 1847. 
 
Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. I'j 
 
 Tennyson's short-lived friend Hallam was gliding into 
 the Tuscan groove of culture, with no mean promise 
 of future effectiveness and honor in that direction.l 
 
 Tennyson's status in life pointed vaguely to the 
 Anglican church as his possible vocation ; but it was 
 fortunate that he escaped being a parson. I fancy 
 that his brother Charles would have lived a more 
 rounded and complete life had he never taken orders. 
 Besides, one never sees Reverend before an author's 
 name without expecting something goody-goody and 
 narrow. Alfred might have been driven into the inns 
 of court; but one shudders at the thought that the 
 brow now decked with laurel should have run the 
 risk of perspiring in a horse-hair wig, although poets 
 and true ones have sat on the bench and been its 
 ornaments. Testibus, Sir William Jones, Talfourd, 
 and for that matter, many a Scotch laird. And is 
 there not Browning, who by rights ought to have been 
 a Q. C, chopping up, say, the law of remainders in a 
 court of equity, instead of knitting his brows and frown- 
 ing in a lord-chancellor way on high Parnassus? 
 
 The only other employment in which Tennyson, 
 according to our present lights, would not have cut a 
 moderate figure would have been the army. What a 
 jovial mess member he would have been ! How he 
 would have shirked drill and pipe-clay ! What rollick- 
 ing camp songs he would have composed and sung! 
 What a popular colonel he would have grown to be ! 
 And how religiously and simultaneously he would have 
 
 1 Hallam's Remains. 
 
i8 Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 
 
 hated and abused the French, and have seen that 
 the mess port was of the right body and flavor ! He 
 would have been just in time to go out to the Crimea, 
 and to take part with his Six Hundred there, instead 
 of singing their exploits in slippered feet at home, 
 where his big bass voire, fit to call a squadron to ad- 
 vance, was utterly thrown away on boots and the butler. 
 (There was, by the way, another Englishman who 
 would have graced any branch of the service, but 
 whose life was wasted on art — poor George Cruik- 
 shank.) 
 
 It might here be noted that when certain Crimean 
 heroes came home, and were called to receive their 
 academic brevets from Oxford, 1855, in the shape of 
 doctorates in jurisprudence, Tennyson was joined with 
 them in the honors for his poetic gallantry. 
 
 No, I don't think that Major-General Sir Alfred 
 Tennyson, K. C. B., etc., etc., would sound badly. 
 But if it were the present fact, what a loss to us on this 
 side of the Atlantic, who have, lo, these many years, 
 enjoyed and stolen his work so remorselessly! 
 
 Tennyson's physical, mental, and moral nature and 
 needs are those of a man enjoying active, every-day life, 
 with a right to take long furloughs from it, and retreat 
 into his library as occasion demands; apt to linger in 
 cozy discussion "across the walnuts and the wine," 
 when the ladies had cleared out ; to sit on a stile and 
 remark a colt's points; to take a languid interest in tur- 
 nips and crop rotation; and to have interchange of 
 
Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 19 
 
 proper courtesies with suspected poachers on the sub- 
 ject of wood-craft, or with the pretty farmers' daughters 
 touching their swains. In America, there is somehow 
 a lack among literary men of that sort of catholicity of 
 intercourse; and my idea of the blessed Longfellow 
 has always been of one who had the New England 
 college tutor thoroughly injected into his marrow at 
 an early age, and who would have been fearful of say- 
 ing or doing anything hostile to varnished boots or 
 academic discipline. 
 
 The two brothers, Charles and Alfred, were early 
 sent to the Louth grammar school. It was here that, 
 in March, 1827, they jointly published a small volume 
 of verse, entitled "Poems by Two Brothers."^ It was 
 stated in the preface that the pieces contained in the 
 volume had been written by them between their 
 fifteenth and eighteenth years. 
 
 This little collection has become a great bibliomaniac 
 rarity. The late Rev. Dr. Chapin of New York 
 was said to possess the only copy ever brought to 
 America.^ 
 
 Criticism of verse attempts by young school-boys 
 would of course be idle; but the fact of the publication 
 may simply be marked, as showing at how early an age 
 and with what apparent success the poet had put in 
 practice his studies of the laws of English rhythm. 
 
 1 Poems by Two Brothers. Printed by J. & J. Jackson, 
 Market Place, Louth, Lincolnshire. 
 
 2 Bayard Taylor's Essay on Tennyson. 
 
20 Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 
 
 In 1829 the two poetic lads went to reside at Cam- 
 bridge, whither young Hallam had preceded them some 
 months, with whom Alfred contracted the warmest 
 of friendships, strengthened, as it was to be, by an 
 engagement between one of the poet's sisters and 
 Hallam. 
 
 Within half a year from his entry at Trinity Col- 
 lege, Alfred was declared the successful competitor for 
 the Chancellor's Gold Medal for English verse — the 
 subject imposed being Timbuctoo.i 
 
 The name recalls the famous witty and successful 
 attempt of Sydney Smith to find a rhyme for it, and 
 invokes something of the grotesque in our feelings; 
 but if we consider what gorgeous speculations were 
 then rife as to the resources and condition of Central 
 Africa, and the fabulous tales in vogue about its 
 cities and their treasures, it would seem natural enough 
 that a question of such great geographical interest 
 should have been suggested as the subject for verse. 
 
 A couple of years before, an adventurous British offi- 
 cer had lost his life in attempting to gain personal 
 knowledge of Timbuctoo.^ 
 
 Prize poems have, I think, been rather unjustly 
 abused. But if they have no other raison d'etre, one 
 might now be found in the fact that Tennyson had 
 buckled down to the task of competing for a prize, and 
 had succeeded so well that the effort became the 
 hinge of his poetic reputation. And it would appear, 
 
 1 Printed at Cambridge, 1S29. See also, Cambridge Prize Poems. 
 
 2 Major Laing. 
 
Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 21 
 
 too, that there was a brilliant set of students at Cam- 
 bridge in those days, when Tennyson bore the banner 
 of success, and young Hallam and Thackeray were 
 among the defeated candidates. In looking over the 
 names of eminent Englishmen who at that time resided 
 at Cambridge, as undergraduates or otherwise, one can- 
 not help thin'king that there was there transpiring what 
 we Westerners would call an "intellectual boom." It 
 is not necessary here to discuss the merits of Tim- 
 buctoo; but it is not out of place to call the attention 
 of San Franciscans to the way in which the young 
 Cantab, who had never felt the shudder of an earth- 
 quake, hits off the salient suggestions elicited by the 
 experience : 
 
 " As whon in some great city when the walls 
 Shake, and the streets with ghastly faces thronged 
 Do utter forth a subterranean sound." 
 
 There are but three lines; but the phenomenon is 
 fully described. 
 
 The "Athenaeum" declared that the poem "indi- 
 cated first-rate poetical genius, and would have done 
 credit to any man that ever wrote."^ 
 
 In 1830 Tennyson published a volume,^ entitled 
 "Poems Chiefly Lyrical." Of this collection there ap- 
 peared in the "Westminster" for January, 1831, a re- 
 view written, it is said, by John Stuart Mill, wherein, 
 after defining the duty, influence, and power of a true 
 poet, the following prophetic passage occurs: 
 
 1 Written either by John Sterling or Frederick Maurice. 
 
 2 London, Effingham Wilson. 
 
2 2 Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 
 
 "If our estimate of Mr. Tennyson is correct, he, 
 too, is a poet ; and many years hence may he read his 
 juvenile description of that character, with the proud 
 consciousness that it has become the description and 
 history of his own work."^ 
 
 Leigh Hunt also, in the "Tatler,"^ gave a favorable 
 review of the volume in conjunction with one pub- 
 lished simultaneously by Charles Tennyson; and 
 Arthur Hallam wrote a notice of his friend's venture, 
 which appeared in "The Englishman's Magazine." 
 
 Kit North, in his breezy way, clinched the strain 
 of eulogy in "Blackwood's" (May, i832),3 mixing kind 
 encouragement with a certain amount of critical ban- 
 ter. In acknowledgment of this latter notice, Tenny- 
 son wrote the lines "Musty, Fusty Christopher," which 
 appeared in a second volume published in the winter 
 of 1832-33, by the poet-publisher, Moxon. 
 
 This second volume was discussed by Coleridge 
 in "Table-Talk'';* and the veteran brings the singu- 
 lar charge against the young poet of a mismanagement 
 of his metres, recommending him to stick to two or 
 three common ones. Now Coleridge knew all about 
 rhythm, and meant to be a fair critic ; but in the light 
 of Tennyson's rhythmical history, we cannot fail to 
 suspect the justice of all poetical criticism. 
 
 As adverse utterances, that of the "Quarterly" (July, 
 
 1 Westminster, January, 1831. 
 
 2 Tatler, numbers from Febraary 24th, 1831, to March 3rd,. 1831. 
 8 Blackwood, Vol. XXXI. 
 
 4 Table-Talk, Vol. II. 
 
, Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 23 
 
 1833),^ is the most noticeable. It found all the weak 
 chords in Mr. Tennyson's lyre; and spoke distrust- 
 fully and scornfully of many others, since acknowledged 
 to be strong. The "Quarterly" in after years man- 
 fully retracted its hasty opinion. 
 
 But out of the collections thus far published by 
 the young man, enough pieces stood their ground to 
 entitle the author to take decided rank as a poet. 
 
 The year 1833 2 was the year of young Hallam's 
 death — that Hallam who had been more than a 
 brother to a poet who knew the worth of sympathetic 
 fraternity; and to Hallam's memory, seventeen years 
 later, Tennyson unveiled the most graceful literary 
 monument that could be raised to the memory of a 
 friendship cut short by death. 
 
 The time had now come when the poet could not 
 be allowed to rest confidingly upon ancient models or 
 to find a large enough world in the limits of a college 
 quadrangle. He had become a man; and whatever 
 life men of his day led, would be, if not his own, at 
 least a strong agency in marking out his pathway for 
 him. The most "offish" of us are affected to some 
 extent by those about us ; and we cannot wholly avoid 
 the vices of our day and generation, even if we would. 
 
 If any one would like to frame an idea of quasi fine 
 literary society in England between 1830 and 1840, 
 he has only to study the ways and doings of coteries 
 
 1 Vol. XLIX. ; see Vol. LXX. 
 
 2 Died September 15, 1833, at Vienna. 
 
24 Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 
 
 such as Lady Blessington's, and simultaneously to read 
 Disraeli's novels. From our standpoint, it was a very 
 good sort of life to keep out of; and Tennyson, in spite 
 of some quavering motions, must have remained on 
 the utter rim. It was a time when men had pallid 
 brows and long hair and brocade dressing-gowns, and 
 were suspected of corsets, and had a glory of soft white 
 hands, innocent of blisters and gauded with rings — a 
 reign of Pelhams and Count d'Orsays in drawing-rooms 
 — a time of Annuals and Books of Gems and Keep- 
 sakes and Friendship's Offerings — all illustrated with 
 plates and engraved titles, and to which contributed 
 languorous gentlemen, whose fathers had sparred with 
 Jackson and fought with bargemen, and whose sons, 
 in their subsequent day, took to club-swinging and foot- 
 racing; dainty volumes patronized by impossible cop- 
 per-plate beauties, who wrote watery verse and flirted 
 with the Melbournes and the Endymions of the hour. 
 
 I have said that Tennyson somehow escaped all that 
 — the glamour whereof led captive the soul of the future 
 tory leader, and made him, as a reward for his apprecia- 
 tive worship, like Joseph in Egypt, a ruler among stran- 
 gers to his blood. But Tennyson did contribute to 
 the annuals ; and one of the most exquisite bits of his 
 verse, afterwards embodied in Maud, first saw light in 
 one of those fashionable collections.^ 
 
 But Tennyson must have studied in one direction — 
 
 1 The Tribute, edited by Lord Northampton, 1837. 
 " O, that 'twere possible, 
 After long grief and pain.' 
 
Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 25 
 
 that of nature — with no careless attention. No poet 
 can effectively pursue his calling if deprived of the 
 essentials of out-door life and pure air. He needs the 
 odors and harmonies of the country to guide him in 
 tuning his harp. He cannot shut himself up in a city 
 vv'ithout more or less vulgarizing his muse, and render- 
 ing his imagery paltry. He cannot bar out the world 
 of sensuous force by closing his library door, without 
 growing fastidious and finical. What would Scott have 
 been but for his stumbling strolls through the heaths, 
 with Maida at his heels? What sort of verse would 
 Byron have written, had he not found the sea a place 
 to revel in? I think the real obstacle which shunted 
 Lamb off the poetic highway \ys& his intense cockney- 
 ism. He had it in him to be a poet, and would have 
 been one, had he been compelled to rest his eyes upon 
 beds of wild flowers instead of shop windows and 
 book-stalls. 
 
 Tennyson all his life has continued the habit 
 which he had commenced in his Lincolnshire boy- 
 hood, of illustrating his verse with suggestions from 
 nature. He is so fond of the trick, and is so full of 
 surprises of that kind, that his critics have taken to 
 carping at the accuracy of hir facts. Bayard Taylor 
 speaks of some of his similes as inapt, and instances 
 where he compares the rippling, broken gurgles of a 
 girl's laughter to a woodpecker's tapping. I fancy it 
 is a question, not of the tapper, but of the sounding- 
 board. Some kinds of woods when struck give an 
 
26 Alfred Tennyson, Foet Laureate. 
 
 almost liquid response. Another critic objects to the 
 poet's making a dog leap from the water to the land, and 
 shake his ears as he recovers his balance. This critic 
 says a dog does not leap but climbs ashore, and waggles 
 his entire body before attending to his dripping ears. 
 Now, it is true that if the dog were in the act of swim- 
 ming, he would not leap; but if it were a shallow brook, 
 he would make a quick jump from the one element 
 to the other ; and if he had pendant ears they would 
 likely be wet when his back would be dry. Indeed, 
 the jump itself would shake his ears. I would hardly 
 be willing to admit that Tennyson was an inaccurate 
 or near-sighted observer in matters of natural phe- 
 nomena; and he is certainly possessed of an immense 
 fund of forest-and-field wisdom. 
 
 Tennyson did not issue any new volumes after 
 Hallam's death, until 1842, although, as before men- 
 tioned, verses by him appeared in the annuals. 
 
 Those who have read the lately published volume 
 of letters to and by Miss Mitford will remember the 
 energetic scorn which she evinces for those who write 
 but do not read. Tennyson had no such conceit of 
 self-evolution. He has written sparingly and read 
 diligently. 
 
 The nine years of comparative silence were un- 
 doubtedly with him a period of study. His mental 
 structure was being "fed with lime," drawn from the 
 nourishment furnished by masters in poetry; and he 
 
Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 27 
 
 had completely acquired his virile strength by cau- 
 tious exercise of his powers, when, in 1842, he pub- 
 lished a new edition of his poems in two volumes 
 (republished the same year by Ticknor, Boston), from 
 which it may be shown that by that time he had adopt- 
 ed the essential features of his mature style, whereon 
 the success of his literary career has been based. 
 
 The epic idyll is there represented by the "Morte 
 d' Arthur"; "Dora" stands as a model of his other 
 idyllic efforts; "l.ocksley Hall," "Ulysses," "The Day- 
 Dream," "Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere," 
 "Break, Break, Break," and "Come not when I am 
 dead," are all typical in their several manners of 
 Tennyson. 
 
 Tennyson was recognized thenceforth as a poet. 
 It must not, however, be lost sight of that, literary-wise, 
 his lines had fallen in pleasant places. His antece- 
 dents were all of cultured dignity. He had been the 
 honored nursling of a venerable academy of learn- 
 ing. His friends were brilliant in their ways of 
 thought, and stood manfully by him. The reviews 
 had been kind to him in the main, and the portals of 
 the temple of fame, if not staring open, were at least 
 ajar for his coming. 
 
 In 1845, Wordsworth, too great-minded to be afraid 
 of his newly created peer, pronounced Tennyson to be 
 "decidedly the first of our living poets." ^ 
 
 Had Tennyson followed in the wake of Keats, with 
 whom at an early period he was frequently compared, 
 
 i Letter to Professor Reed. 
 
28 Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 
 
 he would only have intensified his model until his ex- 
 aggerations became defects. Keats might have been, 
 perhaps, a good companion, but not a master. The 
 secret to rival Keats in his special class of merits 
 would best be solved by poring over the writers of the 
 days of Queen Bess. These, the Laureate seems in 
 his youth to have studied and understood. Here I 
 would note the precocity of the poet. With most of 
 us, the thoughts of great authors need to be subjected 
 to successive winnowings through our minds at inter- 
 vals of years. We do not obtain all that is precious at 
 one reading or at one period in our lives. But 
 Tennyson would seem to have extracted every beauty 
 of style at one sifting, and to have deftly worked every 
 grain of knowledge so acquired into his own mass. 
 
 Gladstone regards Tennyson's Homeric and Dan- 
 tesque studies as at one time scanty; but Gladstone has 
 been cultivating the Homeric field for more than fifty 
 years, with a fine-toothed rake ; and any ordinary knowl- 
 edge on the subject would to him probably appear de- 
 fective. I am afraid, too, that, however strong may be 
 the Premier's friendship for the Laureate, the former 
 does not quite follow the latter throughout his entire 
 poetic labyrinth. There is, however, one piece of evi- 
 dence in favor of Gladstone's slur upon Tennyson's 
 Homeric shortcomings: when the poet makes Ulysses 
 address his old companions with a request to sail with 
 him again out into the west, had he had Homer in his 
 mind, he would have been aware that all those brave 
 souls — Greenwich Pensioners, so to speak — had gone 
 
Alfred Temiyson, Poet Laureate. 29 
 
 to Hades; and that it would be necessary to ship a 
 fresh crew of merely ordinary seamen. Probably he 
 preferred to err with Dante, who knew not the Odyssey, 
 relying for the success of his paraphrase of the Italian 
 upon its being marvellously true to Homeric spirit, if 
 faulty in incident. 
 
 Mr. Stedman, in his elaborate chapters upon Tenny- 
 son, seeks to draw a general parallel between the Vic- 
 torian age, of which Tennyson stands forth as the poet, 
 and the Ptolemaic or Alexandrian period of Greek liter- 
 ature. It does seem to me strange that, in this age of 
 critical literary research and revamping of old mate- 
 rial, more has not been done to bring into direct popu- 
 larity the authors of that cultivated era. Fox, I 
 think, is said to have preferred the "Argonautica" of 
 Apollonius to Homer himself Macaulay admired the 
 poem; and it would be no ungraceful task for some 
 ambitious young scholar of to-day to attempt a metrical 
 translation of the work. 
 
 Tennyson, in dawdling about old country houses 
 and their libraries, seems to have fallen upon many an 
 old volume of the classics not usual in university ex- 
 aminations. Mr. Stedman thinks that, because there 
 was a new edition of Bion and Moschus in print dur- 
 ing Tennyson's Cambridge years, his attention must 
 have been thereby attracted to those authors. It may 
 be so; but one would prefer to believe that he rum- 
 maged the authors out of some old collection in cracked 
 covers, worm-eaten and mouldy, led thereto by some 
 apt quotation which lingered in his mind as a sample 
 
30 Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 
 
 of what a search would bring forth; and that, hav- 
 ing hunted down his author, he devoured him, more 
 with literary hunger than academic or scholarly ambi- 
 tion. There are in Tennyson refined echoes of Quin- 
 tus Calaber, Tryphiodorus, and other dust-covered old 
 worthies, editions of whose works were published in 
 days when men had more time, and did more than 
 merely pretend to read. 
 
 There is one elegance which Tennyson seems to 
 have caught early from Virgil. Sainte-Beuve joins 
 with Fox in admiring Virgil for his power to infuse his 
 own originality into his most exact imitations of his 
 Greek predecessors. From Virgil, Tennyson's mode of 
 paraphrase comes, employed almost always by him in 
 a most felicitous way. 
 
 He has an art, too, of adopting the epithets already 
 applied to objects by older writers — the giving to things, 
 as it were, their christened names. And it has a very 
 happy effect upon the mind of the reader. For, if he 
 be familiar with tlie godfather, a double set of imagery 
 is thrown upon his mental retina — or rather, like a dis- 
 solving view, the old idea recalled momentarily by the 
 epithet fades softly into the glory of the new thought 
 brought in by the later poet. 
 
 It would be curious to gather together a vocabu- 
 lary of all the classical phrases for which Tennyson 
 has furnished pat English equivalents. 
 
 Although transferring to English, passages from 
 Latin, Greek, and Italian poets seems to have been 
 a recreation for which Tennyson has a particu- 
 
Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 31 
 
 lar affection, it is not, however, original with him. 
 P'rom Chaucer down, it has been common with Eng- 
 lish poets — learned by them from Italian writers, per- 
 haps, and originated with the Latins. The famous 
 lines of Catullus, in his epithalamium upon Manlius 
 and Julia — " Ut flos in septis" — probably taken origi- 
 nally from Sappho, have been appropriated or imitated 
 by Tasso, Ariosto, Jacques Gohorry, Spenser, and 
 Jonson, to say nothing of out-and-out translations by 
 others. Byron has the same taste. 
 
 Tennyson has used more than once a passage from 
 Homer — 
 
 " Where falls not hail or rain or any snow 
 Nor ever wind blows loudly" — 1 
 
 which he found that Lucretius had used before him; 
 and which Dante has also worn as a gem — "a jewel 
 five words long." 2 
 
 Americans of casual Latinity cannot quite appreciate 
 how vividly the verse of Virgil lingers in the minds 
 of English lads, be they ever so indolent at study. 
 
 With the English gentleman, Virgil is a sacred book 
 — verbally inspired. There is nothing in America 
 similar to the reverence hitherto paid it by the Briton of 
 culture, unless, perhaps, the devotion of the old-fash- 
 ioned, square-shouldered American, in the good days 
 gone by, to the English Bible. (I fancy that it is to 
 
 1 Morte d' Arthur ; see also Lucretius. 
 
 2 " Perche non pioggia, non grando, non neve 
 
 Non rugiada, non brina piu su cade — " 
 
 Purg. XXI. 
 
32 Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 
 
 the familiarity thereby obtained with the genuine Eng- 
 lish tongue that we are indebted for any purity of 
 speech left. As for Webster's Spelling-book, we may 
 thank it for the metallic phonograph sounds which be- 
 wray us all over the world. Why could it not have 
 been fated that some Scotchman or Irishman should 
 have struck the tuning-fork of our American orthoepy?) 
 
 I doubt if Virgil would not be the first thought, on 
 the subject of poetry, of every Englishman who went 
 to school fifty years ago. He was almost confessedly 
 Tennyson's, as shown by his summarized judgment of 
 the poet in his Mantuan ode, published the other day. 
 Virgil is the patron saint of our five hundred years of 
 Renaissance, and Tennyson closes the dynasty of its 
 high priests. 
 
 From Virgil to Theocritus, so far as idyllic poetry is 
 concerned, is but a step. Virgil's shield is the same 
 as that of Theocritus, only with the difference of a 
 Latin field instead of a Greek one ; and what Tenny- 
 son failed to find in Virgil, he sought in the "Sicilian 
 Shepherd." 
 
 But it would be useless to set forth all the paths 
 of labor which the poet has travelled in his reading to 
 glean material wherewith to enrich his muse. Even in 
 his most fervid and off-hand efforts, he has apparently 
 first racked his memory for a model or a suggestion. 
 The "Charge of the Light Brigade"-'- recalls, by a line 
 or two (suppressed, I believe), the ancient Greek revo- 
 
 1 London Examiner, December gth, 1854. Maud, and Other Poems, 
 1855. 
 
Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 33 
 
 lutionary song of Harmodios and Aristogeiton, show- 
 ing how Tennyson had cast about him for a precedent 
 in the past. Tennyson's sources of literary culture 
 may principally be found in Greek, Latin, Italian, and 
 English literature. He hardly seems to be attracted 
 to French; and if he does use that tongue, it is prob- 
 ably the form known as Duke-of-Wellington French — ■ 
 a speech which came to be popular after Waterloo. 
 
 The Laureate, whatever liberality there may be in his 
 character, is an Englishman. He does not belong to 
 that class of elastic cosmopolites, who, in whatever land 
 they may be, give the impression that they were born 
 elsewhere. He believes thoroughly in British insula- 
 tion ; and in company the other day with a numerous 
 assembly of the nobility and gentry, signed the Chan- 
 nel protest, wishing it to be of record that he for one 
 believed in maintaining those bulwarks of British glory 
 — the Channel fleet and sea-sickness. 
 
 "God bless the narrow seas! 
 I wish they were a whole Atlantic broad. " 
 
 Tennyson does not show any faith in the modern 
 hexameter; and he has a sneer for the German article 
 — probably as found in Voss. He may not be partial 
 to German literature : save in " Maud" (and possibly not 
 there), he scarcely indicates any German reading. 
 When he was young, German scholarship in England 
 was meagre. It was only when Carlyle, by force and 
 arms, compelled attention to it, that a knowledge in that 
 
34 Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 
 
 direction became common. De Quincey, for phil- 
 osophical uses, studied the tongue; Coleridge and 
 Shelley took hold of it for poetry's sake ; Walter Scott 
 translated Goetz von Berlichingen. But in the early 
 part of the century, besides his unsavory Monk, a knowl- 
 edge of German was the only recommendation to liter- 
 ary notice that Matthew Lewis could assert. Nowadays, 
 almost any clever English girl (leaving out her brother, 
 Macaulay's school-boy) is supposed to be able to read 
 Schiller. 
 
 It would not be wise to contradict an opinion on 
 the subject of verse melody originating with the poet. 
 His ear has been too long in the training of harmo- 
 nious sounds to be distrusted; but though there is a 
 deal of sibilation in Voss's hexameters, it gives, after 
 all, a seething, swishing spatter to the verse that 
 sounds of the Baltic waves, and remotely, of Homer 
 and the ^gaean. 
 
 One test of excellence, if it be a test, has been tried 
 again and again upon Tennyson. It is the transfer- 
 ring of his poems by scholars into Latin verse. At 
 this amusement, some of the noted Latinists in Eng- 
 land have tried their hands. I noticed, some months 
 since, a translation into Greek of the pretty song in 
 "The Cup." 1 Such /ijz^a- i^'«/n'/ show how affection- 
 ately he is regarded by the scholarly portion of the ris- 
 ing generation in England. Tennyson is the only 
 English author besides Shakspere and Milton who has 
 
 1 The Theatre, June, i88i. 
 
 '' Moon on the field and foam." 
 
Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 35 
 
 been found worthy of a concordance. Samuel Rogers, 
 with all his wealth to gild his claims as poet, could 
 never have invaded the hearts of artists of brush and 
 pencil as Tennyson has done, nor could he have ever 
 furnished such inspiration for their work. , 
 
 Tennyson's attitude towards his critics and the pub- 
 lic has ever been one of patient humility. It is rare 
 that he shows any restive anger. One or two poems 
 have an indignant sound; and on one occasion — 
 namely, towards Bulwer — he did exhibit temper, 
 which, notwithstanding the provocation, he has since 
 no doubt regretted. 
 
 I am nowise sure, however, that Bulwer's "Miss 
 Alfred"^ was not a beneficial sneer, after all. There 
 was a general tone and perfume of boudoir elegance 
 pervading his then published poems, which, agreeable 
 under certain conditions, might have become too 
 much of a good thing. And, besides, some of his early 
 poems — for example, "O Darling Room" — are quite 
 too awfully nice to escape brutal critics. The fact is, 
 that a minstrel's listeners must be mailed knights as 
 well as gentle ladies ; and he must sing accordingly, 
 if he would not be relegated to the companionship of 
 the idolized pianist and limp curate — objects of mys- 
 terious interest to the feminine heart, but unloved by 
 coarser males. 
 
 In response to Bulwer's rasping mention of him, 
 
 1 The New Timon, Punch, February 7th, 1846 (Vol. X.). See 
 Dedication of Harold. 
 
36 Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 
 
 Tennyson gave one deep-chested howl of ire ^ (just 
 to show his critic that he had been nudging an 
 Ursus horridus instead of a sentimental girl), and 
 then trimmed his style to avoid a similar reproach in 
 the future. He has, in fact, used criticism very much 
 as painters use a mirror, to verify or discover errors in 
 drawing or color. 
 
 In the earlier volumes, Tennyson appended exeget- 
 ical notes, here and there, to bring the reader into 
 better intelligence with the verse. There was too 
 much of it in some instances, and he ultimately veered 
 to the other extreme, and dropped notes of any kind. 
 We all have laughed heartily at Thackeray's burlesque 
 upon Timbuctoo, which was printed in "The Snob" 
 of university days; and one of the most amusing 
 features of the squib is the wealth of exegesis appended. 
 To avoid the error there satirized, Tennyson stripped 
 his poems of all prose explanation. I do not know 
 that such a course is always commendable. For my 
 own part, I find it very comfortable to be bolstered 
 up by marginal commentary. There is more wit, 
 philosophy, and information in Byron's autograph 
 elucidation of his own works than in many authors' 
 texts. 
 
 And in this connection, would it not be a good idea 
 if some clever American editor, who would not 
 mind being a thief, should publish an edition of 
 Tennyson with a running commentary made up with 
 
 1 Punch, February 28th, 1846 (Vol. X.). 
 
Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 37 
 
 excerpts, more or less apposite or true, from the criti- 
 cisms which have appeared of our poet, from 
 "Musty, Fusty Christopher" down to the latest date, 
 together with all the parallel passages marked by 
 admirers or foes? It would do Tennyson no harm, 
 and might stir up a closer spirit of examination, and 
 consequent better appreciation of his merit and 
 power. Something in the nature of an annotated 
 edition was at one time contemplated in England. 
 
 The author of" A New Study of Tennyson," in Corn- 
 hill,^ wonders why the poet does not give Miss Mitford 
 credit for " Dora," so far as plot is considered. In 
 the 1842 edition there is a note to that effect, also credit- 
 ing Miss Ferrier (Walter Scott's pet young authoress)? 
 with the idea of " Lady Clare"; but the rigid suppres- 
 sion of notes carried that one with the rest. 
 
 Tennyson has, throughout his career of literary labor, 
 not merely inverted his stilus to rub out a word here 
 and there; but whenever he fancied a verse or a 
 whole poem to be overripe or rotten, he has not hesi- 
 tated to tear out page after page, and fling whole edi- 
 tions into the fire. But the permanency of print to 
 him is a curse. His older versions have acquired a 
 charm for ghoulish bibliomaniacs; and notwithstand- 
 ing his suppressive policy, he is impotent in his endeav- 
 ors, and must sit and suffer pangs while surreptitious 
 and piratic editions of his early poems are being passed^ 
 about under his very nose. 
 
 i Comhill, 1880. 2 Marriage and Inheritance. 
 
38 Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 
 
 "The Lover's Tale" (what motive could have in- 
 duced him to withdraw it from publication?), written 
 when the poet was nineteen, is a specimen of his fas- 
 tidious anxiety; some freebooting pubHsher of late 
 years issued it illicitly, and the Laureate " had him up'' 
 for the offence, but was finally obliged to yield to his 
 fate, and issue it himself The London "Times" in- 
 timated that theft of that sort would become popular, 
 if publication of a sought-for poem were thereby 
 enforced. 
 
 What an unpretentious, winning poem is "The Prin- 
 cess"! Who is there among articulately speaking men 
 that has not been charmed by it? (By articulately 
 speaking men, I mean, of course, English-speaking 
 men.) It is so simple, so easy to understand (one wise 
 critic, however, claims Tennyson's intelligibility to be a 
 defect) ; 1 and yet it has political, moral, and social 
 philosophy enough in it to furnish up a university or 
 social congress. It appeared in 1847,^ and showed 
 that "Wordsworth had not mistaken the merit of his 
 successor to the laurel crown. 
 
 Several models may have been used to obtain the 
 form of "In Memoriam." The one nearest in mechani- 
 cal construction is the latter part of Petrarch's "Rime" 
 (After Laura's Death). Adonais had been adopted by 
 Shelley as his model for the poem on the death of 
 Keats; and Tennyson had the Greek lament in his 
 mind, as also Milton's Lycidas. Ben Jonson and Lord 
 
 1 British Quarterly Review, 1880. 2 Moxon, 1847. 
 
Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 39 
 
 Herbert of Cherbury perhaps furnished the particular 
 versification used. 
 
 But if we compare Tennyson's work with the Italian 
 or English poems suggested, we find it infinitely supe- 
 rior both in matter and manner. There is always a 
 hint of mawkishness, when a lover whines bemoan- 
 ingly over a mistress, whether alive or dead; but a 
 boy's friendship for his fellow is pure and reverential; 
 and in the grandeur of the thoughts strung together, 
 the man of the nineteenth century has by far the advan- 
 tage in breadth and dignity over him of the fourteenth. 
 
 Lycidas, after all, has something of the air of a 
 college exercise gotten up "to improve the occasion" 
 of young King's death; and Shelley was thinking en- 
 tirely too much of his Greek model to be completely 
 natural in his verse or grief 
 
 "In Memoriam" is neither more nor less than a 
 careful treasure-house, wherein are stored the best and 
 most affectionate of a man's thoughts for delivery on 
 the joyous day when a far-travelled friend returns to 
 his home. 
 
 In 1850,1 Wordsworth died, and Tennyson was ap- 
 pointed to the laureateship2 by Lord John Russell; 
 
 ^ April 23rd. 
 
 2 Gazetted, November 21st, 1850, Poet Laureate in ordinary to 
 Her Majesty, The same Annual Register which furnishes the record 
 of the appointment also contains that of the death of Henry Fitzmau- 
 rice Hallam, the only son left of the historian. In the Poetry De- 
 partment appear Wordsworth's "Prelude "and extracts from "In 
 Memoi-iam," 
 
40 Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 
 
 Palmerston, as great an admirer of Virgil as Meecenas 
 himself, being of the cabinet. 
 
 The "Ode on the Death of Wellington"^ was the 
 first really important official duty undertaken by Ten- 
 nyson — if a Laureate can be said to have duties. No 
 appointed task is easy for a poet ; and a poem for an 
 occasion is likely to be weak and worthless. Duty 
 gets but mediocre service out of its slaves. Yet if ever 
 there was a man who could come to the task of poetic 
 eulogy of the dead soldier, it was Tennyson. Welling- 
 ton was nothing if not English — a character in which 
 he claimed the poet's fullest reverence, who could 
 sympathize fully with the Waterloo victor's intense 
 Anglicanism, distrust of Napoleonic ideas, and faith 
 in England's pluck and glory. All of the Laureate's 
 metrical skill was accordingly invoked; and he even 
 went back to the court of the Romano-Byzantine em- 
 perors for a poetic title grand enough and glorious 
 enough to inscribe upon the sarcophagus of the Great 
 Duke. 
 
 What a puzzle was "Maud"^ to the critics for some 
 time after its publication ! How its rambling incohe- 
 rency was discussed ! The Laureate was actually com- 
 pelled to insert, at places in the subsequent edition, 
 additional verses to serve as bridges over the difficul- 
 ties. And yet how simple it seems to-day ! We have 
 most of us grown up to it. 
 
 1 Death September 14111^-1852, 2 x^^s^. 
 
Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 41 
 
 The poem is really an English version of the "Sor- 
 rows of Werther" — the facts being changed to corres- 
 pond to English taste and prejudices. Indeed, some 
 of the most exquisite passages might be versifications 
 of the German prose, though it may be that Tennyson 
 did not obtain his matter from that source. There 
 is the same brooding introspection; the same impossi- 
 ble ambition to be something, one knows not what; 
 the same sense of apjirehension as to the passion of 
 love. The English solution — "a hope for the world 
 in the coming wars" — is better than the German crisis 
 of snuffing out the candle of life altogether. There is 
 the same disgust for the arrogance of wealth. I won- 
 der how many of us thought of the "oiled and curled 
 Assyrian bull" when the Stalwart leader translated 
 the epithet, the other day, into the Stalwart dialect, 
 and likened his faithful Achates unto "a prize ox, 
 waiting for his blue ribbon." 
 
 I always regarded Thackeray's criticism of Tenny- 
 son's "Welcome to Alexandra'' as one of the happiest 
 expressions of literary judgment of record. Indeed, one 
 always feels safe and satisfied when Thackeray ascends 
 the bench. None but the novelist could have likened 
 the Laureate to "a giant showing a beacon torch on a 
 'windy headland.' [Tennyson, I beheve, then lived on 
 the Isle of Wight] His flaming torch is a pine-tree, 
 to be sure, which nobody can wield but himself He 
 waves it; and four times in the midnight he shouts 
 mightily, 'Alexandra!' and the pontic pine is whirled 
 
42 Alfred Tennyson, Foet Laureate. 
 
 into the ocean, and Enceladus goes home.''i Think 
 of the tall poet as Enceladus waving a flaming pine! 
 Thackeray once said that Tennyson was the wisest 
 man he knew. 
 
 The two men were at college together; but it is 
 hardly likely that they were in the same set. The fact 
 is, that Thackeray in those days must have been too 
 wild for the rectory boy poet. We all enjoy the recital 
 of the tricks and manners of the Steynes, the Cinqbars, 
 the Ringwoods, and the Deuceaces; but, my dear 
 young lady readers, it could hardly be that one should 
 describe them so well without having frequented theii 
 society more than was good for a young gentleman 
 with his fortune still to make. It is all right now ; bi:t 
 what trouble the perverseness of attaining that sort of 
 knowledge must have given, at the time, to those in 
 family or collegiate authority ! 
 
 I somehow fancy that we of this generation, who 
 learned our letters before '50 {Eheu fugaccsf), and 
 were rather tender calves when the Rebellion broke 
 out, who had to read the "Idylls of the King" by 
 piecemeal, have been cheated out of the fullest appre- 
 ciation of the work which would attend a perusal of 
 the entire series as one logical unity. After "Morte 
 d'Arthur," every one believed that Tennyson could 
 write an English epic, if an English epic was to be 
 written at all; and for all practical purposes the 
 "Tdylls" constitute an epic; and if the author did not 
 
 1 On Alexandrines, Cornhill, April, 1865- 
 
Alfred Tennyson, Foet Laureate. 43 
 
 give them the name, it was probably out of respect for 
 some arbitrary tradition, such as that which requires 
 an epic to be limited in narrative, so far as the poet is 
 concerned, to one year^n other words, to be the rec- 
 ord of a single campaign. 
 
 It had been understood for years, before the 
 Arthurian legends, constituting four of the "Idylls,"^ 
 were published, that the Laureate was at work upon a 
 long poem; indeed, two of the "Idylls" had been pri- 
 vately printed, but were being held in suspense, and 
 subject to emendation. For some time before the 
 actual publication there was a buzz of literary expect- 
 ancy, which pervaded the United States as well as 
 England; and the eagerness to read the poems 
 invaded classes ordinarily cold to the charms of verse. 
 I can remember my own enthusiasm, in a western 
 town, when the librarian handed me the only copy 
 which had come, and which he had saved for me, 
 and I shut myself up to enjoy the marvellous produc- 
 tion before the bloom had vanished from the verse or 
 the odor from the printer's ink. 
 
 Tennyson, as befitted an Englishman, took an 
 English demi-god for his hero — that is, a hero con- 
 ventionally agreed upon by myth dealers as English; 
 for it is by no means certain that Arthur was not 
 Breton rather than Briton in birth and domicile. 
 People too who look into such matters closely seem to 
 fancy that Flos regum Arthurus is a graft, imported 
 from some Aryan nursery. The material forming 
 
 1 Moxon, 1859. 
 
44 Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 
 
 the basis of the story was the Morte d' Arthur of 
 Malory, helped out by other chroniclers — English, 
 French, Welsh, and Irish — in prose and verse; for the 
 story has oozed into the text of nearly all legends of 
 the Romantic literature of Europe. The subject was 
 said to be a favorite one with the late Prince Consort, 
 whose taste shows itself in a quiet way in so many 
 directions in English art and culture. 
 
 Among the sources other than Malory to which 
 Tennyson betook himself for his frame-work of facts 
 was the "The Mabinogion,'' or Boys' Own Book of 
 Tales, as an English publisher might call it. 
 
 There was, half a century ago, down in the "black 
 country" of Wales, a certain man of great financial 
 genius, who "wrought till he crept from a gutted mine, 
 master of half a servile shire,'' and of every other good 
 thing which wealth can buy; and among these good 
 things, of a noble and brilliant wife, one Lady Char- 
 lotte Lindsey. (All women named Lindsey or Lindsay 
 are wonderfully clever; witness, Auld Robin Gray, 
 etc.) This elegant dame took it into her head to pub- 
 lish an edition de luxe of the Mabinogion,^ and to 
 have it printed in Wales. Of course, it was the biblio- 
 graphical wonder of the day. Scholars prized it, 
 learned bishops spoke enthusiastically (and truthfully 
 also) of its merits; while Tennyson, who seems to like 
 
 1 The Mabinogion, from the Llyfr Coch o Hergest, and otlier 
 ancient Welsh Manuscripts, with an English Translation and Notes, 
 By Lady Charlotte Guest. London : Longman & Co. , and W. 
 Rees, Llandovery. 1840-48. 
 
Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 45 
 
 the Welsh, appropriated or conveyed from it into 
 his collection of idylls the story of "Geraint ap Erbin," 
 a tale that, whether in the original legend or in the 
 poet's verse, more than rivals the Griseldis of Boc- 
 caccio for interest and simplicity of moral. 
 
 Tennyson is said to consider the idyll of "Guinevere " 
 the culmination of the epic. I never felt very deeply 
 the force of that idyll. It has somehow seemed to 
 me that the real, painful crisis is when little Dagonet 
 — the poor faithful clown, the affectionate human 
 dog — looks up to his royal master and says, sobbing, 
 
 ' ' I am thy fool. 
 And I shall never make thee smile again." 
 
 \s to the Guinevere idyll, there would naturally be 
 some sense of cheerfulness about the parties, like two 
 divorced people taking lunch together after the judge 
 has decreed separation a vinculo. Arthur's spirits are 
 stirred by the battle in which he is about to engage — 
 a dubious one, it is true; but Arthur is a Celt, and the 
 outlook has its charms. On the other hand, Guinevere 
 has been confessing the wrongs done by her; and next 
 to wronging a friend or lover, what a woman most en- 
 joys is telling him of it. In such a crisis, there is false- 
 hood either to her lord or her lover, and falsehood is 
 never lofty or touching. It is moral, however; but 
 morality is neither epic nor tragic. If prim Madam 
 Morality even escapes being laughable, she is lucky. 
 
 The business of appropriating other men's, labors as 
 
46 Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 
 
 the foundation for one's own has been a matter of 
 controversy in the forum of literary morality ever since 
 the ^neid. Is it a merit or a vice to take up and 
 improve another's thought ? A certain class of critics 
 would like to make it a crime; but, on the other hand, 
 success seems to crown every author, whether epic 
 poet or dramatist, who accomplishes such a robbery 
 boldly and artistically. There is probably no great 
 literary monument (not even excepting Homer's epics) 
 that is not a plagiaristic conversion, for which not one 
 but several generations and ages might be actionable 
 together. 
 
 An instance of this successive appropriation is the 
 story of " Federigo and the Falcon," claimed to be 
 original with Boccaccio.^ As a fact, it is an Arabic 
 legend told of Hatem Tai, a sheik and poet of a period 
 prior to Mohammed, whose metrical attacks upon 
 avarice are still on the lips of his countrymen; the 
 legend varying, however, in that it represents the sacri- 
 fice to hospitality as being a favorite horse which the 
 Byzantine emperor, to make trial of Hatem's renowned 
 generosity, had sent messengers to request as a gift, 
 and which, on their arrival, and before Hatem had 
 learned the object of their coming, he had (being 
 straitened in his larder, and horseflesh being regarded 
 as dainty food) killed and cooked for their entertain- 
 ment. It was natural that the gallantry of western 
 
 1 Landino, in his commentary upon Dante (Canto VIII., In- 
 ferno), declares that Boccaccio actually heard the story from Coppo, 
 who knew the hero. 
 
Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 47 
 
 Europe should have substituted a lady-love for the 
 emperor, and that the gentle sport of falconry should 
 have suggested a pet hawk for the Arab's steed. 
 
 In style, Tennyson seems to harmonize, to a remark- 
 able degree, with the languid tenderness of the Italian 
 prosaist. Had Boccaccio been kept in Purgatory five 
 hundred years for his sins of sense, and then as penance 
 let loose in England to write what pleased him, he 
 certainly would have chosen the Laureate's style. 
 
 Into what bright and glittering pieces Tennyson nas 
 recoined the old Italian bullion ! And with what manly 
 decency does he stand out in his vigorous, mental 
 health as compared with La Fontaine's licentious 
 indolence, and in working the same lode. 
 
 As a moralist, and in comparison with the French 
 masters in that regard, Tennyson has much of the 
 delicate faculty of observation of the suppressed emo- 
 tions and passions of men and women, which vivifies 
 the prose of La Bruyere. 
 
 In his subjects and his treatment of them, Tenny- 
 son is the very high priest of "Divinest Melancholy"; 
 and in that particular, whatever be the cause, whether 
 it lies in the imperfect digestion of his generation or 
 in its overwrought nervous powers, he is emphatically 
 the poet of his age, of its thought, and emotions. 
 He has only to touch the chords, and humanity 
 mysteriously grieves like a tender-hearted setter under 
 the magic of a nocturne pn the piano. 
 
48 Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 
 
 Politically, Tennyson would appear to be an aristo- 
 cratic liberal; that is, a man who assumes to be above 
 the people rather than of them; who would not the 
 less scorn to add a feather to their weights in running 
 the race of life; but who, at the same time, has an 
 amiable contempt for the servility, treachery, and dis- 
 honesty which are more than likely to be qualities in- 
 herent in poverty, whether handicapped or not by 
 ignorance or servile origin. And in any event, ex offi- 
 cio every poet should be something of a tory. 
 
 For the same reason, a poet should, for his pro- 
 fession's sake, belong to the more archaic church. 
 The ceilings of the would-be philosophical temple of 
 Protestantism have too white-washed and forbidding a 
 look to invite the muses to kneel therein. But we 
 have no right to expect that a man born in an Eng- 
 lish rectory should escape the prejudices which are 
 the lares haunting its hearthstones. 
 
 To me, " Queen Mary," whether regarded as a poem 
 or a drama, is a very uncomfortable production. There 
 is an aura of chilliness running through the entire sub- 
 ject. There is but one cheery moment or word to rest 
 upon; and that is where "Robin came and kissed me 
 milking the cow." 
 
 Wives who suffer as did Mary are by no means 
 uncommon; and in a social point of view, to say 
 the least of it, it was rather ungallant of the Lau- 
 reate, in his eagerness to strike a blow for his island's 
 church, to hit out at a poor, visionary old maid mak- 
 ing a loveless and fruitless marriage. Whenever rubi- 
 
Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 49 
 
 cund and wheezy Anglican ecclesiasticism feels, as 
 punishment for its good living, an extra twinge of 
 rheumatic gout in its joints, it has frightful visions 
 of the Armada and the Spanish Inquisition; and 
 groans about thumb-screws and racks. 
 
 "The Cup," as a drama, has, I believe, had more 
 stage success than either Harold or Mary, and has 
 bits here and there in the poet's happiest manner 
 The incident is taken from Plutarch's "Amatoria" 
 (repeated in Polyaenus). I remember seeing it made 
 into a story with a French mise en scene, published in 
 "Friendship's Offering" for 1839, an annual to pre- 
 ceding years of which Tennyson had contributed. 
 The subject appears also to have been selected by 
 Jean de Hays, a French dramatist, at the close of 
 the sixteenth century, for his "Cammate." 
 
 As each of Tennyson's plays has been produced 
 on the stage, there has been a buzzing sub-murmur of 
 critics that there was only a succes d'estime, if not an 
 absolute failure. Had there been an out-and-out fail- 
 ure, it would only have been what might have been 
 expected. The poet is not versed in stage business, 
 as is Boucicault, and such knowledge is absolutely 
 essential to the composion, nowadays, of a successful 
 stage drama. Had the rectory lad improved his time 
 properly from, say, 1830 to 1840, in lounging in the 
 green-rooms and posing in the side-scenes, jostling 
 scene shifters and shawling soubrettes, and taking thes- 
 pian parties to supper orgies, instead of sitting prig- 
 
50 Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 
 
 gishly in his darling room and posing as Miss Al- 
 fred, his training would now stand him in good 
 service. 
 
 But a day may come when the public familiar with 
 the text of his plays will enjoy them on representation. 
 Be it remembered that "The Cid" had detractors 
 whose opinions were weighty; and that Moliere's wit- 
 tiest hues took time to impress. 
 
 The telegraph tells us that Tennyson's prose drama, 
 "The Promise of May," is a failure; and also that 
 the Most Noble the Marquess of Queensberry arose 
 and protested against the travesty in the play of the 
 modern dogmas concerning free thought, and left 
 the house. One is carried back to the days of Louis 
 Quatorze, and to the noble cavaliers who then crowded 
 the stage, and abused the dramatists of that glittering 
 time. What the deuce has a noble marquess to 
 do with free thought, anyway? A coronet is about as 
 handy a thing to have on in a revolution in politics 
 or religion as a stove-pipe hat in an Irish shindy. 
 How much more appreciative a critic would Her 
 Grace Kitty of the ducal Queensberrys have been — 
 Prior's Kitty — Gay's Kitty — who stood stoutly up for 
 "The Beggar's Opera,'' and nursed the sick poet in 
 his disgrace when royalty itself turned censor — Wal- 
 pole's Kitty — could she have sat in a box and patted 
 her pretty hands ! ^ 
 
 1 One paper maliciously suggests that noble critic's dinner habits 
 are such as to render it advisable that he attend only matinee per- 
 formances. 
 
Alfred Tennyson, Foet Laureate. 51 
 
 Tennyson's fame has brought him one frightful in- 
 fliction, in the persistent intrusion upon his time and 
 acquaintance of lion-hunting tourists; and it is even 
 murmured that there is a class of travelling Americans 
 especially guilty in that way. 
 
 Hawthorne set Americans an example in that regard 
 which should have been accepted. Now, if there was 
 an American who would have represented our nation 
 gracefully in the poet's eyes, it would have been Haw- 
 thorne; if any American could have been sure of a 
 welcome, it was Hawthorne; and yet he contented 
 himself with a good look at the Englishman in a pub- 
 lic assembly. There might be a remedy for the evil, 
 pacifying all parties. The poet might select a tall 
 young man from the rising generation — some Maudle 
 or Postlethwaite — who would not cloy with being stared 
 at (and there are young bards to whom notoriety is so 
 sweet !) to play the part of the veteran's double, and be 
 shown as the actual incumbent of the laureateship. 
 Of course, the shadow would have to prune his diction 
 so as not to ruin Tennyson's reputation; but such dis- 
 cipline might be a great benefit in years to come. 
 
 Tennyson has, as a fact, founded no school. His 
 grammatical methods, his fashions of prosody, his 
 shades of mannerism, have all been imitated, for all had 
 the seed ; but the revolution in science, over the infancy 
 of which Tennyson has been a watchful sentinel, and 
 the broadening of the field of culture, the new aims 
 which are to be sought, and the new foes which are 
 
52 Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 
 
 to be vanquished, render it necessary that "the fore- 
 most files of time," in which Tennyson has so long 
 served as a grenadier, be filled up with young recruits 
 armed with new weapons; and that the veterans who 
 survive be left to do simple garrison duty over the 
 spoils already captured. 
 
 Tennyson has lived a brilliant and complete literary 
 life. We hope he may be spared to us as long as was 
 Fontenelle to the Frenchmen ; that he will see an inter- 
 national copyright in smooth working order; that he 
 will make a fortune out of his books, every stanza 
 bringing him a one-carat diamond; and that he will 
 be peremptorily summoned to the House of Lords be- 
 fore "that venerable bulwark" is smashed to flinders by 
 the artillery of "Free Thought." What a pang strikes 
 the hearts of us — 
 
 "With tonsured heads in middle age forlorn" — 
 
 when a master of our day passes away! How many 
 are there of us who have read a fresh novel with any 
 intensity since Thackeray fell asleep? People of the 
 glaring, impertinent generation coming in and treading 
 on our kibes may have their new fiction, new poems, 
 and new philosophy; but we will none of them. 
 
 The generation which coinmenced "when classic 
 Canning died" is closing; the men who amused and 
 instructed it are, with some few exceptions, gone. Mac- 
 aulay, Thackeray, Dickens, Longfellow, Dr. Newman, 
 Carlyle, Mrs. Browning, George Eliot, and Anthony 
 TroUope are dead. If a few like Manning, Gladstone, 
 
Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 53 
 
 and Tennyson still remain with us, "yet is their 
 strength, labor and sorrow." 
 
 There is no easy transition or succession from one 
 generation to another. There is always a moral chasm 
 intervening. The coming race may admire Tennyson ; 
 but he will not be their representative poet. His prides, 
 his sympathies, his affections, his politics, his beliefs, 
 will be archaisms to their taste. There are poets, pos- 
 sessors of some power and authority in our reading 
 world, who may reign after him; but it will be as a new 
 dynasty, and not by regular succession. 
 
 It will be a bad index of the morality of the next 
 age if the band of "fleshly" bards who have already 
 glided into popularity maintain their ground perma- 
 nently. They are as foreign to the Laureate in tem- 
 perament and morals as were the authors of the days 
 of Charles II. to Milton. The clef to which the Lau- 
 reate has at all times set his notes has been one of 
 honest morality or honest remorse. He has sung either 
 the miseries that attend as sequences to impossible or 
 disappointed love in self-reverencing natures, or the 
 happiness which honestly comes from gratification; 
 but he has not dallied over description of the actual 
 orgasms of passion. Love is present in all his verses ; 
 but it is hidden under the soil, like the dead man's 
 head in the Pot of Basil. It is the force behind 
 the emotion — not the ultimate object to be reached. 
 But with the school I speak of, the delirium is the 
 normal state of the pulse ; and poetry would seem to be 
 
54 Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 
 
 merely one long, gloating chant of tyrannic and slobber- 
 ing sensuality, that suggests the turgid visions of an 
 insane retreat, and the propriety of prompt exhibition 
 of a strong dose of bromide to the fevered or epileptic 
 versifier.^ 
 
 What Tennyson thinks of that sort of poetico-sexual 
 Katzenjammer may be gathered from the fact that he 
 makes Lucretius speed his departure out of life when 
 he discovers, or fancies that he discovers, what a de- 
 graded phenomenon it is, under given conditions. 
 
 I have suggested that Tennyson closes a poetic gen- 
 eration. He has been in sympathy with every great 
 poet, from Dante downward. He is, as it were, the 
 end of the Renaissance. After all, there is only a dif- 
 ference of degree, of intensity of knowledge, between, 
 
 '' We may admit, with Lucretius (or Walt Whitman, who seems to 
 preach the dogma as a marvellous novelty), that virility (or sexuality) 
 is the mainspring of human intelligence, as it is of organic life; but 
 granting it such dignity as force or power, like all power-yielding en- 
 gines, its proper place is down cellar. There is no artistic need that 
 it should be forever prancing through our literature like a Black Hawk 
 stallion through the crowded streets of a city, instead of being mod- 
 estly hobbled in its paddock. 
 
 Nor is it requisite that our poetic properties should in the main 
 consist of liturgies to be sung in the worship of some western-world- 
 conceived Lingam and Yoni; nor that, after European civilization 
 has kept in stock for twenty-five centuries a moderate amount of 
 blushes, it should fling away Penelope's veil altogether. Neither 
 the polished Gallus {or is it Cato ?) in his sugary lines to Lydia, nor 
 Ariosto in his cogUonerie, ventured, in itemizing the graces of beauty, 
 to hit below the belt; but these late rhythmic convulsionists lind it 
 wise to bring into focus, at any and all times, "the grand, cool 
 flanks," and adjacent anatomical regions. 
 
Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laicreate. 55 
 
 say, Petrarch, Erasmus, Bentley, Dr. Johnson, Porson, 
 and Dr. Arnold. All belong to the same order of 
 thought, used the same materials — that is to say, they 
 rescued the fragments of Greek civilization and letters, 
 and worked them into western culture. Those mate- 
 rials, so far as the workmen are concerned, are ex- 
 hausted. There is little or nothing of them that is not 
 being manipulated at third or fourth hands. There 
 must be details told off to go out into the forests, like 
 Homer's Achaians, for new fuel. The precious 
 metals of the Greek revival of letters have been all 
 melted down and thoroughly mixed. The old plate of 
 Asiatic thought must now go into the pot. 
 
 Tennyson felt the need of being in full sympathy 
 with the scholarship of his day, and attained it. But' 
 the new poet, the possible worthy successor of Tenny- 
 son, must not rest with Virgil and Theocritus, Dante 
 and Shakspere, as his masters and guides. He must 
 go back to the cradle of the world, peradventure, 
 to find there, not models, but mysterious meta- 
 physical forces, wherewith to vivify his verse. This 
 new poet, whoever he be, this lopas to come after the 
 Phemios of Her Majesty Victoria's court, must, in any 
 event, as part of his poetic task, learn to clothe the pres- 
 ent aridity of science in graceful garb. He must be a, 
 Lucretius to the Memmii of the next race. 
 
 How he will work, what elements he will employ, 
 what emotions invoke, we of this age cannot declare, 
 any more than Coleridge could have foretold the suc- 
 cess and glory of Tennyson. 
 
56 Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. 
 
 Note. — Now that Mr. Fletcher and his coUaborateurs have 
 published a new edition of Poole's Index to Periodical Litera- 
 ture, there is no longer any necessity of referring the reader 
 to magazine articles. Some of them have a merit apart from the 
 subject. Notably, the article by "D. R., a Lincolnshire Rector" 
 (Macmillan's, 1874), said to be the Rev. Drummond Rawnsley, 
 a connection of both the Tennyson and Franklin families, and a 
 poet himself. It may be proper to call the reader's attention to 
 the letters by the first wife of Captain Franklin, who died in 
 1825, to Miss Mitford, both before her marriage to the great 
 sailor and afterwards, as evidence of the cultured character of 
 those Lincolnohire villages. 
 
 The only books that it is necessary here to refer readers to 
 (more for the sake of acknowledging my obligation to them than 
 anything else) are *' Alfred Tennyson, his Life and Works," by 
 Walter E. Wace, Edinburgh, l88l (could this gentleman be of 
 the same family with the author of "Brut"?); and "Tennyson- 
 iana,"byR. H. Shepherd, 2nd edition, 1879. To those who 
 wish to gain some idea of the bibliography of our poet, both or 
 either of the volumes will render a satisfactory service. 
 
;