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 ,XV-. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
>. N. 
 
 \. 
 
A 
 
 Tennyson Primer 
 
 A CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM MACNEILE DIXON 
 
 LiTT.D., A.M., LL.B. " 
 
 FROFESSOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IN KASON 
 
 COLLEGE, BIRMINGHAM, AUTHOR OF "ENGLISH POETRY 
 
 FROM BLAKE TO BROWNING." 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 
 1 896 
 

 CoPYRIOHT, 1896, BY 
 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
</? 
 
 710 
 
 EDIVARD T)01VDEN. 
 
 !My T)ear Trofessor T)owden : 
 
 I wish to inscribe this book to j>ou, because, 
 though it does not claim the distinction of literacy 
 value which belongs to your work, it may prove useful 
 to readers of modern poetry ; and if it so proved, I 
 should be glad to think that the name of one to whom 
 I owe so much — and that not merely as a student — 
 might be read here as that of my teacher and friend. 
 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 W. Macneile Dixon. 
 
 jrV 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chap. I. "Biography. 
 Parentage and Childhood 
 At Cambridge 
 
 Marriage and Poet Laureateship 
 Married Life, Travels and Political Poems 
 Maud and the Idylls of the King 
 The Dramas . ' . 
 
 Closing Years 
 
 Chap. II. The Toe ins. 
 Poems by Two Brothers 
 Timbuctoo and the Poems of 1830 . 
 The Poems of 1832 . 
 The Poems of 1842 . 
 
 Page 
 1 
 
 3 
 
 '5 
 >7 
 20 
 
 3' 
 35 
 
 39 
 42 
 
 47 
 
 53 
 
 Chap. 111. 
 
 The Princess, 
 
 .847 
 
 59 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 In Memoriam, i8so . 
 Maud and Other Poems 
 
 74 
 
 85 
 
 Chap. V. 
 
 Idylls of the King, 1859-8, . 
 Enoch Arden, etc., 1864 
 The Dramas 
 Ballads and Otiier Poems 
 
 9> 
 105 
 110 
 116 
 
 Chap. VI. 
 
 A Critical Essay 
 
 125 
 
 Appendix. 
 
 List of Dates and Bibliography 
 
 M5 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Alfred Tennyson, the acknowledged representa- 
 tive of his age in poetry, was born on August 6, 
 1809, at Somersby Rectory, in the village of Somers- 
 by, in Lincolnshire. His parents were of gentle 
 blood : his father, tlie Rev. George Clayton Ten- 
 nyson, rector of Somersby and vicar of 
 Grimsby, a man of exceptional culture, Parentage 
 versatile powers, imagin^itive temper, and and 
 strongly marked character ; his mother, a Childhood, 
 daughter of the Rev. Stephen Fytche, vicar 
 of Louth. Frederick and Charles (afterwards Charles 
 Tennyson-Turner), who preceded Alfred in a family 
 of twelve, both became distinguished as poets in 
 after life. From his earliest years Alfred was devoted 
 to poetry, and seemed destined for a poetical career. 
 His first recorded verse was the cry that broke from 
 him, when a child of five, as the wind hurried him 
 down the garden walk : 
 
 " I hear a voice that's speaking in the wind." 
 
 While still very young, some verses written upon 
 his slate — the subject, the flowers in the rectory gar- 
 den — modelled upon Thomson, the only poet he had 
 then read, were rewarded by a I' Yes, you can write," 
 from his brother ; a little later the death of his grand- 
 
2 A TENNYSON PRIMER, 
 
 mother was the theme of a poem which drew from 
 his grandfather half a sovereign, and the prophecy, 
 soon to be falsified, " That is the first money, my boy, 
 that you've made by poetry, and, take my word for 
 it, it will be the last." 
 
 Perhaps the lines in the Poems by Two Brothers^ be, 
 ginning, " There on the bier she sleeps," are an im- 
 proved version of this early attempt.* In his twelfth 
 year he was busy on an epic in imitation of Scott, 
 which ran to some thousand lines, and in his fifteenth 
 he essayed a drama. Of the epic it is interest- 
 ing to note that, in his father's judgment, it gave 
 promise of a famous future. " If that boy dies," said 
 Mr. Tennyson, " one of our greatest poets will have 
 gone." 
 
 After the village school came the grammar school 
 at Louth, followed in its turn by home tuition. The 
 changes hardly broke the tranquil, dreamy life spent 
 by the boy, chiefly alone — for he was naturally of re- 
 tiring disposition — or in long rambles with his favour- 
 ite brother Charles. The news of Byron's death, in 
 •1824, was the first wave of emotion from the outside 
 world that touched him. " I thought," he said, 
 " that everything was over and finished for every one 
 — that nothing else mattered. I remember I walked 
 out alone and carved ' Byron is dead !' into the sand- 
 stone." Two years later Alfred and Charles joined 
 in a poetical venture, and put forth a small volume ; 
 but rather, it appears, in search of pocket-money 
 than fame. . A Louth bookseller, Jackson by name, 
 was induced to give twenty pounds for the copyright of 
 thtw Juvenilia. The Poems by Two Brothers (1826), 
 
 * Signed, however, " C. T." in the 1S93 edition. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 3 
 
 containing one hundred and two short poems, was pub- 
 lished, and the money spent on a tour round the 
 churches of Lincolnshire. 
 
 The scenery of Lincolnshire is faithfully sketched 
 as background to all the early poetry of Tennyson 
 which is not purely derivative ; the rich meadow and 
 gradual slope, the " ridged wolds," the picturesque 
 wandering lanes, as well as the " glooming flats" 
 and less attractive features of the fen country, appear 
 in it, even the 
 
 "... woods that belt the gray hillside, 
 The seven elms, the poplars four 
 That stand beside my father's door." 
 
 — Ode to Memory. 
 
 In 1828 Charles and Alfred went up to Trinity 
 College, Cambridge, whither Frederick had pre- 
 ceded them. Alfred's rooms were in Corpus Build- 
 ings, overlooking the main quadrangle of King's 
 College, and within hearing of its chapel 
 organ. The change from the quiet, rural At 
 life of his childhood to that of the univer- Cambridge. 
 sity, where many of the lasting friend- 
 ships of his life were made, was fraught with 
 important influences upon Tennyson's career. He 
 became the central figure of a group of brilliant 
 young men, not a few of whom bore names afterwards 
 distinguished : Richard Monckton Milnes (afterwards 
 Lord Houghton), James Spedding (the "J. S." of 
 the poem, " You ask me why, tho' ill at ease"), 
 J, M. Kemble (the "J. M. K." of the sonnet, " My 
 heart and hope is with thee"), Richard Chenevix 
 Trench (afterwards Archbishop of Dublin), W. H. 
 Brookfield (to whom the sonnet, " Brooks, for they 
 
4 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 called you so that knew you best," was addressed), 
 Henry Alford (afterwards Dean of Canterbury), Ed- 
 ward Lushington, Charles Merivale (afterwards Dean 
 of Ely), and Arthur Hallam, the eldest son of Henry 
 Hallam, the historian.* Between Arthur Hallam and 
 Alfred Tennyson grew up a friendship so close and 
 deep as rightly to be named ideal — a friendship which, 
 though cut short by Hallam 's death in less than five 
 years {In Mcmoriam, xxii.), must be reckoned one of 
 the great determining forces of the poet's life. Hal- 
 lam, Tennyson's junior by two years, was at this 
 time the more widely read and accomplished scholar, 
 and gave equal promise of future name and fame. 
 His engagement, in the year in which he left Cam- 
 bridge, to Emily Tennyson, Alfred's sister, promised 
 to add another bond to that of friendship {In Me- 
 moriam, Ixxxiv.), a promise sadly unfulfilled. 
 
 Before going up to the University, Tennyson had 
 been at work upon a poem entitled The Lover's Tale. 
 After a few years' interval the first and second parts 
 appeared in print in 1833 (the same year as Brown- 
 ing's Pauline), "when," wrote the author (in the 
 preface to the edition of 1879), " feeling the imperfec- 
 tion of the poem, I withdrew it from the press." 
 Copies were, however, in circulation, and the work 
 was reprinted without his consent and without the 
 improvements which were in contemplation. In self- 
 defence a corrected and improved version, with the 
 addition of a third part. The Golden SuJ^per, a work of 
 the author's mature life, was published in 1879. The 
 Lover's Tale contains one line — 
 
 " A center'd glory-circled memory" — 
 
 * Thackeray, afterwards a warm friend, was also a contemporary 
 of the Tennysons at Trinity College. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 5 
 
 of which Tennyson had already made use in his now 
 famous university prize poem, a fact which may be 
 noted as an example of his almost parsimonious habit 
 of treasuring a good line like a jewel until he could 
 find for it a suitable setting. Three lines, also from 
 the same poem, appear again in the Ode to Memory* 
 
 In 1829, Milnes, Hallam, and Alfred Tennyson were 
 all competitors for the Vice-Chancellor's medal in 
 English verse — the subject " Timbuctoo." Tennyson 
 was a candidate at his father's request, and the 
 verses sent in were remodelled to some extent from 
 an unfinished earlier poem on the Battle of Armaged- 
 don. To him the medal was awarded, despite the fact 
 that it was supposed to be de rigueur that the com- 
 positions should be in the heroic couplet, and Tenny- 
 son had chosen for his metre blank verse. Promise of 
 great poetry to come was found in Timbuctoo by 
 several acute readers, and it is creditable to the dis- 
 cernment of the examiners that they were able to ap- 
 preciate its merit. Both here and in 77ie Lover s 
 Tale the influence of Shelley is clearly evidenced, 
 but the ring and movement of the blank verse which 
 we now recognise as Tennysonian unmistakably dis- 
 play themselves. 
 
 During the autumn of 1830 Hallam and Tennyson 
 visited Spain — a visit commemorated in The Valley of 
 Cauteretz — to carry money and letters of encourage- 
 ment to the revolutionists, with some of whose leaders 
 they had interviews.! The enthusiasm of the youth- 
 
 * " Sure she was nigher to heaven's spheres. 
 Listening the lordly music flowing from 
 Th' illimitable years." 
 
 — Ode to Memory. 
 
 f " A wild time we had of it," Hallam said. " I played my part 
 
6 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 ful poets had been kindled by the struggle for freedom 
 in the Spanish war of independence, much as the spirits 
 of Wordsworth and Coleridge had been aroused by 
 the hopes of the French Revolution. But, like Words- 
 worth, Tenn3'Son came to a different and perhaps 
 wiser mind when his knowledge of revolutionary men 
 and methods was nearer and more personal. In this 
 year of the visit to the Pyrenees was published Alfred's 
 first independent volume of verse. Poems, Chiefly Lyri- 
 cal. The original design had been to include poems 
 by Hallam in the volume, but owing to the disap- 
 proval expressed by Hallam's father the idea of a 
 poetic partnership was given up, and the book ap- 
 peared as we have it. In this year also appeared a 
 volume of poems, Sonnets and Fugitive Pieces, by Charles 
 Tennyson, the brother with whom Alfred had joined 
 in the production of the Poems by Two Brothers. 
 Wordsworth, writing from Cambridge about this time, 
 remarked : " We have also a respectable show of blos- 
 som in poetry — two brothers of the name of Tenny- 
 son ; one in particular not a little promising." 
 
 The death of his father in March, 1831, brought 
 Tennyson's University career to a close without a 
 degree, nor does it seem that he had any regard for 
 the traditions of Cambridge or breathed its atmosphere 
 with any keen enjoyment.* He had taken little part 
 
 as conspirator in a small way, and made friends with two or three 
 gallant men, who have since been trying their luck with Valdes." 
 
 * The following sonnet, written in pencil, appears on the fly-leaf 
 of the 1833 volume in the Dyce collection of the South Kensington 
 Museum : 
 
 " Therefore your halls, your ancient colleges, 
 
 Your portals statued with old kings and queens. 
 Your gardens, myriad-volumed libraries. 
 
 Wax-lighted chapels, and rich carven screens, 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 7 
 
 in the life a university offers, and was never a candidate 
 for academic distinctions. To a chosen few, a coterie 
 known as " the Apostles" {In Meffwriam, Ixxxvii.), he 
 was accustomed to read his verses as they were com- 
 posed, but it was understood that no criticism would 
 be acceptable. From the first the natural sensitiveness 
 of the poet, which increased in later life to an almost 
 morbid degree, made him extremely averse to a word 
 of dispraise. The same sensitiveness debarred him 
 from playing any active part in the world of men, and 
 at no period was his circle of acquaintanceship large. 
 But while impatient of adverse criticism, there was 
 never author who turned it to better account when it 
 came ; and the day of its coming was not long delayed. 
 The first rude breath of censure blew from the critical 
 journals, Blackwood and the Quarterly, soon after the 
 appearance of Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, and the Poems of 
 1832. The article in Blacktvood was written by Chris- 
 topher North (John Wilson) in May, 1832, in the 
 trenchant style of the reviews of the time, and that in 
 the Quarterly (July, 1833), almost certainly by Lock- 
 
 Your doctors, and your proctors, and your deans, 
 
 Shall not avail you, when the day-beam sports 
 New risen o'er awakened Albion — no ! 
 
 Nor yet your solemn organ-pipes that blow 
 Melodious thunders thro' your vacant courts 
 
 At morn and eve — because your manner sorts 
 Not with this age wherefrom you stand apart. 
 
 Because the lips of little children preach 
 Against you, you that do profess to teach. 
 
 And teach us nothing, feeding not the heart." 
 
 The following note is appended : "I have a great affection for 
 my old university, and can only regret that this spirit of under- 
 graduate irritability against the Cambridge of that day ever found 
 its way into print." 
 
8 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 hart, the editor, was even more severe. Wilson de- 
 scribed Tennyson as "the pet of a cockney coterie," 
 a remark at the time not so very wide of the truth, 
 and Lockhart praised some of the poems in a vein of 
 caustic irony. But both critics found genius in the 
 work of the new poet, and it is with the manner rather 
 than the matter of the reviews that any reasonable 
 quarrel can be raised. While Tennyson replied to the 
 Blackwood article bitterly enough in the verses, after- 
 wards suppressed, describing Wilson as " rusty, fusty 
 Christopher," he was careful to adopt his suggestions 
 almost without exception ; and though the Quarterly re- 
 view was resented, it was honoured scrupulously in the 
 same way. This was to exhibit the temper of the 
 child, but to act like a man. The voices, moreover, 
 were very far from being all against Tennyson. Cole- 
 ridge praised the poems, while he expressed the opin- 
 ion that the new poet was not yet master of the 
 metrical craft, and confessed to his own difficulty in 
 scanning some of the verses. The Westminster Review 
 of January, 1S31, had been full of eulogv ; Hallam him- 
 self, in the Englishman's Magazine of August, had 
 warmly praised the genius of his friend in a glowing 
 article, and Leigh Hunt, in the Tatlcr of the same 
 year (February and March), in reviewing Alfred's 
 poems, together with the volume of sonnets by 
 Charles, while he praised both, had predicted the 
 laurel of the future for Alfred. 
 
 In the year that Arthur Hallam took his degree 
 (1832) he was a guest at Somersby. "Fifty years 
 hence people will make pilgrimages to this place," he 
 said. About this time his engagement to Emily Ten- 
 nyson was made public, and he went up to London to 
 begin his/ career at the bar, the profession he had 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 9 
 
 chosen as the best avenue to the public life to which 
 he looked. Until compelled, the following year, to 
 seek health abroad, Hallam was domiciled at 67 
 Wimpole Street — " the dark house in the long 
 unlovely street." " You will always find me at sixes 
 and sevens," he was accustomed to say as a mnemonic 
 for his friends. In September of 1833 the end came. 
 
 " In Vienna's fatal walls 
 
 God's finger toucht him, and he slept." 
 
 After Arthur Hallam's death Tennyson went to re- 
 side in London. So deep and poignant a sorrow as the 
 early loss of his best-loved friend hung like a heavy 
 cloud over his life. It was Tennyson's " dark hour," 
 and years passed before he could bring him- 
 self to find relief even in poetry. No volume I1 London, 
 was published between the Poems of 1832 
 and the revised and enlarged edition, in two volumes, 
 of 1842. Occasional verses had appeared in 1831 in 
 the Gem, and in the following year in the English Mag- 
 azine, the Yorkshire Literary Annual, and Friendship's 
 Offering ; and others followed. St. Agnes^ Eve was first 
 published in The Keepsake in 1837, and the song, " Oh 
 that 'twere possible," in the Tribute in the same year. 
 
 During these silent years in London Tennyson be- 
 came one of Carlyle's most frequent visitors — none 
 more congenial — " a true human soul or some authen- 
 tic approximation thereto, to whom your own soul 
 can say. Brother !" The poet of these London days 
 was described in Carlyle's picturesque style thus : 
 " A great shock of rough, dusty-dark hair ; bright, 
 laughing, hazel eyes ; massive aquiline face, most 
 massive, yet most delicate ; of sallow brown complex- 
 ion, almost Indian-looking ; clothes cynically loose, 
 
lO A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 free and easy ; smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is 
 musically metallic — fit for loud laughter and piercing 
 wail, and all that ma}'^ lie between ; speech and specu- 
 lation free and plenteous ; I do not meet in these late 
 decades such company over a pipe." In 1838 he ap- 
 peared as a member of the Anonymous Club, of 
 which Carlyle, Mill, Thackeray, Landor, Macready 
 Sterling, Cunningham, and other men of letters were 
 members. Some of his poems were handed about in 
 manuscript and read by friends. Landor praised in 
 especial (December, 1837) the poem we know as the 
 Morte iV Arthur as " more Homeric than any poem 
 of our time, and rivalling some of the noblest parts of 
 the Odyssea." The details of this period of Tenny- 
 son's life are but scanty, and there is little for a bio- 
 grapher to relate. We know that he became strongly 
 attached to Rogers, the veteran poet, and at his house 
 met, among men of note, Gladstone, Leigh Hunt, and 
 Tom Moore. The following note occurs in the diary 
 of Henry Crabb Robinson : 
 
 "31 Jan., 1845. I dined this day with Rogers. We 
 had an interesting party of eight — Moxon, the pub- 
 lisher ; Kenny, the dramatic poet ; Spedding, Lush- 
 ington, and Alfred Tennyson, three young men of 
 eminent talent, belonging to literary young England 
 — the latter, Tennyson, being by far the most eminent 
 of the young poets. He is an admirer of Goethe, and 
 I had a long tcte-a-tHe v^'xXh him about the great poet." 
 
 It is certain that Carlyle's influence was a potent 
 factor in the enlargement and development of his in- 
 tellectual sympathies ; and to it, as well as to Hallam's 
 death, is due the graver, more philosophical note 
 soon to be heard in Tennyson's poetry. While he 
 still continued to pay studious attentitm to the ex- 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. II 
 
 ternal form of his verse, he essayed higher subjects and 
 grappled with the deeper problems. In these days he 
 met and talked far into the night, smoking '* infinite 
 tobacco," with his chosen friends, or read far and 
 wide, and brooded over the poems that were to set the 
 seal upon his reputation in the 1842 volumes ; in Car- 
 lyle's words, " carrying a bit of chaos about him which 
 he was manufacturing into kosmos." With the pub- 
 lication of the volumes just mentioned Tennyson's 
 place in English literature was beyond question as- 
 sured. The author of Locksley Hall, Ulysses, the Vision 
 of Sin, and the Morte d' Arthur was universally ac- 
 knowledged the first poet of the day. " He is de- 
 cidedly," wrote, in 1845, Wordsworth, whom he had 
 met for the first time two years earlier, " the first of 
 our living poets." That year saw the fourth edition 
 of the two volumes, and Moxon, his publisher, con- 
 fessed that Tennyson was the only poet by the pub- 
 lication of whose work he was not a loser. 
 
 In 1837 the Tennyson family had left Somersby for 
 Beech Hill House, near Hill Beech, situated on the 
 border of Epping Forest, and near Waltham Abbey, 
 whose bells are addressed in the fine greeting to the 
 New Year, now familiar to all English ears : 
 
 " Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky !" 
 
 In 1840 came another change to Tunbridge Wells, 
 and in the next year still another to Boxley, near 
 Maidstone. Here Alfred's youngest sister, Cecilia, 
 was married to Edmund Law Lushington, professor 
 of Greek in the University of Glasgow, the wedding 
 which is the subject of the closing section of In Me- 
 moriam. In 1845,* through the influence of Milnes, 
 
 * In 1844 Edgar Allen Poe, carried away by the artistic beauty of 
 
12 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 Tennyson's name was placed by Sir Robert Peel, 
 \vlu> had never previously heard of the poet, upon the 
 Civil List for a pension of two hundred pounds a year, 
 and his pecuniary anxieties, for some time pressing, 
 were at an end. Though approved of by the major- 
 ity, by some the pension was considered premature, 
 and Bulwer Lytton, in his satire. The New Ti/uon, made 
 a sharp attack upon Tennyson, both as poet and pen- 
 sioner. He was there spoken of as " School-Miss Al 
 fred," and his poetry described as 
 
 ..." a jingling medley of purloined conceits 
 Out-babj'ing Wordsworth, and out-glittering Keats." 
 
 A note to the passage stated that Tennyson had 
 been "quartered on the public purse in the prime of 
 life, without either wife or family." The reply was 
 not delayed, and a set of verses in Punch, signed '* Al- 
 cibiades," proved that stinging satire was quite within 
 Tennyson's reach also, had he cared to enter that 
 field.* An Afterthought, now included in his works 
 
 form in Tennyson's poems, wrote enthusiastically: "I am not 
 sure that Tennyson is not the greatest of poets." 
 
 * ■' We know him out of Shakespeare's art. 
 
 And those fine curses which he spoke — 
 The old Timon with his noble heart, 
 That strongly loathing, greatly broke. 
 
 ' So died the Old, here comes the New ; 
 Regard him — a familiar face ; 
 I thought we knew him. What, it's you. 
 The padded man that wears the stays — 
 
 " Who killed the girls and thrilled the boys 
 With dandy pathos when you wrote — 
 O Lion ! you that made a noise, 
 .-\nd shook a mane en faf^i Notes. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 1 3 
 
 under the title of Lifcra/y Squahhics, appeared the fol- 
 lowing week over the same signature, and more justly 
 represents Tennyson's true attitude towards such con- 
 troversies. The passiige of detraction in the New 
 Timon was subsequently excised ; and the amende hon- 
 orable was acknowledged by the dedication, in 1876, 
 of the drama of Harold to the novelist's son. Among 
 other attacks may be noted the Bon Gaultier Ballads 
 (the work of Theodore Martin and W. E. Aytoun), 
 1S45, which contained some clever parodies of the 
 1842 poems.* About this time Howitt wrote of 
 Tennyson : " It is very possible you may come across 
 
 " But men of long-enduring hopes, 
 
 And careless what the hour may bring, 
 Can pardon little would-be Popes, 
 
 And Brummels when they try to sting, 
 
 " An artist, sir, should rest in art. 
 And waive a little of his claim ; 
 To have the great poetic heart 
 
 Is more than all poetic fame. 
 ***** 
 
 " A Timon you ! Nay, nay, for shame, 
 It looks too arrogant a jest — 
 That fierce old man — to take his name. 
 You bandbox ! off, and let him rest." 
 
 * The following stanza from The Laiircati-, parodying The Mer- 
 man, will serve as an example : 
 
 " Who would not be 
 The Laureate bold, 
 With his butt of sherry 
 To keep him merry, 
 And nothing to do but to pocket his gold. 
 'Tis I would be the Laureate bold " 
 This was written on the death of Southey (1843), and was in- 
 tended as an ironical demand for the appointment of Tennyson. 
 
14 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 him in a country inn, with a foot on each hob of the 
 fireplace, a volume of Greek in one hand, his meer- 
 schaum in the other, so far advanced towards the 
 seventh heaven that he would not thank you to call 
 him back into this nether world." 
 
 Although Tennyson's reputation was now firmly 
 established, there wanted not on the part of the best 
 critics a certain reticence as to the quality of his at- 
 tainment. In 1846, Wordsworth, in conversation with 
 Thomas Cooper, spoke some weighty words which 
 probably represented the more reserved and less en- 
 thusiastic verdict of the time, the opinion of those who 
 felt that so far the new poet had given signs indeed of 
 very unusual power, but had trifled with his art rather 
 than given himself seriously to its greater aims- 
 " There is little," said Wordsworth, " that can be 
 called high poetry. Mr. Tennyson affords, indeed, 
 the richest promise. He will do great things yet, and 
 ought to have done greater things by this time." Ere- 
 long he was to show the best he had to give. In 1848 
 a new issue of The Princess (published the previous 
 year) " produced among the fogs and smuts of Lin- 
 coln's Inn," appeared, with a dedication to Henry 
 Lushington, the friend whom Tennyson was accus- 
 tomed to speak of as "his most suggestive critic." 
 But the central year of the century was Tennyson's 
 Aiinus Mirabilis, the year which saw the publication 
 of his greatest poem, his marriage, and his appoint 
 ment as Poet Laureate. 
 
 In 1850 Tennyson left Cheltenham, where he had 
 chiefly resided from 1S44. The years that lay between 
 these two dates were mainly occupied in the composi- 
 tion of the g "eat elegy which enshrines the memory of 
 Arthur Hallam. /// Afemoriain appeared in 1850, at first 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. I 5 
 
 anonymously. On June 13 of the same year, the author 
 was married at Shiplake Church, Oxfordshire, to Emily 
 Sellwood, a niece of Sir John Franklin, the 
 Arctic explorer. Wordsworth had died Marriage 
 earlier in the year, and in November Al- a,nd Poet 
 fred Tennyson was appointed his succes- l'*^J^*8,tesnip. 
 sor as Poet Laureate,* and the seal of 
 national recognition placed upon his already great 
 fame. For two years after his marriage, on his re- 
 turn from a wedding journey in Italy,f the poet lived 
 at Twickenham, famous on account of Pope's resi- 
 dence there, and now (as Mr. G. J. Cayley, in a blank 
 verse letter, wrote to the Laureate) "twice classic." 
 
 From this year until that of his death Tennyson's 
 career was a summer of unbroken splendour, clouded 
 only by the death of his brother Charles, in 1879, and 
 his son Lionel, in 1885. Unlike most poets, he lived 
 a long life through in the sunshine of critical as well 
 as popular favour, honoured by all and reverenced by 
 
 *The post was offered to and declined by Rogers. 
 
 t See The Daisy. 
 
 His verses To the Queen, written after his appointment to the 
 Laureateship, have been so altered and amended that scarcely a line 
 of the original remains as at first. The original MS. contained 
 these two verses, afterwards omitted ; 
 
 " Nor should I dare to flatter state, 
 Nor such a lay would you receive 
 Were I to shape it, who believe 
 
 Your nature true as you are great. 
 
 ***** 
 
 " She brought a vast design to pass 
 
 When Europe and the scatter'd ends 
 Of our fierce world did meet as friends 
 And brethren in her halls of glass." 
 The reference here is to the Crystal Palace of 1851. 
 
1 6 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 many as among the very greatest of English poets. 
 No such supreme lot has perhaps ever fallen to a 
 poet of any race or country in the history of the 
 world, 
 
 Tennyson's almost immediate and unanimous ac- 
 ceptance as a poet — a circumstance in itself usually 
 far from prophetic of enduring fame — may be set 
 down as due in part to the versatility of his poetic 
 manner, and in part to the absence of serious rivals. 
 He was fortunate in the possession of many brilliant 
 gifts; he was perhaps even more fortunate in his birth 
 time, and in the length of days granted him, with 
 faculties unimpaired, and with ample space wherein 
 to stablish his monument and enjoy his fame. Of the 
 great poets of the century, but few reached even 
 middle life ; for Keats and Shelley and Byron the 
 light was early quenched ; Wordsworth and Southey 
 and Coleridge had overlived their poetic prime, and 
 the fruit of public acceptance was once more ripe for 
 plucking. And Tennyson, in whose brain the man of 
 the world was not unrepresented, took the nearest 
 way to fame in that he made appeal, in almost every 
 volume of verse published in his earlier years, to the 
 people as well as to the critics. He was the man of 
 the hour, and, with no very definite or sagacious 
 opinions to offer, gave expression in his poetry to the 
 prevailing feelings, the prevailing thought of the time. 
 The admiration of the few and the critical was ex- 
 cited by the perfection of his art, the admiration of 
 the many and unsophisticated readers of poetry by 
 the simple and graceful treatment of themes gener- 
 ally themselves simple, frequently English. The few 
 were delighted to find their own thoughts in the deli- 
 cate and exquisite version of a scholar of perfect 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 1/ 
 
 taste ; the many could not deny that here were poems 
 which never ran on to undue lengths, easily understood, 
 even more easily enjoyed, and praised by all poetical 
 authorities. 
 
 The first year of Tennyson's married life was partly 
 spent in Italy, the route chosen being through the 
 Riviera to Florence. Save for a few stanzas in The 
 Keepsake, a. farewell sonnet to Macready, 
 read by John Forster at the banquet Married Life, 
 given the actor on the eve of his depart- Travels, and 
 ure, and the dedication "to the Queen"* ^°"tical Poems, 
 of the seventh edition of the Poems, 
 there was nothing of importance published during 
 the year. But in 1852 the political horizon became 
 clouded and threatening, and Tennyson, in company 
 with most of his countrymen, viewed with extreme 
 distrusT' the events taking place in France. The 
 period of excitement that followed the coup d'etat of 
 December, the abolition of the constitution of the 
 French Republic by Louis Napoleon, gave birth to 
 three patriotic lyrics, published under the pseudonym 
 of "Merlin" \x\ \)i\& Examiner. It was not until 1872 
 that Tennyson acknowledged the authorship of these 
 lyrics by the publication in the library edition of his 
 works of the stirring lines entitled The Third of 
 February, which, with the poems, Britons, Guard your 
 Otvii and Hands all Round, had given full expression 
 to the national feeling in England towards the French 
 emperor and those weak-kneed English peers who. 
 
 * Tennyson was presented to the Queen at Buckingham Palace, 
 on his appointment to be Poet Laureate, March 6, 1851. It is said 
 he was dressed in Rogers' court dress, worn on a former occasion 
 by Wordsworth. 
 
1 8 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 to purchase peace at any price, would have " salved 
 the tyrant o'er." 
 
 In September the Duke of Wellington died, and 
 upon the day of his funeral appeared in the Tifnes 
 the first version of Tennyson's funeral ode, a poem 
 which, if studied in its various editions, will give con- 
 siderable insight into the author's careful methods of 
 work. There was little enthusiasm over the ode in 
 its early form, and it was severely criticised in the 
 Press. Tennyson was much gratified by Henry 
 Taylor's approval — *' It has a greatness worthy of its 
 theme, and an absolute simplicity and truth, with all 
 the poetic passion of your nature moving beneath" — 
 and replying, wrote : " Thanks ! thanks ! In the all 
 but universal depreciation of my ode by the Press, the 
 prompt and hearty approval of it by a man as true as 
 the Duke himself is doubly grateful." The second 
 edition, published in 1853, was greatly altered and ex- 
 tended, and further improvements were introduced 
 before its reappearance in the Afa u ti xolumo. of 1856. 
 The following lines in the first were omitted in all 
 the subsequent editions : 
 
 " Perchance our greatness will increase ; 
 Perchance a darkening future yields 
 Some reverse from worse to worse, 
 The blood of men in quiet fields. 
 And sprinkled on the sheaves of peace." 
 
 In this 5'ear the poet's eldest son, Hallam, was born 
 at Twickenham, and in the following year the family 
 removed to Farringford, in Freshwater. The lanes 
 and breezy downs, the meadow and wood and views 
 of sea of the Farringford district form the back- 
 ground of his later poetic descriptions, as the flats and 
 level wastes and marshes of Lincolnshire had done in 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 19 
 
 the earlier. In his poetic invitation to the Rev. F. D. 
 Maurice, on the occasion of his expulsion from King's 
 College, London, Tennyson accurately describes the 
 surroundings of his home in the Isle of Wight : 
 
 " Where, far from noise and smoke of town, 
 I watch the twilight falling brown 
 
 All round a careless-order'd garden 
 Close to the ridge of a noble down. 
 
 ***** 
 
 " For groves of pine on either hand, 
 To break the blast of winter, stand ; 
 And further on, the hoary Channel 
 Tumbles a billow on chalk and sand." 
 
 Here, w^here Lionel, his second son, was born in 
 1854, Tennyson lived until 1870. In 1853 appeared 
 the eighth edition of the Poems and the fifth edition 
 of the Princess^ w^hich, like the Ode on the Death of 
 the Duke of Wellington, had undergone many altera- 
 tions and editions ; the third edition in especial pre- 
 senting the poem in many parts completely rewritten, 
 and with the addition of the songs, which may be re- 
 garded as its chiefest beauty. In 1854* appeared in 
 the Examiner (December 9) the first draught of The 
 Charge of the Light Brigade, a poem of which three 
 versions are extant. The final version appeared as a 
 separate publication, with the following note by the 
 author : 
 
 "Having heard that the brave soldiers before 
 Sebastopol, whom I am proud to call my countrymen, 
 have a liking for my ballad on the Charge of the 
 Light Brigade at Balaclava, I have ordered a thousand 
 copies of it to be printed for them. No writing of 
 
 * In this year Dr. E K. Kane, the Arctic explorer, named a 
 columnar rock in Greenland, "Tennyson's Pillar." 
 
20 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 mine can add to the glory they have acquired in the 
 Crimea ; but if what I have heard be true, they will 
 not be displeased to receive these copies of the ballad 
 from me, and to know that those who sit at home 
 love and honour them. 
 
 "August 8, 1855. Alfred Tennyson." 
 
 "The people's voice" was never more distinctly 
 heard than in the poetry of Tennyson written in 
 times of grave national anxiety. His sympathy with 
 popular feeling, as here, aroused by the war in the 
 Crimea, was closer and deeper, aristocratic poet 
 though he was, than that of any poet of the demo- 
 cracy that England has yet seen. 
 
 In May, 1855, the year of the publication of Maud, 
 
 the honorary degree of D.C.L. was conferred on the 
 
 Poet Laureate by the University of Oxford. Of all 
 
 Tennyson's poems, Maud was received 
 
 Maud "^vith the least favour ; it was severely criti- 
 
 and The cised in Blackiiwod (September), and the 
 
 Idylls of JVational Review (October), and a hot con-- 
 the King, troversy ensued over its merits and de^ 
 merits. An " Anti Maud, by a Poet of the 
 People," appeared and ran into a second edition. 
 The germ of Maud (as noted above) is to be found in 
 the lines, " Oh, that 'twere possible," contributed in 
 1837 to the Keepsake, and it is on record that its 
 genesis maybe traced to a remark of Sir John Simeon 
 (Tennj'son's friend and neighbour), to the effect that 
 the lines suggested a story which ought to be more 
 fully explained. Be this as it may, the poem was 
 mainly composed in Sir John Simeon's garden at 
 Swainston. Though the author's favourite poem, 
 Maud has never taken firm hold of the popular imagi- 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 21 
 
 nation, and only a few of the more eminent critics have 
 spoken enthusiastically in its favour. Chief among 
 the charges made against the poem is that of obscurity, 
 a charge which can, however, with difficulty be main- 
 tained. The best-known vindication of Mai/d, a reply 
 to the animadversions of the critics, was published by 
 Dr. Mann (1S56), and is of special interest as approved 
 by Tennyson himself. In a letter to the author,, Ten- 
 nyson wrote : " No one with this essay before him 
 can in future pretend to misunderstand my dramatic 
 poem, Maud J your commentary is as true as it is 
 full." Rightly understood, Maud wiW be taken as a 
 proof of the real range and fertility of Tennyson's 
 lyric power. More truly dramatic than any of his 
 poems composed in the traditional form of the drama, 
 it serves to display the character of his genius, which 
 was capable of the development of intense individual 
 moods such as he could realise in his own person, and 
 their presentation in the emphatic form of subtly 
 modulated lyric verse. In a monodrama whose 
 action unfolds itself in a series of lyric poems, his 
 intense individualism was a source of strength, just as 
 it was a source of indisputable weakness when he 
 afterwards essayed a great dramatic theme in Queen 
 Mary and Harold. 
 
 Maud was the poem which the author most fre- 
 quently chose to read aloud. Perhaps the most in- 
 teresting occasion upon which it was so read was in 
 the September of 1855 ; Robert Browning and his 
 wife were present, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Ros- 
 setti made a pen-and-ink sketch of the poet as he de- 
 claimed his verses, which is still preserved. Tenny- 
 son is sketched seated on the sofa, in a loose coat. 
 His left hand grasps his foot in a curious fashion. 
 
22 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 and the riglit holds the book. Of Tennyson's read- 
 ing, several descriptions have been given. It seems 
 to have been a kind of chant, guided by the music of 
 the verse rather than by the sense of the words, and in 
 this way a striking contrast to Browning's, whose 
 stress of voice was not intended to be musical, but 
 indicative of the meaning. The contrast is signifi- 
 cant as interpreting in the case of each poet his con- 
 ception of the aim of his own art. " I rather need to 
 know what he is reading," said Sir Henry Taylor of 
 Tennyson, " for otherwise I find sense to be lost in 
 sound from time to time." 
 
 Two American men of letters have left interesting 
 records of their personal impressions of Tennyson 
 during 1S57. Bayard Taylor was the poet's guest at 
 Farringford, and walked with him over the cliffs to 
 the Needles. " I was struck," he wrote, " by the 
 variety of his knowledge. Not a little flower on the 
 downs escaped his notice, and the geology of the 
 coast, both terrestrial and submarine, was perfectly 
 familiar to him. I thought of a remark I once heard 
 from a distinguished English author (Thackeray), 
 that Tennyson w^as the wisest man he knew." Of 
 the outward man he spoke as " Tall and broad-shoul- 
 dered as a son of Anak, with hair, beard, and eyes of 
 Southern darkness."* Hawthorne found the poet 
 " as un-English as possible," though not American in 
 appearance. " I cannot well describe the difference, 
 but there was something more mellow in him, softer, 
 sweeter, broader, more simple than we are apt to 
 be." t 
 
 It ma}' be noted here that Whittier, a warm ad- 
 
 * Ai Home and Abroad, by Bayard Taylor (London, 1S60). 
 \ July 30, 1857. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 23 
 
 mircr of Tcnn3fson's poetry, wrote to him in 1885 to 
 ask for some memorial verses for the cenotaph of 
 Gordon — a request which produced the well-known 
 stanza beginning : 
 
 " Warrior of God, man's friend" — 
 
 Some years later he wrote to Walt Whitman an ac- 
 knowledgment of the gift of that poet's photograph : 
 
 " Dear Walt Whitman : I thank you for your 
 kind thought of me. I 'value the photograph much, 
 and I wish that I could see not only this sun picture, 
 excellent as I am told it is, but also the living original. 
 May he still live and flourish for many years to be. 
 The coming year (1888) should give new life to every 
 American who has breathed a breath of that soul 
 which inspired the great founders of the American 
 Constitution, whose work you are to celebrate. Truly 
 the mother country, pondering on this, may feel that 
 how much soever the daughter owes to her, she, the 
 mother, has nevertheless something to learn from 
 the daughter. Especially I would note the care taken 
 to guard a noble Constitution from rash and unwise 
 innovators." 
 
 This year (1857) saw in print,* though it never was 
 published, the first of the series of poems dealing 
 with the Arthurian cycle of legends which we now 
 possess under the title of The Idylls of the King. For 
 long Tennyson's mind had been occupied upon the 
 material for poetic treatment lying unused in the an- 
 cient British romances. In every volume published 
 by him appear traces of their influence upon his 
 
 * F.tiid and Xi III lie ; or, 7'/ie True and tlie False. 
 
24 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 imagination. The Lady of S/ialott, Sir Galahad, and 
 The Morte d' Arthur were pieces of exquisite jewel 
 work such as a consummate artist alone could have 
 achieved, but they were little more than beautiful 
 fragments, and the subject demanded a larger treat- 
 ment. Milton's youthful design of an epic poem upon 
 King Arthur had never been executed. " King Ar- 
 thur," as Dr. Johnson said, " was reserved for another 
 fate" — that, namely, of cruel prosing at the hands of 
 Sir Richard Blackmore, the valiant author of ineffec- 
 tual epics. It was left for a nineteenth-century poet 
 to attempt the authentic English epic, the great na- 
 tional poem unifying the deeds of the great national 
 hero of Britain's legendary age. The development of 
 Tennyson's poem was very gradual. In 1859 ap- 
 peared Enid, Vivien, Elaine, and Guinevere in a volume 
 of which ten thousand copies were sold within a few 
 weeks. At long intervals from this year until 1885, 
 the date of Balin and Balan, was built up, book by 
 book, the poem of Arthur and the Round Table. An 
 expectant but critical audience received the first volume 
 with mingled feelings of admiration and disappoint- 
 ment. Longfellow wrote in his diary : " Finished the 
 four idyls. The first and third {Enid and Elaine) could 
 have only come from a great poet. The second and 
 fourth ( Vivien and Guinevere) do not seem to me so 
 good." Carlyle was more outspoken in his dissatis- 
 faction. In a letter to Emerson he wrote : " We read 
 at first Tennyson's Idylls with profound recognition 
 of the finely elaborated execution, and also of the in- 
 ward perfection of vacancy, and, to say truth, with 
 considerable impatience at being treated so very like 
 infants, though the lollipops were so superlative. 
 We gladly changed for one of Emerson's English 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 25 
 
 Traits." Fitzgerald, one of Tennyson's oldest friends, 
 shared the disappointment, but for different reasons 
 from Carlyle's. Tennyson's poetic progress had been 
 in his judgment a deterioration. The early poems, 
 Fitzgerald's first love, had been added to indeed, but 
 not outshone. Of In Meinoriam, though he spoke 
 admiringly, he confessed that for him it had " the 
 sense of being evolved by a poetic machine of the 
 highest order," and of The Princess he wrote to Fred- 
 erick Tennyson : " I am considered a great heretic for 
 abusing it ; it seems to me a wretched waste of power 
 at a time when a man ought to be doing his best ; and 
 I almost feel hopeless about Alfred now — I mean 
 about his doing what he was born to do." When the 
 Idylls appeared he said : " I wish I had secured more 
 leaves from that old ' Butcher's Book' torn up in old 
 Spedding's rooms in 1842, when the press went to 
 work with, I think, the last of old Alfred's best." 
 Without literally endorsing Fitzgerald's mournful 
 verdict, the majority of the good critics sorrowed over 
 Tennyson's desertion of the field in which his early 
 laurels had been reaped for the excursion into epic 
 territory, and the regret was even more unanimous 
 and widespread when he essayed drama. His repu- 
 tation indisputably suffered during these epic and 
 dramatic periods, and was not altogether restored 
 even by the publication in 1880 of Ballads and Other 
 Poems in his seventieth year, described by Theodore 
 Watts as " the most richly various volume of English 
 poetry that has appeared in this century." 
 
 A personal note in connexion with a passage in The 
 Holy Grail may here find a place : 
 
 " Let visions of the night or of the day 
 
 Come as they will ; and many a time they come, 
 
26 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 Until this earth he walks on seems not earth, 
 This light that strikes his eyeball is not light, 
 This air that strikes his forehead is not air 
 But vision — yea, his very hand and foot — 
 In moments when he feels he cannot die, 
 And knows himself no vision to himself. 
 Nor the high God a vision, nor that One 
 Who rose again." 
 
 Here, and, as will be presently noted, elsewhere in 
 his poetry Tennyson describes a mental state which 
 was one frequently present in his own experience. 
 He describes it as follows (May 7, 1874): "I have 
 never had any revelations through anaesthetics, but a 
 kind of waking trance (this for lack of a better name) 
 I have frequently had quite up from my boyhood, 
 when I have been all alone. This has often come to 
 me through repeating my own name to myself silently, 
 till, all at once, as it were, out of the intensity of the 
 consciousness of my individuality, the individuality 
 itself seemed to resolve and fade away into boundless 
 being, and this not a confused state, but the clearest 
 of the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly be- 
 yond words, where death was an almost laughable 
 impossibility. The loss of personality (if so it were) 
 seeming no extinction, but the only true life." 
 
 In The Ancie/it Sage we have an exact reproduction 
 of this description in verse : 
 
 " For more than once when I 
 Sat all alone, revolving in myself 
 The word that is the symbol of myself. 
 The mortal limit of the Self was loosed. 
 And past into the Nameless, as a cloud 
 Melts into Heaven. I touch'd my limbs, the limbs 
 Were strange, not mine — and yet no shade of doubt, 
 But utter clearness, and thro' loss of self 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 2/ 
 
 The gain of such large life as match'd with ours 
 Were sun to spark — unshadowable in words. 
 Themselves but shadows of a shadow- world." 
 
 A similar account of trance-like state is quoted by- 
 Mr. Knowles from a conversation of Tennyson's : * 
 " Sometimes as I sit here alone in this great room I 
 get carried away out of sense and body and rapt into 
 mere existence, till the accidental touch or movement 
 of one of my own fingers is like a great shock and 
 blow, and brings the body back with a terrible start." 
 With these experiences we may compare that deline- 
 ated in the ninety-fifth section of In Memoriam. 
 
 " So word by word, and line by line 
 
 The dead man touch'd me from the past. 
 And all at once it seem'd at last 
 The living soul was flash'd on mine, 
 
 " And mine in his was wound and whirl'd 
 About empyreal heights of thought, 
 And came on that which is, and caught 
 The deep pulsations of the world." 
 
 In 1859 Tennyson's strong patriotic sentiment once 
 more found expression in verse, this time inspired by 
 the volunteer movement, the outcome of a period of 
 political unrest and the feeling of the necessity of 
 provision for national defence. The Times of March 9 
 printed The War (best known as Riflemen, Form /), a 
 poem known to be by the Laureate, though unac- 
 knowledged by him. Tennyson's interest in the vol- 
 unteer force was keen and sustained. In 1867 he wrote 
 to the late Colonel Richards : " I most heartily con- 
 gratulate you on your having been able to do so much 
 for your country ; and I hope that you will not cease 
 
 * Aspects of Tennyson, N^inetefnth Century (January, 1893). 
 
28 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 from your labours until it is the law of the land that 
 every man child in it shall be trained to the use of 
 arms." 
 
 After the first volume of the Idylls of the King, Ten- 
 n5'^son took another new departure in Sea Dreams, 
 which, with Enoch Ardcn and Aylmer's Field, is an essay, 
 not altogether successful, in decorative treatment of 
 subjects taken from modern English life. His extra- 
 ordinary versatility — at once a strength and a weak- 
 ness — appears in the comparison of these poems with 
 Tithonus, contributed at Thackeray's request to Corn- 
 hill, the magazine of which he was at the time editor, 
 and written in the same year as Sea Dreams. In the 
 former we have a faultless rendering of one of the 
 most beautiful of the classic myths, deepened and 
 widened in its spiritual and moral significance, sub- 
 dued in tone yet full of exquisite colour — in short, a 
 poem in which Tennyson's genius displays itself in its 
 most commanding presence ; in the other, as in Enoch 
 Arden, the embroidered splendours of the form only 
 serve to belittle or remove into the region of fantastic 
 unreality the substance of the poem. 
 
 In 1859, accompanied by his friend, Professor Pal- 
 grave, Tennyson visited Portugal, and in 1861 revisit- 
 ed the Pyrenees, whither in 1830, with Arthur Hal- 
 lam, he had made the enthusiastic revolutionary ex- 
 cursion of his youth. It was on this occasion that 
 the lines In the Valley of Cauteretz,* commemorating 
 that early journey, were composed. In 1S64 Gari- 
 baldi was a visitor at Farringford. As a memorial 
 of his visit, and at Mrs. Tennyson's request, he 
 planted in the grounds, already beautiful with ilex 
 
 * See Remains of Arthur Hugh Clotigh, vol. i., pp. 264-69. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 29 
 
 and cedar, a WcUingtonia gigantea. In the Deinctrr 
 volume, Tennyson, in a poem to W. G. Palgrave 
 ( To Ulysses), makes a graceful reference to the visit 
 and the memorial act : 
 
 " Or watch the waving pine which here 
 The warrior of Caprera set, 
 A name that earth will not forget 
 Till Earth has rolled her latest year." 
 
 Except for such visits, occasional journeys abroad, 
 and the publication of his poems, the Laureate's long 
 life, like that of most men of letters, was a life of un- 
 eventful years. In 1867 the even tenour of the 
 home at Farringford was exchanged during the sum- 
 mer and autumn months for Aldvvorth, a house built 
 for the poet from designs by Mr. J. T. Knowles on the 
 borders of Sussex, near the village of Haslemere. 
 Partly to provide a secluded retreat where, in his in- 
 creasing horror of hero-worshippeVs, he niight have a 
 certain refuge, and partly for the sake of Mrs. Tenny- 
 son's health, the change was made. As the years wore 
 on Tennyson bore with decreasing patience the penalty 
 of fame, and his dislike of publicity may have had 
 something to do with his refusal of a baronetcy offered 
 him in 1865. 
 
 The Laureate's contribution about this time to the 
 " Eyre Defence Fund" occasioned much popular in- 
 dignation. Eyre had entered Louth Grammar School 
 shortly after the Tennysons left for Cambridge, and 
 had in later life come prominently before the public 
 eye by his prompt and decisive suppression of an in- 
 surrection among the natives in Jamaica, where he 
 was stationed. A charge of wanton cruelty was pre- 
 ferred against Eyre by a large and influential body of 
 
30 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 religious sentimentalists ; and the action of Carlyle, 
 Kingsley, Ruskin, and Tennyson in subscribing to a 
 fund for his defence produced an almost fierce resent- 
 ment. The Laureate's letter on the occasion is of 
 more than passing interest: " I sent my small sub- 
 scription as a tribute to the nobleness of the man, and 
 as a protest against the spirit in which a servant of 
 the State, who has saved to us one of the islands of 
 the Empire and many English lives, seems to be 
 hunted down. In the mean time, the outbreak of our 
 Indian Mutiny remains as a warning to all but mad- 
 men against want of vigour and swift decisiveness."* 
 
 Of the lesser poems written by Tennyson during 
 his epic and dramatic periods, by far the most remark- 
 able is Lucretius. I am not sure that the poet's high- 
 est reach is not attained in this, the most splendid of 
 his masterly studies of classical subjects. No other 
 poem displays his best qualities in such powerful 
 combination, in such flawless perfection. Admirably 
 balanced, magnificent in its metrical movement, and in 
 its final version closed by perhaps the most dramatic 
 touch in all Tennyson's poetry, it marks in my judg- 
 ment the high-water mark of his achievement. 
 Among his other poems there may be found some to 
 equal, none, I think, to surpass it. 
 
 In 1868 Henry Wads worth Longfellow visited 
 Tennyson at Farringford, whither the most distin- 
 guished visitors to England now made a pilgrimage. 
 An account of an expedition to the newly built and 
 inaccessible Aldworth, made about this time by a 
 party of guests, is given by Lord Houghton, one of 
 their number : 
 
 * Life of E. J. Eyre, late Governor of Jamaica, by Hamilton 
 Hume. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 3 1 
 
 " Our expedition to Tennyson's was a moral suc- 
 cess, but a physical failure ; for we had so bad a pair 
 of posters that we regularly knocked up seven miles 
 from the house, and should have had to walk there in 
 the moonlight, if we had not met with a London cab. 
 The bard was very agreeable, and his wife and son 
 delightful. He has built himself a very handsome 
 and commodious house in a most inaccessible site, 
 with every comfort he can require, and every discom- 
 fort to all who approach him. What can be more 
 poetical ?" 
 
 That in his poetry he had built himself an imper- 
 ishable monument was never, it seems, a settled con- 
 viction in Tennyson's mind. He was often visited by 
 doubts regarding the enduring quality 
 of his poetical achievement. Looking on The Dramas, 
 one occasion at Aldworth, in company with 
 its architect, Mr. Knovvles, he said, " That house will 
 last longer than I shall. It will last five hundred 
 years." Ambitious to try his hand in the highest de- 
 partment of literature, and uncertain how the work 
 already done might fare at the hands of time, Tenny- 
 son, led by the irony of fate, gave up some of the 
 best years of his life to the composition of dramatic 
 poetry, to which his genius cannot be said to have in- 
 clined him, and in which he certainly attained no 
 crown of lavish praise. Fine as are occasional pas- 
 sages and dramatic as are many of the scenes in 
 Queen Alary, Harold, and Becket, these plays are es- 
 sentially poems upon which a dramatic form has been 
 impressed, but impressed unconvincingly. Neither 
 in action nor in presentation of character are we 
 persuaded that they are dramatically conceived. 
 
 Queen Mary was produced at the Lyceum in April, 
 
32 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 1876, Mr. Henry Irving taking the part of Philip, 
 and Miss Bateman that of the Queen. In spite of the 
 excellence of the stage management, the representa- 
 tion was a failure. Harold, in some respects a play of 
 better construction for stage purposes, although abso- 
 lutely inferior as poetry, followed, but in published 
 form only, and has never been acted. 
 
 But in the very hour of his failure as a dramatist 
 Tennyson was engaged upon poems which were to" 
 prove how great an error he made in deserting the 
 field best suited to his genius, and how much greater 
 was the error of the critics who saw visible decline 
 writ large upon his later work. " Eh ! he has got the 
 grip of it," cried Carlyle when the ballad of The 
 Revenge was read to him ; and many another friend, 
 dissatisfied with the epic and the dramas, rejoiced 
 over the marvellous virility of the verse collected in 
 the volume entitled Ballads and Other Poems of 1880. 
 This book was the first sign of the gorgeous Indian 
 summer which was to diffuse its golden splendours 
 •over the remainder of Tennyson's career, and to end 
 only with his life. For his genius there lay in wait 
 no "winter of pale misfeature." 
 
 In April, 1879, Charles Tennyson Turner* died. At 
 Grasby, where he had been rector, he left behind him 
 many affectionate memories, and to the world of 
 letters a reputation not indeed of such far-shining 
 brilliance as his brother, but of tender and enduring 
 ray. A collected edition of his poems, with Alfred's 
 prefatory memorial lines " At Midnight," was pub- 
 lished in the year following that of his death. Fred- 
 erick, the eldest of this poetic brotherhood, still lives, 
 
 * The name " Turner" was taken under the will of a relation. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 33 
 
 the author of many poems which, bearing any name 
 but that of Tennyson, might have made the name 
 illustrious. 
 
 In The Falcon, produced by Mr. and Mrs. Kendal at 
 St. James's Theatre (December, 1879), the Laureate 
 again essayed success as a dramatist, this time with a 
 vastly less ambitious play ; a mere graceful poetic set- 
 ting of a plot from Boccaccio, the ninth novel of the 
 fifth day of his Decameron. The Falcon, too, like its 
 predecessors, failed, and it was not until the produc- 
 tion at the Lyceum by Mr. Irving in January, 1881, of 
 The Cup that success rewarded Tennyson's persever- 
 ing efforts in the dramatic form. This play owed its 
 public favour in some degree to the actors and to the 
 management under which it was produced in a style 
 of profuse magnificence. 
 
 In 1880 Tennyson was invited to become a candi- 
 date for the Lord Rectorship of the University of 
 Glasgow, but declined the honour of a nomination on 
 hearing that he was to be the candidate of the Con- 
 servative Party, in the following terms : " I only 
 consented to stand for your Lord Rectorship when 
 informed by the letter of introduction which your 
 agreeable deputation brought, that my nomination 
 was 'supported by a large majority, if not the total- 
 ity of the students of Glasgow.' It now seems neces- 
 sary that I should, by standing at your invitation, 
 appear, what I have steadfastly refused to be — a party 
 candidate for the Conservative Club. . . . You are 
 probably aware that some years ago the Glasgow 
 Liberals asked me to be their candidate, and that I, 
 in like manner, declined ; yet I would gladly accept a 
 nomination, after what has occurred on this occasion, 
 if at any time a body of students, bearing no political 
 
34 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 party name, should wish to nominate me, or if both 
 Liberals and Conservatives should ever happen to 
 agree in foregoing the excitement of a political con- 
 test, and in desiring a Lord Rector who would not 
 appear for installation, and who would, in fact, be a 
 mere roi faineant, with nothing but the literary merits 
 you are good enough to appreciate." 
 
 The note struck by Tennyson in the Ballads and 
 Other Poems was a fuller, richer, deeper note than had 
 yet been heard in his poetry. The voice that spoke 
 in it was a manlier voice. The dreamy melody of the 
 verse of his youth had given place to a more strenu- 
 ous music and themes of graver human interest. 
 Had his career closed before 1880, it might fairly 
 have been said of him that he had given the best he 
 had to give, that nothing more was to be expected. 
 There is not, I think, in the history of literature so 
 signal an example of poetic power steadily advancing 
 in strength and compass through so long a life, and 
 until its very close. Or if there be, to find a par- 
 allel we shall need to journey far : Tennyson is 
 only matched by Sophocles. 
 
 In 1882, under the direction of Mrs. Bernard Beere, 
 The Promise of May, Tennyson's fifth drama — a prose 
 one this time — was produced at the Globe Theatre, 
 and proved a dismal failure. It was popularly though 
 wrongly supposed* that, in the character of ' Edgar,' 
 Tennyson intended to pourtray the ordinary agnostic, 
 and the portrait was regarded as unnecessarily insult- 
 ing. Much excitement was caused on the fourth 
 night of the representation by an interruption from 
 
 * In a letter to Mr. Hall Caine, Tennyson wrote : " I meant 
 Edgar to be a shallow enough theorist. I never could have thought 
 that he would have been taken for an ' ordinary freethinker.' " 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 35 
 
 the Marquis of Queensberry, who rose in the theatre 
 and exclaimed, " I am an agnostic, and I protest 
 against Mr. Tennyson's gross caricature of our 
 creed." 
 
 The transient decline in popularity produced by 
 this play and by the general ill success of Tennyson's 
 dramas, was increased when, on his return from a 
 yachting cruise to Copenhagen with Mr. Gladstone, 
 he accepted a peerage. The Poet-Peer's attendance 
 at the debates in the House of Lords was very rare ; 
 on one occasion he took part in a division, voting for 
 a measure in extension of the franchise ; on another 
 he paired in favour of the " Deceased Wife's Sister" 
 bill. 
 
 The Laureate's sixth drama, Becket, was published 
 in 1884. It is pleasing to record the graceful act of 
 courtesy done his old friend, Mr. Aubrey de Vere, in 
 connexion with its composition. " He would not 
 write it," says Mr. de Vere in a private letter, "till he 
 ascertained from me (my Thoinas of Canterbury had 
 been published a few years earlier) that, so far from 
 being annoyed at his writing on the same great man, 
 I should much rejoice at it." 
 
 Of the remaining years of Tennyson's life there is 
 little for the unofficial biographer to record save the 
 publication of successive volumes of a veteran poet's 
 verse, which never lost its charm, while it grew in 
 power and drew at last to an almost tri- 
 umphant close. It is good to think that „ ^ 
 ^ . ^ . . Years. 
 
 Tennyson, like Shakespere, in his latest 
 
 work delivered a message of hope to the human race, 
 a message even prophetic in its tone of deep and sol- 
 emn assurance. The Tiresias volume (1885), fitly 
 dedicated to Robert Browning, contained among 
 
36 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 many noble and striking poems one in particular, 
 The Ancient Sage, which, to me at least, seems to sum 
 up all that is noblest and best in the life-teaching of 
 Tennyson. 
 
 It is of interest to note that in this year he ex- 
 pressed his opinion in very definite language of the 
 proposal to disestablish the English State Church. 
 " I believe," he wrote, " that the disestablishment and 
 disendowment of the Church would prelude the down- 
 fall of much that is greatest and best in England."* 
 Tennyson was given to expressing his opinions 
 strongly and with no uncertain note. When the news 
 of the persecution of the Russian Jews reached Eng- 
 land in 1891, " I can only say," he wrote, "that Russia 
 has disgraced her church and her nationality. I once 
 met the Czar. He seemed a kind and good-natured 
 man. I can scarcely believe that he is fully aware of 
 the barbarities perpetrated with his apparent sanction." 
 
 In 1886 Lionel Tennyson died on his voyage home 
 from fever contracted in India, where he had been as a 
 member of the Viceroy's staff. His death was the one 
 great trial of the poem's declining years, and is the 
 main theme of the pathetic poem dedicating the De- 
 mefer volume (1889) to the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava. 
 
 " For he — your India was his Fate, 
 And drew him over sea to you — 
 He fain had ranged her thro' and thro' 
 To serve her myriads and the State. 
 * * * * * * 
 
 " But while my life's late eve endures, 
 Nor settles into hueless grey, 
 My memories of his briefer day 
 Will mix with love for you and yours." 
 
 * Letter to Mr. Bdsworth Smith. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 37 
 
 Among the visitors to Farringford and Haslemere 
 during the last years of Tennyson's life were his old 
 friends, the Duke of Argyll, Professor Jowett, and Mr. 
 Theodore Watts, and from across the Atlantic jour- 
 neyed a welcome guest in Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 Just before his own death in December, 1889, Brown- 
 ing wrote his last letter to Tennyson on the occasion 
 of the Laureate's eightieth birthday : 
 
 " My dear Tennyson : To-morrow is your birthday, 
 indeed a memorable one. Let me say I associate my- 
 self with the universal pride of our country in your 
 glory, and in its hope that for many and many a year 
 we may have your very self among us — secure that 
 your poetry will be a wonder and delight to all those 
 appointed to come after. And for my own part, let 
 me further say, I have loved you dearly. May God 
 bless you and yours." 
 
 Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886), in which the 
 author returned to the theme of his youth, possesses an 
 interest of a somewhat different order from that of the 
 other later volumes in that it presents the same mind 
 that produced the early Locksley Hall, moving among 
 the same surroundings altered by time, and thus 
 at once marks a contrast and emphasises a develop- 
 ment. If the two poems are read side by side, the 
 characteristics of Tennyson's youthful and decorative 
 art are sharply distinguishable from those of his 
 maturer, enlarged, and reflective poetry. The early 
 poem betrays an intellectual slightness and a music 
 thin by comparison with the impassioned depth and 
 sincerity, the ample volume of the later. The one is 
 governed by the egoistic passion of the boy, the other 
 by the altruistic temper of the sage. 
 
38 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 Versatile and graceful to the last, even in fields re- 
 mote from that of his power, he published in 1892 his 
 last drama, The Foresters, a romantic pastoral play, 
 which achieved a brilliant success when produced by 
 Mr. Daly in New York, with Miss Ada Rehan as 
 Maid Marian. Sherwood Forest, Robin Hood, Maid 
 Marian, and the life under the greenwood tree must 
 have conveyed something of the charm of English 
 country life in the olden time to American audiences, 
 whose ancestors' life indeed it was. 
 
 But the harp from whose magic strings flowed the 
 ever-varying, ever-melodious music that had seemed 
 in English ears the sweetest of its time, was soon to 
 be silent. In the autumn of 1892, but a few weeks 
 before the publication of The Death of Qifione and 
 Akbars Dream, rumours were heard of the poet's ill- 
 ness, and on October 6, before dawn, but in a room 
 flooded with the quiet moonlight, the end came. He 
 was buried among his peers and beside his friend, 
 Robert Browning, in Poets' Corner, Westminster 
 Abbey. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 In the spring of 1827, Charles and Alfred Tenny- 
 son were partners in a literary venture. The preface 
 to the volume, which had for motto the line from 
 
 Martial, 
 
 " Hsec nos novimus esse nihil," 
 
 stated that the " poems were written from the ages 
 of fifteen to eighteen, not conjointly, but 
 individually." In Messrs. Macmillan's "poems 
 edition of 1893 the preface by Hallam, by Two 
 Lord Tennyson, contains the further in- Brothers," 
 formation obtained from his father that he 1827. 
 (Alfred) was between fifteen and seventeen 
 when the poems were written, his brother Charles 
 between fifteen and eighteen, and that four poems 
 now signed " F. T." were by Frederick Tennyson, 
 the eldest brother. In this latter edition the initials, 
 supplied by Frederick Tennyson, of the supposed 
 authors, either "A. T." or " C. T.," are appended to 
 each of the poems, but we are warned that there is 
 no certainty as to the authorship in individual cases.* 
 Without the help of the initials, however, and despite 
 the fact that the music now familiar as Tennysonian 
 is nowhere to be heard in the book, there is little 
 difficulty in determining the work of each author. 
 
 * Some additional poems are for the first time printed in this 
 edition. They belonged to the original MS. of 1827, but were 
 omitted for some forgotten reason. 
 
40 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 After one perusal I was struck by the fact that the 
 moVe ambitious poems are the work of one hand, and 
 that hand is proved to be Alfred's by the occasional 
 phrases to be met with which appear again in his 
 later poetry — as, for example, in this volume, in the 
 poem entitled Egypt, occur these lines: 
 
 " The first glitter of his rising beam 
 
 Falls on the broad-based pyramids sublime;" 
 
 and in A Fragment, published by Alfred in the Gem 
 in 1830, these occur : 
 
 " Yet endure unscathed 
 Of changeful cycles, the great Pyramids 
 Broad-based a.vaid the fleeting sands." 
 
 And here in Oriaiia the lines, 
 
 " Winds were blowing, waters flowing. 
 We heard the steeds to battle going, 
 
 Oriana ; 
 Aloud the hollow bugle blowing, 
 Oriana," 
 
 echo a similar movement in the Vale of Bones : 
 
 " When on to battle proudly going, 
 Your plumage to the wild winds blowing. 
 Your tartans far behind ye flowing." 
 
 I have noticed a number of these similarities and 
 resemblances, and think it would be no difficult task 
 to pick out with tolerable certainty the poems by 
 Alfred from among the one hundred and two poems 
 of which the volume is composed. The vein of feel- 
 ing in Charles's poems is more tranquil, more domes- 
 tic, and the themes chosen far less difficult. Alfred is 
 the bolder adventurer, and ranges further in his search 
 for subjects. His work seems to express a more de- 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. ^ 4I 
 
 liberate determination to be poetic, and effort is more 
 distinctly characteristic of his contributions to the book 
 than those of Charles, which may be unhesitatingly 
 described as by comparison spontaneous and natural. 
 It may at once be said that there is no mark of distinc- 
 tion, no promise of future greatness in these poems. 
 They are rather, indeed, remarkable for the absence 
 of the puerility one might naturally expect to be some- 
 where betrayed in a series of such youthful efforts, 
 than by any positive qualities. Many of the poems 
 written by Alfred Tennyson in later years, such as, for 
 example, The Skipping-Rope or The English War Song 
 (of 1830), reach a lower deep of inanity than any 
 printed in this first volume. For the rest an ac- 
 quaintance with the poetry of the world such as 
 few schoolboys can boast is plentifully exhibited in 
 the mottoes prefixed to most of the verses. The 
 Latin poets, Lucretius, Virgil, Horace, are laid under 
 contribution ; Milton, Gray, Byron, Scott, and Moore 
 among English poets ; and occasional prose authors 
 are represented — in short, a goodly company — among 
 which, of course, the English writers, and Byron in 
 particular, predominate. The boys, and it is signifi- 
 cant when we attempt to fix for ourselves the place 
 which the future will assign to Alfred Tennyson — the 
 boys were cradled into poetry by the best poets of 
 the world. The determination to be poets preceded 
 any true poetic faculty, and in Alfred's case we must 
 regard that determination, leading as it did to life- 
 long, indefatigable labour in the effort to obtain an 
 artist's command over his medium, an artist's mastery 
 in technique, as in large measure the power which, 
 joined with the true poetic vision of later years, made 
 him the poet he eventually became. 
 
42 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 The versification and metrical movement of this 
 early verse are, of course, entirely derivative ; Byron's 
 Hebrew Melodies and Moore's Irish Melodies supply 
 much of the inspiration. The boys had indeed, as 
 Coleridge said of Alfred, " begun to write poetry 
 without very well understanding what metre was," 
 and this volume is composed of a series of imita- 
 tive metrical essays. Imitative they are, however, 
 in a catholic spirit, no one model being exclusively 
 followed. 
 
 The only notice of the book in which the brothers 
 " crossed the Rubicon" together, as they expressed it 
 in the preface, appeared in The Literary Chronicle and 
 Weekly Revieio (May 19, 1827), "This little volume," 
 remarked the writer, "exhibits a pleasing union of 
 kindred tastes, and contains several little pieces of 
 considerable merit." 
 
 In the first year of his Cambridge residence Tenny- 
 son was a candidate for the Chancellor's Medal in 
 English Verse — the subject Timbuctoo. Among his 
 rivals were Monckton Milnes and Arthur 
 Timbuctoo Hallam. Hallam's poem, composed in the 
 and the terza rima of Dante, may be read in the 
 " Poems" of volume of his Remains in Verse and Prose, 
 1830. published in 1834. Tennyson's poem is 
 now accessible in Messrs. Macmillan's edi- 
 tion of Poems by Tivo Brothers, to which it forms a 
 natural conclusion. The exercises were submitted 
 to the University Examiners in April, and upon June 
 12, 1829, the following announcement appeared in 
 the Cambridge Chronicle and Journal: "On Saturday 
 last the Chancellor's Gold Medal for the best English 
 poem by a resident undergraduate was adjudged 
 to Alfred Tennyson, of Trinity College." This 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 43 
 
 is the first public mention of the name of Alfred 
 Tennyson in connexion with poetry. In the AtJiciKZum 
 of July 22, a very flattering notice of the prize poem 
 appeared. "We have accustomed ourselves," wrote 
 the reviewer (perhaps John Sterling or Frederick 
 Maurice, at that time the joint editors), "to think, 
 perhaps without any very good reason, that poetry 
 was likely to perish among us for a considerable 
 period after the great generation of poets which is 
 now passing away. The age seems determined to 
 contradict us, and that in the most decided manner ; 
 for it has put forth poetry by a young man, and that 
 where we should least expect it — namely, in a prize 
 poem. These productions have often been ingenious 
 and elegant, but we have never before seen one of 
 them which indicated really first-rate poetical genius, 
 and which would have done honour to any man that 
 ever wrote. Such, we do not hesitate to affirm, is the 
 little work before us ; and the examiners seem to 
 have felt it like ourselves, for they have assigned the 
 prize to its author, though the measure in which he 
 writes was never before, we believe^ thus selected for 
 honour." The measure here referred to was blank 
 verse, a bold experiment on Tennyson's part, the 
 traditions being all in favour of the heroic couplet. 
 I have little doubt, however, that, so far from attenu- 
 ating his chance of success by his choice of metre, 
 Tennyson really increased it ; the novelty of the 
 measure calling attention to and emphasizing the 
 novelty of method and manner conspicuous in the 
 poem. Without echoing the high praise of the 
 AthencEui/i reviewer, it is not too much to say that 
 Timbuctoo is a very remarkable prize exercise, vague 
 indeed in its general conception and purpose, but 
 
44 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 indisputably original ; the first English poem to 
 mark the direction in which the richly decorative 
 art of Keats was to find its development. Written 
 very shortly after the Poems by Two Brot/iers, it is a 
 surprising advance in poetic technique. The ob- 
 viously imitative measures of his boyhood poems 
 are forgotten, and Tennyson has found himself. The 
 music is the familiar music that we associate with 
 his name — 
 
 " Where are ye, 
 
 Thrones of the Western wave, fair Islands green? 
 
 Where are your moonlight halls, your cedarn glooms, 
 
 The blossoming abysses of your hills ? 
 
 Your flowering capes, and your gold-sanded bays, 
 
 Blown round with happy airs of odorous winds ?" 
 
 The inspiration here, as indeed throughout, is es- 
 sentially Keats ; read Hyperion and you have traced 
 this manner to its fount. The influence of Words- 
 worth, traceable in some of his later poems, is not yet 
 visible, nor was there anything either of Wordsworth, 
 the revealer, or Wordsworth, the unconscious artist, 
 grand in the bare simplicity of his style, in Tennyson 
 at any period of his poetic history. They may be 
 taken as representatives of methods in poetry mu- 
 tually exclusive. If Wordsworth was a great poet, he 
 was a great poet by reason of his revelation, by 
 reason of the truth and the beauty of his thought 
 when it crystallised in a perfect and inevitable be- 
 cause a quietly natural form of expression. If Tenny- 
 son was a great poet, it was because, like Pope, he 
 could set forth a philosophy and adorn a pathetic 
 tale in a more graceful and more appropriate key of 
 words than any man of his time ; and, what Pope 
 could not do, give lyric expression to intense individ- 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 45 
 
 ual moods with almost the passionate power of Burns, 
 and an intellectual precision not at all times attained 
 by Shelley. Essentially a lyrist, and original only in 
 his presentation of his own moods or states of feel- 
 ing, Tennyson, when he travelled beyond the range 
 of his own experience, was a scholarly and accomplish- 
 ed versifier, a later Pope, who from among the ideas 
 current at the time selected the best, and gave them 
 out again in his own elegant and exquisite version. 
 Difficile est proprie commit nia die ere. 
 
 The rich and dreamy melodies, the alternate lan- 
 guor and swiftness of emotion, and the subtleties of 
 its delineation, displayed in Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, at 
 once exercised a fascination over the sensitive tem- 
 peraments of the young men who were readers of 
 poetry in 1S30. Verse like this, from the first poem 
 in the volume, Claribel, was a source of new and de- 
 lightful sensations : 
 
 " At eve the beetle boometh 
 
 Athwart the thicket lone : 
 At noon the wild bee hummeth 
 
 About the moss'd headstone ; 
 At midnight the moon cometh, 
 
 And looketh down alone. 
 Her song the lintwhite swelleth, 
 The clear-voiced mavis dwelleth. 
 
 The callow throstle lispeth, 
 The slumbrous wave outwelleth. 
 
 The babbling runnel crispeth, 
 The hollow grot replieth 
 
 Where Claribel low lieth."* 
 
 * In Henry Alford's journal there are some interesting refer- 
 ences to the brothers Tennyson. Referring to Alfred's " Poems" 
 of 1S30, and Charles's Sonnets and Fugitive Pieces, published the 
 same year, he wrote : 
 
 "Oct. 12, 1830. Looked over both the Tennysons' Poems at 
 
46 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 It was a new departure in English poetry ; there 
 had been nothing like it before ; and although the in- 
 tellectual equipment of the author, so far as revealed 
 in the poetry, was really of the slightest, and although 
 some of the poems were hardly worthy of a place in any 
 printed book, curiosity and admiration were aroused, 
 and an interest excited in the personality of the new 
 poet. The best and most characteristic poems in this 
 volume were Claribcl, Mariana, Isabel, Adeline, Oria/ia, 
 The Dying Swan, A Character, The Poet, The Poet's 
 Mind, and Circumstance. There were fifty-three poems 
 in all, of which almost half (twenty-five) were after- 
 wards suppressed, a few being restored to places in the 
 collected editions of later life. The following is a list of 
 the suppressed poems : Elegiacs ; The How and the Why ; 
 Supposed Confessions of a Second-rate Sensitive Mind not 
 in Unity with Itself ; The Burial of Love j To Juliet j Songs 
 (three) ; Heroto Leander ; The Mystic ; The Grasshopper ; 
 Love, Pride, and Forgetfulness ; Chorus in an Unpublished 
 Drama, written very early ; Lost Hope ; The Tears of 
 Heaven ; Love and Sorrow ; To a Lady Sleeping ; Sonnets ; 
 Love ; The Kraken j English War Song ; National Song j 
 Dualisms J We are Eree,oi piovrsi. Tennyson's judg- 
 ments on his own poems, unlike those of Wordsworth, 
 were almost unerring, and, as a consequence, the inces- 
 sant revision to which his work was subjected rarely 
 failed to be happily effective. How finely some of his 
 poems were retouched may here be illustrated by per- 
 
 night ; exquisite fellows. I know no two books of poetry which 
 have given me so much pure pleasure as their works ;" and again 
 later : 
 
 " Met Tennant, Hallam, Merivale, and the three Tennysons at 
 Alfred Tennyson's rooms. The latter read some very exquisite 
 poetry of his, entitled Anacaoiia and T/w IlisperiJcs. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 47 
 
 haps the palmary example. In its first version, the 
 closing line of Lucretius read : 
 
 " What matters ? All is over : Fare thee well" 
 
 —a line weak in itself, and weaker as the conclusion of 
 BO matchless and dramatic a reproduction of the clas- 
 sic story. In its later form the last words of Lucre- 
 tius catch up in questioning echo his wife's despairing 
 cry " as having failed in duty to him," and once again 
 the unsolved problem of his philosophic life shapes it- 
 self anew, the ruling passion strong even in violent 
 and untimely death : 
 
 "Thy duty? What is duty ? Fare thee well !" 
 
 The Poems of 1S30 were praised by Hallam and 
 Leigh Hunt, but severely handled by Christopher 
 North in Blackwood. So far there had been no unanim- 
 ity among the critics as to the rank to be assigned 
 the representative of the new school of 
 poetry. At the same time, it was evident The "Poems" 
 that the younger generation was in his of 1832. 
 favour, and in 1S32 Tennyson put forth 
 another volume of lyrics in which the distinctive char- 
 acteristics of his style were still more strongly marked. 
 Hallam's criticism^" the author imitates nobody" — 
 made in his reviewof the 1830 Poems in the English- 
 mail's Magazine^ was even more strictly true of this 
 second volume. Subtly indefinite as many of the 
 pieces were, the very absence of definite meaning lent 
 them the magic of suggestiveness which captivated 
 many minds. " I am not sure," wrote Edgar Allan 
 Poe, " that Tennyson is not the greatest of poets. . . . 
 There are passages in his works which rivet a convic- 
 tion I had long entertained, that the indefinite is an 
 element in the true 7roii]GiZ. Why do some persons 
 
48 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 fatigue themselves in endeavours to unravel such phan- 
 tasy pieces as The Lady of Shalott ? As well unweave 
 the xjcntum textilcm. If the author did not deliberately 
 propose to himself a suggestive indefiniteness of mean- 
 ing, with the view of bringing about a definiteness of 
 vague and therefore of spiritual effect — this, at least 
 arose from the silent analytical promptings of that 
 poetic genius which, in its supreme development, em- 
 bodies all orders of intellectual capacity."* In that mu- 
 sical dream, T/ie Lady of S/ialott,\ in the subtile mod- 
 
 * New York Democratic RcvicLi), December, 1844. 
 •j- The original version of this poem differs from the final in 
 sixty or seventy lines. The following was the concluding stanza 
 in the early edition : 
 
 " They crossed themselves, their stars they blest, 
 Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire, and guest ; 
 There lay a parchment on her breast. 
 That puzzled more than all the rest 
 The well-fed wits at Camelot. 
 ' The web was woven curiously, 
 The charm is broken utterly ; 
 Draw near and fear not, this is I, 
 The Lady of Shalott.' " 
 How Tennyson could polish a pebble until it becam^ a gem is 
 nowhere better illustrated than by a comparison of this with the 
 following stanza : 
 
 " Who is this ? and what is here ? 
 And in the lighted palace near 
 Died the sound of royal cheer ; 
 And they cross 'd themselves for fear. 
 
 All the knights at Camelot : 
 But Lancelot mused a little space ; 
 He said, ' She has a lovely face ; 
 God in his mercy lend her grace. 
 The Lady of Shalott.'" 
 
 Shalott is a form of Astolat. The poem was suggested by an 
 Italian romance — Donna Ji Scalotia. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 49 
 
 ulation, the harmonies and cadences of The Lotos- 
 Eaters,^ in the finely drawn portraits of The Dream of 
 Fair Women., and especially in the highly wrought 
 beauty and deep moral significance of the allegory 
 presented in The Palace of Art, indisputable evidences 
 of original genius were displayed. It was impossible 
 to receive this body of poetry in contemptuous silence ; 
 it was difficult to withhold from it a meed of respect. 
 But the casquet which held these jewels contained 
 some spurious and many faulty brilliants. And in 
 the Quarterly of July, 1833, a full and cruel but, in 
 many respects, admirable review of Tennyson's poetry 
 proceeded with caustic irony " to point out," as the 
 writer said, " the peculiar brilliancy of some of the 
 gems that irradiate his poetical crown." The indig- 
 nation of Tennyson-worshippers against the author 
 of this critique has never slept, but in my judg- 
 ment it may be justly claimed not only as the most 
 effective, but in the poet's own interest the most 
 valuable review ever written. The supreme excel- 
 lence of Tennyson's poetry, if it can be said to re- 
 side in any one quality, resides in its flawless per- 
 fection of finish. Had Tennyson not been a great, al- 
 most a faultless artist, he would have been a poet of 
 inconsiderable rank. He became such an artist, as 
 has already been remarked, by assiduous culture of 
 rare native talent, and the criticism of the Quarterly 
 showed the young author the indispensable necessity 
 of even sterner artistic governance and stricter self- 
 discipline. Lockhart, for there is little doubt as to 
 the authorship of the article, was a severe critic, but 
 his severity bore fruit where extravagant praise or in- 
 dulgent partiality would have proved less than barren. 
 
 * Founded on a passage in Odyssey. (Bk. ix. 82 seq.) 
 
50 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 Some of the pieces which drew forth his sarcastic com- 
 ments were omitted from future editions, and almost all 
 were altered or rewritten in respect of the censured 
 passages.* The following poems were dropped in the 
 next collected edition. Five Sonnets (" Mine be the 
 strength of spirit fierce and free ;" " O Beauty, pass- 
 ing beauty ! sweetest sweet !" " Blow ye the trumpet, 
 gather from afar ;" " How long, O God, shall men be 
 ridden down ;" " As when with downcast eyes we 
 
 muse and brood") ; Lines " To ;" TJic Hesperides ; 
 
 Rosalind ; Songs — Who can Say ; O Darling Room ; Lines 
 "To Christopher North ;" Kate. In the first edition of 
 T/ie Palace of Art, many passages appeared which were 
 struck out of all subsequent editions, and four stanzas 
 descriptive of two statues in the palace were appended 
 to the poem with a note, together with the following 
 fine verses descriptive of a tower for astronomical ob- 
 servation : 
 
 " Hither, when all the deep unsounded skies 
 
 Were shuddering with silent stars, she clomb, 
 And, as with optic glasses, her keen eyes 
 
 Pierced through the mystic dome. 
 " Regions of lucid matter taking forms, 
 
 Brushes of fire, hazy gleams. 
 Clusters and beds of worlds, and bee-like swarms 
 
 Of suns and starry streams. 
 " She saw the snowy poles of moonless Mars, 
 
 That marvellous round of milky light 
 Below Orion, and those double stars 
 
 Whereof the one more bright 
 
 " Is circled by the other." 
 " In this poem," wrote Lockhart, " we first observed 
 4 stroke of art which we think very ingenious. No 
 
 * Compare the first with the later editions of lite Millo's 
 Daughter. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 5 1 
 
 one who has ever written verses but must have felt the 
 pain of erasing some happy line, some striking phrase, 
 which, however excellent in itself, did not exactly suit 
 the place for which it was destined. How curiously 
 does an author mould and remould the plastic verse 
 in order to fit in the favourite thought ; and when he 
 finds that he cannot introduce it, as Corporal Trim 
 says, anyhow, with what reluctance does he at last re- 
 ject the intractable but still cherished offspring of his 
 brain ! Mr. Tennyson manages this delicate matter in 
 a new and better way. He says with great candour and 
 simplicity, ' If this poem were not already too long, / 
 should have added the following stanzas,' and then he adds 
 them J or, ' I intended to have added something on 
 statuary, but I found it very difficult ; but I have fin- 
 ished the statues of Elijah and Olympias ; judge 
 whether I have succeeded ; ' and th.e.n we have those two 
 statues. This is certainly the most ingenious device 
 that has ever come under our observation for recon- 
 ciling the rigour of criticism with the indulgence of 
 parental partiality." Another comment of Lockhart's 
 may be quoted. The early version of the Dream of 
 Fair Women contained these lines in the description of 
 Iphigenia's sacrifice : 
 
 " One drew a sharp knife through my slender throat ; 
 Slowly, and nothing more." 
 
 " What touching simplicity," remarked the reviewer, 
 " what pathetic resignation — he cut my throat — 
 ^nothing morel' One might indeed ask what more 
 she would have ?"* 
 
 * The lines now stand as follows — 
 
 " The bright death quiver'd at the victim's throat ; 
 Touch'd ; and I knew no more." 
 
52 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 In April, 1833, Coleridge, than whom no subtler 
 musician in words has ever written verse, wrote of these 
 early poems as follows : " I have not read through all 
 Mr. Tennyson's poems, which have been sent to me, 
 but I thini<. there are some things of a good deal of 
 beauty in that I have seen. The misfortune is that he 
 has begun to write verses without very well under- 
 standing what metre is. Even if you write in a known 
 and approved metre, the odds are, if you are not a 
 metrist yourself, that you will not write harmonious 
 verses ; but to deal in new metres without considering 
 what metre means and requires is preposterous. 
 What I would, with many wishes of success, prescribe 
 to Tennyson — indeed without it he can never be a 
 poet in art — is to write for the next two or three years 
 in none but one or two well-known and strictly defined 
 metres, such as the heroic couplet, the octave stanza, 
 or the octosyllabic measure of the Allegro and Pense- 
 roso. He would probably thus get imbued with a 
 sensation, if not a sense, of metre without knowing it, 
 just as Eton boys get to write good Latin verses by 
 conning Ovid and Tibullus. As it is, I can scarcely 
 scan his verses."* How is this criticism of Coleridge's 
 to be interpreted ? To censure the author of The 
 Lotos-Eaters^ The Palace of Art, and CEiwne as deficient 
 in a knowledge of what metre was excites surprise, 
 and were any other than Coleridge the critic, would 
 excite derision no less. Yet Coleridge is in a sense 
 right. Tennyson, more especially in his earlier poems, 
 was a melodist rather than a metrist. He aimed at 
 musical effects, at sound-effects only perfectible for 
 the human ear through some more plastic medium 
 
 * Table- Talk of S. T. Coleridge, vol. ii., p. 164. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 53 
 
 than language. The human voice may be regarded as 
 a perfect instrument of limited range, but as the 
 organ of articulate speech it is at once ennobled and 
 degraded — ennobled as the servant of the rational 
 soul, degraded as a musical instrument. Language- 
 less emotion it may adequately render, as the harp or 
 violin render it ; intellectual precision, only attain- 
 able in some articulate tongue, is incompatible with 
 the freedom of its chords, essential for the production 
 of the purely musical effects attainable through- other 
 mediums.* 
 
 For ten years after the publication of the 1832 poems 
 Tennyson published no volume of verse. When at 
 length he broke silence, it was to take assured rank 
 among English poets. " If anything were to happen 
 to Tennyson," said Elizabeth Barrett, " the 
 world should go into mourning." The first Poems of 
 of the two volumes published in 1842 was i^**. In 
 mainly composed of poems which had al- 
 ready appeared in the previous collected 
 editions of 1830 and 1832, the second of poems, with 
 one or two exceptions, entirely new. Of the reprinted 
 pieces some were practically re-written and many were 
 
 * Edgar Allan Poe, writing in the New York Democratic Review 
 (December, 1844), notices in Tennyson the absence of strict regard 
 to metre. " His shorter pieces abound in minute rhythmical lapses 
 — sufficient to assure me that, in common with all poets, living or 
 dead, he has neglected to make precise investigation of the prin- 
 ciples of metre ; but, on the other hand, so perfect is his rhyth- 
 mical instinct in general, that he seems to see with his ear." It were 
 more correct, I believe, to say that he attempts to reproduce a 
 melody correctly heard by the ear, but disorganized when set to 
 words— that is, only imperfectly reproduced; hence the rhythmical 
 lapses; hence, too, the inapplicability of ordinary metrical prin- 
 ciples. 
 
54 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 amended. The attempt to chronicle the alterations 
 made by Tennyson in his poetry, even after it was 
 made public, would in itself require a volume. It will 
 suffice to remark that up to the last the successive 
 editions invariably contained changes, many, indeed, 
 slight or verbal, but no less indicative of the scrupu- 
 lous and incessant attention bestowed upon his work. 
 Take as one example these lines, the opening of 
 QLnoue in the 1832 volume : 
 
 " There is a dale in Ida, lovelier 
 Than any in Ionia, beautiful 
 With emerald slopes of sunny sward, that lean 
 Above the loud glen river, which hath worn 
 A path thro' steep-down* granite walls below 
 Mantled with flowering tendril twine." 
 
 This might have been written by any one, but in 
 1842 it had been through the refiner's hands again, and 
 emerged pure Tennysonian : 
 
 " There is a vale in Ida, lovelier . 
 
 Than all the valleys of Ionian hills. 
 The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen. 
 Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine. 
 And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand 
 The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down 
 Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars 
 The long brook falling thro' the clov'n ravine 
 In cataract after cataract to the sea." 
 
 When Monckton Milnes, on behalf of Tennyson's 
 friends, represented to Sir Robert Peel, then Prime 
 Minister, that the poet's name be placed upon the 
 civil list for a pension, he sent him a copy of these 
 
 * Tennyson's authorities are always classic : 
 
 " Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire." 
 
 • —Othello. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 55 
 
 poems, marking Ulysses and Lockslcy Hall. Of all his 
 poems probably the latter has gained the widest ap- 
 preciation. Its colour and picturesqueness, the fresh- 
 ness of its treatment of a simple and familiar theme, 
 and the lively movement of its trochaic measure won 
 for it instant popularity. In a copy of the first edi- 
 tion, originally possessed by Mr. R. W. Proctor, the 
 following verses appear in manuscript after the nine- 
 teenth couplet : 
 
 " In the hall there hangs a painting, Amy's arms are round my 
 neck, 
 Happy children in a sunbeam, sitting on the ribs of wreck. 
 
 " In my life there is a picture : she that clasped my neck is flown, 
 I am left within the shadow, sitting on the wreck alone." 
 
 These lines serve to connect this poem with the 
 Locksley Hall of Sixty Years After, as they appear in 
 the later poem after the sixth couplet. Several of the 
 readings of the first edition have been changed, for 
 example : 
 
 " Let the peoples spin forever down the ringing grooves of change" 
 
 and 
 
 " 'Tis the place, and round the gables, as of old, the curlews call." 
 
 Among the new poems of this collection the Morte 
 d' Arthur, the English idylls, Dora, and The Gardener s 
 Daughter^' The Two Voices, Ulysses,] and St. Simeon 
 Stylites, are the most remarkable, and call for special 
 notice as marking an advance in the scope and ethical 
 
 * A note to Dora in the 1842 edition stated " The idyll of 
 Dora was partly suggested by one of Miss Mitford's pastorals ; 
 and the ballad of Lady Clare by the novel of Inheritance. 
 The reference here is to the story Dora Crcssxucll in Our Village.^' 
 The Inheritance is by Susan Ferrier, of Edinburgh. 
 
 f Founded on 26 canto of Dante's Inferno. 
 
56 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 significance of the poet's art. When these poems were 
 published Tennyson had passed the first two stages 
 of his poetical career — the derivative period, during 
 which he was in turn influenced by preceding writers, 
 and imitated their several manners, and the period 
 of musical effects, in which the formal part of poetry, its 
 sensuous beauty, had occupied his ear and mind. Ex- 
 perience of real life — the death of his beloved friend, 
 Arthur Hallam — awoke in him the fuller pulse of man- 
 hood. The ebb and flow of human passion, the deeper 
 currents in the lives of men, were now the springs of a 
 less sensuous, more intellectual music. In )^outh, it was 
 the loveliness and the charm of the world that took 
 by storm his imagination ; in age, its majesty, its un- 
 riddled mysteries, and far-reaching issues are the bur- 
 den of his song. In Ulysses the many voices of the 
 ocean summon the wanderer from inglorious rest, and 
 once again he calls together his friends for a voyage 
 of heroic enterprise ; in The Tivo Voices, the old yet 
 ever new debate on the value and the issues of our 
 mortal life is evolved with a wonderful skill and a 
 critical exactness which brings to mind the art of 
 Dryden, that master logician in verse ; in St. Simeon 
 Stylites, the companion picture to Ulysses, the fruitless- 
 ness of the creed that in its passion for another world 
 neglects the present is vividly pictured, and we have 
 in it the most dramatically conceived and executed 
 poem he had yet written. Tennyson's mind, as I have 
 elsewhere attempted to show, was in fuller sympa- 
 thy with the ethics and ideals of Greek philosophy 
 than with the self-effacing spirit of the Middle Ages. 
 In this poem we have his criticism in dramatic form 
 of the extreme asceticism, the " other-worldliness" of 
 mediaeval Christianity, but it is a criticism full of 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 57 
 
 sympathy. That he should have entered into its 
 spirit, and exhibited the finer shades of feeling in a 
 spiritual mood so foreign to his own gives to the 
 poem an element of very special interest. It may be 
 said that in The Idylls of the King — in some respects his 
 most characteristic work — the mental attitude is dis- 
 tinctly Christian. But I should prefer to describe the 
 symbolism of the idylls as neo-Platonic. The allegory 
 of " the soul at war with sense," though embodied in 
 a chivalric romance, is pervaded by conceptions which 
 have their root in the poetic mysticism of Plato's 
 many-sided mind. The philosophic creed of Brown- 
 ing and the devout faith of Mr. Aubrey de Vere, if 
 their poetry be contrasted with Tennyson's, have their 
 roots deep struck in the soil of pure Christianity,* and 
 borrow from the philosophers subsidiary conceptions 
 only ; with Tennyson, though his creed was indeed 
 Christian, it was grafted on the tree of high pagan 
 speculation. 
 
 In these 1842 volumes Tennyson speaks out of his 
 heart and mind. He remained till the last a delicate 
 manipulator of musical phrases, but the substance, or 
 what Aristotle would call " the soul of the poem," is 
 no longer second to the diction, the body in which it 
 resides. 
 
 Dora and The Gardener s Daughter, like The Miller s 
 Daughter of the previous volume, are vignettes of real 
 country life, idyllic scenes, " tasting of Flora and the 
 country green." It is the richness of colour, the lush 
 luxuriance of beauty, not tropical, but through gen- 
 erations ordered by skilful hands — such colour and 
 luxuriance as English landscape alone can show — that 
 
 * Note the spirit of sympathy with mediaeval Christianity present 
 in their poetry. 
 
58 A TENXVSOX PRIMER. 
 
 are lovingly dwelt upon in Tennyson's descriptive 
 poetry. He was a patriot who loved his native coun- 
 try best — her citizens, her government, her traditions, 
 and not less the flowers in her fields, the skies above 
 them, and the sea that keeps her inviolate. It is in- 
 structive, however disillusionising, to note the extra- 
 ordinary " inter\-al" in the fine judgment of such an 
 artist, which permitted these lines (afterwards sup- 
 pressed), entitled The Skipping- Rape, a place beside 
 the truh- great poems of i S42 : 
 
 " Sure never yet was antelope 
 
 Could skip so lightly by. 
 Stand off. or else ray skipping-rope 
 
 Will hit you in the eye. 
 How lightly whirls the skipping-rope ! 
 
 How fairy -like you fly ! 
 Go, get you gone, you muse and mope — 
 
 I hate that silly sigh. 
 Nay, dearest, teach me how to hope. 
 
 Or tell me how to die. 
 There, take it. take my skipping-rope, 
 
 And hang yourself thereby."' 
 
 The future may discover in this some oracmar mean- 
 ing, but surely Fitzgerald was justified when he said : 
 " Alfred, whatever he may think, cannot trifle. His 
 smile is rather a grim one."* 
 
 * Fitzgerald's Letitrs, p. 95. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Since Shakespeare's day woman had not occupied 
 in English poetry so large and gracious a space as in 
 the character-studies of Tennyson's early volumes. 
 The ideals of chivalry were come again, but enriched 
 and refined. 
 
 In The Princess, published in 1847, the now widely- 
 known poet became the poetic interpreter and critic of 
 that movement of thought and feeling which con- 
 cerned itself with the position of woman in 
 the social organisation. In a fantastic and The 
 half serious, half sportive allegory, " moving Princess, 
 as in a strange diagonal," he outlined and 1847. 
 reduced to form the many elements in the 
 problem, and by his statement, no less than by his solu- 
 tion of the questions involved, gave definite and con- 
 crete shape to the vague aspirations and somewhat 
 nebulous ideas present in the intellectual atmos- 
 phere. 
 
 Criticise it as you will, and the early reviewers 
 were not tardy in expressing disapproval. The Prin- 
 cess is a poem full of Tennyson's own peculiar 
 charm. " A medley," as it was called, incongru- 
 ous and unreal, if it betrays the poet's faults and 
 weaknesses, it cannot be denied to possess many of 
 his most winning and most characteristic excellences. 
 Like most of his longer poems, it was built up to its 
 present shape through successive editions. The sec- 
 ond edition, published after a year's interval, contained 
 
6o A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 few changes, and was dedicated to Henry Lushington,* 
 an ardent admirer, with whom the author was on a 
 visit in September, 1847, ^"d whose friendship was 
 one of the most prized in his life. With the third 
 edition (1850) began the series of extensive emenda- 
 tions, omissions, and additions, which were continued 
 in the fourth and fifth editions of 185 1 and 1853. 
 The hint for the story is by some believed to have 
 been given in Johnson's Rasselas. " The princess 
 thought, that of all sublunary things, knowledge was 
 the best ; she desired, first, to learn all sciences, 
 and then proposed to found a college of learned 
 women, in which she would preside, that, by convers- 
 ing with the old and educating the young, she might 
 divide her time between the acquisition and commu- 
 nication of wisdom, and raise up for the next age 
 models of prudence and patterns of piety." It has 
 been suggested by others that the inspiration came 
 from Defoe or Margaret Cavendish's Female Academy. 
 By others, again, the clue to the genesis of The Prin- 
 cess is found in the lines : 
 
 " This were a medley ! we should have him back 
 Who told the ' Winter's Tale' to do it for us," 
 
 and the central idea in the plot of Love' s Labour s Lost, 
 which turns upon a three years' enforced seclusion in 
 study and apart from women: 
 
 " Our court shall be a little Academe, 
 Still and contemplative in living art." 
 
 The question is not a grave one and need not be 
 
 * " If all Mr. Tennyson's writings had by some strange accident 
 been destroyed, Henry Lushington's wonderful memory could, I 
 believe, have reproduced the whole." — Memoir of Henry Lushing- 
 ton, by G. S. Venables. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 6l 
 
 definitely answered. The scene of the Prologue is 
 laid in the south of England, and the surroundings 
 are those of Sir John Simeon's garden at Swainston. 
 The host, in whose grounds the opening festival is 
 held, is probably the poet's friend under the disguise 
 of Sir Walter Vivian. Some lines (afterwards omit- 
 ted) in the Epilogue, which was almost entirely re- 
 written for the third edition, give an account of the 
 original design, and its subsequent development: 
 
 " Here closed our compound story, which at first 
 Had only meant to banter little maids 
 With mock heroics and with parody ; 
 But slipt in some strange way, crost with burlesque, 
 From mock to earnest, even into tones 
 Of tragic, and with less and less of jest 
 To such a serious end." 
 
 Besides remodelling the Prologue and Epilogue, and 
 in many respects shaping the poem to a later design, 
 Tennyson added to the third edition the exquisite 
 songs, which alone secure for the work in which they 
 are set an immortality of remembrance. It already 
 contained that wonderful isometric lyric, Tears, Idle 
 Tears, which I am inclined to regard as the most 
 characteristic of his genius of any poem ever writ- 
 ten by the author, and that for two reasons. It is 
 his most successful expression of the emotion of 
 vague regret, of dumb inarticulate pain of heart, a 
 province of universal human feeling, which Tenny- 
 son alone among poets* has found a voice to render, 
 and thus made peculiarly his own. 
 Here, as in the lines : 
 
 * If he have a rival in this province it is Goethe. 
 
62 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 " Break, break, break 
 
 On thy cold gray stones, O Sea !"* 
 
 he has sounded the hidden and mysterious places of 
 the soul, whence at times wells up a nameless and a 
 causeless sorrow, and to its incommunicable speech the 
 chords of his music vibrate. And of the music the 
 form, too, is all his own. That the measure is the 
 measure of Hamlet and the. Paradise Lost is difficult to 
 realise. The subtle sweetness of the modulation is 
 typical of Tennyson's handling of our great national 
 metre, and is displayed here in its fullest perfection. 
 He discovered in it a lyric quality hitherto unsus- 
 pected, and if it be objected that the division into 
 stanzas and the recurrence of the phrase " days that 
 are no more'' serves to compensate for the absence of 
 rhyme, it is only necessary to turn to the '' small 
 sweet idyll," "Come down, O maid, from yonder 
 mountain height," where without stanza or definite 
 rhyme the effect of lyric movement is perfectly at- 
 tained. In the concluding lines of the last-named 
 poem there is much onomatopoeic beauty : f 
 
 " Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn, 
 The moan of doves in immemorial elms, 
 And murmuring of innumerable bees." 
 
 * " Written," said Tennyson, " in a Lincolnshire lane at five 
 o'clock in the morning." 
 
 f "Onomatopoeic effects are common in Tennyson, as in such 
 a passage as this : 
 
 "Plunged : and the Jlood drew j yet I caught her ; Ihen 
 Oaring one arm, and bearing in my left 
 The weight of all the hopes of half the world, 
 Strove to buffet to land in z'ain," 
 
 ■ — The Princess. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 63 
 
 " Who after three such lines," wrote Charles Kings- 
 ley, " will talk of English as a harsh and clumsy 
 language, and seek in the effeminate and monotonous 
 Italian for expressive melody of sound ? Who cannot 
 hear in them the rapid rippling of the water, the 
 stately calmness of the wood dove's note, and in the 
 repetition of short syllables and soft liquids in the 
 last line : * 
 
 " The murmuring of innumerable bees" ? 
 
 I may here note, in passing, possible suggestions for 
 one or two of the songs. For the third Moore's lyric, 
 How Sweet the Ansiver Echo Makes, and for the fifth 
 the tenth section of Canto I. of Scott's Lay\ and the 
 Anglo-Saxon fragment, Gudrun. 
 
 To the fourth edition of The Princess were added 
 the passages relating to the " weird seizures" of the 
 Prince, and a few minor alterations were introduced 
 into the text ; the fifth contained for the first time the 
 
 Or here, where the sound of the violin is imitated in the " n"s 
 and " u"s. 
 
 " All night have the roses heard 
 The Jlute, violin, bassoon : 
 All night has the casement jessamine stirred 
 To the dancers dancing in tune," 
 
 — Maud. 
 
 * Of this idyll Symonds writes in his Studies of the Greek 
 Poets : "It transfers with perfect taste the Greek idyllic feeling 
 to Swiss scenery ; it is a fine instance of new wine being success- 
 fully poured into old bottles, for nothing could be fresher, and not 
 even the Thalysia is sweeter." But Mr. Symonds is wrong when 
 he speaks of it (Appendix) as containing "no reiterated sounds." 
 Let any one read the first half-dozen lines and judge for himself. 
 The place of rhymed endings is taken by interlaced repetitions of the 
 same words and phrases. The rhyming may not be regular, but the 
 poem is full of rhymes. 
 
64 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 fifteen lines in the Prologue, beginning " O miracle 
 of women." Among the many omissions which were 
 made between the successive issues one possesses an 
 interest which make it perhaps worthy of record. It 
 occurs in the speech of the Princess in answer to 
 Lady Blanche. 
 
 " But Ida with a voice, that like a bell 
 
 ToU'd by an earthquake in a trembling tower, 
 Rang ruin, answered full of grief and scorn 
 
 What ! ill our time of glory when the cause 
 Noiv stands tip, first, a trophied pillar — now 
 So dipt, so stinted in onr triumph — bai-rcd 
 Evn front our free heart-thanks, and every way 
 
 Thwarted and vext, and lastly catechised 
 
 By our own creature ! one that made our la7i>s ! 
 
 Our great she- Solon ! her that built the nest 
 
 To hatch the cuckoo ! whom we called our friend ! 
 But we will crush the lie that glances at ns 
 As cloaking in the larger charities 
 Some baby predilection : all amazed ! 
 
 We must amaze this legislator more." 
 
 [Here follow eight retained lines.] 
 
 " Go help the half -brained dwarf Society, 
 To find loio motives unto noble deeds. 
 To fix all doubt ttpon the darker side y 
 Go, fitter there for narrowest neighbourhoods. 
 Old talker, haunt where gossip breeds and seethes. 
 And festers in provincial sloth ! and you. 
 That think we sought to practise on a life 
 Risk'd for our own and trusted to our hands. 
 What say you, sir? you hear us ; deem ye not 
 ' Tis all too like that even now we scheme. 
 In one broad death confounding friend and foe. 
 To drug them all? revolve it ; yozi are man. 
 And therefore no doubt wise." 
 
 Both the poem and the character of the Princess 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 65 
 
 have gained much by the rejection of these weak and 
 tasteless lines. 
 
 The pause that occurs at the close of the fourth 
 canto when Lilia sings : 
 
 " Thy voice is heard thro' rolling drums," 
 
 marks the " change in the music," the transition from 
 gay to grave, the point at which the " enchanted rev- 
 erie" passes into the serious allegory. It will be 
 noticed that the songs at once reflect and focus the 
 significant or uppermost sentiment of the cantos they 
 separate and unite, and may be read as a clue to the 
 poet's philosophy of the relations between the sexes. 
 Around the child gather all the elements in the social 
 problem, and in so far as Tennyson offers any solu- 
 tion of that problem it is by emphasising the laws of 
 nature which determine in their inexorable fashion the 
 place of the man and the place of the woman in any 
 social system that is to endure. To say that 
 
 " Woman is not undevelopt man 
 
 But diverse ; could we make her as the man, 
 Sweet Love were slain ;" 
 
 to say that they must 
 
 " Sit side by side, fuU-summ'd in all their powers, 
 Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be" — 
 
 this is but to give poetic expression to very evident 
 things, but it is also to give expression to the only 
 "thinkable" philosophy of the matter. Tennyson 
 has added nothing to our knowledge, but he has 
 beautifully summed for us, as an artist should, the 
 teaching of nature, our mother. 
 
 In many respects the distinctive elements in Ten- 
 nyson's poetic genius — certainly those of his youthful 
 
66 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 genius — the branches of his art in which he excelled 
 are most prominently exhibited and may be most 
 advantageously studied in this poem. The idyll was 
 a form borrowed indeed from the Greek, but, suited 
 as it was to his powers, the form which he made espe- 
 cially his own. And T/ic Princess is an idyll or series 
 of idyllic pictures where the sweetness of his versifi- 
 cation, his subtle skill in word-painting, and his keen 
 and yet gracious vein of pleasantry meet under the 
 felicitous auspices of a subject eminently iippropriate 
 to their display. 
 
 The Laureate's model in blank verse was Milton, 
 and his verse displays the artist's reverence for a 
 greater artist. Compared with Milton's, his blank 
 verse is distinguished by the much larger proportion 
 it contains of words of pure English stock, by the 
 comparative frequency with which the pause comes 
 at the end of the line and by his preference for the 
 internal pause after the fourth syllable to that after 
 the sixth, which was Milton's favourite. The splen- 
 dour of the great wheeling circles of Milton's verse, its 
 organ-like harmony, the billowy mounting volume of 
 its music, is in large measure due to its periodic struc- 
 ture. Milton constructed his verse in paragraphs, car- 
 ing more for the effect of the whole than of its consti- 
 tuent parts, and so arranging the pause and cadence of 
 his single lines that the ear remains attent until the 
 final strain is reached, in which the suggested harmo- 
 nies are all resolved, each paragraph 
 
 " swelling loudly 
 Up to its climax, ami then dying proudly." 
 
 With Tennyson the single line is more frequently 
 sufficient for itself, the periodic system less conspicu- 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 6/ 
 
 ous. The traditional licences, elision such as is exhib- 
 ited here : 
 
 " O swallozu, stuallo'cu, if / could follow and light 
 Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill" — 
 
 an occasional initial trochee, or in the second or fourth 
 foot, in room of the iambus, and feminine endings, are 
 to be found in Tennyson, as in most other writers, but 
 he is more uniformly careful to avoid abruptness or 
 harshness ; so much so, that his verse exhibits a more 
 evenly polished surface than that of any other English 
 poet. Among musical devices, alliteration ranks as 
 his first favourite, and is used throughout his poetry 
 with unusually fine effect and with less insistence than 
 by Mr. Swinburne, whose monotony in this respect is 
 not infrequently exasperating, Tennyson's allitera- 
 tion, skilfully introduced in its unapparent form 
 when the similarity of sound occurs in the body rather 
 than in the initial letters of words, as, for example : 
 
 " A /ife that lea.ds melod'ioxxs days," 
 
 accounts for much of his melodic beauty. His pov- 
 erty in rhymes, a point in which he offers a striking 
 contrast to Browning, who is royal in affluence, is 
 particularly noticeable in his longest rhymed poem, 
 In Me/iioriam J* a poverty compensated by studied 
 and ingenious arrangement of alliterative phrases, as 
 once more, for example : 
 
 " Wild Inrd whose wdixble /iqui(/ Jte'eet. " 
 
 Instances may be found, I believe, in every section of 
 this poem. A critical and scientific workman in his 
 
 * See Tennyson and " Jn A/finoriain," by J. Jacobs (Uavid 
 Nutt, London.) 
 
68 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 measures, Tennyson might have been trusted to write 
 upon any subject at any length without fear of descent 
 into the slipshod or turgid movement of Wordsworth's 
 lengthy disquisitions. 
 
 The word-painting of TJic Pri/icess, no less than its 
 versification, will reward a careful stud}'. It seems 
 that the author was in the habit of noting a scene or 
 aspect of nature in a few brief phrases, as a painter 
 might with a dash or two of colour suggest a scheme 
 for future elaboration. Here is the result where the 
 memory of an approaching storm, seen from the brow 
 of Snowdon, supplied the original suggestion : 
 
 " As one that climbs a peak to gaze 
 O'er land and main, and sees a great black cloud 
 Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of night, 
 Blot out the slope of sea from verge to shore, 
 And suck the blinding splendour from the sand, 
 And quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn 
 Expunge the world." 
 
 I am unacquainted with any poem exhibiting a more 
 luxuriant richness of colour or more vivid and delicate 
 picturesqueness of imagery. Illustration is needless, 
 but take this : 
 
 " Many a little hand 
 Glanced like a touch of sunshine on the rocks. 
 Many a light foot shone like a jewel set 
 In the dark crag." 
 
 In its entirety, T/ie Pn'rui'ss, though not his most 
 ambitious work, displays, as I have already indicated, 
 the qualities of Tennyson's genius which the future 
 will speak of as '* Tennysonian," as exclusively his 
 own, the qualities which of all English poets he pos- 
 sessed and cultivated in the fullest measure. It is the 
 highest conceivable reach in decorative art, nor can 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 69 
 
 lyrical sweetness be further sweetened. Half classic, 
 half mediaeval in feeling, wholly modern in subject 
 and treatment, it represents the character of the 
 author's mind. His culture enabled him to embellish 
 and enrich with a wealth of suggestion and illustration 
 so fresh a theme as the emancipation of woman, in a 
 style of captivating, dream-like phantasy, and, as in 
 The Idylls of the King, the strongest elements in his 
 nature, mysticism and romance, are subtly woven 
 through the whole. 
 
 The following letter, the most important and inter- 
 esting ever written by Tennyson in connexion with 
 his poetry, was addressed to Mr. S. E. Dawson, author 
 of A Study of " The Princess." It naturally claims a 
 place here : 
 
 "Aldworth, Haslemere, Surrey, 
 
 November 21, 1882. 
 
 " Dear Sir : I thank you for your able and thought- 
 ful essay on The Princess. You have seen, among 
 other things, that if women ever were to play such 
 freaks, the tragic and the burlesque might go hand in 
 hand. I may tell you that the songs were not an 
 afterthought. Before the first edition came out I 
 deliberated with myself whether I should put songs 
 in between the separate divisions of the poem ; again, 
 I thought, the poem will explain itself ; but the public 
 did not see that the child, as you say, was the heroine 
 of the piece, and at last I conquered my laziness and 
 inserted them. You would be still more certain that 
 the child was the true heroine, if instead of the first 
 song as it now stands, 
 
 " ' As thro' the land at eve we went,' 
 
 I had printed the first song which I wrote, The Losing 
 
yo A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 of the Child. The child is sitting on the bank of the 
 river, and playing with flowers ; a flood comes down ; 
 a dam has been broken through ; the child is borne 
 down by the flood ; the whole village distracted ; after 
 a time the flood has subsided ; the child is thrown 
 safe and sound again upon the bank, and all the women 
 are in raptures. I quite forget the words of the bal- 
 lad, but I think I may have it somewhere. 
 
 "Your explanatory notes are very much to the pur- 
 pose, and I do not object to your finding parallelisms. 
 They must always recur. A man (a Chinese scholar) 
 some time ago wrote to me, saying that in an unknown, 
 untranslated Chinese poem there were two whole lines 
 of mine almost word for word. Why not ? Are not 
 human eyes all over the world looking at the same 
 objects, and must there not consequently be coinci- 
 dences of thought and impressions and expressions ? 
 It is scarcely possible for any one to say or write any- 
 thing in this late time of the world to which in the 
 rest of the literature of the world a parallel could not 
 somewhere be found. But when you say that this 
 passage or that was suggested by Wordsworth or 
 Shelley or another, I demur, and, more, I wholly dis- 
 agree. There was a period in my life when, as an 
 artist — Turner, for instance — takes rough sketches of 
 language, etc., in order to work them eventually into 
 some great picture ; so I was in the habit of chroni- 
 cling, in four or five words or more, whatever might 
 strike me as picturesque in nature. I never put these 
 down, and many and many a line has gone away on 
 the north wind, but some remain — e.g. : 
 
 " ' A full sea glazed with muffled moonlight.* 
 " Suggestion : The sea one night at Torquay, when 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 'J\ 
 
 Torquay was the most lovely sea village in England, 
 though now a smoky town ; the sky was covered with 
 thin vapour, and the moon was behind it. 
 
 " ' A great black cloud 
 
 Drags inward from the deep.' 
 
 " Suggestion : A coming storm seen from the top of 
 Snowdon. In the Idylls of the King : 
 
 " ' With all 
 Its stormy crests that smoke against the skies.' 
 
 " Suggestion : A storm that came iijion us in the mid- 
 dle of the North Sea. 
 
 " ' As the water-lily starts and slides.' 
 
 " Suggeetion : Water-lilies in my own pond, seen in 
 a gusty day with my own eyes. They did start and 
 slide in the sudden puffs of wind till caught and stayed 
 by the tether of their own stalks — quite as true as 
 Wordsworth's simile, and more in detail. 
 
 " ' A wild wind shook — 
 
 Follow, follow, thou shalt win.' 
 
 "Suggestion : I was walking in the New Forest. A 
 wind did arise, and : 
 
 " ' Shake the songs, the whispers and the shrieks 
 Of the wild wood together.' 
 
 " The wind, I believe, was a west wind, but because 
 I wished the Prince to go south, I turned the wind to 
 the south, and naturally the wind said, ' Follow.' 
 
 " I believe the resemblance which you note is just a 
 chance one. Shelley's lines are not familiar to me, 
 though, of course, if they occur in T/ie Prometheus I 
 must have read them. 
 
 " I could multiply instances, but I will not bore 
 you ; and far indeed am I from asserting that books. 
 
72 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 as well as nature, are not and ought not to be sug- 
 gestive to the poet. I am sure that I myself and many 
 others find a peculiar charm in those passages of such 
 great masters as Virgil or Milton where they adopt 
 the creation of a bygone poet, and reclothe it, more or 
 less, according to their own fancy. 
 
 " But there is, I fear, a prosaic set growing up 
 among us, editors of booklets, bookworms, index- 
 hunters, or men of great memories and no imagination, 
 who impute themselves to the poet, and so believe 
 that he, too, has no imagination, but is forever poking 
 his nose between the pages of some old volume in or- 
 der to see what he can appropriate. The)' will not allow 
 one to say, ' Ring the bells ' without finding that we 
 have taken it from Sir P. Sydne}', or even to use such 
 a simple expression as the ocean * roars ' without find- 
 ing out the precise verse in Homer or Horace from 
 which we have plagiarised it. (Fact !) 
 
 " I have known an old fishwife who had lost two 
 sons at sea clench her fist at the advancing tide on a 
 stormy day and cry out : ' Ay, roar ; do ! How I hates 
 to see thee show thy white teeth ! ' Now, if I had 
 adopted her exclamation, and put it into the mouth of 
 some old woman in one of m}' poems, I dare say the 
 critic would have thought it original enough, but 
 would most likely have advised me to go to nature for 
 my old woman, and not to my imagination ; and, 
 indeed, it is a strong figure. Here is another little 
 anecdote about suggestion. When I was about twenty 
 or twenty-one I went on a tour to the Pyrenees. 
 Ljnng among these mountains before a waterfall that 
 comes down one thousand or twelve hundred feet, 
 I sketched it (according to my custom then) in these 
 words : 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 73 
 
 " ' Slow-drnpping veils of thinnest lawn.' 
 
 When I printed this a critic informed me that ' lawn' 
 was the material used in theatres to imitate a water- 
 fall, and graciously added : ' Mr. T. should not go to 
 the boards of a theatre, but to nature herself, for his 
 suggestions.' And I had gone to nature herself. I 
 think it is a moot point whether, if I had known how 
 that effect was produced on the stage, I should have 
 ventured to publish the line. I beg you to believe 
 me, etc., A. Tennyson." 
 
 " P. S. — By the by, you are wrong about ' the trem- 
 ulous isles of light ;' they are isles of light, spots of 
 sunshine coming through the eaves, and seeming to 
 slide from one to the other, as the procession of girls 
 * move under the shade.' And surely the ' beard-blown 
 goat ' involves a sense of the wind blowing the beard 
 on the height of the ruined pillar." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Arthur Henry Hallam, Tennyson's college friend 
 and constant companion, died in September, 1833. 
 From their first meeting until the companionship was 
 broken by death not quite five years elapsed,* and al- 
 most seventeen years passed away before 
 InMemoriam. the elegy which has become the imperish- 
 1850. able monument of their friendship was 
 given to the world. f The poems composing 
 it were written at intervals during Tennyson's life in 
 London, and the whole was complete or almost com- 
 plete long prior to its publication. '"A. T. has near a 
 volume of poems — elegiac — in memory of Arthur 
 Hallam," wrote Fitzgerald in January, 1845 ; " don't 
 you think the world wants other notes than elegiac 
 now ? Lycidas is the utmost length an elegiac should 
 reach. But Spedding praises ; and I suppose the ele- 
 giacs will see daylight, public daylight, one day." 
 When the elegiacs did see daylight, five years later, 
 they were published anonymously, but Tennyson's 
 name upon the title-page was not necessary to pro- 
 claim him the author. 
 
 * /;/ AI cm or tarn, xxii. 
 
 \ An interesting circumstance connects Hallam with another 
 great English elegy, Adoiiais. It was first printed in Pisa, under 
 the direction of Byron, and a copy of the pamphlet was brought by 
 Hallam from Italy. The poem appeared for the first time in an 
 English edition, accessible to English readers, in The Transactions 
 of the Caml)ridge Union, 1834. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 75 
 
 The attention of a reader of In Memoriavi is 
 at the outset naturally directed to the form of the 
 stanza, which is unvaried throughout. The arrange- 
 ment of the transposed quatrain has much to do 
 with the effect produced by the poem as a whole 
 and in its several parts ; it strikes the key-note of the 
 elegiac mood, and thus preserves throughout sections 
 that deal with very varying subject-matter the unity 
 of sentiment which binds them together ; and when the 
 poet is dealing with the philosophical problems that 
 naturally suggest themselves in such a poem, the 
 thought flows with less interruption into the mould of 
 this than it could conceivably have done into any other 
 rhymed form among English measures. I have no 
 doubt that the possibilities in the stanza for refiective 
 elegiac poetry were suggested to Tennyson by the 
 short elegy composed in the same metre by Ben Jon- 
 son.* Might one not accept this, for example, as part 
 of the later poem ? 
 
 " Who, as an offering at your shrine, 
 
 Have sung this hymn, and here entreat 
 One spark of your diviner heat 
 To light upon a love of mine." 
 
 The same measure was employed by Lord Herbert, of 
 Cherbury,f in a short love poem of small merit but 
 more interest, as containing verses such as these, 
 which so nearly recall the later music : 
 
 " O no, belov'd ! I am most sure 
 Those virtuous habits we acquire, 
 As being with the soul entire, 
 Must with it evermore endure. 
 
 * Ben Jonson's Underwoods. f Born 1581. Died 1648. 
 
76 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 •' Else should our souls in vain elect ; 
 And vainer yet were heaven's laws, 
 When to an everlasting cause 
 They gave a perishing effect. 
 
 " These eyes again thine eyes shall see, 
 And hands again these hands infold ; 
 And all chaste pleasures can be told, 
 Shall with us everlasting be."* 
 
 I do not know that Tennyson has anywhere invented 
 anew poetic form ; but here, as throughout his poetry, 
 he proves his possession of that singular penetration 
 of judgment which made choice with perfect instinct 
 of the formal mould best suited to his theme. As will 
 be seen, I incline to regard the pre-eminent quality in 
 his genius as keen-sighted judgment rather than power 
 of initiative or originating way of thovight. The orig- 
 inal thinker is original in the disengagement of his men- 
 tal processes from the grooves in which the thoughts 
 of ordinary men run, and in his presentation of the 
 facts with which all are familiar in new and unex- 
 pected relationships. Tennyson — and no better ex- 
 ample of my meaning need be adduced than this poem 
 — is a great and deservedly popular poet because his 
 way of thought is that of the cultivated minds of his 
 time ; and his large and indisputable influence in the 
 shaping of the ideas of that time is in great degree 
 due to the ripeness of the popular mind to receive 
 those ideas, and to the fact that his precision and 
 beauty of expression made clear to his readers what 
 they had already themselves obscurely felt and 
 thought. Does any one ask : " Is this not to be a great 
 poet, a poet of the first order ?" I would answer, " It 
 
 * From An Ode upon the Question moved. Whether Love should 
 continue forever? 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. TJ 
 
 is to be a great poet, but not a poet of the first order, 
 for it recalls the greatness of Pope and of Gray, it sug- 
 gestsno companionship with Dante, with Milton, or with 
 Wordsworth." It may, perhaps, again be asked : "Is 
 not Virgil a poet of the first order, and is not Tennyson 
 comparable to Virgil ?" To me it seems that fortu- 
 nate as Tennyson was in the hour of his birth, he 
 lacked a supreme poetic lot such as fell to Virgil — 
 still, in Bacon's words, " The chastest poet and the 
 royalest that to the memory of man is known" — to be 
 the acknowledged poetic representative of Rome's 
 imperial race, to have for theme, majestic and incom- 
 parable, the foundation and the glories of Rome itself. 
 Published when the century had reached its middle 
 year. In Mcmoriam best reflects of any poem written 
 during the century the current moods of its thought 
 and feeling. Here are put into verse the problems of 
 the head and heart that were uppermost in men's minds 
 in the days in which he wrote, so that the poet, while 
 he speaks of his personal sorrow, is really a man of 
 his time, speaking for his contemporaries. For this 
 reason /;/ Memoriam is an elegy in a class by itself, 
 nor can it, to any purpose, be compared with poems 
 like Lycidas or Adonais. Each of these is a dirge, 
 in which the person of the lost friend is never lost 
 sight of, whereas the later elegy is a series of lyrics, 
 many of which are general reflections in the presence 
 of death the thought-compeller, rather than songs of 
 mourning for a definite grief.* And, moreover, be- 
 
 * " It is rather the cry of the whole human race than mine. In 
 the poem altogether private grief swells out into thought of and 
 hope for the whole world. It begins with a funeral and ends with 
 a marriage, begins with death and ends in promise of a new life — 
 a sort of Divine Comedy, cheerful at the close. It is a very im- 
 
78 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 cause it mirrors the life of the mind and heart in the 
 valley of the shadow, its appeal is to emotions that are 
 universal and thoughts that visit the homes of all the 
 world. While, then, an expression of personal loss, and 
 modern in its theological and philosophical features, 
 In Memoriam is most purely human in its interest of 
 all elegiac poems that ever were written. Like Gray's 
 elegy, in this predominance of the human element 
 over the personal it takes a place in the hearts of its 
 readers that the marvellous art and witchery of colour 
 in Lycidas and Adonais can never give them. 
 
 In the history of theology In Memoriam marks the 
 beginnings of that school of thought represented 
 within the Church by Frederick Denison Maurice — the 
 Broad Church movement, as it is called, which was 
 itself the outcome of the more liberal and deeper 
 view of life, its meaning and its issues, presented in 
 the Transcendental philosophy. But while the in- 
 fluences of Kant and the later German thinkers, radi- 
 ated in England by Coleridge and Carlyle, are abun- 
 dantly apparent in Tennyson's philosophy, fairly sum- 
 med in this poem, we must be careful to abstain from 
 any effort to find in the poetic statement of his 
 thought any definite scheme or system. If I were 
 asked to give some succinct statement of Tennyson's 
 philosophy, I should say that he emphasises in every 
 line of his reflective poetry the creed of the higher 
 emotions. Born as he was into a critical epoch, he 
 
 personal poem, as well as personal. There is more about myself 
 in Ulysses, which was written under the sense of loss and all that 
 had gone by, but that still life must be fought out to the end. It 
 was more written with the feeling of his loss upon mo than many 
 poems in /// Menioiiaiit." — " K tin arks of Tfiuiysoii," quoted b_v 
 the editor in the Nineteenth Century, January, 1893. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 79 
 
 could not but feel the uncertainties that mar, the 
 doubt that threatens the most firmly built and most 
 zealously guarded dogmas. Yet Tennyson's strength 
 as a thinker seems to me to have lain in the sceptical 
 attitude of his mind, not indeed towards the older 
 forms of faith, but towards the newer creeds of science, 
 which in the first flush of their youth claimed an easy 
 victory, ere the ground upon which the battle was to be 
 fought lay clearly mapped or determined before men's 
 eyes. In his refusal to accept the negatives of science 
 — a refusal more than justified even before his own 
 death — in his conviction that the uncertainties of the 
 new teaching were more uncertain, the doubts as to 
 the reality of its solutions of the old problems to be 
 doubted more gravely than those attaching to revela- 
 tion, in this the penetration of his judgment was 
 eminently proved. It is this grasp of real amid in- 
 numerable false issues, this intellectual sanity, which 
 dignifies Tennyson as a thinker no less than a poet. 
 If he lacked the power of imaginative synthesis, which 
 in a brain like Plato's marshals the facts of the world 
 under the unity of a self-consistent system, his an- 
 alytic faculty probed deep and far. 
 
 I have said that briefly summed Tennyson's creed 
 maybe described as the creed of the higher emotions. 
 The powerlessness of the human mind face to face 
 with the tremendous problems of " why ? whence ? 
 whither?" its inherent incapacity to solve these ques- 
 tions, was forced upon him, as it was forced upon his 
 contemporaries, Clough and Arnold. But while with 
 them in this, he did not share their spiritual dejection 
 or sad stoic acquiescence in an unavoidable lot. Fall- 
 ing back upon a testimony higher than any that could 
 be submitted to a critical scientific examination, he 
 
8o A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 took up his position in the ancient and impregnable 
 fortress of the soul that refuses to doubt its Divine 
 origin, its home in God. 
 
 " If e'er, when faith had fallen asleep, 
 I heard a voice, ' Believe no more,' 
 And heard an ever-breaking shore 
 That tumbled in the Godless deep; 
 
 " A warmth within the breast would melt 
 The freezing reason's colder part. 
 And like a man in wrath the heart 
 Stood up and answer'd, ' I have felt.'"* 
 
 This creed, based upon the higher emotions, or, as 
 we may perhaps call it, the evidence of the best and 
 noblest moments of the spirit's inner life, is the spirit- 
 ual message borne to his youthful friend by the An- 
 cient Sage: 
 
 " 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." 
 
 The history of the soul in grief, such a grief, with 
 its accompanying cloud of torturing doubts, as Death, 
 the parter of friends, alone can bring, is in this poem 
 delineated with a fidelity we dare not challenge. Its 
 passage from affection for an earthly to devotion to- 
 wards a heavenly friend, from vague doubt to hope- 
 ful trust, from " wild unrest " to peace, is strikingly 
 matched in the history of the soul in Carlyle's Sartor 
 Jiesartus. From "the everlasting no" until the 
 " centre of indifference" is passed the shadow lies 
 deep upon the path, and then slowly "a full new life" 
 
 * /;/ Menioriain, cxxiv. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 8 1 
 
 is breathed, drawn in part from the subtle helpful- 
 ness of Nature in her time of spring,* until " the ever- 
 lasting yea" is realised. In Mcmoriam has been com- 
 pared with the sonnet-sequence of Shakespeare, and 
 the comparison is not without interest. Many of 
 Tennyson's phrases were borrowed from these son- 
 nets; in both series of poems the deepest feelings and 
 convictions of the heart and mind are reflected, and 
 in both the labour of the artist strangely mingles a 
 pleasure with its pain. 
 
 While it outlines no system of thought, no philos- 
 ophy of consolation, Iti Memoriam is pre-eminently a 
 poem strong in soothing influences, in assuaging 
 remedies for the pain of loss. It can hardly be said 
 that Tennyson fortifies the mind and heart as Brown- 
 ing or as Wordsworth fortifies them. He supports and 
 consoles, indeed, in that the reader is taken into his 
 confidence, and learns what were the supports and 
 consolations of the poet in his dark hour. Thus by 
 sympathy with the sorrow he is drawn insensibly to 
 sympathy with hope renewed and faith regained. In 
 the presentment of his own experience, in that series 
 of delicate sketches of the healing influences of time 
 and nature allied against victorious despair Tennyson 
 speaks to every mourner an unforgettable word. 
 
 Here, perhaps, may be fitly noticed the art displayed 
 by Tennyson in making Nature sympathise with his va- 
 rying moods. He finds in her an echo of his own secret 
 feeling, and her sights and sounds minister to his heart. 
 
 " Calm is the morn without a sound, 
 Calm as to suit a calmer grief, 
 And only thro' the faded leaf 
 The chestnut pattering to the ground." 
 
 * In Memoriam^ Ixxxvi. 
 
82 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 The lucid beauty and completeness of the scenes 
 depicted in his earlier poems, in themselves delight- 
 ful, prepare in each case the mind for the mood or 
 sentiment that prevails throughout the story. In The 
 Lotos-Eaters, for example, or in such idyllic scenes as 
 are drawn in poems like The Miller s Daughter, Nature 
 is in perfect harmony with the prevailing emotion, at 
 once intensifying and interpreting it. Much of the 
 charm resident in Tennyson's setting of tales, them- 
 selves destitute of any special interest, may be directly 
 traced to the exquisite appropriateness of the back- 
 ground chosen and the no less exquisite skill in its 
 pourtrayal. 
 
 A careful study of In Memoriain reveals more of 
 design than is at first apparent in the arrangement of 
 the lyrics.* Probably because it was long mature, 
 before it was given to the world, the changes in later 
 editions, if we except verbal alterations, are fewer than 
 is the case with most of Tennyson's longer poems. f 
 Two sections only were added : xxxix. (" Old warder 
 of these buried bones") in the pocket volume edition, 
 and lix. (" O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me ?") in the 
 fourth edition of 185 1. The design, therefore, was 
 complete from the first, and the sequence of sections 
 has not been interfered with. It seems clear that 
 Nos. i.-lvi. (now Ivii. by reason of the interpolated 
 "yew tree" section) were complete in themselves and 
 were written, most of them, in the first year. No. 
 
 * Tennyson is quoted by Mr. Knowles {^Nineteenth Century, Jan- 
 uary, 1S93) as saying that there are "nine natural groups" of 
 stanzas in the poem. These are : 1-8 ; g-20 ; 20-27 ; 28-49 ; 
 50-58 ; 59-72 ; 72-98 ; 99-103 ; 104-131. 
 
 \ Few for Tennyson ; about fifty verbal and other changes were 
 made since its publication. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 83 
 
 Ivi. (Ivii.) has a marked conclusion, and Ivii. (Iviii.) is 
 introductory to a supplement. That supplement be- 
 gan with " He past, a soul of nobler tone," to which 
 he afterwards prefixed lix. It is to be observed that 
 he himself makes lix. begin the sixth of his nine 
 groups. These five groups might be called Death, 
 Burial, the Past, Christmas Hopes, the Future. The 
 lapse of time is clearly marked ; the three Christmas 
 seasons following the death of Hallam, in September, 
 1833, are each the subject of a section or sections,* 
 and the whole is therefore a mental history of the 
 years of the poet's life immediately following 1833. 
 The Epilogue is a marriage greeting to Cecilia Ten- 
 nyson, who, in October, 1842, was married to Edward 
 Law Lushington. 
 
 One more word may be added. I note in this poem 
 a purity of colour in its pictorial passages, a quieter 
 music than is elsewhere to be found in Tennyson's 
 poetry. To one who takes up a volume of his verse 
 after a volume by, let us say, a contemporary — Mat- 
 thew Arnold — the colour seems glaring, and at times 
 the music loud and even noisy. Arnold's ideal in the 
 poetic art was a chastened simplicity, a reliance for 
 effect in a poem, to use his own phrase concerning 
 Wordsworth, solely on the weight and force of that 
 which with entire fidelity it utters. Tennyson's deco- 
 rative art, his love of colour for its own sake, of music 
 for its own sake, lead him at times into what must 
 always seem to the highly cultivated sense extrava- 
 gances of colour, an over-profusion, a lush luxuriance, 
 and into similar extravagances of sound. To put it 
 briefly, he rarely trusts his thought, as Wordsworth 
 
 *xxviii.-xx.x. ; Ixviii. ; civ.-cv. 
 
84 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 trusted it, to build for itself a natural home of expres- 
 sion. So much an artist was he that Nature could 
 not speak his language, and hence the inevitable word 
 is rarely heard in his poetry. Compare a poem like 
 that entitled Palladium, or a poem like that To 
 Marguerite, beginning : 
 
 " Yes, in the sea of life enisled" — 
 
 compare these with almost any poems by Tennyson, 
 and it will be seen that in the one case the power and 
 charm of the verse belong in the main to the idea, in 
 the other case frequently to the language in which it 
 is clothed. 
 
 Save in In Mcmoriam and in some of the finer pas- 
 sages of the Idylls, I do not know that elsewhere in 
 Tennyson's more ambitious poetry is the decorative 
 instinct, the laying of colour for the sake of colour, so 
 restrained, the reliance upon the emotion or the idea 
 so complete, the expression so simply and directly nat- 
 ural, as in the above and in a hundred other poems by 
 Wordsworth or Arnold. If I am right, therefore, a 
 purer ideal of art, a more fastidious taste guides the 
 artist's hand in this than in any other part of his work : 
 
 " Till now the doubtful dusk reveal'd 
 
 The knoll once more where, couch'd at ease, 
 The white kine glimmer'd, and the trees 
 Laid their dark arms about the field ; 
 
 " And, suck'd from out the distant gloom, 
 A breeze began to tremble o'er 
 The large leaves of the sycamore, 
 And fluctuate all the still perfume, 
 
 " And gathering freshlier overhead, 
 
 Rock'd the fuU-foliaged elms, and swung 
 The heavy-folded rose, and flung 
 The lilies to and fro, and said, 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 85 
 
 " ' The dawn, the dawn,' and died away ; 
 And East and West, without a breath, 
 Mixt their dim lights, like life and death, 
 To broaden into boundless day." 
 
 Had he been content at all times to trust his subject 
 as he has trusted it here, Tennyson would not only 
 have been a greater poet, he would have been even a 
 greater artist than he was, for the greatest artists are 
 those who allow Nature to write in their names, and 
 are themselves too wise to interfere with or add a 
 word to the language she speaks. 
 
 It seems a far journey from the philosophy of In 
 Memoriatn to the philosophy of Maud, from the 
 poetry of a sad resignment to that of revolt ; yet 
 there is little difficulty in recognizing the same hand 
 in both, the same worker in different moods. As 
 has been already observed, the germ from 
 which Maud was developed is the lyric, (^3,^4 and 
 " Oh, that 'twere possible," contributed in other Poems. 
 1837 to The Tribute, a collection of miscel- 1855. 
 laneous unpublished poems by various 
 authors, published by John Murray, and edited by 
 Lord Northampton. Among the other contributors 
 were Wordsworth, Landor, Aubrey de Vere, Henry 
 Taylor, Southey, Monckton Milnes, and Charles Ten- 
 nyson. The proceeds from the sale of this publica- 
 tion were intended to relieve the necessities of the 
 Rev. Edward Smedley, a clergyman in ill health and 
 threatened with loss of eyesight. Smedley died be- 
 fore the book appeared, and the proceeds were given 
 to his family. In reply to Milnes' application to him 
 for a contribution, Tennyson wrote : " Three summers 
 back, provoked by the incivility of editors, I swore an 
 oath that I would never again have to do with their 
 
86 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 vapid books, and I broke it in the sweet face of 
 Heaven when I wrote for Lady What's-her-name 
 Wortley. But then her sister wrote to Brookfield, and 
 said she (Lady W.) was beautiful ; so I could not help 
 it. But whether the Marquis be beautiful or not, I 
 don't much mind ; if he be, let him give God thanks, 
 and make no boast. To write for people with prefixes 
 to their names is to milk he-goats ; there is neither 
 honour nor profit." This characteristic effusion 
 evoked an indignant remonstrance from Milnes, to 
 whom Tennyson again wrote : " What has so jaun- 
 diced your good-natured eyes as to mistake harmless 
 banter for insolent irony?" and promised his help. 
 The promise w'as fulfilled by the contribution above 
 mentioned. These stanzas developed in after years 
 into the lyrical melodrama, which was Tennyson's fa- 
 vourite among his own poems, and the development 
 was due to a remark of Sir John Simeon's to the effect 
 that the lines suggested a story which ought to be 
 told. The edition of 1855 gave the poem as continu- 
 ous ; the edition of the following year contained some 
 new passages. In subsequent issues the poem was 
 divided into two, and eventually into three parts, 
 and styled " a monodrama. " 
 
 J/ai/ci was greeted with an almost unanimous chorus 
 of disapproval. Readers, critical and uncritical alike, 
 complained that it was unreal, fantastic, had " the 
 serious defect of leaving one in a painful state of con- 
 fusion as to the limits of the sane and the insane ; "* 
 the chief charge of all being that it was an inde- 
 fensible defence of war. As a psychological study of 
 a difficult subject, it was natural that J/(7//</ should be 
 
 * To this it might be replied that the same charge may be brought 
 against Ilamlct, and that in nature no defining line can be drawn. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 8/ 
 
 misunderstood and unappreciated. The critical judg- 
 ments are not now arrayed against the author's fa- 
 vourite work as they were at first, but it still remains 
 and will remain the least favoured by his readers. In 
 many respects it must, I think, be regarded as the 
 most dramatic of Tennyson's poems, dramatic as the 
 presentation not of the characters of a group of indi- 
 viduals and their mutual interaction, but as reflecting 
 the varying moods of a single person of eager temper 
 wrought upon by violent passions in a period itself 
 full of exciting actions, of nerve-stirring emotions and 
 of arousing ideas.* Maud is a lyrical monodrama, 
 and into the lyrics which compose it Tennyson poured 
 much of his strongest feeling, many of the thoughts 
 which came from the closest corner of his brain. It 
 is a sincere, a characteristic utterance, a real tran- 
 script of the poet's mind ; hence his love for it,f hence, 
 too, its interest to students of his poetry. Whatever 
 regard Tennyson in his poetry paid to the conventions 
 — and as an artist he was to some extent their prisoner 
 — he is here moving with a freer, more natural step, 
 speaking to please himself, and himself alone. The 
 subject, too, is a favourite one. Maud may fairly be 
 
 * Mr. Knowles quotes Tennyson as saying: "It should be 
 called Matid, or The Madness. It is slightly akin to Havilet. No 
 other poem (a monotone with plenty of change and no weariness) 
 has been made into a drama where successive phases of passion in 
 one person take the place of successive persons. The whole of 
 the stanzas where he is mad in Bedlam, from " Dead, long dead " 
 to " Deeper, ever so little deeper," were written in twenty minutes, 
 and some mad doctor wrote to me that nothing since Shakespeare 
 has been so good for madness as this." — Nineteenth Century, 
 January, 1893. 
 
 I " I've always said that Maud and Guinevere were the finest 
 things I've written." 
 
88 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 compared with the two Locksley Halls, the poems of 
 his youth and age that came most directly from the 
 heart, taking them as a single work for the purpose of 
 the comparison. In both the undercurrent of his na- 
 ture becomes for the time the uppercurrent. Each is 
 the stor)'^ of a lost love ; in both there are noble as- 
 pirations, disappointed hopes, a touch of scorn, the 
 outcome of such unfulfilled longing. The hero of 
 each suffers the same sharp reverse, both would mix 
 with action to keep at bay the tiger despair, both are 
 critics of life, who find it an unweeded garden ; in 
 both the vein of bitterness gives place to more self- 
 honouring resolve. 
 
 " Follow light and do the right, for man can half control his doom, 
 Till you find the deathless angel seated in the vacant tomb," 
 
 is a counsel at one with the resolve of the hero of 
 Maud, 
 
 " It is better to fight for the good than to rail at the ill. 
 I have felt with my native land, I am one with my kind, 
 I embrace the purpose of God and the doom assigned." 
 
 For the rest, Maud passes now and then from the 
 sphere of poetry into that of rhetoric, but in the best 
 ' of the lyrics there is much of Tennyson's best, the im- 
 perishable beauty that belongs to the musical expres- 
 sion of sincere emotion. For a defence of the battle- 
 ardour of Maud, we may read the Epilogue to The 
 Charge of the Heavy Brigade. But a defence is unne- 
 cessary. Only the purblind moralist who knows 
 nothing of life can fail to recognise that terrible as are 
 its accompaniments of suffering and horror, by war are 
 evoked the noblest elements of human character as 
 well as its most debasing ; that in the furnace of its 
 fires men are tried as gold in the refining pot, and 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 89 
 
 that not seldom has it discovered beauties and hero- 
 isms, an unselfishness and devotion, the existence of 
 which in self-seeking times of peace the most subtle 
 observer could not even have suspected. 
 
 Maud is not a world-poem ; it is not even a poem of 
 great imaginative range or far-reaching power, but it 
 finds the vulnerable points in modern civilisation, and 
 has its place with those true works of art which will 
 not leave us at rest with ourselves until we know our 
 minds and sound the real depth of our feelings. 
 
 In addition to Maud, this volume of 154 pages con- 
 tained The Charge of the Light Brigade, Will, The Daisy, 
 Ode on the Death of the Duke of JVellington, Lines to the 
 Rev. F. D. Maurice,* The Brook, and the Letters. 
 
 Of the remaining poems few words are called 
 for here. The Brook takes its rightful place among 
 the English idylls, a vignette of English country- 
 life, peaceful and sweet. The Daisy is a record 
 of the poet's wedding journey, brought in after 
 years to mind by a faded flower. The lines To 
 Frederick Denison Maurice,\ " the truest Christian he 
 ever knew," recall a controversy of the past and pic- 
 ture the surroundings of the poet's home in the Isle of 
 Wight. The Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington 
 and The Charge of the Light Brigade, Tennyson's two 
 most famous patriotic poems, need no comment. The 
 early printed versions of each underwent even more 
 than the customary revision, the labour of the file, and 
 
 * Maurice had dedicated his Theological Essays to Tennyson. 
 
 f Even this short poem was considerably altered in later ver- 
 sions. Lushing-ton, comparing it with The Daisy, remarked of 
 the latter : " How the simple change in the last line from a dactyl 
 to an amphibrachys changes a mere experiment into a discovery 
 in metre." 
 
go A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 in their present form are very different from the orig- 
 inals. 
 
 As a whole, the volume may be noted as containing 
 a number of new experiments in metre. Matid, the 
 Ode on the Death of the Duke, The Daisy, the lines To 
 Maurice, Will, all exhibit Tennyson moving in hitherto 
 untrodden metrical paths. I do not know that any 
 English poet has employed and achieved success in 
 so many and various measures. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Among the books published by William Caxton at 
 the first printing-press set up in England, at West- 
 minster, was Sir Thomas Malory's Mortc d'Arthut'- in 
 the year 1485. Malory was a compiler of 
 genius, with a real skill in language and idylls of 
 a real feeling for the spirit of the old le- the King, 
 gends which he attempts to unify. He 1859-85. 
 so alters, arranges, and combines the 
 stories, so nobly conceives the cycle of the Arthurian 
 chivalric romances, that at his hands the whole is 
 clothed, and indeed for the first time, with almost 
 epic interest, the interest of simple yet heroic actions 
 on an ample field, unified by their relation to a great 
 central figure. Into the neglected treasury of chiv- 
 alric legend — neglected from the time that the Renais- 
 sance revived men's sympathies with classic ideals 
 and the myths of older days — into this treasury of 
 chivalric legend, neglected and even scorned by so 
 great and true a poet as Chaucer, Malory stepped bold- 
 ly, and committing a splendid theft from contempo- 
 rary or older writers on the Continent, made himself 
 the undisputed possessor in English prose of the story 
 of King Arthur and his knights. In his version the 
 story is at once more human, more tragic, more convinc- 
 ing, and more natural than in that of any of the earlier 
 compilers ; and for this reason it is that the more re- 
 cent poets, and Tennyson among them, follow Malory, 
 except in some instances, in preference to any of his 
 
92 A TENNYSON TRIMER. 
 
 predecessors in other languages who handled the 
 same subject. And the name of his predecessors is 
 legion and of many nationalities, divided from each 
 other by long centuries. 
 
 The origin of the Arthur story is lost in the 
 mists of remote Celtic tradition. There are traces 
 of a hero named Arthur even before the time 
 in which we hear of him as a king who lived 
 and reigned in the sixth century, and of whom the 
 tale was told that he united all the petty princedoms 
 under his sovereign rule, and as the champion of his 
 people and of the Christian faith long resisted the 
 invading bands of the Saxon heathen. But the earli- 
 est references to Arthur in the lays of the Welsh 
 bards celebrate him as a valiant hero only, and it is 
 not until we come to the accounts of Nennius,* and 
 especially to those of Geoffrey of Monmouth, that 
 the romantic and marvellous elements enter, that we 
 hear of him as rex quondavi rexquc futurus, and that 
 the legends begin to take the shape and display the 
 character with which we are now familiar. To the 
 influence of Geoffrey of Monmouth's version, f com- 
 piled according to his own words from " a certain 
 very ancient book in the British tongue," may be 
 traced the inexhaustible harvest of chivalric romances 
 which grew up around the person of the mythic 
 
 * Popularly supposed to have been a writer of the seventh cen- 
 tury, but really much later — probably the twelfth. 
 
 f Geoffrey of Monmouth was consecrated Bishop of St. Asaph 
 in 1 152. Before that date he composed the Chronicon sive His- 
 toria Britotiuin, a work which the author professes to have trans- 
 lated from a chronicle entitled Brut of Brcnhiiied, a history of 
 the kings of Britain, found in Brittany, and given him by Walter 
 Calenius, Archdeacon of Oxford. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIAIER. 93 
 
 British prince. How far Geoffrey may have been 
 the conduit pipe through which real historical facts 
 were conveyed is, indeed, difficult to determine, but 
 that the greater part of his work is fiction, partly, 
 perhaps, even fiction of his own invention, is more 
 than probable. With him the legends entered upon 
 the period of their Christian and chivalric treatment 
 in the metrical romances of the twelfth and thirteenth 
 centuries, both in French and (later) in English. 
 In these romances Arthur becomes the ideal knight, 
 the founder of the noble brotherhood of the Round 
 Table. A king of mysterious lineage and endowed 
 with supernatural gifts, he keeps his court at Caer- 
 leon, and from thence his knights go forth on knight- 
 ly quests,' to succour the distressed and helpless, to 
 protect women, and do service in their honour, and to 
 venture themselves in every heroic contest which may 
 issue in glory and the triumph of justice and virtue. 
 The whole atmosphere of these romances is charged 
 with enchantment and mysticism, the imagination 
 ranges freely, and the bare outlines of the original 
 history are by this time completely lost in the colour 
 and variety of the new poetic setting. It will be 
 seen, then, that the Arthurian cycle had its origin in 
 remote antiquity, its germ in ancient Celtic tradition; 
 that, after it had already undergone many and impor- 
 tant variations, and received accretions from vari- 
 ous sources, it passed, mainly through the version of 
 Geoffrey of Monmouth, into the hands of the French 
 trouveres* and German minnesingers, and returned 
 again to England to find its way into ballad litera- 
 
 * The greatest by far was Chretien de Troies of the twelfth 
 century. 
 
94 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 ture, and eventually into the Morte iT Arthur of Mal- 
 ory, Tennyson's main source for the Idylls. 
 
 There is yet another source to which Tennyson is 
 indebted.* In 1S49, Lady Charlotte Guest translated 
 into English a Welsh collection, entitled the Maiu'/io- 
 gion, containing tales not to be found in Malory, but 
 of about the same date, the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries. Although these stories were in all proba- 
 bility also originally translated from the French, they 
 display a character of their own which distinguishes 
 them from the stories of the Morte cV Arthur. Mat- 
 thew Arnold and other critics have found in these 
 chivalric versions of the Arthurian legend traces of a 
 greater antiquity. " These are no mediaeval person- 
 ages," Arnold writes in his Celtic Literature; " they 
 belong to an older pagan mj-thological world. The 
 first thing that strikes one in reading the Mabinogion 
 is how evidently the mediaeval story-teller is pillaging 
 an antiquity of which he does not fully possess the 
 secret ; he is like a peasant building his hut on the 
 site of Halicarnassus or Ephesus : he builds, but 
 what he builds is full of materials of which he knows 
 not the history, or knows by glimmering tradition 
 merely ; stones ' not of this building,' but of an older 
 architecture, greater, cunninger, more majestical." 
 The English literary history of the Arthurian legends 
 from Malory to Tennyson is rather a curious history 
 of projects than of achievements. The great dra- 
 matic period of our literature produced one play only 
 on an Arthurian subject. The Alisfortunes of Arthur^ 
 presented at Gray's Inn before the Queen in 15S7, 
 the author, Thomas Hughes. References to the le- 
 gends occur in a few passages in Shakespeare, but 
 * For the story of Enid. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 95 
 
 his only connexion with them — a bond of the slightest 
 — is to be found in the fact that the plots of King Lear 
 and of Cyiiibcliiic were originally taken from the 
 chronicle of Geoffrey of Monmouth, though Shake- 
 speare himself derived them from Holinshed. With 
 Spenser, gleams of the Arthurian romance shine 
 through the texture of his strangely-woven song, 
 where Aristotelian scheme, classic myth, and Italian 
 verse-form are the conspicuous elements; but Spen- 
 ser was not destined to unify the Arthurian legends. 
 A greater than Spenser came near doing so. 
 
 In his youth, Milton tells us, " I betook me among 
 those lofty fables and romances which recount in 
 solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood, founded by 
 our victorious kings, and from thence had in renown 
 over all Christendom." He had for long in con- 
 templation an epic poem whose subject should be 
 taken from ancient British history,* but a higher 
 argument claimed him, and the Arthuriad remained 
 unwritten. Dr3'den, too, contemplated an epic poem 
 on a national theme, but hesitated, doubtful whether 
 to choose as subject Arthur conquering the Saxons, 
 or Edward the Black Prince, in his Spanish wars. 
 The times, however, were not ripe for such an effort. 
 As Scott writes: 
 
 " Dryden in immortal strain 
 Had raised the Table Round again, 
 But that a ribald king and court 
 Bade him toil on to make them sport." 
 
 The worthy knight, Sir Richard Blackmore, was 
 the first to achieve the distinction of a completed 
 
 * See his Latin poems, Mansus and Epitaphittiii Damonis; also 
 Paradise Lost, Bk. ix. 20, for the reasons for .a different choice. 
 
96 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 Arthurian epic. " In leisure hours he dealt in epic 
 song," and produced several poems of epic pro- 
 portions, if not of epic dignity, among them Prince 
 Arthur and King Arthur; but Blackmore failed to 
 make good his claim to be England's national poet, 
 and it was not until after the dawn of the Neo-Ro- 
 mantic epoch, of which Chatterton was the true har- 
 binger, that the long-delayed poetic justice was done 
 to the ancient British legends. The life of these 
 legends was renewed in poetry and art by the Ro- 
 mantic revival, and the old interest in them was once 
 more awakened. Scott in his Bridal of Tricnnain 
 treated an episode from the romances. Heber, Words- 
 worth, Lytton, and others found in them stimulus for 
 the imagination, and there were few among the poets 
 who were Tennyson's contemporaries for whom the 
 spell of the old enchantment was not too strong to 
 be resisted. 
 
 Subjects drawn from the Arthurian story appear in 
 several of Tennyson's early poems : in the 1832 vol- 
 ume The Lady of Shalott, Sir Galahad and Sir Lancelot 
 and Queen Guinevere in 1842. The Palace of Art con- 
 tains a reference to Arthur — " mythic Uther's deeply 
 wounded son ;" and elsewhere may be found traces of 
 the effect made by the beauty of these ancient legends 
 upon his sensitive temperament. That the ambition 
 to weave the Arthurian legends into a poetic whole 
 was early cherished by him is evidenced in The Epic, 
 which, published among Xh^ Poems oi 1842, introduced 
 the fragment, J/(?;'/<' d' Arthur, where the intention* to 
 give a permanent poetic form to the Arthurian history 
 is indicated : 
 
 * Or its tentative accomplishment. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 97 
 
 " ' You know,' said Frank, ' he burnt 
 
 His epic, his King Arthur, some twelve books.* " * 
 
 In this fragment a new note is struck, the pre-Raph- 
 aelite mediaeval style of The Lady of Shalott and Sir 
 Galahad has given place to a manner worthy of epic 
 material. The Mortc d' Arthur, then, opens the long 
 period of his life during which Tennyson was more or 
 less occupied with his epic scheme. f This is the 
 poem referred to by Landor, who wrote in 1837 : "A 
 Mr. Moreton, a young man of rare judgment, read to 
 me a manuscript by Mr. Tennyson, very different in 
 style from his printed poems. The subject is the 
 death of Arthur. It is more Homeric than any poem 
 of our time, and rivals some of the noblest parts of 
 the Odysseay 
 
 For more than a decade we hear no more of the de- 
 sign, but in 1857 was published a small volume, already 
 m.Q.nt\onQ.d,\E/iid and JViiniie ; or, The True and the False, 
 which had a very brief spell of public life, being im- 
 mediately withdrawn from publication. In June of the 
 next year, 1858, Clough " heard Tennyson read a third 
 Arthur poem — the detection of Guinevere, and the 
 last interview with Arthur." This, entitled Guinevere, 
 together with three other poems, Enid, Vivien, and 
 
 * Mrs. Ritchie quotes Tennyson as saying : " When I was twenty- 
 four, I meant to write a whole great poem on it (the Arthurian 
 story), and began it in the Morte d' Arthur. I said I should do it 
 in twenty years, but the reviews stopped me. By Arthur I always 
 meant the soul, and by the Round Table the passions and capaci- 
 ties of a man. There is no grander subject in the world than King 
 Arthur." 
 
 \ A long visit to Caerleon on Usk prepared the way for the de 
 scriptions of scenery in the Idylls. 
 
98 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 Elaine* appeared in 1859 2i% Idylls of the King, the first 
 occasion upon which the name was employed. Three 
 years later the dedication to the memory of the Prince 
 Consort was prefixed to the poems, which remained 
 unaltered, save for a few unimportant verbal changes. 
 After another interval of seven years, in 1869, four 
 new poems were added to the already published idylls 
 — T/ic Coming of Arthur, The Holy Grail, Felleas and 
 Ettarre, and The Passing of Arthur. The last named 
 was an extended version of the Morte d' Arthur of 
 1842. In 187 1 The Last Tournament appeared in the 
 Contemporary Reviejci, a.nd in 1872 Garcth and Lynctte.] 
 After yet another long interval, Balinand Balan, which 
 serves as an introduction to Aferlin and Vivien, was 
 published in 1885, and in 1888 Geraint and Enid was 
 divided into two parts, the first being named The 
 Marriage of Gcraint, and the second retaining the 
 former title. 
 
 Such is the external history of the 'Idylls of the 
 King. The history of the author's purpose and its 
 gradual development, as indicated in the additions 
 and alterations, made from time to time in the text of 
 successive editions, can here be but briefly sketched. 
 Through fully half a century, as I have shown, the 
 Arthurian story had possession of Tennyson's mind. 
 Throughout that period it seems as if he were slowly 
 feeling his way towards the best solution of the diffi- 
 cult problem — how to create a living interest in the 
 old-world legend, how to re-tell these tales of centu- 
 ries ago, that they might touch the modern mind, 
 
 * Afterwards entitled Gei-aint and Enid, J\ferlin mid Vivien, 
 Lancelot and Elaine, Arthur and Guinevere. 
 
 f The lines " To the Queen" were added as a conclusion to the 
 series in this year. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 99 
 
 affect with real power the men who live the altered 
 life of to-day. 
 
 Although the subject was in many respects suitable 
 for a great English poem, and offered practically an 
 open field which any poet might make his own pos- 
 session, were his genius equal to the task, the choice 
 of method was a difficult one. The Arthurian ro- 
 mances embody the ideals of chivalry, but they were 
 never true to the real life of any age, and some indeed 
 have thought that no treatment, however skilful, could 
 give them more than a poetic-antiquarian interest : 
 
 " No part have these wan legends in the sun. 
 
 Whose glory lightens Greece and gleams on Rome. 
 Their elders live ; but these — their day is done ; 
 Their records written on the winds, in foam 
 Fly down the wind, and darkness takes them home. 
 What Homer saw, what Virgil dreamed, was truth 
 And died not, being divine ; but whence, in sooth, 
 Might shades that never lived win deathless youth ?" 
 
 It was too late by many centuries to build out of 
 these misty legends the heroic epic, whose readers 
 should find in Arthur a real king, and follow with be- 
 lieving, beating heart the record of his knightly deeds. 
 Whatever else may be said of Tennyson, we must 
 willingly grant the wisdom of his choice of the only 
 way in which the material could be handled with any 
 measure of success in these later days. An allegorical 
 treatment of the romance of Arthur was the sole pos- 
 sible treatment for a poet of the nineteenth century. 
 Nor did the romances present any features incompat- 
 ible with such treatment ; they lent themselves readily 
 to it. Already around the person of Arthur had col- 
 lected many myths of symbolic import, through which 
 inner meanings ran, and the whole story had been 
 
lOO A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 treated by Malory in the spirit of one who, while he 
 tells a particular tale, relates a chapter of universal 
 human history. 
 
 The idea of an allegorical treatment of the Arthu- 
 rian story was, I think, present with Tennyson from 
 the first, but his conception of the whole scheme was 
 in the beginning far from definite, and the presence 
 of the symbolism is hardly felt in the four Idylls of 
 1859. He was not sure how far the allegory might be 
 justly carried. By Arthur, as he tells us, he always 
 meant the Soul, but it was not until 1869, when he 
 published Pelleas and Ettarre and The Holy Grail, that 
 the allegoric purpose is clearly present. In the address 
 to the Queen, which concludes the whole, and was 
 published in 1872, he sets forth the aim of his work, 
 and speaks of it as an 
 
 " old imperfect tale, 
 Nezv-old and shadowing Sense at war with Sozil 
 Rather than that gray king, whose name, a ghost. 
 Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain-peak. 
 And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still ; or him 
 Of Geoffrey's book, or him of Malleor's, one 
 Touch'd by the adulterous finger of a time 
 That hover'd between war and wantonness, 
 And crownings and dethronements." 
 
 The constant revision to which, almost until the 
 last, the various poems were subjected was designed 
 to emphasise their true character, and to bind them 
 into a closer unity. After the publication of Balin 
 and Balan, in 1885, Tennyson wrote but one other 
 poem, a lyric, on an Arthurian subject. In Merlin 
 a?id the Gleam the poet seems to allegorise his own life 
 and teaching, and, in his faith that the ideal is indeed 
 the vera lux that must lead the world, once more 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. lOI 
 
 restores the hope that in the failure of the Table 
 Round had seemed ahnost wholly quenched. 
 
 I have said that Tennyson's treatment of the Ar- 
 thurian romances was the only possible one — a frank 
 literary and symbolic handling of the legendary cycle ; 
 it remains to ask, Was it successful? I shall not stay 
 to discuss the wisdom of the choice of title, nor to 
 enter upon the barren logomachy, so long waged by 
 the critics, whether or no the poems constitute an 
 epic. Like all Tennyson's poems, the lyrics excepted, 
 the Idylls of the King have the elements of strength 
 and of weakness, we may say the elements of the 
 author's characteristic strength, the elements of his 
 characteristic weakness. The cardinal defect, inher- 
 ent in the subject, a lack of unity, was precisely the 
 defect which the limitations of Tennyson's genius ren- 
 dered him least able to repair. It would have been 
 repaired by Milton had he essayed the task ; I believe 
 no English poet since Milton possessed the architec- 
 tural faculty, the unifying imagination essential to 
 complete success. Tennyson's Idylls are a series of 
 pictures — as their name indeed implies ; there is no 
 link strong enough to bind the constituent parts into 
 an organic whole. The figure of Arthur is too dim, 
 too undefined to serve as centre to the movement of 
 the various poems ; he comes and passes away, but his 
 influence is slight. Within the work itself, it can 
 hardly be said that there is " a beginning, a middle 
 point, and an end," as Aristotle justly demanded in an 
 epic. We are conscious that many more such poems 
 might have been added, that some might have been 
 omitted without serious disturbance to the poem as a 
 whole. To say so is to say what cannot be asserted 
 of an organic growth, to which nothing can be added 
 
I02 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 and from which nothing can be taken away. Yet in 
 the room of unity we have symmetry^ a delicate balance 
 and proportion, artistic and admirable, with which we 
 may well be content. 
 
 Turning from the poem as it might have been to a 
 consideration of it as given to us, the most serious de- 
 fect arises out of the unfortunate contrast between the 
 cold, colourless, faultless Arthur and the human- 
 hearted though sinning Lancelot. It is not enough to 
 say that, viewed in its spiritual meanings, the compar- 
 ison must be in favour of the blameless king. The 
 story affects us before the symbolism is apparent, and 
 our sympathies are enlisted on the side of flesh and 
 blood, and cannot again be alienated. Our instincts 
 teach us that Lancelot is the nobler type of manhood. 
 The story, if the poem is to be perfect, must be com- 
 plete and interesting in itself. But the necessities of 
 the symbolism clash at times and cannot be harmo- 
 nised with the tale, and w^hen " we come suddenly upon 
 the moral, it gives us a shock of unpleasant surprise, 
 a kind of grit, as when one's teeth close on a bit of 
 gravel in a dish of strawberries and cream." This and 
 the inevitable sense of depression which the failure of 
 its ideals, the final ruin of Arthur's once noble court, 
 leaves within the mind, are faults without remedy. 
 But the compensations are not a few — such, indeed, as 
 Tennyson rarely failed to supply in any work. In the 
 Holy Grail and in Guinevere^ as in Elaine and indeed 
 in almost all the poems, there are as noble passages as 
 any to be found in the whole range of English poetry. 
 The felicitous rendering, too, of natural scenery, and 
 its equally felicitous use for purposes of illustration, 
 are as conspicuous as ever. No better example can 
 be adduced than the often-quoted lines that follow : 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. IO3 
 
 " So dark a fore-thought roll'd about his brain, 
 As on a dull day in an ocean cave 
 The blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall 
 In silence." 
 
 The greatest artist in colour among modern poets is 
 present in the Idylls from the first line to the last. 
 
 Of the allegory itself, no strict interpretation is pos- 
 sible, nor is it desirable. But it may be outlined as 
 the history of the soul of man in its warfare upon 
 earth.* In Arthur, who builds and reigns in Camelot, 
 we have symbolised the soul and the city that the 
 genius of man has erected for himself — the whole or- 
 dered social fabric, the human institutions built up to 
 serve his needs. In Guinevere the beauty of the 
 world of sense is typified, the beauty which the soul 
 would fain make its own, finding in it a winning, inex- 
 haustible charm. But in the world of sense, with all 
 its charm, there resides a principle which is antagonis- 
 tic to the spirit ; while it attracts it also repels, and 
 the problem which man has to face lies here. He is 
 a citizen of two worlds, a spiritual and a material, and 
 while this life lasts a perfect reconciliation is impos- 
 sible. Arthur comes and establishes his kingdom upon 
 earth, and for a time all goes well. The ideals of the 
 soul are slowly but surely organizing a human after 
 the pattern of a divine society. But the difficulties are 
 many, human weaknesses and frailties hinder the evo- 
 lution of a perfect reign of love and law, the hostile 
 forces are ceaselessly at work. In Gareth and Lytiette, 
 in Balin and Balan, in Geraint and Enid the warfare is 
 
 * " The whole is the dream of man coming into practical life 
 and ruined by one sin. Birth is a mystery and death is a mystery, 
 and in the midst lies the table-land of life, and its struggle and per- 
 formance." — Conversation of Tennyson quoted by Mrs. Ritchie. 
 
104 A TENNYSON PklMER. 
 
 mainttiincd between the spiritual and material influ- 
 ences in the heart of man, and the spiritual are still 
 undefeated. But more powerful forces of evil enter. 
 These in Merlin and Vivien and in Pelleas and Ettarre 
 are triumphant, and the shadow of its approaching 
 dissolution begins to lower over the once splendid 
 court. In The Holy Grail is symbolised the quest for 
 the true spiritual principles, the true religion which 
 throughout the centuries has inspired the noblest 
 souls. But many of the seekers for the Grail are led 
 astray by wandering fires, and only those in whose 
 hearts burns the flame of pure devotion attain to a 
 sight of it. Lancelot is the type of perfect manhood, 
 in whom the love of earthly beauty has not been sub- 
 dued until too late by a vision of what is still more 
 lovely. With the sin of Lancelot and Guinevere the 
 end draws near ; the winter of failure, the final dark- 
 ness approaches, and the Round Table, " which was an 
 image of the mighty world," is dissolved. But though 
 dissolved, the ideal at which it aimed shines as it ever 
 shone ; no failure can dim the brightness of its chal- 
 lenging fires. Arthur, the king that was, the king 
 that will be, is not dead ; and in Merlin and the Gleam, 
 though not a part of the poem, the allegory finds its 
 true conclusion. The poet's last word is one of en- 
 couragement : 
 
 " After it, follow it, 
 Follow the gleam." 
 
 The Idylls of the King, when criticism has spoken its 
 last word, may fairly be called a great poem ; perhaps 
 the greatest poem since the Faerie Queen, in the order 
 to which it belongs. For those, indeed, who value 
 breadth and scope of conception in art above all 
 beauty of expression, all exquisiteness of detail ; who 
 demand authentic warrant in the idea for each word of 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. I05 
 
 the language that conveys it ; who refuse to diction, 
 be it verse or prose, the right to shine in itself, be- 
 lieving that in its highest reach it challenges no atten- 
 tion, but, itself unseen, is but the perfect mirror of the 
 thought or feeling it presents — for those, in a word, who 
 set the whole above the parts that compose it, the 
 Idylls can never rank with the supreme poetry of the 
 world. But it will be conceded by the future, as it 
 has already been conceded in the present, that few of 
 the qualities of enduring poetry are here unrepresent- 
 ed. Steeped in the golden splendours of an heroic 
 past the legends keep their intrinsic power to charm, 
 while, in their modern form, the magic and melody and 
 mystery in which they seem to float diffused, the 
 mediaeval glamour of a world of old romance that 
 pervades the whole, the deep spiritual significance of 
 the allegory — with these the poet weaves for every 
 reader the spells of an enchanted land. Let us not, 
 therefore, speak of the grandeur of the Idylls of the 
 King ; let us rather speak of their splendour, their 
 luxuriance of colour, their exquisite grace of word and 
 phrase, their pictorial magnificence, the un'dying 
 charm of their high and truthful eloquence. Beauti- 
 ful, indeed, they are, yet with limitations ; jafA«;rar ra 
 KoXkiara — perfection is a difficult mark to hit. 
 
 " Tennyson's plays," said George Eliot, speaking of 
 Queen Mary and Harold, "run Shakespere's close." 
 When one hears criticism of this kind from a writer 
 of genius, one is inclined to say, Let us 
 henceforth forever dispense with criti- Enoch 
 cism. Such criticism is pestilential, it goes Arden,* etc. 
 far to destroy all standards of excellence °° • 
 in literature, all sense of distinctions; it 
 
 * The title of the volume was originally Idylls of the Hearth, but it 
 was altered while in the press. It was dedicated to Mrs. Tennyson. 
 
I06 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 goes far to create a positive distaste for even the best 
 literature. " Enoch Ardeti," said Mr. Dawson, an 
 ardent admirer of Tennyson, " is his noblest and 
 best " poem. " I find in it almost every quality of 
 the poet, true sympathy and all the rest. There is >wt 
 a fine word in it." We are growing more and more 
 accustomed to outrageous insanities in criticism; we 
 are not now surprised to find it asserted that the 
 quality of Shakespere's dramatic art is matched in 
 the last new play, that the splendours of Milton's 
 prose are reproduced in the trivial clevernesses of a 
 magazine article. That a critic should say of Enoch 
 Arden, therefore, that "there is not a fine word in it," 
 does not surprise us ; though the truth is just the op- 
 posite of this, that it is a poem in which a simple 
 subject is adorned with all " the fine words," all the 
 wealth of language at the poet's command. It is, as 
 Mr. Bagehot long ago said, a perfect instance of or- 
 nate or decorative as opposed to pure art. 
 
 " While Enoch was abroad on wrathful seas, 
 Or often journeying landward ; for in truth 
 Enoch's white horse, and Enoch's ocean-spoil 
 In ocean-smelling osier, and his face, 
 Rough-reddened with a thousand winter gales, 
 Not only to the market-cross were known, 
 But in the leafy lanes behind the down, 
 Far as the portal-warding lion-whelp, 
 And peacock yew-tree of the lonely Hall, 
 Whose Friday fare was Enoch's ministering." 
 
 "So much," as Mr. Bagehot said, "has not often 
 been made of selling fish." We are presented with a 
 portrait of an unreal sailor, painted in unreal colours, 
 upon an unreal canvas, "a sailor crowded all over 
 with "ornament and illustration." The key to this 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 107 
 
 poem is to be found in a letter of Fitzgerald's, written 
 just before its composition — "Alfred wants a story to 
 treat, being full of poetry with nothing to put it in. " — 
 The subject when found was all but lost beneath the 
 magnificence of its " poetic" treatment. Enoch Arden 
 is the best example that can be selected from the 
 author's works of that weakness in his artistic nature 
 which seemingly made it impossible for him to trust 
 his subject, to permit it to speak for itself. But the 
 grand distinction of the greatest artists is this, that 
 their action predominates over their expression, that 
 they regard the whole more than the parts, the idea, 
 therefore, above the language ; and their aim is ac- 
 complished not in the luxuriance of their imagery, 
 the wealth of their colour, or the multiplicity of their 
 illustration, but, as I have elsewhere phrased it, when 
 they leave upon the reader's mind one pure, simple, 
 affecting outline, one undying image of perfect fea- 
 ture. In this poem of Tennyson, as in many other of 
 his poems — here, I think, pre-eminently — he errs by 
 overlaying a simple and pathetic tale by splendour of 
 language altogether alien to it, by whose instrumen- 
 tality it is removed out of the real world of things as 
 they are into an altogether unreal world of things as 
 they are not. The action is not permitted to control 
 the expression, but is really subordinated to it ; is 
 made the occasion of a magnificent display of verbal 
 and pictorial wealth. When one thinks of Enoch 
 Arden, one thinks first of that matchless description 
 of the island in the tropics upon which the ship- 
 wrecked sailor is thrown : a description, as I say, 
 matchless, but quite unessential to the story, quite 
 out of keeping with the feelings of the shipwrecked 
 sailor, a purple patch which distracts the mind from 
 
Io8 A TENNYSON I'RIMER. 
 
 the main business of the piece, wliich is to tell a sim- 
 ple, pathetic tale of simple fisher-folk. 
 
 It is a noteworthy fact that this poem is among the 
 most popular, if not the most popular, of Tennyson's 
 works ; it certainly has been more frequently chosen 
 for translation into other languages than any other of 
 his poems — a proof, if any were required, how few are 
 the lovers of pure, of restrained, of classic art even 
 among the readers of poetry. The popularity of 
 Enoch Arden is comparable to the popularity of the 
 May Queen, a poem so full of false sentiment and 
 false pathos as to be painful to a reader of any fine- 
 ness of sensibility ; so much so, that I doubt whether 
 such a reader ever thinks of turning to it again after 
 the first reading. Think of an artist in the great 
 style, like Milton, indulging in these puling senti- 
 mentalities ! But it was with poems such as these 
 that Tennyson made his irresistible appeal to the wide 
 circle of his uncritical admirers, an appeal which may 
 be compared to that made by Millais with his popular 
 pictures. 
 
 A noticeable contrast to Enoch Arden is the first 
 of the dialect poems. The Northern Farmer, published 
 in the same volume. This is a study of real life ; 
 here the patient, observing eye has been at work, here 
 the artist for once conceals his art, and speaks the 
 real language of men. The poems in dialect are 
 more dramatic, because infinitely more true to life, 
 than any work can ever be of the order to which 
 Enoch Arden belongs. They are remarkable, too, as 
 revealing an unexpected humorist in the aristocratic 
 poet, a sympathetic humorist, who was at home in the 
 rural cottage as much as in the courts of princes. 
 The Northern Farmer was another proof of the extra- 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. IO9 
 
 ordinary versatility of Tennyson's genius, and in 
 some respects the most striking poem in this volume. 
 Aylmcrs Field, of which the story was told to the 
 author by his friend Woolner, the artist, is redeemed 
 from slightness by the intensity and fervour of its 
 rhetoric, culminating in the funeral sermon. In Sea 
 Dreams the decorative method employed in Enoch 
 Ardcii is again conspicuous, but the theme is trivial 
 and the treatment almost languid. But in TitJiouus^ 
 the old mastery, the old, inimitable skill is once more 
 apparent. It is in the classical studies that Tenny- 
 son's art seems faultless. With all their exquisite 
 beauty of form there is a dignity, a reserve apparent 
 which adds immeasurably to their charm. Ulysses, 
 Tithonus, Lucretius, and Detneter are something more 
 than delicately woven dreams, phantasies in colour 
 and sound. Akin to The Lady of Shalott, they yet 
 possess something higher ; here is the Greek sharp- 
 ness of outline, with the Greek simplicity of motive ; 
 here is a chiselled perfection of phrase. The classi- 
 cal studies are, in my judgment, the poems of the 
 author which give us by far the highest sense of his 
 power, whether intellectual or poetic. 
 
 Of the remaining poems in this volume, The Grand- 
 mother maybe noted as a favourite with the poet him- 
 self, and The Flower a.s 3. not unnatural protest against 
 the fickle admirers and critics who found nothing in 
 the poet's work to reverence until it became the ob- 
 ject of imitation, and then, again, when " most could 
 raise the flower, since all had got the seed," found it 
 of trivial value. The other pieces were The Voyage, 
 The Ringlet (afterwards omitted), The Sailor Boy, 
 
 * First appeared in the second number of the first volume of 
 Cornhill {lito). 
 
no A TENNYSON FRIMER. 
 
 previously published — in a Miscellany, " The Victoria 
 Rcgia" — in 1861, T/ie Islet, a.nd The Attempts at Classic 
 Afetres in Quantity, which had appeared in the Cornhill 
 for December, 1863. In these last Tennyson's delicate 
 perception of form enabled him to reproduce for 
 English readers the musical aroma of some of the 
 most complex classical metres, never before so ex- 
 quisitely rendered. To them we may here add the 
 Sapphic stanza, written for Professor Jebb's Primer of 
 Greek Literature, in which, as he tells us, the genuine 
 Greek cadence is preserved : 
 
 " Faded every violet, all the roses ; 
 
 Gone the glorious promise, and the victim, 
 Broken in this anger of Aphrodite, 
 Yields to the victor." 
 
 It may be said of this volume that it was a series of 
 experiments, most of which were comparative fail- 
 ures. In the domestic idyll Tennyson was not work- 
 ing the true vein of his genius. Enoch Arden, Aylniers 
 Field, and Sea Dreams were subjects which Words- 
 worth might have treated, but the very simplicity of 
 the themes here chosen jars with the jewelled phras- 
 ing, the ornate manner of Tennyson's setting. The 
 artist is too conspicuously present in his creations. 
 
 Versatility and growth in power were the signal 
 features of Tennyson's art and artistic life. That the 
 author of The Miller's Daughter should become the 
 author of The Revenge, that in the brain of the poet of 
 
 Claribel there was hidden the poet of Liicre- 
 The Dramas, tins, that Queen Mary and Ifarold a.nd Becket 
 
 belong to the same life-history as The Lotos- 
 Eaters, The Talking Oak, and Locksley Hall — this is a 
 source of natural admiration and wonder. This also 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. Ill 
 
 is the true point of view for the critics who are lovers 
 of Tennyson, the point of view from which his great- 
 ness is most clearly discernible. While we stand at 
 this point we can hardly praise too highly. But to 
 forget that there are other points of view is to forget 
 the true function of criticism, which is to draw distinc- 
 tions, to insist upon distinctions, and to show wherein 
 they exist. Splendidly versatile as was Tennyson's 
 genius, the critic must say, then, he was not successful 
 as a dramatist : two things stood in the path of his 
 success. The genius of the time was against him ; 
 the seclusion in which he chose to live his life was 
 even more against him. Had any large share of the 
 dramatic faculty fallen to his lot, these hostile influ- 
 ences might in some degree have been overcome ; as 
 it was, the discerning observer marks with surprise 
 not, indeed, his failure, but the measure of his success. 
 I have already indicated that we need not look for our 
 author's strength in breadth and scope of conception, 
 in imaginative synthesis, but in the balance of his 
 judgment, in his analytic subtlety, in his assimilative 
 powers, in the rich accessories of his artistic detail. 
 To the most ordinary observer the plays are evidently 
 full of fine things ; for example, the second scene in the 
 third act of Queen Mary is grandly conceived and 
 executed, as is also the concluding scene in the play, 
 but this cannot satisfy us ; fine things do not make, 
 they have never yet made, a drama. We must ask, 
 Are Tennyson's plays dramatically conceived ; that is, 
 do they find their natural home upon the stage ? Is 
 the action an inevitable march ? Is the characterisa- 
 tion vital ? Is the effect one and indivisible ? These 
 questions cannot be answered in the affirmative, and 
 yet in these we have only a few of the essentials 
 
112 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 of a drama. The plays of Tennyson in any real 
 meaning of the word drama are failures ; we may 
 speak of "them thus frankly. His admirers will tell us 
 it is not so ; they will tell us that Tennyson is a great 
 dramatist, that, as George Henry Lewes said, " The 
 critics of to-morrow will unanimously declare Alfred 
 Tennyson to be a great dramatic genius." It may be 
 so, but some of us, when we read the tragedy of Mary 
 Tudor, will do so more frequently in the version of 
 Sir Aubrey de Vere than in that of the greater poet, 
 and will content ourselves with saying that, although 
 Tennyson's dramas are indisputably failures, they are 
 quite as indisputably charged with high interest, with 
 evidences of fine literary tact, with intellectual force ; 
 and, above all, we will connect them with the growing 
 power on the part of the author of holding his hand 
 as he acquired a stronger because a severer style. 
 The years devoted by Tennyson to the composi- 
 tion of his dramatic works left their impress in the 
 nobler, more virile, more restrained poetry of his later 
 life. 
 
 Harold^ Becket, and Queen Mary are studies of great 
 crises in the history of the English race. Their inter- 
 est is not merely individual, it is also national. In 
 each the conflicting forces of English national life are 
 represented in the persons of prominent men and 
 women, outstanding historical figures of the time. 
 The tragedy in each life is a scene in the great 
 drama of the development of England. The tragedy 
 of Saxon Harold, dead at the feet of Norman William, 
 marked a crisis which seemed to bode for England a 
 bitter future, but it proved the beginning of her great- 
 ness. In the tragedy of Becket, the struggle of the 
 Church, the champion of the people's rights against 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. II3 
 
 the Crown, is represented in the person of that great 
 churchman and of his king. Once more, what seemed 
 ominous for the future was proved by the future the 
 opening-day of English freedom. In Queen Mary the 
 issue involves both the spiritual and temporal life of 
 England. Shall the nation guide its own destinies, 
 take its own counsel in matters ecclesiastical, as in 
 civil, or do homage to a foreign power and accept the 
 decrees of Rome ? Here, again, the cause of liberty 
 rises triumphant from its own ashes, and the darkest 
 hour is seen to be only the hour before the dawn. 
 Throughout these dramas the idea of a Providence 
 in history is the ruling idea in Tennyson's mind, a 
 Providence that shapes the nation's ends, let kings 
 and statesmen rough-hew them how they will. 
 
 Harold wdiS dedicated to Lord Lytton, the son of the 
 Lord Lytton who had attacked Tennyson in the satire 
 of The JVew Tif?io?i, and to whom Tennyson had re- 
 plied under the pseudonym of " Alcibiades" in the 
 trenchant verses published in Punch. The old quarrel 
 was thus healed, and in the introductory sonnet to 
 Harold the hate-healing influences of time are glanced 
 at, and the blossoming of unexpected good out of the 
 heart of conflict and of evil. 
 
 There is much in Harold, as there is much in Queen 
 Mary, to praise ; the movement is more rapid, the 
 action predominates over the dialogue and the ana- 
 lysis of emotions to a greater degree than in the earlier 
 play ; but no such interest as attaches to the person of 
 Mary is present in it, and thus Harold falls shorter of 
 success. There is little reason to believe that if re- 
 presented on the stage this play could long hold a 
 place among English dramas whose reappearance is 
 always welcome. 
 
114 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 In Becket,^ as in Queen Mary, Tennyson, though he 
 attains no dramatic success, creates striking characters 
 in the persons of the stern Ecclesiastic and the unhappy 
 Rosamond. Few readers can fail to be impressed 
 by these powerful studies — studies of real insight and 
 force. They redeem Tennyson's dramatic work and 
 preserve our interest in it despite all the faults and 
 weaknesses, which, regarding it as a whole, are too pal- 
 pably betrayed. Harold cannot rank with either in 
 poetical strength. The^ Falcon, produced at St. James' 
 Theatre in December, 1879,! ^^ ^ light, unambitious, 
 fanciful piece, in which the plot, borrowed from the 
 story of Sir Federigo, told by Boccaccio in the ninth 
 novel of the fifth day of the Decameron, gains nothing in 
 the new dramatic setting. The humour of the Falcon 
 is without point, and the element of romance in the orig- 
 inal has melted away in the new version. In The Cup, 
 produced at the Lyceum in January, i88i,| Tennyson 
 was happier in subject, as well as treatment, and 
 achieved a deserved and unequivocal success. The 
 story, a short and tragic one, is derived from Plutarch's 
 De Claris Mulieribus. The interest is centred in few 
 characters, the action proceeds rapidly, and the catas- 
 trophe is impressive and pathetic. In this brief drama 
 the author approached very near the production of a 
 play that might have held the stage. He seemed to be 
 progressing in that knowledge of effects and that 
 management of situations without which dramas may 
 be written for the reader, but cannot hold the atten- 
 tion of the spectator. But from unequivocal success 
 
 * Produced at the Lyceum by Mr. Irving and Miss Ellen Terry 
 in February, 1893. 
 
 f By Messrs. Hare and Kendal. 
 
 X With Miss Ellen Terry as Caniina. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. II5 
 
 Tennyson passed to unequivocal failure once more. 
 The Promise of May, produced at the Globe Theatre* 
 in 1882, was the only prose work written by the re- 
 presentative poet of his time. It was also his only 
 dramatic work in which he touched upon a subject 
 which in so many of his poems he had treated with an 
 intensity of feeling and a delicacy of judgment un- 
 surpassed by any other poet — the problem of the re- 
 lation between Faith, the daughter of the Heart, and 
 Science, the daughter of the Head. In his dramatic 
 presentation of that problem in its social aspects Ten- 
 nyson's judgment failed him. Whether intentional or 
 not — and we know on the author's own authority that 
 it was unintentionalf — the conclusion inevitably offers 
 itself that out of agnosticism must proceed social ruin, 
 that the loss of religion is the beginning of anarchy. 
 The thesis, in itself perhaps legitimate, is enforced il- 
 logically and through an offensive situation. The dra- 
 matic instinct is absent from the play as a whole, and 
 we need not wonder that critics, no less than people, 
 felt that it was unworthy of its great author. 
 
 It was a happy circumstance that in his last essay in 
 drama Tennyson turned again to a world of old ro- 
 mance. The Foresters, an English woodland piece, 
 though slight in texture, possesses the true Tennyso- 
 nian charm. The plot is that of one of the best-known 
 midland tales, told in the spirited ballad, A Lytel 
 Gcste of Robyn Hood. The atmosphere is the at- 
 mosphere of As You Like It. There breathes through 
 it the poet's love of England and English traditions 
 and English folk, and in the forest walks there lurks 
 no concealed problem of modern life. An idyllic 
 
 * By Mrs. Bernard Beere. \ See biography above, p. 34. 
 
Il6 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 masque, it recalls to the senses the glad sights and 
 sounds of natural country life, and mingles with them 
 the dream-like enchantment of a legend that recounts 
 a merry, roguish life lived long ago. In this romantic 
 pastoral Tennyson's dramatic essays found a fitting 
 and fortunate conclusion. 
 
 There can be no more striking passage in the 
 history of poetry than that which puts on record the 
 fruitage of Tennyson's genius in old age. Few even 
 among thoughtful critics conceived of his 
 Ballads and dramatic period as other than a day of de- 
 Other Poems, cline, filled with experiments in an uncon- 
 1880. genial form by one who had already ex- 
 hausted his best powers in the work that 
 lay behind him. Nothing more was expected of 
 Tennyson, the book seemed naturally and not un- 
 worthily closed, nor was there need to await further 
 development ere assigning to him his place among 
 the poets of his race and country. Yet in the drama 
 he had lost and found himself. Out of the heart of 
 failure there blossomed a marvellous success, the 
 more marvellous, perhaps, because unlooked for. The 
 Ballads of 1880 had a vigour, a breadth, a movement 
 surpassing any previous volume. The pulse of action, 
 the spirit of true dramatic art, beat strongly in poems 
 free at last from all traces of daintiness, of super- 
 fine graces. The very music breathed a nobler air 
 and moved to manlier measures. The Monologue, a 
 form doubtless suggested by Browning's example, 
 prevails, and is nowhere used even by Browning with 
 greater ease or finer talent for rapid effects. In The 
 Revenge* and in The Defence of Luckncnv we have 
 
 * The closeness with which Tennyson followed his authority — 
 Raleigh — in his account of the fight between the Revenge and a 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. II/ 
 
 ballads comparable with any in English ; in Columbus 
 a stirring force of passion and passion-matching lan- 
 guage ; in the dialect poems, The Northern Cobbler and 
 The Village Wife, a powerful realism; \x\ De Profundis 
 a deep-reaching philosophy, for which it will be in 
 vain to look in the poetry of twenty years previous. 
 A full and grave maturity shines in the verse of 
 Tennyson's closing years. 
 
 The Ballads and Other Poems were inscribed to the 
 poet's grandson, another Alfred Tennyson, then a 
 year and a half old: 
 
 " Crazy with laughter and babble and earth's new wine." 
 
 In addition to the poems already mentioned, the 
 volume contained The First Quarrel, Rizpah, Sir John 
 Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, The Sisters, In the Children's 
 Hospital, A Prefatory Sonnet, contributed to the first 
 number of The Nineteenth Century, edited by Tenny- 
 son's friend, Mr. Knowles ; Sonnets to W. H. Brook- 
 field and to Victor Hugo, and a sonnet entitled Mon- 
 tenegro; translations, The Battle of Brunanbuhr and 
 Achilles over the Tre7ich, the lines To the Princess 
 Frederica of Hanover, the lines for Sir John Frank- 
 lin's cenotaph in Westminster, and the lines To Dante. 
 The only other poem not mentioned above which was 
 printed in this volume was The Voyage of Maeldune. 
 Maildun is the hero of an ancient Celtic romance.* 
 
 " navy of Spain " is only matched by that of Wolfe in his famous 
 verses on The Burial of Sir fohn Moore. Much of Tennyson's 
 ballad, save for the metrical arrangement, is almost word for 
 word taken from Raleigh's pamphlet. See A Report of the Truth 
 of the Fight about the Iks of Azores this last sommer, betwixt the' 
 Revenge, one of her Majesty's shippes, and an Armada of the King 
 of Spaine. (Reprinted by Edward Arber, 1S71.) 
 * See Joyce's Ancient Celtic Romances. 
 
Il8 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 The story belongs to the group of tales of sea voy- 
 ages of which Sf. Brendan is the best known. The 
 marvels seen by Maildun and his men are only par- 
 tially related in Tennyson's ballad, and the tone of the 
 original is lost, but the fantastic imaginative splen- 
 dour of the legend could hardly be hidden even in its 
 modern dress. 
 
 The Tiresias volume was dedicated to Robert 
 Browning, and strikes the personal as its predominant 
 note. In the dedication to Fitzgerald, the translator 
 
 of Omar Khayyam, and in the epilogue 
 
 Tiresias and which speaks of his death ; in the teaching 
 
 Other Poems, of the Ancient Sage, where in the person of 
 
 1885. ^j^g gggj. Tennyson sums the beliefs of his 
 
 own life ; in the prefatory poem to his 
 brother's volume of Sonnets, published after the 
 author's death — in all these we may read the veteran 
 poet's sense of an end not very far off : 
 
 " Remembering all the golden hours. 
 Now silent, and so many dead." 
 
 While they retain the original Tennysonian sweetness 
 of phrase, the poems in this book are fuller of interest, 
 deeper of tone, chaster of expression than those of 
 his youth. Tiresias is another piece of classic sculp- 
 ture for the gallery in which Lucretius, Ulysses, and 
 Tithonus had already place. Baliti and Balan, an un- 
 expected addition to the Idylls, was written as an in- 
 troduction to Merlin and Vivien. The Dead Prophet is 
 a characteristic, indignant, passionate remonstrance 
 against "the scandal and the cry" which in these 
 latter days are wont to follow upon the biographer's 
 revelations of the private life of public men. Here, 
 there is little doubt, by the Dead Prophet is meant 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. II9 
 
 Tennyson's old friend, Carlyle ; and the profanation of 
 his name by curious, scandal-loving readers, no less 
 than the opportunity given them by the biographer, 
 is the subject of the poet's savagest scorn and invec- 
 tive. 
 
 To me The Ancient Sage is the poem of by far the 
 greatest interest in this volume, for can we not say 
 that we have here the authentic, outspoken expression 
 of the poet's creed, the first and last word in his con- 
 fession of faith ? I have already spoken of that creed 
 as the creed of the higher emotions. I may say of the 
 faith in his own words, that it is " a faith beyond the 
 forms of faith." The spiritual energies of his nature 
 flowed into no mould of traditional doctrine, but they 
 were the inspiration of his solemn visions and pro- 
 phetic hopes. In the Two Voices, the poem of his 
 youth which most closely corresponds to this of his 
 age, the same piroblems are presented, but presented 
 in a clever, logical texture, whose threads are finely 
 drawn, but whose conclusions leave us cold. In the 
 later poem, more vigorous and more dramatic in con- 
 ception, from out a life's experience, from out a poet's 
 heart of fire springs the living word of an intense and 
 secure conviction. If the future hold for men an in- 
 crease of knowledge which may warrant an increase 
 of hope, then, indeed, " they will look back on Tenny- 
 son as no belated dreamer, but as a leader who, in the 
 darkest hour of the world's thought, would not despair 
 of the destiny of man. They will look back on him 
 as Romans looked back on that unshaken Roman who 
 purchased at its full price the field of Cannae, on 
 which at that hour the victorious Hannibal lay en- 
 camped with his Carthaginian host."* 
 
 * F. W. H. Myers, Tennyson as Prophet. 
 
I20 A TENNYSON PRIMER, 
 
 The results of Tennyson's studies in the drama may- 
 be seen in his heightened power in dealing with such 
 situations as those of The Wreck, The Flight, and that 
 most tragic of any in Tennyson's poetry, or, indeed, 
 possible, in Despair. The lines To Virgil are the ex- 
 pression of a life-long affection for a poet with whom, 
 perhaps, Tennyson had more in common than any 
 other, while the lines entitled Frater Ave atque Vale 
 convey to English readers something of the beauty 
 and pathos with which Catullus clothes the emotion 
 of a wistful regret. The Charge of the Heavy Brigade 
 falls short of the earlier battle-piece, and is less stir- 
 ring than the account from which it is taken ; but in 
 Hands all Round, originally published in 1852, the 
 patriotic ardour of England's most patriotic poet is 
 bravely and nobly sung. The remaining poems pub- 
 lished in this volume are the epitaphs on Gordon, 
 Caxton, and Lord Stratford de Redclyffe, Freedom, 
 To the Duke of Argyll, Helen s Tower (written at the 
 request of his friend, Lord Dufferin), To H. R. H. 
 Princess Beatrice, Early Spring, To-Morrow (an Irish 
 tale in dialect). The Spinster s Sweet Arts, and the lines 
 (subsequently) entitled Poets and their Bibliographies. 
 In the last-mentioned verses Tennyson glances at the 
 poetic methods of Virgil and of Horace, methods 
 similar to his own in the ceaseless labour of the file, 
 and resents, with some impatience, the attention of 
 the critics. Doubtless that impatience was in no 
 slight degree due to the parallelisms adduced by them 
 from other writers to many of Tennyson's own 
 thoughts and phrases, and to the implied suggestion 
 that his assimilative powers were conspicuously greater 
 than his inventive. Tennyson was indisputably a 
 great borrower, but he borrowed as only genius bor- 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 121 
 
 rows, and had he not repudiated with somewhat un- 
 necessary heat and protestation the charge of pla- 
 giarism, the critic might not have found so keen a 
 deHght in pressing home the charge. 
 
 The greater part of the 1886 volume was occupied 
 by the text of the drama (partly prose), The Promise of 
 May, and, with the exception of the poem which gave 
 its name to the book, there was little of in- 
 terest among the new verses. The Fleet 
 and The Ode on the Opejilng of the Indian Locksiey 
 and Colonial Exhibition may be passed with- ^^^^' ^^^*y 
 
 out comment. The \zX.&r Locksiey Hall is in ^ ,„„„ ' 
 
 ■^ etc. 1886. 
 
 part a philippic against the moral degrada- Demeter and 
 
 tion, the moral infirmities of the age, a other Poems. 
 
 subject to which the poet returned, but 1889. 
 
 with a larger motif, in Vast?iess, published 
 
 in Demeter and Other Poems in 1889. The 
 
 seriousness of their outlook upon life, the intensity 
 
 of their feeling, the sincerity and depth of these 
 
 poems harmonises with the fuller music, the less 
 
 daintily wrought manner of Tennyson's later and 
 
 stronger style. The impeachment, passionate though 
 
 it be, in the later Locksiey Hall, of the littleness of 
 
 man, is full of stern justice — 
 
 " However we brave it out, we men are a little breed." 
 
 {3faud.) 
 
 In Vastness the poet makes the pathetic comparison 
 between the best and the worst in man, between his 
 aspirations and his achievements, between the narrow, 
 circumscribed boundaries of his little life and the in- 
 finite ocean that stretches away on all sides of his 
 island-spot of earth. Vain, paltry, and meaningless, 
 the history of the human race dwarfed in the immen- 
 
122 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 sities of boundless times and spaces becomes no more 
 than 
 
 " a trouble of ants in the light of a million million of suns." 
 
 Here as elsewhere in Tennyson's poetry the only 
 refuge from permanent intellectual confusion is 
 found in the conviction that the soul and God stand 
 sure, that 
 
 ' the dead are not dead, but alive." 
 
 If the human interest in the youthful poems of 
 Tennyson was slight, the later are almost overcharged 
 with emotion. Colour and melod}' and fragrance 
 were exchanged for anxious questionings upon the 
 deepest problems of life and death, and in some 
 poems so intensely fraught were they with human 
 feeling, that the passionate expression was almost 
 painfully affecting. 
 
 In Oii.<d Rod, a rustic study that belongs to the same 
 class as The A^orthcrn Farmer, in Forlorn, Happy, The 
 Ring and Romney' s Remorse, the passion of S3'mpathy 
 with suffering hearts thrills in the verse till it touches 
 the infinite of pathos, while in Merlin a7id The Gleam 
 and Crossing the Bar even the flute-like sweetness of 
 the youthful lyrics is surpassed, and the voice of the 
 poet-seer reaches in these poems an accent of almost 
 sacred impressiveness. 
 
 In Demeter and Persephone we have a poem equal to 
 anything that the author ever gave us, a poem that 
 with Lucretius, Tithonus, and the other classic studies, 
 will keep pace with the years, nor ever suffer wrong 
 at the hands of time. 
 
 Tennyson's last volume, a posthumous volume, was 
 in the press at the time of his death, and was pub- 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER, 12$ 
 
 lislied but a few weeks later. Though it contained 
 
 nothing to increase, it sustained to the full 
 
 his reputation, and fitly closed the long and 
 
 bright career. T//e Death of (Eiwne, dedi- The Death of 
 
 Gated in a new and difficult verse- form to ^none, 
 
 Dr. Towett, the Master of Balliol, is a con- ^ 
 
 -' ' . Dream, and 
 
 tinuation and conclusion of the CEnone of other Poems 
 
 1832. The blank verse freely and admir- i892. 
 ably handled in this poem, as in St. Tele- 
 mac/ius and in Akhar s Dream, is the stronger, 
 less opulent verse of his later life, learnt in his dra- 
 matic period — less ornate but no less musical than 
 that of the Morte d' Arthur and The Princess. 
 
 St. Telctiiachns may be taken as a companion study 
 to St. Simeon Stylites, the record of " a deed that woke 
 the world," marking the contrast between the fruitful 
 influences of a single good action and the barren vir- 
 tues of a life of asceticism. In Akbar s Dream Ten- 
 nyson touches yet again upon the old matters of the 
 meaning and the issues of life, and pleads, as in The 
 Ancient Sage, for a "faith beyond the forms of faith," 
 a religion of charity and hope. The Hymn to the Sun, 
 with which it closes, exhibits all the fine qualities of 
 his poetic workmanship — 
 
 " Once again thou flamest heavenward, once again we see thee rise. 
 Every morning is thy birthday, gladdening human hearts and eyes. 
 Every morning here we greet it, bowing lowly down before thee. 
 Thee the Godlike, thee the changeless in thine ever-changing skies. 
 
 " Shadow-maker, shadow-slayer, arrowing light from clime to clime, 
 Hear thy myriad laureates hail thee monarch in their woodland 
 
 rhyme. 
 Warble-bird, and open-flower, and men below the dome of azure 
 Kneel adoring Him the Timeless in the flame that measures 
 
 Time !" 
 
124 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 Of the remaining shorter poems in the book, The 
 Dawn and The Making of Man return to the problem 
 of the moral progress of the race, while in Faith, 
 The Silent Voices, and God and the Universe we have the 
 last words of the poet to his fellows and to his own 
 soul on the threshold of the unknown future — 
 
 " ' Spirit, nearing yon dark portal at the limit of thy human state. 
 Fear not thou the hidden purpose of that Power which alone is 
 
 great, 
 Nor the myriad world, His shadow, nor the silent Opener of 
 
 the Gate.' " 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The death of Alfred Tennyson seemed almost in a 
 sense to bring the history of English poetry to a close. 
 He had outlived all the great poets whose inspiration 
 was drawn from the quickening, dilating forces of the 
 first quarter of the century ; he had long dominated 
 without a rival the poetic realm in the succeeding 
 and quieter epoch ; he had been for fifty years the 
 acknowledged chief of the poet clan, so perfect a re- 
 presentative of English thought, so closely identified 
 with English ideals, as to be looked upon as the natu- 
 ral voice of the nation's noblest spiritual and intellect- 
 ual life. Tennyson resumed in himself as its highest 
 type the civilization of the Victorian era. And sum- 
 ming as he did in his own person and in his work 
 the gains of the English race throughout its long and 
 splendid history of a thousand years, he must stand 
 for us, as he will assuredly stand for all the future, as 
 the poetic heir of England's aristocratic, intellectual, 
 and heroic traditions. No such inheritance remains 
 for his successors. The new is the age of democracy, 
 and its poets must quarry their marbles from the virgin 
 rock ; Tennyson built with material that was already 
 shaped, and lay ready to his hand. His inspiration 
 came from the past ; upon the past the eye of his poetic 
 imagination was fixed ; in the traditions of the old 
 masters he exercised himself, and in their schools he 
 learnt the secrets of his art. He was of the order of 
 poets who sum up, who bring to an end, while his friend 
 
126 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 and contemporary, Browning, was of another order — a 
 pioneer poet, an explorer of new lands, the first 
 adventurer in untilled poetic territory. And for this 
 reason, perhaps, it may be justly said that Tennyson 
 belongs to the history of language rather than to the 
 history of thought. He was a polished speaker; master 
 of an exquisite style ; he was not a natural orator, 
 whose words spring forth to wing the impassioned 
 message of the heart. Consider the contemporaries 
 of his youth and of his age, Wordsworth and Browning. 
 Here were poets, charged, it would seem, with oracles 
 for men, but poets the burden of whose message lay 
 heavy upon them, often indeed out-weighted or out- 
 ran their immediate power of utterance. Wordsworth 
 not infrequently found verse unsustainable, and 
 Browning stammered in his haste to speak. But when 
 from either source the word came to be spoken, it was 
 abundantly evident that the revealing prophet was at 
 our doors. Tennyson's revelation, as far as there was 
 a revelation, was personal, the revelation of his own 
 heart. Its sorrows and joys and hopes and aspira- 
 tions — these were the real themes of his verse ; and be- 
 cause these sorrows and joys and hopes and aspira- 
 tions were also ours, their perfect expression was a 
 wonder and a delight to us. Here were Carmina, verses 
 that might be crooned as "charms" over a heart- 
 dissolving grief to ease its pain, or lilted when lan- 
 guage ran to music for very gladness of spirit, or re- 
 called to characterize with magical fitness some natu- 
 ral scene, or to sum in telling phrase a daily experience 
 of every human life. " I sing myself," he might have 
 said with truth, " and in these transcripts of my heart 
 and mind you will find your own." 
 
 I have said that in the poetry of Tennyson the past 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 12/ 
 
 of English tradition is resumed ; in it the voice of the 
 poet's own time is also heard, for he was, through half 
 a century, the spokesman, the chief speaker of the 
 English race. If in his early volumes, like Keats, he 
 cared only for beauty and languorous melody, cared 
 only for art as art, for poetry as a source of exquisite 
 sensation, when the genius of the world had taken 
 away the veil from his eyes and he saw life plain, his 
 verse took wider range and graver accent. But while he 
 came to represent the thought of his day, and was in a 
 measure too a prophet of the things that were to be, 
 disclosing the tendencies that ripen in due course into 
 creeds, Tennyson never outstepped the intellectual 
 and ethical traditions of his age and country. The 
 English gentleman and scholar are not far off even in 
 poems that breathe revolt, like Aland, or like the later 
 Locksley Hall " curse the social forms " that delay the 
 day of freedom and of truth. When Science, embol- 
 dened by her successes, threatened the gates of the time- 
 honoured citadel of faith, he declined any longer to 
 hymn her praise ; when the dreams of the enthusiast 
 for a new heaven and a new earth seemed about to 
 take shape in revolution, he spoke of law, of freedom 
 that slowly broadens down, and of the red fool-fury of 
 the Seine. Tennyson kept with the main body of Eng- 
 lish opinion, and was its champion. Thus only in a 
 minor sense was he a shaping or compelling power in 
 social or intellectual development, in the enfranchise- 
 ment of mind. We may speak more truly of him as 
 a poetic chronicler of the mental life of his time. 
 
 A chronicler of the mental life of his time, this we 
 must call him, but we must add, a chronicler who was 
 a consummate artist. And success in poetry of this 
 kind, though far indeed from success in the highest 
 
128 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 kind, is neither easy nor the product of every genera- 
 tion. To chronicle the best ideas of any generation, 
 it is necessary that one should feel inspired by them ; 
 that one should find them a source of real power ; that 
 one should estimate them as of the first importance, 
 and even find pleasure in them. Hut this is not pos- 
 sible for all men ; it is rarely possible for the poet whose 
 penetrativeness, moral sagacity, and far, sure gaze dis- 
 close to him the true meanings and real issues of 
 things. Such poets, often in advance of their genera- 
 tion, are more likely, save at epochs of rare insmra- 
 tion, to find the times out of joint, the predominant 
 current of ideas uninspiring, and the world into which 
 they have been born an unwceded garden that runs to 
 seed. The poetical spirit is an exacting spirit. A sym- 
 pathetic spirit, you will say. Yes, sympathetic, but 
 exacting. The needs of Tennyson's nature were such 
 that he found his age satisfying ; its attitude of mind 
 was his own attitude ; and thus it was that, as the 
 chronicler of its mental life, he gained acceptance. 
 Like Pope, he found the tersest expression for the 
 dominant moods, the ruling ideas of his time, and be- 
 came the historian of contemporary thought. Tenny- 
 son, like Pope, took the surest path to immortality ;and 
 when it is said that he belongs to the history of 
 language rather than to the history of thought, it is 
 meant that, thoughtful as he was, and passionate with 
 the warm human passions of a poet, neither did he 
 present in his work the full features of the age in 
 which he lived, nor had he for that age a message of 
 moment. Like his age, he was himself in doubt about 
 many things, and had no unifying conception, no 
 harmonising hypt^thesis to offer. On the minds of his 
 own contemporaries Tennyson exerted no intellectual 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 1 29 
 
 pressure, such as Carlyle exerted, nor did he awaken 
 dulled or sleeping chords in the spiritual life by 
 such strong, animating music as Browning's. His of- 
 fice was to minister to the general mass of readers 
 by holding up the mirror in which their most inti- 
 mate thoughts and feelings were reflected with charm- 
 ing simplicity, with marvellous exactness. 
 
 Tennyson, then, was the spokesman of the English 
 race in an era of art-renaissance, and he that runs 
 may read the cardinal notes of his art — its assimila- 
 tive power and the ciira et diligentia, the unwearied de- 
 votion he gave to it. Of that assimilative faculty which 
 made his verse so full-flavoured with reminiscences, so 
 dear to scholars, so pleasant on the ears of those fa- 
 miliar with the poetry of an elder day, more needs not 
 to be written. Not a little of what has been written 
 barely conceals the smile of irony beneath the veil of 
 praise. So much that was beautiful, so little that was 
 new! And indeed many of Tennyson's poems are a 
 veritable ccnto^ a patchwork from Greek and Italian 
 looms. Is it a cause for censure, you will ask, or 
 must we find in these reminiscences an unqualified 
 delight? To me, and I think I need make no de- 
 fence of myself, the power possessed by Tennyson of 
 reproducing in his verse the music of strains long 
 familiar, of recalling in phrase and echo the best 
 beauties of poets of long ago — to me this power 
 seems an altogether admirable and delightful power. 
 I cannot wish away a line of his poetry that displays 
 it. To quarrel with Lucretius because it is built of 
 materials taken from the Dc Kcruiii Natura, with pas- 
 sages like that fine one descriptive of 
 
 " The gods who haunt 
 The lucid interspace of v urld and world" — 
 
130 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 to quarrel with such a phrase as that used by Cleopa- 
 tra in The Dream of Fair Women — " I died a queen" — 
 because it is a paraphrase of a fine expression used by 
 
 Horace of Cleopatra, 
 
 " invidens 
 Privata deduci superbo 
 Non humilis mulier triumpho," 
 
 or with the stanza in which Helen of Troy, in the same 
 poem, cries : 
 
 " I would the white cold heavy-plunging foam, 
 Whirl'd by the wind, had roll'd me deep below, 
 Then when I left my home," 
 
 because if we turn to the sixth Iliad w it shall find the 
 original — to quarrel with such a line as " This way and 
 that dividing the swift mind," because it is a transla- 
 tion of Virgil's "Atque animum nunc hue celerem, nunc 
 dividit illuc " — to make a quarrel upon causes like 
 these would be to exhibit a temper unworthy of one 
 bidden to the feasts of the gods. Tennyson is indeed 
 full of translations and reminiscences ; he was a pla- 
 giarist, as Virgil and Spenser and Milton and Shelley 
 were plagiarists, but a plagiarist of less assurance. 
 If I have a touch of disquietude in the matter, 
 it is due to this lack of assurance in him. A frank 
 expression of indebtedness to his peers of former 
 time could have detracted nothing from his fame. 
 His plagiarisms, if we must call them so, are likely 
 to trouble us less than his anxiety to disprove 
 them. It might well be replied to a critic who com- 
 plained of these plagiarisms, that the hints taken by 
 Tennyson were not hints given to him alone ; it might 
 be replied that it is too late for criticism to complain 
 of a poetical method honoured in the practice of the 
 
A TENNYSON I'KIMEK. I3I 
 
 best poets of the ancient as of the modern world ; a 
 poetical method which gave us Lycidas and Adonais 
 and many another lovely poem beside, recalling words 
 sweet on the ears of men long centuries ago, fra- 
 grant with the infinite associations and memories that 
 cling around the speech of Homer and Theocritus, of 
 Horace and Virgil and Catullus. If Tennyson failed 
 to be always powerful, he seldom failed to be in- 
 teresting. And he seldom failed to be interesting 
 because of his close acquaintance with the best writ- 
 ings of the ancients as well as of the moderns, with the 
 masterpieces of Greek art, with the wisest sayings of 
 the philosophers — in a word, with the culture of the 
 world. Tennyson seldom fails to be interesting be- 
 cause of this close acquaintanceship with " the best 
 that has been known and thought in the world," and 
 because his poetry abundantly displays it. 
 
 No less conspicuous in his verse than its wealth of 
 reminiscences is the labor /ii/iw, the care he devoted to 
 it. The marks of an unwearying labour of love are 
 plainly visible in almost every line of his poetry, 
 whether of his youth or age. Are you curious to learn 
 the secrets of the poetical art ? There is no poet who 
 goes so near betraying them. There is no poet who 
 has so frequently shown a poem upon the stocks, in 
 process of building. In the many versions of a poem 
 like The Princess, you are admitted to the studio ; 
 you are shown the first rough draft, the elaborated 
 sketch, the completed picture. The instinct and 
 care for form somewhat obscured in the work of his 
 predecessors — this instinct and care for form, which in 
 the early years of the century had suffered temporary 
 eclipse, were early apparent in Tennyson's poetry. 
 The favouring gale of inspiration and the proud full 
 
132 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 sail of Scott's and Byron's verse had seemed sufficient 
 to their generation, had in the eyes of their readers 
 left nothing to be desired. The rights of form were 
 reasserted in the poetry of Coleridge and of Keats, 
 and the earliest essays of Tennyson in verse foretold 
 the character of his art, whose final aim was only 
 reached in a laboured perfection of finish. Passing by 
 the boyish verses of 1827, indicative of little more than 
 the presence of strong poetical ambition, the poems of 
 1832, though still without any grasp of realit}^ proved 
 the advent of a writer with undoubted skill in words, 
 with music in his brain. The feminine daintiness, the 
 absence of all intensity, of the masculine voice, was 
 the least hopeful sign of his early work, and seemed 
 to indicate little real power behind the picture-music, 
 behind the delicate web of words little real breadth of 
 poetic imagination. 
 
 Even his admirers in those early days would have 
 welcomed verses that betrayed less anxious correct- 
 ness, less highly wrought beauty of diction. The 
 results appeared due to assiduous culture rather than 
 to native strength, and it seemed more than doubtful 
 that the ground could produce a richer or fuller crop. 
 And indeed in Tennyson there is no such spontaneity as 
 amazes us in Keats, there is no such " sweet slipping 
 movement " as in Spenser. In his more ornate and 
 decorative verse the artist is too conspicuous ; we ad- 
 mire the skill of the workman more than the quality 
 of the work. But let this be as it may, the admirable 
 poise of his faculties remains to him. Tennyson's na- 
 ture was finely balanced, and he rises far above the 
 poets whose emotion is merely musical. In the firm 
 balance of his nature, strong as his artistic instincts 
 were, in the firm balance of his nature the artist rare- 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 133 
 
 ly outran the man. The subordination of the matter 
 to the form is less and less apparent in the succeeding 
 volumes of his poetry. How different is he in this 
 from the poets of to-day ! The latter-day poets as- 
 sure us, and the latter-day critics likewise, that art is 
 all in all, that poetry is style. We have critics not a 
 few who regard sweetness and strength as attributes of 
 style, and are ignorant that they are not attributes of 
 style, but attributes of mind and character, expressed 
 in style. How fortunate that in Tennyson the balance 
 was preserved — the balance between the emotions and 
 the will, between the heart and head, between what is 
 said and the manner of saying it ! Because Tenny^ 
 son's style is the expression of character, and not a 
 palace of emptiness, because he is throughout sane 
 and everywhere guided by a wise knowledge of the 
 poet's craft, he is a true and great artist. To compare 
 him with his successors is to gauge the true measure 
 of his performance. With his successors the balance 
 is lost, and when a man or a poet has nothing to say, 
 to think that it can be said finely, what hallucination ! 
 To think that the accent of freshness can be obtained 
 by torturing language, that the great effects in 
 poetry, the effects of Sophocles, of Dante and of 
 Shakespere, their intense significance, can be account- 
 ed for by a skill in words, an artisan's dexterity ! The 
 great effects in poetry are straightforward effects ; the 
 great effects of poetry are those in which the emphasis 
 of expression corresponds to some emphasis of 
 thought, some intensity of feeling. And it is because 
 in Tennyson the artist rarely outran the man that we 
 have confidence in him. If you ask me for the se- 
 cret of Tennyson's hold upon the mind of his gener- 
 ation, I shall answer you with assurance that it lies in 
 
134 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 his accent of sincerity, it lies in his literary integrity, 
 in a wholesomeness in his art. For this integrity we 
 value him, and for this the future will value him. 
 The poetry that cannot make for beauty and grace and 
 harmony in human life, since it has practically no bear- 
 ing upon life at all, such poetry is as vain a thing as the 
 jargon of the critics who commend it, and as transi- 
 tory. 
 
 As the poetic artist of the nineteenth century 
 who best knew his own limitations, and in whom the 
 balance, the compromise between form and matter in 
 which poetry consists, is best preserved, as poetic 
 chronicler of the mental life of his time, and as the 
 interpreter of that spirit of intellectual hesitation 
 which was characteristic of his contemporaries and 
 leads to eclecticism in matters of faith, Tennyson will 
 be remembered. And he will be remembered, although 
 the greatness of his work must be looked for else- 
 where than in its scope or imaginative power. The 
 large comprehensiveness, the wide-eyed vision that 
 takes in the spectacle of human life in its vast whole 
 ^nd in the complexity of its parts, this did not belong 
 to him, nor did he share in all the joys and sorrows 
 of mankind. Tennyson's lyrics sing the joys and 
 sorrows of English folk ; he was above and before all 
 the poet of England, the best lover among her poet- 
 sons. For the rest his attitude was retrospective, and 
 when his fancy ranged, the land of its dearest romance 
 lay in the heroic past. " It was written," he said of 
 that exquisite lyric, Tears, idle Tears, " at Tintern 
 Abbey, when the woods were all yellowing with 
 autumn, seen through the ruined windows. It is 
 what I have always felt as a boy, and what as a boy I 
 called the passion of the past. And it is always with 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. I35 
 
 me now ; it is the distance that charms me in the 
 landscape, the picture and the past, and not the im- 
 mediate to-day in which I move."* 
 
 To the colour-school of English poetry, to. the line- 
 age of the poets of romance, Tennyson belonged. He 
 did not care to draw in outline, to impress by the 
 naked grandeur of conception. From the first, like 
 Keats, he held that poetry should surprise by a fine 
 excess, by a richness and profusion of beauties, that 
 it should be a veritable cloth of gold. From the first 
 he was for such accessories as should lead the senses 
 captive and enthrall the reader with infinite vistas of 
 delight. Yet his is not the bewildering charm of 
 Spenser's fairyland, the luxuriant undergrowth of 
 beauty in enchanted forests. Rather it is the ordered 
 beauty of a noble English garden, of the English 
 landscape that he loved so well. It was said by 
 Wordsworth of Tennyson : " He is not much in sym- 
 pathy with what I should myself most value in my at- 
 tempts — viz., the spirituality with which I have en- 
 deavoured to view the material universe, and the moral 
 relations under which I have wished to exhibit its 
 most ordinary appearances." It is true that Tenny- 
 son was not much in sympathy with such attempts. 
 Few poets indeed have kept with Nature a closer com- 
 panionship ; her sights and sounds were his most 
 familiar friends. To this close companionship we owe 
 the skilful appropriateness of his backgrounds and 
 the delicate accuracy of their form and colour. Tenny- 
 son observed, and observed narrowly ; observed indeed 
 with something akin to the trained scientific eye. 
 There is no need to adduce from his poetry passages 
 
 * Cf. The Ancient Sage — " On me, when boy, there came what 
 then I call'd," etc. 
 
136 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 to prove how loving and how close an eye he kept 
 upon the world around him. Readers of Tennyson do 
 not need to be reminded of such touches as meet us, 
 for example, in a phrase like that descriptive of the 
 yew tree answering a random stroke, 
 
 " With fruitful cloud and living smoke" — 
 
 such illustrative touches as meet us here, 
 
 " Why lingereth she to clothe her heart with love, 
 Delaying as the tender ash delays 
 To clothe herself when all the woods are green." 
 
 Those who are acquainted with the poetry of 
 Tennyson know that it is a mine of such wealth ; they 
 know that he was a true lover of Nature, of her trees 
 and flowers and waters, and her skies and silent stars. 
 They know too that he was a bird lover, and that 
 there are few English birds that have not found men- 
 tion in his verse. But for all this Wordsworth was 
 right. Tennyson did not, in the same degree as 
 Wordsworth, "see into the life of things," and when 
 the elder poet's imagination would have kindled into 
 .the flame of unquenchable poesy, Tennyson remained a 
 draughtsman and a colourist, but the draughtsman 
 and colourist who is perhaps the greatest of English 
 idyllic poets. His admirers have much to tell us of 
 his greatness as an epic, of his greatness as a dra- 
 matic poet. It will be sufficient for us to maintain 
 an attitude of admiration, but an attitude of admira- 
 tion qualified by some acquaintance with the great 
 epics and the great dramas of the world. The truth 
 is, that Tennyson's versatility is a source of critical 
 error, just as Byron's brilliancy and versatility were a 
 source of rrJtl^al prror. Possessed of a finer judg- 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 137 
 
 ment but a narrower imaginative range and less 
 strength than Byron, Tennyson essayed, like Byron, 
 song and idyl, epic and drama. Tennyson essayed 
 all these, and on the whole essayed them more success- 
 fully than Byron. But as it is merely idle to speak of 
 Byron as a great dramatic or even a great epic poet, 
 it is idle to speak of Tennyson as having achieved 
 greatness in these, the highest departments of the poetic 
 art. The creative artists are few, and though Tenny- 
 son was not one of them, though his real power lay 
 in the adornment of familiar themes, in the re-cloth- 
 ing of familiar feelings, so strong and brilliant a 
 writer, so careful and so fine an artist could hardly 
 fail of success, even in fields unsuited to his genius. 
 By reason of his versatility, Tennyson is a difficult 
 poet to characterize. But however his critics may dif- 
 fer upon other points, they will be at one upon this, that 
 his idyllic poems possess a singular and vivid charm, 
 and they will be at one upon this also, that in great 
 measure they possess this charm because in no other 
 poems have the features of English landscape found so 
 admiring and so faithful an interpreter. Here is a 
 poet in whose dealings with Nature there is no mysti- 
 cism, who sees in her only what all may see, and yet 
 for whom Nature, as seen by the scientific eye, has 
 suffered no loss of beauty, no diminution of her poetic 
 stimulus. For many poets Nature has been the dwell- 
 ing-place of innumerable spirits, passionful creatures 
 of the flood and field, spirits of forest and stream, lush 
 meadow and gray hill-side. These half-human, half- 
 divine shapes flitted by them in the music of the wind, 
 babbled in the rivulet, or held revel in the cool green 
 depths of their long sea-halls. Upon the minds of 
 their less imaginative readers the appeal made by the 
 
138 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 fantastic dreams of such poets was necessarily slight. 
 The nature-poetry of Wordsworth required for its due 
 appreciation even a more active and certainly a more 
 spiritual imagination. In Tennyson's world the de- 
 mand for any activity of imagination on the part of 
 the reader is unapparent ; his pictures satisfy the 
 senses and fill the eye. Mark the sharpness of out- 
 line, the lucidity and completeness of this, the descrip- 
 tion of the island in Enoch Arden : 
 
 " The mountain wooded to the peak, the hiwns 
 And winding glades, high up like ways to Heaven, 
 The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes, 
 The lightning flash of insect and of bird, 
 The lustre of the long convolvuluses 
 That coil'd around the stately stems, and ran 
 Ev'n to the limit of the land, the glows 
 And glories of the broad bell of the world ; 
 All these he saw ; but what he fain had seen 
 He could not see, the kindly human face, 
 Nor ever heard a kindly voice, but heard 
 The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl. 
 The league-long roller thundering on the reef, — 
 The moving whisper of huge trees that branch'd 
 And blossom'd in the zenith, or the sweep 
 Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave. 
 As down the shore he ranged, or all day long 
 Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge, 
 A shipwreck'd sailor waiting for a sail : 
 No sail from day to day, but every day 
 The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts 
 Among the palms and ferns and precipices ; 
 The blaze upon the waters to the east ; 
 The blaze upon his island overhead ; 
 The blaze upon the waters to the west ; 
 Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven, 
 The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again 
 The scarlet shafts of sunrise, but no sail." 
 
A TENNVSON PRIMER. 1 39 
 
 In the poetry of Tennyson Nature is suffused in a 
 mellow light ; she is at peace, charged with a message 
 of rich but quiet beauty. He sought her society for 
 soothing influences, for her infinite lore and her celes- 
 tial calm, not, as did Wordsworth, to find a presence 
 that disturbed him with the joy of elevated thoughts. 
 
 But just as the reader of Wordsworth will feel the 
 absence of spirituality in Tennyson's transcripts of na- 
 ture, the readers of Browning will miss in him the 
 spiritual fire by which that poet discovers in nature 
 and life and art not the powers that make for rest and 
 peace, but for restless and upward strife ; they will 
 miss in him the spiritual energy which finds the best 
 hopes of the race in the thought 
 
 " that man is hurled 
 From change to change unceasingly, 
 His soul's wings never furled." 
 
 For Tennyson not passion, not aspirations and en- 
 thusiasms are man's guiding angels, but love and duty 
 and allegiance ; and while he seeks for quiet waters 
 and for harbours of refuge for the soul upon the voy- 
 age of life. Browning " is glad to know the brine salt 
 on his lips and the large air again," and finds invigo- 
 rating influences and infinite encouragement in the 
 midst of toil and storm ; quoedam divina volaptas, a cer- 
 tain divine gladness in the wind and reeling seas. 
 
 You will seek in vain in Tennyson for the larger 
 elements, the far horizons of thought, the wide and 
 gracious spaces, the unimagined depths, the austere 
 yet tranquillising sadness, the severe unbroken calm, 
 the magnanimities of the greatest poetry. You will 
 seek in vain for the presence of the higher imagina- 
 tion. The popular verdict will not have it so. It will 
 
I40 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 affirm that none of the qualities of the highest poetry 
 are absent from Tennyson's verse. But for those 
 acquainted, however slightly, with the literature of 
 the world's past, passage after passage will rise to 
 mind, passage after passage beside which there is 
 nothing of Tennyson's to be placed. Take one from 
 a contemporar)' : 
 
 " The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth, 
 And the earth changes like a human face ; 
 The molten ore bursts up among the rocks, 
 Winds into the stone's heart, outbranches bright 
 In hidden mines, spots barren river-beds. 
 Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask — 
 God joj'S therein. The wroth sea's waves are edged 
 With foam, white as the bitter lip of hate, ■ 
 When, in the solitary waste, strange groups 
 Of j'oung volcanos come up, cyclops-like. 
 Staring together with their eyes on flame — 
 God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. 
 Then all is still ; earth is a wintry clod : 
 But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes 
 Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure 
 Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between 
 The withered tree-roots and the cracks of frost, 
 Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face ; 
 The grass grows bright, the boughs are swollen with blooms 
 Like chrysalids impatient for the air. 
 The shining dorrs are bus\', beetles run 
 Along the furrows, ants make their ado ; 
 Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark 
 Soars up and up, shivering for very joy ; 
 Afar the ocean sleeps ; white fishing gulls 
 Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe 
 Of nested limpets ; savage creatures seek 
 Their loves in wood and plain — and Gud renews 
 His ancient rapture." 
 
 I have elsewhere said that Browning was our only 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 14I 
 
 representative of Christian art in an era of classical 
 revival. And he was so because his interest centred 
 in the individual rather than in any terrestrial future of 
 the race, and because in the pursuit of his art, his reach 
 exceeded his grasp, his thought outsped his expres- 
 sion. He passed by, and that deliberately, the possi- 
 bility of perfection in a limited sphere of endeavour, 
 preferring to follow forever the supreme unapproach- 
 able ideal. In Browning's poetry the splendid eleva- 
 tions alternate with the levels of indisputable prose. It 
 was not so with Tennyson. Where inspiration failed, 
 the labour of the artist was redoubled and the verse 
 showed no signs of weakness. Tennyson, to use his 
 own phrase, " respected the limitations," wrought 
 with no material save such as he could fashion to per- 
 fection, grasped and outlined his thought with the 
 sharp precision of one who speaks of familiar experi- 
 ences, and was master of all the keys of his instru- 
 ment. Tennyson clove the mark at which he aimed, 
 but Browning's arrow, like that of the archer of 
 ancient story, sped, in an arc of light, beyond the 
 ken of the gazers, to be lost in the overarching 
 heaven. 
 
 When the critic has put on record his judgments, 
 but one part of his duty is performed. He must put 
 on record his admiration also. And if the office of 
 the poet were to be a minister of sweet pleasure only, 
 I do not know that Tennyson might not be rightly 
 judged the first of the moderns. There is no body of 
 English verse wherein for eye and ear and heart a 
 feast of purer, more unalloyed pleasure is spread. 
 And Tennyson's reward was the reward of accept- 
 ance. By the choice of his subjects as well as by the 
 variety of his form, by the simplicity and directness 
 
142 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 of his method and by the tempered perfection of his 
 art he made his irresistible appeal to his countrymen. 
 Even in his rendering of an old-world story, in his 
 treatment of a Greek myth, he satisfied the modern 
 ear, he created the atmosphere that was the poetic 
 breath of life to the sensitive minds of the time. In 
 his lyrics, where he was most original, he made an 
 almost untouched field of human feeling his own, the 
 field of that vague, wordless autumnal sadness of the 
 spirit, a sadness that seems to have its source in a 
 secret sympathy with some hidden sorrow lying deep 
 in the heart of Nature, the universal mother. Tenny- 
 son was born for acceptance as a poet ; under his 
 transmuting touch all material became poetic. He 
 was born for acceptance, and in his strong practical 
 cjualities, in his deep-rooted love for the heroic, as 
 displayed in his stirring ballads of action, in his tender 
 domesticities, as well as in his uiupicnchable patriot- 
 ism and love of political order, he was a poet after 
 the English heart. He may well spare to others the 
 crowns of their deserving, the people's garland of 
 affection will long be Tennyson's. 
 
 That from first to last in Tennyson's poetry the 
 idea of law is paramount, that the central doctrine of 
 his political and social creed was the dt)ctrine of an 
 equable progress under the reign of law — all this has 
 been sufficiently dwelt on by the critics. His philo- 
 sophy, too, has been sufliciently dwelt on, his ethical 
 and religious teaching. One word more may be 
 added. Of his creed, the creed of optimism, it is 
 inevitable that the inquiry be made. Of what valid- 
 ity is such a creed, reached by a process unknown to 
 logic, supported only by frail trembling desires and 
 emotions that know not the place of their birth? 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 1 43 
 
 What is the poet that we should trust him, and who 
 shall be our prophet but the man of science, the revealer 
 of the indisputable fact? There is but one answer 
 to these questions : We are not optimists by nature, 
 neither are we pessimists. To the cry of despair in 
 the poetry of the world, ofttimes an exceeding 
 bitter cry, the heart of man responds no less than to 
 its cry of hope — 
 
 " Surgit amari aliquid, quod in ipsis floribus angat." 
 
 To the cry of despair in the poetry of the world, let 
 it be fully granted, the heart, indeed, responds, but 
 from the beginning of things one thought has never 
 found but momentary place in the human mind, one 
 thought has seemed to all men intolerable — that the 
 base and selfish and unjust and craven-hearted have 
 read the riddle of life aright ; that the battle has been 
 and will be to these, and that its pure and merciful 
 and brave and generous souls are the foolish and the 
 vanquished ones of earth. This, even in the foolish- 
 ness that is our only wisdom, we cannot think. And 
 at the foundations of all poetry and philosophy to 
 which we are accustomed to look for the awakening 
 and the nourishment of the best and highest in man, 
 at the foundations of all poetry and philosophy we find 
 that they arc built upon this rock of faith. We shall 
 do well to be on the side of Plato, and of the house- 
 hold of the poets. 
 
LIST OF DATES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY, 
 
 iSog. Alfred, the third son of the Rev. George Clayton Tennyson, 
 LL.D., and Elizabeth Fytche, was born at Somersby 
 Rectory, in Somersby, Lincolnshire. The family consisted 
 of seven sons (Frederick and Charles preceding Alfred) 
 and five daughters. 
 
 1811. Arthur Hallam born. 
 
 18 16. Alfred entered the Grammar School at Louth. 
 
 1820. Alfred left the Grammar School at the Christmas vacation. 
 
 1826. Poems by Two Brothers. " Hcec nos novimtis esse nihil" 
 
 (Martial). London : Printed for W. Simpkin & R. Mar- 
 shall, Stationers, Hall Court, and J. & J. Jackson, Louth, 
 MDCCCXXVIL, (post-dated), pp. xii., 228. Published in 
 two sizes, 8vo and i2mo. 
 
 1827. Notice of Poems by Two Brothers, in the Literary Chronicle 
 
 and Weekly Review (May 19). 
 
 1828. Alfred and Charles Tennyson went up to Trinity College, 
 
 Cambridge, whither Frederick had preceded them. 
 
 1829. TiMBucTOO : A poem which obtained the Chancellor's medal 
 
 at the Cambridge Commencement. By A. Tennyson, of 
 Trinity College, MDCCCXXIX. Printed in the Cam- 
 bridge Chro7iicle of July 10, 1829, and in the ''Prohisiones 
 AcademiccE prt^mis annuis dignatis et iit curia Canta- 
 brigiensi recitata; comitiis maximis. A, D. MDCCCXXIX. 
 Cantabrigics ; typis academicis excudit Joannes Smith, 
 pp. 13." Reprinted several times in collections of " Cam- 
 bridge Prize Poems." 
 
 Notice of Ti/nbuctoo in The AthencBum (July 22). 
 
 Burlesqued by W. M. Thackeray in The Snob (Cambridge), 
 pp. 18-21. 
 
 Reviewed in The Athcnceum (July 22). 
 
 1830. Poems, chiefly Lyrical, by Alfred Tennyson. London : 
 
 Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, Cornhill, 1830, 8vo, 
 pp. 154, and leaf of errata. (No Table of Contents.) 
 
146 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 Alfred Tennyson and Arthur Hallam made an excursion 
 into the Pyrenees. 
 
 In this year Charles Tennyson published S<y/n/<-/s and Fugi- 
 tive Pieces. 
 1S31. No More. -\ Printed in llie Gem, a Literary An- 
 
 Anacreontics. > nual. London : W. Marshall, i Holborn 
 
 A Fragment. 3 Bars, MDCCCXXXI. 
 
 Sonnet, " Check every outflash, every ruder sally." Printed 
 in The Eiiglis/inian's Magazine {Awgnsl). Reprinted, 1833, 
 in Friendship' s Offering, p. 29. 
 
 Review of Poems, chiefly Lyrical, in The Westminster Re- 
 vieii) (January) ; in The Tatler (February 24 and succeed- 
 ing numbers), by Leigh Hunt, and in The Englishman's 
 Magazine (August), by A. H. Hallam {On Some of the 
 Characteristics of Modern Poetry and on the Lyrical Poems 
 of Alfred Tennyson). 
 
 The Rev. George Clayton Tennyson, the poet's father, died, 
 March 16, aged 52. 
 
 1832. Poems, by Alfred Tennyson. London : Edward Moxon, 
 
 64 New Bond Street, MDCCCXXXIIL, pp. 163, leaf of 
 contents, title, and half title. Published in winter of 1S32 
 and post-dated. 
 
 Sonnet, " There are three things which fill my heart with 
 sighs." Printed in the Yorkshire Literary Annual (ed- 
 ited by C. F. Edgar). London : Longmans & Co., 
 p. 127. 
 
 Sonnet, "Me, my own fate to lasting sorrow doometh. " 
 Printed in Friendship's Offering, a literary album. Lon- 
 don : Smith, Elder & Co., p. 367. 
 
 Review of Poems (1833) in Blackivood'' s Magazine (May), by 
 Christopher North (Professor Wilson). Reprinted in 
 works of Professor Wilson, vol. vi., pp. iog-152. 
 
 Review of Poems (1S33) in Atheneeum (December l). 
 
 Arthur Hallam graduated at Cambridge. A guest at Som- 
 ersby. 
 
 1833. The Lover's Tale, by Alfred Tennyson. London : Ed- 
 
 ward Moxon, 64 New Bond Street, MDCCCXXXIIL, pp. 
 60. (Suppressed and withdrawn from the press.) 
 Review of Poems (1833) in The Quarterly (July), attributed 
 to John Gibson Lockhart, the editor. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. I47 
 
 Review of Poems, chiefly Lyrical, by W. J. Fox in The 
 
 Alonthly Repository (January). 
 Arthur Henry Hallam died at Vienna, September 15. 
 
 1834. Mrs. Tennyson removed to Cheltenham, after three years 
 
 at Boxley, near Maidstone. 
 
 1835. Review of Tennyson s Poems in The London Revieiv, (after- 
 
 wards merged in The Westtninster Review) (July), by John 
 Stuart Mill. 
 Tennyson visited Cumberland. 
 
 1836. Charles Tennyson Turner married Louisa .Sellwood, sister 
 
 of Emily, who became the wife of Alfred Tennyson. 
 
 1837. St. Agnes. Printed in The Keepsake (edited by Lady E. S. 
 
 Wortley). London : Longmans & Co. 
 
 Stanzas, "Oh that 'twere possible." Printed in The 
 Tribute : a Collection of Miscellaneous Unpublished 
 Poems by Various Authors (edited by Lord Northamp- 
 ton). London : John Murray, pp. 244-250. 
 
 Notice of Tennyson in The Edinburgh Review (October). 
 
 Tennyson family left Somersby for High Beech, Essex. 
 1S38. Tennyson appears as a member of the Anonymous Club. 
 
 1842. Poems, by Alfred Tennyson. In two volumes. London : 
 
 Edward Moxon, Dover Street, MDCCCXLII., pp. vii., 
 233, vii., 231. 
 
 Review of 1842 /"tfc'wj in The Westminster Revie^u {Octoher), 
 by Richard Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton). 
 
 Review in The Quarterly by John Sterling, vol. Ixx., pp. 
 385-416. Reprinted in Sterling's Remains, vol. i., pp. 
 422-462. 
 
 Review in The Examiner (May). 
 
 Review in Tail's Edinburgh Magazine (August). 
 
 Review in The London University Magazine (December). 
 
 Review in The Christian Examiner , Boston (November). 
 
 Tennyson introduced to Carlyle. 
 
 Cecilia Tennyson married to Edward Law Lushington (Oc- 
 tober). 
 
 1843. Poems, by Alfred Tennyson. 2 vols. 2d edition. Changes 
 
 were introduced into The Blackbird, Walking to the 
 Mail, The Day Dream, and The Two Voices. 
 Bon Gaultier Ballads, by Theodore Martin and W. E. 
 Aytoun, published in Tail's and Eraser s magazines. 
 
148 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 These contained parodies of several of Tennyson's 
 
 poems. 
 Review of Pooiis in Tlic Edin/nirgh Review (July). 
 Elizabeth Barrett (Browning) introduced to Tennyson. 
 Tennyson meets Wordsworth. 
 
 1844. Portrait and notice of Tennyson in R. H. Home's A New 
 
 Spirit of the Age. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 
 
 Review of Tennyson in The Democratic Revieia (January), 
 New York, by Mrs. Kemble. 
 
 Marginalia, by Edgar Allan Poe, in the December num- 
 ber of the same review, p. 580. 
 
 1845. Poems, by Alfred Tennyson. 2 vols, 3d edition, A note 
 
 to the Idyll of Dora and The Ballad of Lady Clare omitted. 
 Review of Poems in Chambers' Edinburgh Reviezu (July), 
 Tennyson's name was placed on the Civil List for a pension 
 
 of ;i^2oo a year by Sir Robert Peel. 
 Tennyson satirised as Poet and Pensioner in The New Ti- 
 mon : A Romance of London, by Sir E, B. Lytton. Lon- 
 don : Henry Colburn, 
 Living Poets, and their Services to the Cause of Political 
 Freedom and Human Progress. No. HL, Alfred Tennyson, 
 Lectures addressed chiefly to the Working Classes, by 
 W. J. Fox. Published from the reporter's notes, Lon- 
 don, 1845, vol. i., pp. 248-265. 
 
 1846. Poems, by Alfred Tennyson. 2 vols. The Golden Year 
 
 first printed in this edition (the last in two volumes). 
 The New Timon and the Poets. A reply to Bulwer Lytton, in 
 
 Punch (February 28): 
 Afterthought, in Punch (March 7). 
 
 Keats and Tennyson. Conversations on the Poets, by J. R, 
 / Lowell, Cambridge, U, S,, p, 104, 
 
 1847. The Princess : A Medley, by Alfred Tennyson. London: 
 
 Edward Moxon, Dover Street, MDCCCXLVH., pp, 
 164, 
 Notice of Tennyson in William Howitt's Homes and Haunts 
 of the Most Eminent British Poets. London, 1S47, vol. 
 ii., pp. 452-470, 
 
 1848. The Princess : A Medley, by Alfred Tennyson, 2d edi- 
 
 tion. With a Dedication to Henry Lushington, This 
 edition contains a few slight verbal alterations. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. I49 
 
 Poems, by Alfred Tennyson. 5th edition, pp. viii., 372. 
 The first one-volume edition. 
 
 Review of The Princess in Quarterly Review (March), at- 
 tributed to Sara Coleridge. 
 
 Review of The Princess in The North British Review 
 (May). 
 
 Lines to , " You might have won the poet's fame," in 
 
 The Examiner (March). 
 
 The Living Authors of England (Tennyson, pp. 36-60), 
 by T. Powell, New York. 
 
 Review of Poems in Blackwood' s Magazine (April). 
 
 Review of Poems in The Westmitister Reviezv (July). 
 
 Review of The Princess in The Edinburgh Review (October). 
 
 Review of 77/^? Princess in The New Englander, by Pro- 
 fessor Hadley, of Yale. 
 
 In Memoriam. London : Edward Moxon, pp. vii., 210. 
 (Anonymous.) The 2d and 3d editions unaltered save 
 by the correction of two misprints. 
 
 The Princess. 3d edition. (Partly rewritten and much al- 
 tered ; the songs added.) 
 
 Poems. 6th edition, pp. 374. Addition of lines, " You 
 might have won the poet's name." 
 
 Lines, " Here often, when a child, I lay reclined." Printed 
 in The Manchester A thcna:u7n Album. 
 
 Alfred Tennyson married to Emily Sellwood, June 15, in 
 Shiplake Church, Oxfordshire. Settled at Chapel House, 
 Twickenham, after a journey to Italy. 
 
 Alfred Tennyson appointed Poet Laureate, November 19, 
 to succeed William Wordsworth, who died April 23. 
 
 Tennyson, in Eraser' s Magazine (September), by Charles 
 Kingsley. 
 
 Review of In Memoriam in Tail's Edinburgh Magazine 
 (August). 
 
 Review of In Memoriam in Sharpe's London Magazine (Au- 
 gust). 
 
 Review of In Afemoriam in The Westminster Rcviciv (Oc- 
 tober). 
 
 Review of In Memoriam in Dublin University Magazine 
 (August). 
 
 The Princess. 4th edition, pp. 182. Passages added 
 
ISO A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 describing the Prince's ^vcird seizures, and the fourth song 
 altered. 
 
 In Memoriam. 4th edition. Sec. lix. added (" O Sorrow, 
 wilt thou live with me?"). 
 
 Poems. 7th edition. The following poems added, To the 
 Queen J Edwin Morris, or tJie Lake; Come Not wlien I am 
 Dead, and The Eagle. 
 
 Stanzas, "What time I wasted youthful hours," and 
 " Come not when I am dead." Printed in The Keepsake 
 
 . (edited by Miss Power). London : David Bogue, p. 22. 
 
 Sonnet to W. C. Macready, read by John Forster at the 
 farewell dinner to the actor. Printed in The Household 
 Narrative of Current Events (February, March), in The 
 People's Jourtial {A^rW), and elsewhere. 
 
 Review of In Memoriam in The People's and Howitt's Jour- 
 nal (}J\.a.y). 
 
 Five papers on Tennyson's Prineess in the Christian So- 
 cialist (September to November), by Gerald Massey. 
 
 Tennyson presented to the Queen at Buckingham Palace, 
 March 6. 
 
 1852. Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, by Al- 
 
 fred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. London : Edward Mox- 
 
 on, pp. 16. 
 Stanzas, " Britons, guard your own," in The Examiner 
 
 (January 31). 
 Lines, " Third of February, 1852," and " Hands All Round," 
 
 in The Examiner (February 7). 
 (These three poems were over the signature of " Merlin.") 
 A Second Gallery of Literary Portraits, Edinburgh, by 
 
 George Gilfillan (Tennyson, pp. 148-159). 
 Literary Recreations, by D. L. Richardson. (Criticism 
 
 of the Day and Tennyson, pp. 291-305.) London : 
 
 Thacker & Co. 
 Hallam, Tennyson's eldest son (now Lord Tennyson), born 
 
 at Twickenham (August). 
 
 1853. Poems. 8th edition, pp. 379. Poem, Sea Fairies (1830 vol.) 
 
 restored ; A Dream of Fair Women, and To the Queen 
 altered ; To E. L., on his Travels in Greece, added. 
 The Princess. 5th edition, pp. 183. Passage from the 
 "gallant, glorious chronicle" added in the Prologue. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 151 
 
 An Essay on the Characteristic Errors of ottr Most Dis- 
 tinguished Livitig Poets, by Nicholas J. Gannon, Dublin, 
 pp. 49. 
 
 Sketches of the Poetical Literature of the Past Half Century, 
 by D. M. Moir. Edinburgh and London : Blackwood 
 & Sons. (Tennyson, pp. 307-317.) 
 
 Translation : Gedichte iibersetzt von W. Hertzberg. Dessau. 
 
 Bought, and went to reside at, Farringford, Freshwater, 
 Isle of Wight. 
 
 Tennyson visited the Western Highlands, Staffa and lona. 
 
 1854. The Charge of the Light Brigade. First printed in 
 
 The Examiner (December 9). A thousand copies on a 
 quarto sheet (August, 1855), with a note by the author, 
 printed for distribution among the soldiers before Sebas- 
 topol. 
 
 Days and Hours, by Frederick Tennyson. London : John 
 W. Parker & Son, West Strand, pp. viii. , 346. 
 
 Dedication by Frederick Denison Maurice of his Theological 
 Essays to Tennyson. 
 
 Lionel, Tennyson's second son, born at Farringford. 
 
 Translation : In Menioriam aus dein Englischen. Braun- 
 schweig. 
 
 1855. Maud, and other Poems, by Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L., 
 
 Poet Laureate. London : Edward Moxon, pp. 154. 
 
 R eview of The Poetry of Alfred Tennyson, by Gerald 
 Massey, in Hogg's Instructor (July). 
 
 Review of Maud in Blackwood's Magazine (September). 
 
 Review of Maud in Dublin University Magazine (Septem- 
 ber). 
 
 Review of Maud in The Edinbttrgh Review (October). 
 
 Review of Aland in Eraser's Magazine (September). 
 
 Review of Aland in The A^ational Review (October). 
 
 Review of Aland in The North American Review (October), 
 by the Rev. E. E. Hale. 
 
 Essay on Tennyson, by George Brimley, published in Cam- 
 bridge Essays. Reprinted in Brimley's Collected Essays. 
 
 The University of Oxford conferred the D.C.L. upon Ten- 
 nyson at the May Commencements. 
 
 1856. Maud, and other Poems. 2d edition, with considerable 
 
 alteration and enlargement, pp. 164. 
 
152 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 Alfred Tennyson : An Essay. In three parts. By W. 
 Fulford in the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, pp. 7, 
 
 73. 136. 
 English Traits, by Ralph Waldo Emerson. (Tennyson in 
 
 LiUrahere article. Works. Vol. ii., pp. 114-115.) 
 Teniiysons Maud Vindicated, The Spirit and Purpose of 
 
 Maud, by R. J. Mann, M.D. London : Jarrold & Son, 
 
 pp. 78. 
 Anti-Maud, by a Poet of the People. 2d edition. London : 
 
 L. Booth, pp. 30. 
 Defence of Matid in an anonymous volume of poems, en- 
 titled lonica, in verses entitled After Reading Maud, 
 
 September, 1855. 
 Review of Maud in the London University Magazine (May). 
 Notice of Tennyson in The National Magazine (November). 
 
 1857. Enid and Nimue ; or, The True and the False. Tw^o 
 
 idylls privately printed (probably intended for publication 
 and withdrawn for alterations), pp. 139. 
 
 Notice of Tennyson in the London University Magazine 
 (April). 
 
 Lectures and Miscellanies, by H. W. Freeland, M.A. Lon- 
 don : Longmans & Co. (Tennyson's In Memoriavi, pp. 
 194-200.) 
 
 Bayard Taylor visited Tennyson at Farringford (June). See 
 Bayard Taylor's At Home and Abroad, p. 372. 
 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne met Tennyson at the Manchester Ex- 
 hibition (July). 
 
 1858. Two stanzas on the marriage of the Princess Royal, added 
 
 by Tennyson to the National Anthem, January 28, 1858. 
 Printed in the newspapers of January 29. Notice of Ten- 
 nyson by the Rev. F. W. Robertson in his Lectures and 
 Addresses. London : Smith, Elder & Co., pp. 124-141. 
 
 On June 22 Clough " heard Tennyson read a third Arthur 
 poem — the detection of Guinevere, and the last interview 
 with Arthur." {Remains of A. H. Clough, vol. i., p. 235.) 
 
 Prince Albert visited Tennyson at Farringford. 
 
 Tennyson visited Inverary as the guest of the Duke of 
 Argyll. 
 1S59. Idylls of the King, by Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet 
 Laureate. London : Edward Moxon & Co., pp. 261. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. I 53 
 
 Verses, The War (" There is a sound of thunder afar"). 
 Printed in The Times (May 9), signed "T. " Acknowl- 
 edged by Tennyson, iSgi. 
 
 Verses, The Grandmother s Apology. With an illustration 
 by J. E. Millais. Printed in Onee a Week (July 16). 
 Now entitled The Grandmother . 
 
 Tennyson and his Teachers, by Peter Bayne, M.A. James 
 Hogg & Sons, Edinburgh and London, pp. 202-2S0. 
 
 Review of Idylls of the A'iiig in The National Reznezv (Oc- 
 tober), pp. 368-394. 
 
 Review of Idylls of the King in Fraser's Magazine (Septem- 
 ber). 
 
 Review of Idylls of the King in Edinburgh Revieia (July). 
 
 Rewlaw oi Idylls of the K'ing in the N^orth British Hevieto 
 (August). 
 
 Review of Idylls of the King in The New Riigbeian, by 
 Warner Lee (September), pp. 267-271. 
 
 Review of Idylls of the King in Blaektuood's Magazine (No- 
 vember). 
 
 Review of Idylls of the King in The Constitutional Press 
 (September). 
 
 Review of Te7tnyson's Poems in Tlie Quarterly (October), pp. 
 
 454-485- 
 
 Review of Tennyson in Meliora, a quarterly review of so- 
 cial science (October). 
 
 Article on The Polities of the Poet Laureate, by D. Owen 
 Maddyn, in The Constitutional Press (June). 
 
 Article on Moral Aspects of Mr. Tennyson's Idylls of the 
 King, by J. M. Ludlow, Macmillans Magazine (No- 
 vember). 
 
 Notice of Tennyson's Maud in Macmi Han's Magazine 
 (December), No. 2. 
 
 Review of Tennyson s Poems, by John Nichol, in The 
 Westminster Review (October). 
 
 The Poetical Character, Illustrated from the Works of Al- 
 fred Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet Laureate, a lecture delivered 
 at Sheffield, December 6, by the Rev. Alfred Gatty, 
 M.A., Vicar of Ecclesfield. London : Bell & Daldy, 
 1S60, pp. 29. 
 
 Translation : De Molenaar s-dochter ; door A. J. de Bull. 
 
154 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 Tennyson visited Portugal (Vigo, Lisbon, Cintra, and the 
 Monastery of da Cortica) with Mr. F. T. Palgrave. (Ac- 
 count by Mr. Palgrave in Undtr t.'u- Ciotvii, a magazine. 
 Nos. I and 2.) 
 
 Dean Stanley visited Tennyson at Farringford. 
 
 Tennyson's bust, by Woolner, presented to Trinity College, 
 Cambridge. 
 i860. Sea Dreams : An Idyix. Printed in .1/<7<w/7/,7w'j- JA?^-^!?:/;/,- 
 (January). 
 
 TlTHONi'S. Printed in Coriihiil Macazin,-. edited by \V. M. 
 Thackeray (February). 
 
 Review of Pocticai Wor/:s of Alfred Tcnuysoii in The A'orth 
 Aniiricaii /CiT'u-7c> (January), by C. C. Everett. 
 
 Moral Aspects of lenuyson's Idylls of the King, in Mac- 
 niillans Magazine, by J. M. Ludlow, vol. i., pp. 65-72. 
 
 Essay on Tennyson in Poems and Essays, bj' the late Will- 
 iam Caldwell Roscoe. edited, with a prefatory memoir, 
 by his brotherin law, Richard Holt Hutton. London : 
 Chapman & Hall, vol. ii., pp. 1-37. 
 
 Tennyson visited Cornwall. 
 
 1561. Stanzas, Tlie Sailor Hoy. Printed in T'ieloria Pegia, 
 
 edited by Emily Faithfull, Christmas. 
 
 Lines, Ifeleit's ToTcer, printed in quarto pamphlet by Lord 
 Dufferin for private circulation. 
 
 £ssays on Englis/i Lileratitre{AUT€d Tennyson, pp. 24S-276), 
 by T. McNichoU. London : Pickering. 
 
 Alfred Tennyson (and his wife) visited the Pyrenees, where 
 he had been in the autumn of 1S30 with Arthur Hallam. 
 On this journey he wrote the lines, " In the Valley of 
 Cauteretz," which have reference to his former visit with 
 Hallam. On this journey the Tennysons met Arthur 
 Hugh Clough travelling for his health. He died two 
 months later. (See Keniains of Artlnir Ilugli Clongli, vol. 
 i. , pp 264-269.) 
 
 1562. Ii')Vi.LS OK THE King. Xew edition. With a dedication to 
 
 the memory of the late Prince Consort. 
 "Ope: May the First, 1S62" (E.xhibition Ode). Sung 
 at the opening of the International Exhibition. Printed 
 in the daily papers. Accurate version in Eraser's Mag.:- 
 ziiie (June). 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. I 55 
 
 A Painter's Camp in the I/ij^klands and Thous^hts A/wiit 
 
 . Art, by Philip Gilbert Hamerton (Tennyson, Word Paint- 
 ing and Colour Painting, vol. ii., pp. 252-269). 
 
 An Introduction to English Literature from Chaucer to Ten- 
 nyson, by Henry Reed. 
 
 Index to In Mernoriam. London : Edward Moxon & Co., 
 pp. 40. 
 
 Analysis of In Memoriam, by the late Rev. F. W. Rob- 
 ertson, of Brighton. London : Smith, Elder & Co. 
 
 Tennyson visited Derbyshire and Yorkshire. 
 
 1863. A Welcome (to the Princess Alexandra, March 7). Lon- 
 
 don : Edward Moxon & Co., pp. 4. 
 Attempts at Classic Metres in Quantity, in the Comhill 
 
 Magazine (December). 
 An essay Concerning Cutting and Carving, hy A. K. H. B. 
 
 (on the changes introduced by Tennyson into his poems), 
 
 in Fraser s Magazine (February). 
 Remains in Verse and Prose of Arthur Henry II alia in. 
 
 London : John Murray. The third issue : the first two 
 , for private circulation. 
 
 1864. Enoch Arden, etc., by Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet 
 
 Laureate. London : Edward Moxon & Co., Dover 
 Street, pp. 178. (This volume is dedicated to his wife.) 
 
 Epitai'h on the Late Duchess of Kent. Printed in I'he 
 Court Journal (March 19). Also inscribed on Theed's 
 statue at Frogmore. 
 
 Review of Enoch Arden in The Westminster Kevie7o (Octo- 
 ber). 
 
 Review of Enoch Arden in Dublin University Magazine 
 (October). 
 
 Review of Enoch Arden in Blackwood's Magazine (No- 
 vember). 
 
 Review of Enoch Arden in The North British Revie^v 
 (August). 
 
 Review of Enoch Arden in the N'orlh American Review 
 (October), by J. Russell Lowell. 
 
 Review of Enoch Arden in Harper's Magazine (October), 
 by George William Curtis. 
 
 Review of Enoch Arden in the Nouvelle Revue de Pai-is 
 (September), by A. Vermorel. 
 
I 56 A TKNNVSOX PRIMKR. 
 
 U'ords-!('ort/i, Ttnnysoti, aiu/ fin'^c/iim;- : or, run-, Orniitt\ 
 ami Grotcsi/iii- Art, by Walter Bagchot, in T/u- A^iUional 
 Kt-7'iew (November). Reprinted in Kagehot's " Literary 
 Studios." Edited by R. H. Hutton, 1S79. London : 
 Longmans. Green & Co., voL ii., pp. 33S-390. 
 Alffid Tittnyson. A lecture by Henry Edward Watts, 
 delivered at the Town Hall, Prahan, October 10. Mel- 
 bourne : Samuel Mullen, Collins Street, East, p. 37. 
 
 Tc-UHVson's JVort/ic-rn Fanner, in J/ai//i/7/ii/i's J/iJi^iizint- 
 
 (October), pp. 486-4S9. By J. ^L Ludlow. 
 Notice of Tennyson's work in H. Taine's Ilistoire <;V hi 
 
 lAtt^ratnrr Anglaisc. Paris. Tom. iv., pp. 431-4S3. 
 Garibaldi visited Tennyson at Farringf(ird (.\pril 8), and 
 planted a ]VcUin<;toiiia gigantca in the grounds as a me- 
 morial of his visit. See the reference to "the warrior of 
 Caprera" in the poem. To Ulysses {^Dcmeter, and other 
 Poiins, 1SS9). 
 {So/tucts, by the Rev. Charles [Tennyson] Turner, Vicar of 
 Grasby, Lincoln. London and Cambridge : ^L1cmillan & 
 Co., pp. viii., 102.) Dedicated to Alfred Tennyson. 
 1865. .\ Selkction from the Works of Alfrkd Tknnyson, 
 London: Edward Moxon ^^ Co., Dover Street, square 
 i2mo, pp. 256. This volume contained six new poems : 
 T/ic- Ca/>tai>i, On a Mourner, Three Son tuts to a Coquette, 
 Home they brought him siain loith shears. (Rewritten for 
 music. Another version. Home they drought her 7i>arrior 
 dead, appeared in IVte Tri/teess. The poem is a transla- 
 tion from the Anglo-Saxon Gtidrun [see Conybeare's 
 A nglo- Saxon 7 '<'<//j']). 
 
 The bibliography of Tennyson. By the Hon. J. Leicester 
 Warren. Fortnightly Hc-x'ieiv (October). 
 
 Three Great Teachers of Our Own Time (Carlyle, Tenny- 
 son, and Ruskin), by Alexander H. Japp. London : 
 Smith. Elder .'t Co., pp. S7-1S6. 
 
 Tennyson was offered and declined a baronetcy. 
 
 Elected a member of the Royal Society. 
 
 Tennyson's mother died February 21, in her eighty-fifth 
 year. 
 
 Tennyson visited Weimar and Dresden. 
 lS()l). I'ennysoniana : jVotes Bibliogra/>hieal and Critieal on Early 
 
A TENNYSON PKIMIOR. 157 
 
 Poems of Alfred and Ckaidrs Tciinyann. Basil Montague 
 Pickering, Piccadilly. London, W., pi). 170. Hy R. H. 
 Shepperd. Published anonymously. 
 Review of Enoch Ardcii in the London Quarlerly Review 
 
 (January). 
 Paper On a Song in The Princess, in the Shilling Magazine 
 
 (February), pp. 181-184, by George Grove. 
 The Last Hundred Years of English Literalnre. Jena. 
 
 By Charles Grant. (Tennyson, pp. 147-162.) 
 Commentary on Tears, Ldle Tears, in Macniillans Mag- 
 azine (November). 
 Translation : Enoch Arden. Oversat of A. Munch. Co- 
 penhagen. 
 Tennyson visited Cambridge. 
 1867. Thk Window ; or. The Loves of the Wren.s. By Alfred 
 Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet Laureate. Printed at the private 
 press of Sir Ivor Bertie Guest, Bart, (now Lord Wim- 
 borne), of Canford Manor, near Wimborne, Dorset, son 
 of Lady Charlotte Guest, editor of the Mahinogion. With 
 dedication and note. (These songs were written for 
 music composed by Mr. Arthur [now Sir Arthur] Sullivan, 
 and published in 1870.) The original edition was dedi- 
 cated as follows : " These little songs, whose almost sole 
 merit— at least till they are wedded to music— is that they 
 are so excellently printed, I dedicate to the printer." 
 Considerai)le changes were made in later editions. 
 The Victim, by Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet Laure- 
 ate. Published at the same press. 
 Review of Tennyson's Works in Afternoon Lectures on L.it- 
 erature and Art (4th series), by J. K. Ingram, LL.D., 
 Fellow of Trinity College, and Professor of English Lit- 
 erature in the University of Dublin. London : Bell & 
 Daldy, pp. 47-94- 
 Studies in Tennyson, in Belgravia, by W. S. 
 Lectureon "The Sonnetsof Charles and Alfred Tennyson." 
 By Richard Chcnevix Trench (Archbishop of Dublin). 
 Printed in Afternoon Lectures on Literature and Art 
 (4th series). London : Bell & Daldy, p. 163. 
 Translation : Enoch Arden. Ul'crsetzt von Schellwien 
 Ouedlinburg. 
 
I 58 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 L/yHs of t/i£ King. U/n-rsetzt von \N.Scho\z. Berlin. 
 Tennyson visited Dartmoor and Salcombe. 
 In this year he purchased the Greenhill estate, on Block- 
 down, in Sussex, three miles distant from the village of 
 Haslemere, in Surrey. Here was built for him Aldworth 
 
 (a summer and autumn residence) from the designs of his 
 
 friend, Mr. J. T. Knowles, the editor of 77/c- Xi/tcticntk 
 Cc'/t/urv. 
 The Duke of .-Yrgyll, Mr. Gladstone, and Lord Houghton 
 
 were guests at Farringford in July. 
 lS6S. The Victi.m. Printed in <SooJ Il'on/s (January). 
 
 On a Spitefi'l Letter. Printed in Once a /rtV/{- (January).* 
 Wages. Printed in JlacmiHan's Magazine (February). 
 1S65-1S66 (" I stood on a tower in the wet"). Printed in 
 
 Good /FtTi/j (March). (Since suppressed.) 
 Lucretius. Printed in JMacntiu'an's Magazine (May\ and 
 
 New York, in Ezery Saturday (May). 
 Article on T/te Arthurian Legends in Tennyson. By S. 
 
 Cheetham, in The Contemporary Jvevie-.o (.\pril). 
 Paper On Mr. Tennyson's Lucretius, by Professor R. C. 
 
 Jebb, in Macrnillan's Magazine (June). 
 Review of Lucretius in London Quarterly A'tt/Vrc (October) ; 
 
 also in Tinsley's Magazine (July), pp. 610-616. 
 A Study of the Works of Alfred Tennyson, by Edward 
 
 Campbell Tainsh. London : Chapman & Hall. (En- 
 larged editions published 1S70 and iSg2.) 
 Jerrold, Tennyson, and Macaulay. loith Other Critical Es- 
 says, by James Hutchison Stirling, LL.D. Edinburgh : 
 
 Edmonston ^^ Douglas, pp. 51-111. 
 Translation : Enoch Arden. Cbersetzt von R. WaldmUller. 
 
 Hamburg. 
 Translation : Dora. Trad, di G. Zanella. Firenze. (/« 
 
 z'ersi di Giacomo Zanella, vol. i.) 
 {Small Tableaux, by the Rev. Charles [Tennyson] Turner. 
 
 Vicar of Grasby, Lincoln. London : Macmillan & Co., 
 
 pp. viii., 114.) 
 Tennyson visited at Farringford by Henry Wadsworth 
 
 Longfellow. 
 
 * In a letter to Omce a HWi Tennyson stated of this poem : " It is no particular 
 letter th.it I meant. I have dozens of them from one quarter or another," 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMKR. I 59 
 
 The Holy Grail, and Other Pokms, by Alfred Tenny- 
 son, D.C.L., Poet Laureate. London : Strahan & Co., 
 56 Ludgate Hill, pp. 222. This volume included The 
 Victim, Wages, and Lucretius, The Northern Farmer, 
 new style, The Golden Supper, The Higher Pantheism, 
 Fhnoer in the Crannied Wall. 
 
 A Concordance to the Entire Works of Alfred Tennyson, 
 by D. Barron Brightwell. London : E. Moxon, Son & 
 Co., pp. 477. 
 
 Paper on The Holy Grail in The Athenaum (December). 
 
 Notice of Tennyson in an article, "The Poetry of the 
 Period," by Alfred Austin, Temple Bar {May). 
 
 Mr. Tenn^'son and Mr. Brownitig, by Edward Dowden, 
 M.A., Professor of English Literature, Trinity College, 
 Dublin. Printed in Afternoon Lectures on Literature and 
 Art {Mi\i series), pp 139-179. Reprinted in Professor 
 Dowden's Studies in Literature, Kegan Paul, Trench & 
 Co., London. 
 
 Paper on A/odern English Poets, in The Quarterly (April), 
 
 pp. 328-359- 
 
 Translation : Enoch Arden. Ubersctzt von F. W. Weber. 
 Leipzig. 
 
 Translation : Aylmers Field. Uhersetzt von F. W. Weber. 
 Leipzig. 
 
 Translation : Henoch Arden, door S. J. van den Bergh. 
 Hage. 
 
 Tennyson visited North Wales. Elected an Honorary Fel- 
 low of Trinity College, Cambridge. 
 
 Article, The Idylls of the King, by Henry Alford, in The 
 Contemporary Review (January). 
 
 Paper, The Epic of Arthur, in the Ediiilntrgli Review 
 (April). 
 
 Review of The Laureate and his Arthuriad in the London 
 Quarterly Review (April). 
 
 Modern Men of Letters Honestly Criticised, by J. Hain 
 Friswell. London : Hodder & Stoughton. (Alfred Ten- 
 nyson, pp. 145-156.) 
 
 Paper, Alfred Tennyson, in the N'uova Antologia, Florence 
 (February), by E. Camerini. 
 
 Translation : Enoch Arden. Trad, par M. de la Rive. Paris. 
 
l6o A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 Sir John Simeon, Tennyson's friend and neighbour, died in 
 
 Switzerland. 
 The verses, " In the garden at Swainston," were composed 
 
 at this time. 
 
 1871. The Last Tournament,* contributed to The Coutemporary 
 
 Rcvifw (December). 
 
 Article, The Songs of the Wrens, by the Rev. H. R. Ha- 
 vveis, in The Saint Paul 's Magazine (February). 
 
 Our Living Poets : An Essay on Criticism, by H. Buxton 
 Forman. London : Tinsley. (Alfred Tennyson, pp. 27- 
 69.) 
 
 Mr. Tennyson's Poetry, in The N'orth British Pez>ie7c> (Jan- 
 uary), pp. 379-425- 
 
 Translation : La Cena cV Oro di Alfredo Tennyson. Trad, 
 di Lodovico Biagi. Firenze. 
 
 1872. Garkth and Lynette, etc., by Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L., 
 
 Poet Laureate. London : Strahan & Co., Ludgate Hill, 
 pp. 136. 
 
 Library Edition of Tennyson' s JTorhs. 6 vols. Strahan 
 & Co. (1872-73). (Several of the Juvenilia were re- 
 stored in this edition. It included two early sonnets, 
 Alexander and The Bridesmaid ; also The Lliird of Feb- 
 ruary, iSj3 [printed in Examiner, January, 1852, over 
 the signature of Merlin, and now first acknowledged]. 
 Literary Squabbles [anonymously printed in Punch, March 
 7, 1846, as Afterthought^, verses, 7^o the Queen, and some 
 additional passages in " The Ldylls of the King.") 
 
 Review of Tennyson's poetry in Macmtllan's Magazine (De- 
 cember), by Richard Holt Hutton. 
 
 Article, Tennyson s Charm, by Robert Buchanan, in The 
 Saint Paul's Magazine (March). 
 
 Tennyson visited Norway. 
 
 Translations : Enoch Arden. Ay liner's Field ; Ausgeiodhlte 
 Diehtungen (1870), and /\.'oenig's Ldyllen (1872), von 
 
 * As printed in the Review, the two lines, afterwards altered, following •' 
 
 " He rose, he tiirn'd, then dinging round her neck, 
 Claspt it," 
 read I 
 
 " But while he bowed himself to lay 
 Warm kisses in the hollow of her throat." 
 
A TENNYSON TRIMER. l6l 
 
 H. A. Feldmann. Hamburg. Aiisgetoahlte Gcdichtc, uber- 
 sctzt von M. Rugard. Elbing. 
 
 1873. A Comparative Estimate of Modern English Poets, by J. De- 
 
 vey. E. Moxon, Son & Co. (Alfred Tennyson, pp. 275- 
 
 336.) 
 Article, Mr. Tennyson as a Botanist, by J. Hutchison, in The 
 
 Saint Paul's Magazine (October). 
 Tennyson, by Walter Irving. Edinburgh : Maclachlan & 
 
 Stewart, pp. 28. 
 Notes and Marginalia, by J. H. Smith. London. 
 Article, Lincolnshire Scenery and Character as Illustrated 
 
 by Mr. Tennyson, by the Rev. Drummond Rawnsley, in 
 
 Macmillan's Magazine (December). 
 Master Spirits, by Robert Buchanan. London : Henry 
 
 S. King & Co., pp. 349 {Tennyson, Heine, and De Mussel, 
 
 pp. 54-88). 
 Review of Idylls of the King in the Contemporary Review 
 
 (May). 
 Garcth and Lynette, in The Spectator and The Athenccum. 
 
 1874. A Welcome to Marie Alexandrovna, Duchess ok Edin- 
 
 burgh. Printed in 77/^ /Ywcj, and separately on a single 
 sheet. 
 
 (Cabinet edition of Tennyson's works. H. S. King & Co. 
 In this edition appeared the poem in memory of Sir John 
 Simeon, In the Garden at Swains ton ; also The Voice and 
 the Peak, England and America in 1^82, and an addi- 
 tional passage in Merlin and Vivien.) 
 
 Translation : Zum Geddchtniss, von Agnes von Bohlen. 
 Berlin. 
 
 1875. Queen Mary : A Drama, by Alfred Tennyson. London : 
 
 H. S. King & Co., pp. viii., 278. 
 Prefatory sonnet to Lord Lyttelton's Memoir of W. H. 
 
 Brookfield, prefixed to a volume of his " Sermons" 
 
 (" Brooks, for they called you so that knew you 
 
 best"). 
 (Author's edition of Tennyson's works. H. S. King & Co., 
 
 6 vols., 1875-1877. In this edition Maud was for the first 
 
 time entitled y]/rt«r/.- A Monodrama. Changes were made 
 
 in the text of various poems.) 
 Notes on Queen Mary, in Macmillan's Magazine. 
 
lOJ A lEXN VSON rUlMKR. 
 
 Review of (Jttcr'i Mary in T/ie Aiiuiciiiy, by Mr. Andrew 
 Lang. 
 
 Review of Qiiiun J/ary in V'/t<- (Juar/i-r/v /C-i'ii-n' (July), pp. 
 231-24S. 
 
 Victorian Potts, by Edmund Clarence Stedman. Boston : 
 Houghton. Mifflin & Co. London : Chatto iS: Windus, 
 1S76. The fifth and sixth chapters deal with the poetry 
 of Tennyson. 
 
 T/ie Ri-iiiiion 0/ our Lit<:raturc : Essays upon Carlyle, 
 Browning, and Tennyson, by George McCrie. London : 
 Hodder & Stoughton (Tennyson, pp. iio-iSo). 
 
 Article, Virgil ami Tiiinvsoii, in B!ack:cooJ's J/acazinr 
 (November), by " .\ Lincolnshire Rector" — the Rev. 
 Drummond Rawnsley. 
 
 Translations : Tlu- May Qnivn, a/. A. Falck. Christiania. 
 — £nit/ and Elaini-, translated by L. Gisbert. — /'//<• May 
 Quten, trad, dci Marchesi Luigi e Raniero de Calboli. 
 Roma. 
 187(1. lL\KOi.n : A Drama, by Alfred Tennyson. London : 
 Henry S. King iS: Co., 1S77 (post-dated), pp. viii., 
 161. 
 
 Qtuin Mary was produced under the management of Mr. 
 Henry Irving at the Lyceum in April. 
 
 Tennyson again visited the Pyrenees. 
 
 Browning dedicated the two volumes of his "■ Selections" 
 ■'To Alfred Tennysi\n : In Poetry, illustrious and con- 
 summate ; in Friendship, noble and sincere." 
 
 Translations : Idilli, Liriclii, Miti, <• Z("j,v//</<", £not- Ardin, 
 Quadri Dramatici. Tradnzioni di Carlo Faccioli. Ve- 
 rona. — Fircnzc, Sticctssori U Monnic-r, pp. 441 (2d edition, 
 1S79). — Enock Ardcn di Alfredo Tennyson : AV<<7/j in 
 trrsi Italiani di Angelo Saggioni. Padova. 1S76. — Stabil- 
 inif-nti Tros/t-rini, pp. 51. A'<>sst" Sto/'oli-Xarrari . — A'o- 
 nnns^ Art/tiir oc/i /laus /Hiddar^. L^psala. — IdylUr om 
 Kong Arthur, af. A. Munch. Copenhagen. —£'/i<vA 
 Arden : deutsch von A. Strodtniann. Berlin. 
 1S77. Prefatory Sonnet to T/it .Vine-ternt// (>///// ri- (first number, 
 March), edited by Mr. J- T. Knowles. 
 
 Sonnet, Mont<ni-gro, in the same number. 
 
 Sonnet, 7'o I'iotor //ngo. in /"';;• AVm/tv;//^ (>w///rr (June). 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 163 
 
 Translation : Achilles over tJie Tniich {Iliad, Book iS), in 
 
 The Nineteenth Century (August). 
 Lines in memory of Sir John Franlvlin on the cenotaph in 
 
 Westminster Abbey. 
 Review of Harold in Tlie Academy, by John Addinglon 
 
 Synionds. 
 Article on Tennyson in TJte International Rcvieio, New 
 
 Yoric (May), by Bayard Taylor, vol. iv., pp. 397-418. 
 Longfellow's Sonnet to Tennyson, entitled Wapentake, 
 
 printed in The j\tlantie Monthly (December). 
 Translation : Sea Dreams, Aylincrs Field, af. F. L. Myns- 
 
 ter. — Elaine. A. Hjelmstjerna. 
 
 1578. Sir Richard Grenville : A Ballad of the Fleet, 
 
 printed in The A^ineteenth Century (March) (afterwards 
 
 named The Revenge). 
 The Poetical Works of Alfred Tennyson, 13 vols. London : 
 
 Kegan Paul & Co., 1878- 1SS2. 
 Studies in the Idylls : An Essay on J\/r. Tennyson's Idylls 
 
 of the A'i'ig, by Henry Elsdale. London : H. S. King 
 
 & Co., pp. vii., 197. 
 Article on Tennyson, in The Literary World (September), 
 
 by P. Bayne. 
 Tennyson visited Ireland. 
 Lionel Tennyson married Miss Eleanor Locker. 
 
 1579. The Lover's Tale, by Alfred Tennyson. London: Kegan 
 
 Paul & Co., pp. 95. 
 
 Dedicatory Poem to the Princess Alice. 
 
 The Defence of Lueknow, printed in Tlie Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury (April). 
 
 The Falcon, produced at the St. James' Theatre, with Mrs. 
 Kendal in the part of the heroine (December). 
 
 Lessons from my Masters {C&r\y\Q, Tennyson, and Ruskin), 
 by Peter Bayne, London : John Clarke & Co., pp. 437. 
 
 The Poets Laureate of England, by Walter Hamilton (Al- 
 fred Tennyson, pp. 263-300). 
 
 Tennysoniana. 2d edition, enlarged (R. H. Shepherd). 
 
 Notice of The Lover's Tale in The .Icademy, by Edmund 
 Gosse. 
 
 Notice of The Lover's Vale in The Congregationalist, vol. 
 viii., pp. 672-681. 
 
104 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 Notice of The Lover s Talc in Frascr's Magaziiic, vol. c, 
 pp. 110-116. 
 
 Notice of T/w Lo7'i-rs Tale in T/ie Canadian JMotitltly, vol. 
 xvi., pp. 221-223. 
 
 Sketch of the Life of Tennyson in TJu- Atlantic Monthly^ 
 Vol. c.xliv, pp 356-361, by J. H. Ward. 
 
 The Tennyson Birthday Book, edited by Emily Shakspear. 
 London. 
 
 The Rev. Charles Tennyson Turner died April 15. 
 iSSo. B.VLLADS, AND OTHER PoEMS, by Alfred Tennyson, pp. vi., 
 1S4. London : Kegan Paul & Co. 
 
 The Works of Alfred Tennyson, with portrait and illustra- 
 tions, I vol., pp. iv., 665. London : Kegan Paul is: Co., 
 1881 (1S80). 
 
 Poem, De Profit ndis, printed in 'J'he A'ineteenth Century 
 (May). 
 
 Lines, Midnii^ht, June 30, 1879, prefixed to collected son- 
 nets, old and new, by Charles Tennyson Turner. Lon- 
 don : Kegan Paul & Co., pp. xxii., 390. 
 
 Two poems ( The City Child and Minnie and IVinnie), 
 printed in St. Xieholas, an American magazine for chil- 
 dren. 
 
 Translation : Ilarald : Ein Drama. Deittseh 7'on A. Graf 
 Wickenburg, pp. 137. Hamburg (printed Altona). 
 
 Poets in the Pulpit, by the Rev. H. R. Haweis, London 
 (Tennyson, pp. 33-115). 
 
 A A'ew Study of Tennyson, by J. Churton Collins, in The 
 Cornhill J/a^a^ine (January and July, and July, 1S81). 
 Same articles in Littell's Living Ai:;e, vol. cxlvi. 
 
 Sonnet, by Theodore Watts, " To Alfred Tennyson, on 
 his publishing, in his seventy-first year, the most richly 
 various volume of English verse that has appeared in his 
 own century." 
 
 Review of 'J'ennysons Poems (with portrait) in the British 
 Quarterly Pevie~c: The same article in Littell's JJving 
 Age (December), Potter's American Monthly, vol. xvi. 
 
 Parody of Tennyson's Higher Pantheism in 'The Hepta- 
 log^ia ; or. the Se7Yn against Sense. (A. C. Swinburne.) 
 iSSi. Despair, by Alfred Tennyson, printed in 7'he A'ineteenth 
 Century (November). 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 165 
 
 Charge ok the Heavy Brigadk, liy Alficd TcMinyson, 
 printed in Macmillan s Mai^azine. 
 
 The Cup, produced at the Lyceum Theatre by Henry Irv- 
 ing (January 3). 
 
 Alfred Tennyson, //is Life and Works, by W. E. Wace. 
 Edinburgh : Macniven & Wallace, pp. vii., 203. 
 
 A Key to Tennyson s In A/einoriain, by Alfred Gatty, 
 pp. xi., 144. L(3ndon : D. Bogue. Worksop (printed). 
 (2d edition, new and revised. London : George Bell & 
 Sons, 1882 ; 3d edition, pp. xxvii., T48, 1885.) 
 
 Review of Ballads, and Other Poems, in 7'he Edinburgh Re- 
 view, vol. cliv., pp. 486-515. 
 
 Review oiBallads, and Other Poems, in TJie International Re- 
 viezv, vol. X., pp. 178-183. 
 
 Article on Tennyson s Ballads in The Congregationalist, vol. 
 X., pp. 53-60. 
 
 Article on The Cup \v\ Appleton's Journal (ixova I'he Satur- 
 day Review), vol. XXV., pp. 253-256. 
 
 "The Performance of The Cup a.X. the Lyceum," in Saint 
 James' Afagazine, vol. xlviii., pp. 195-203. 
 
 Article on The Idylls of the A'ing, by R. W. Boodle, in 
 The Canadian A/onthly, vol. xix., pp. 379-398. 
 
 Article on Tennyson and Mtisset in The Fortnightly Rcviezu 
 (February), by A. C. Swinburne. (Reprinted in Swin- 
 burne's A/iscella nil's.) 
 
 Same article in Eclectic A/agazine, vol. xcvi., pp. 600-616. 
 
 A Study of Tennyson, by R. H. Stoddard, in IVie North 
 American Revieio (July), pp. 82-107. 
 
 Article on Air. Tennyson s New Volume in Marmillan''s 
 Magazine (January), by Sidney Colvin. 
 
 Travesty ol Despair, by A. C. Swinburne, in The Fortnightly 
 Reidew, entitled Disgust (October). 
 
 Atheism and Suicide. A Reply to Mr. Tennyson, pp. 8, 
 by G. W. Foote. London : Freethought Publishing 
 Co. 
 The De Profundis of Alfred Tennyson : Remodelled by 
 
 Aletamorphosis. London : E. W. Allen. 
 Papers on Tennyson in Colburn's New Alonthly Magazine, 
 
 vol. clxix., pp. 47-68 ; 131-147 ; 241-257. 
 Review of Ballads, and Other Poems. Articolo crilico di 
 
l66 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 Enrico Nencioni, nel Fa)ifulla della Donictiica. Rome. 
 
 (April.) 
 Trajislatioii : A/aria Tudor. Ilisiorische Dravia i fi'iir 
 
 Akter. Ovcrsat af. F. L. Mynster (in verse), pp. 280. 
 
 Kjbenham. 
 Translation : La Carica della Brigata Lyglit. Le Due 
 
 Sorelle. In Fiori del nord : Versione di Moderne Poesie 
 
 Tedesche e Inglese di Pietro Turati. Milano, pp 133- 
 
 137- 
 Tennyson elected Vice-President of the Welsh National 
 
 Eisteddfod. 
 18S2. The Promise of May produced at the Globe Theatre under 
 
 the management of Mrs. Bernard Beere. 
 The Charge of the Heavy Brigade, printed in Macniillan'' s 
 
 Magazine (March). 
 Lines To Virgil, in The Nineteenth Century (November). 
 English Dramatists of To-day, by William Archer. (Ten- 
 nyson, pp. 334-351-) 
 A Study of The Princess, by S. E. Dawson. London : 
 
 Sampson Low & Co., pp. 120 (also Montreal : Dawson 
 
 Brothers). 
 A Lecture on The Religious Signi fieanee of Tennyson s 
 
 Despair, by Thomas Walker. London : Eliot Stock, 
 
 pp. 32. 
 Notice of Tennyson's Despair in The JModern^ Review, vol. 
 
 iii., pp. 462-473. By C. Shakspeare. 
 Notice of Tennyson's Despair in The Congregationalist , vol. 
 
 ii., pp. 824-831. By J. H. Hallowell. 
 Notice of Tennyson's Charge of the Heavy Brigade in The 
 
 Literary World, vd\. xiii., p. 97. By W. H. Chamberlain. 
 Catholic Musings on Tennyson's In Menioriain, in Tlie 
 
 Catholic World, vol. xxxiv., pp. 205-21 1. 
 The Literary Career of Tennyson, in The Literary World, 
 
 vol. xiii., pp. 280, 281. 
 Review of I'he Promise of May, in I'he Academy, vol. xxii., 
 
 PP- 370, 371, by F. Wedmore. 
 Review ot The Promise of May in IVie Saturday Review, 
 
 vol. liv., pp. 670, 671. 
 Review of The Promise of May in The Spectator, vol. Iv., 
 
 pp. 1474, 1475. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 167 
 
 An article on Maud in Domcnica Litteraria, Rome (March 
 19), by Enrico Nencioni. 
 
 Translation : Henoch Arden. . . . In het Nederlandsch be- 
 werkt door J. L. Wertheim, pp. 53. Amsterdam. 
 
 Tennyson visited Lombardy. 
 
 Lines, Frater Ave atqiic Vale, printed in The Nineteenth 
 Century (March). 
 
 Poems, by Alfred Tennyson, 2 vols. London : Kegan Paul 
 & Co. (50 copies on large paper.) 
 1883. Article on Tennyson in The Overland Monthly (U. S.), vol. 
 i., pp. 17-33, by T. H. Rearden. 
 
 Article on Tennyson, with portrait, in Harper's Monthly 
 Magazine, vol. Ixviii., pp. 21-41, by Anne Thackeray 
 Ritchie. 
 
 Paper on Tennyson and Milton, in The Presbyterian Re- 
 view, vol. iv., pp. 681-709, by H. J. Van Dyke. (Re- 
 printed in The Poetry of Tmnyson. London : Elkin 
 Mathews & John Lane.) 
 
 Articles on Tennyson as a Plagiarist, in The Literary 
 World, vol. xiv., p. 291 ; vol. xiv., pp. 272, 273, by E. L. 
 Didier ; vol. xiv., pp. 327, 328, by J. Hooper. 
 
 Article on Tennyson's Acceptance of a Peerage in l^te Sat- 
 urday Jievieiu, vol. Ivi., pp. 751, 752. 
 
 Article on Tennyson's Acceptance of a Peerage in Hie 
 Spectator, vol. Ivi., pp. 1577, 1578. 
 
 Article on Tennyson's Poems in The Spectator, vol. Ivi., 
 
 pp. 355-357- 
 The Earlier and Less-known Poems of Tennyson, by C. E. 
 
 Mathews. Birmingham, pp. 34. 
 Articles on In Memoriam and The Idylls of the Ki)ig in 
 
 Fanfulla della Dotneniea, by Enrico Nencioni. Rome. 
 
 (May and September.) 
 Translations : Vier Idyllen van Konig Arthur. (A Dutch 
 
 translation in prose, pp. viii., 116.) Amsterdam. 
 Poemas . . . Enoch Arden, Gareth y Lynette, Merlin y 
 
 Bibiana, La Reina Ginebra, Dora, La Maya, puestos en 
 
 Castellano (in prose) por D. V. de Arana, e' illustrados 
 
 con dibujos originales de D. J. Riudavets, etc., pp. 302. 
 
 Barcelona. 
 (Part of the " Biblioteca Verdaguer.") 
 
1 68 A TENNYSON TRIMER. 
 
 Alaj-dronnhigen . . . 07't'rsnt af. F. L. Mynster, pp. 12. 
 (No. 65 of " Den indre Missions Forlagsskrifter.") 
 
 Tennyson took a house in Belgrave Square, London, and 
 lived for some time in town. 
 
 Tennyson accompanied Mr. W. E. Gladstone on a sea trip 
 to Copenhagen. On his return he was offered and ac- 
 cepted a peerage. Gazetted Baron of Aldworth and Far- 
 ringford, January, 1884. 
 1884. The Cup and The Falcon, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 
 Poet Laureate. London : Macmillan & Co., pp. 146 
 (printed in Edinburgh). 
 
 Becket, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate. Lon- 
 don : Macmillan & Co., pp. 213 (printed in Edinburgh). 
 
 Lines, Early Spring, in an American periodical. The 
 Youth's Companion. 
 
 The following lines, written in youth, were published in a 
 pamphlet (which also contained a poem by Browning) : 
 
 " Not he that breaks the dams, but he 
 That thro' the channels of the State 
 Conveys the people's wish is great ; 
 His name is pure, his fame is free." * 
 
 Introductory verses to Jiosa Rosarmn, by E. V. B. (the 
 Hon. Mrs. Boyle), published in this year. 
 
 Freedom. Printed in Alacmillan s Magazine for December. 
 
 The Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (a new and revised 
 edition in seven vols., and also in one vol.). London : 
 Macmillan & Co. (printed in Edinburgh). 
 
 The Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. School edition, 
 4 parts. London : Macmillan & Co. 
 
 The Passing of Arthur, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. 
 London: Macmillan & Co., pp. 24. 
 
 Tennyson's In Alemoriam — Its Purpose and Structure, 
 by J. F. Genung. London : Macmillan & Co., pp. vi., 
 199 (also Boston, Mass. : Houghton & Co.). 
 
 Lord Tennyson : A Biographical Sketch, by H. J. Jen- 
 nings. London : Chatto & Windus, pp. vii., 270. 
 
 * The pamphlet was published in connexion with a Shalcespere exhibition at 
 the Albert Hall in aid of the Chelsea Hospital for Women. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 169 
 
 Tennyson's Allusions to Christ, by J. Hogben, in The Sun- 
 day Magazine, vol. xiii., pp. 761-764. 
 
 Articles on Tennyson's Becket. The Academy, vol. xxvi., 
 pp. 421,422, by J. W. Mackail. 
 
 Articles on Tennyson's Becket. The Saturday Review, vol, 
 Iviii., pp. 757, 758. 
 
 Articles on Tennyson's Becket. The Spectator, vol. Ivii., 
 pp. 1699, 1700. 
 
 Articles on Tennyson's Cup and Falcon. The Spectator, 
 vol. Ivii., pp. 316, 317. 
 
 Articles on Tennyson's Cup and Falcon. The Athenaum, 
 1884, vol. i., pp. 319-321. 
 
 Article on Tennyson's Holy Grail. The Congregationalist, 
 vol. xiii., pp. 463-471, by H. Evans. 
 
 Article on Tennyson's hi Memoriam and the Bible. Quar- 
 terly Revieiv, vol. clviii., pp. 162-183. 
 
 (Same article in Littell's Living Age, vol. clxii., pp. 
 549-561.) 
 
 The Genesis of Tenttyson s Maud. The North American 
 Review, vol. cxxxix., pp. 356-361, by R. H. Shepherd. 
 
 Letter on Dawson's Study of Tennyson's Princess. The 
 Academy, vol. xxv., p. 367. 
 
 Tennyson on Daiusons Study of The Princess. The Critic, 
 vol. iv., pp. 223, 224. 
 
 Trifles by Tennyson. The Critic, vol. v., pp. 268, 269; 
 vol. vi., pp. 301, 302, by W. J. Rolfe. 
 
 " A respectful operatic perversion of Tennyson's ' Princess,' 
 in three acts, entitled Princess Ida ; or, Castle Adamant," 
 etc., by W. S. Gilbert. London: Chappel & Co., pp. 48. 
 
 Parodies of the Works of American Authors, by Walter 
 Hamilton. London. (Parodies of the poems of Alfred, 
 Lord Tennyson, vol. i.) 
 
 Translation : Koenigs Idyllen : In metrum des Orig. fibers, 
 von C. Weiser. Leipzig (1883-1886). 
 
 Tennyson was elected President of the Society of Authors. 
 
 Hon. Hallam Tennyson married Miss Audrey Boyle. 
 
 TiRESiAS, AND OTHER PoEMS, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 
 D.C.L., P.L. London : Macmillan & Co., pp. viii., 203 
 (printed in Edinburgh). This volume bore the following 
 dedication: "To my good friend, Robert Browning, 
 
IJO A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 whose genius and geniality will best appreciate what may 
 
 be best and make most allowance for what may be worst, 
 
 this volume is affectionately dedicated." 
 Lyrical Poems. Selected and annotated by F. T. Palgrave. 
 
 London : Macmillan & Co., pp. vii., 270. (Printed in 
 
 Edinburgh.) 
 (Part of the " Golden Treasury Series.") 
 The Princess : A Medley. Edited with notes by W. J. 
 
 Rolfe, with illustrations. J. R. Osgood & Co., Boston. 
 
 (Printed in Cambridge, Mass.) 
 The Poetical Works of Lord Tennyson. Complete edition 
 
 from the author's text. Illustrated, etc. New York : 
 
 T. Y. Crowell & Co., pp. viii., 896. (Printed in Cam- 
 bridge, Mass.) 
 The Fleet, printed in The Times (April 23). 
 " To 11. K. //. Princess Beatrice," printed in The Times 
 
 (July 23). 
 Vastness, printed in Macmillan' s Magazine (November). 
 A Review of Tennyson s Poetry in The Keviie ties Deux 
 
 Momles, by Aug. Filon, torn. Ixxi., pp. 70-roi. 
 A Review of Tennyson's Poetry in The Contemporary /\e- 
 
 z'ieta, by Hon. Roden Noel (February). 
 (Reprinted in Tssays anil Poets, London, pp. 223-255 [1886]). 
 Same article in LitteWs Liz'im^ Age, vol. clxiv., and Eclectic 
 
 Magazine, vol. civ. 
 Review of Becket in The Catholic World, by M. F. Egan, 
 
 vol. xlii., pp. 382-395. 
 Review of Becket in The Month, by C. Nicholson, vol. 
 
 XXXV., pp. 509-520. 
 Review of Becket in The Athenceum, 18S5, vol. i., pp. 7-9. 
 Review oi Becket in The Theatre, by F. Hawkins, vol. 1., 
 
 pp. 53-61. 
 Review of Becket in Ufacmilhui's Magazine, vol. li., pp. 287- 
 
 294. 
 Review of Becket in Blackrcooil's Magazine, vol. cxxxviii., 
 
 pp. 57-66. 
 Review of Becket in Eclectic Magazine, vol. cv. , pp. 418- 
 
 425- 
 The Meaning of The Idylls of the King, by C. B. Pallen, 
 
 in The Catholic JVorld, vol. xli., pp. 43-54. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. I7I 
 
 Article on The Lyrics of Ti'iiiiysoii, in The Sprctator, vol. 
 
 Iviii., pp. 1319, 1320. 
 Review of Tir esias, and Othe7- Poems, in The Spectator, vol. 
 
 Iviii., pp. 1649-1651. 
 Review of Tircsias, and Other Poems, in The Academy, by 
 
 T. H. Caine, vol. xxviii., pp. 403-405. 
 Review of Tiresias, and Other Poems, in The Athenceum, 
 
 1885, vol. ii., pp. 831-834. 
 Review of Tiresias, and Other Poems, in The Saturday Re- 
 
 view, vol. Ix. , pp. 810-81 1. 
 Review of Vastness in The Spectator, vol. Iviii., pp. 1466, 
 
 1467. 
 Paper on Tennyson in Urbaiia Scripta, by A. Gallon. 
 
 London : Eliot Stock, pp. 36-68. 
 Translation : Enoch Arden . . . recato in versi I tali a ni da 
 
 A. Soggini, p. 109. Firenze. (See 1876.) 
 1886. LocKSLEY Hall Sixty Years After, etc., by Alfred, Lord 
 
 Tennyson, D.C.L., P.L. London and New York: Mac- 
 
 millan & Co., pp. 201 (printed in Edinburgh). 
 The Poetical Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. 10 vols. 
 
 London and New York : Macmillan & Co. (printed in 
 
 Edinburgh), 
 The Dramatic Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. 4 vols. 
 
 Macmillan & Co. 
 Ode to India and the Colonies. Written for the opening 
 
 of the Colonial Exhibition in London (May 4). 
 The Poetry of Tennyson, in The London Quarterly Review, 
 
 vol. Ixv., pp. 243-247. 
 Tennyson or Darwin, by Algernon C. Swinburne, in 
 
 Studies in Prose and Verse, pp. 141-145. 
 Tennysott as a Conservative, in The Atlantic Monthly, vol. 
 
 Ivii., pp. 423-426. 
 Tennyson s Later Poems, in The Leisure Hour, by S. G. 
 
 Green, vol. xxxv.,pp. 99-101. 
 Review of Locksley Hall in Youth and Age in The Specta- 
 tor, vol. lix., pp. 1706, 1707, 1750, 1751. 
 Review of Locksley Hall in Youth and Age, in The Saturday 
 
 Revieiv, vol. Ixii., pp. 842, 843. 
 Philosophy of Locksley Hall, in The Southern Pivoiiac, by 
 
 T. Canebrake, vol. v., p. 704. 
 
172 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 Translation : II Primo Diverbio . . . Tradtizioiic (of the 
 poem entitled The First Quarrel), di E. Castelnuovo, 
 p. 19. Venezia : Nozze Bordica. Selvatico. 
 
 Enoch Arden. Students' Tauchnitz anjl. in it ]Vdrterbuch, 
 von Dr. A. Hamann. Leipzig, p. 24. 
 
 (Bibliothek der Gesammt-Literatur.) 
 
 Tennyson visited Cambridge in August. 
 
 Lionel Tennyson died on the voyage home from India 
 (April 20). 
 
 (Jack and the BcanStalk, by Hallam Tennyson. London : 
 Macmillan & Co. Illustrations from Caldecott.) 
 1887. The Jubih-L' of our Queen (printed under title, Carmen Sec- 
 ulare), in Macmillan^ s Magazine (April). A souvenir 
 poem by Lord Tennyson. Designs by F. Marriott. Lon- 
 don : Eyre & Spottiswoode, i6mo. 
 The Brook. Illustrated by A. Woodruff. London : Mac- 
 millan & Co., obi. 8vo. 
 
 Vox Claniantis. A comparison analytical and critical be- 
 tween the Columbus at Seville of Joseph Ellis . 
 and The Columbus of the Poet Laureate. London : 
 W. Stewart & Co., p. 32, 4°. 
 
 An essay on Tennyson's Idylls of the A'ino-, by A. Ha- 
 mann. Berlin, p. 25. 
 
 Review of Lockslcy Hall Sixty Years After in The Church 
 Heview, vol, xlix. , pp. 283-289. 
 
 Review of Lockslcy Hall Sixty Years After in The Atlantic 
 Monthly, vol. lix., pp. 705-708. 
 
 Review of Lockslcy Hall Sixty Years After in The Congre- 
 gational Review, vol. i., pp. 97-105. 
 
 Review of Lockslcy Hall Sixty Years After in THackinood's 
 Magazine, vol. cxli. , pp. 129-131. 
 
 Review of Lockslcy Hall Sixty Years After in The Dial 
 (Chicago), by W. M. Payne, vol. vii., pp. 246-248. 
 
 Review of Lockslcy Hall Sixty Years After in 7'he AVry 
 Englander, by J. R. Bacon, vol. xlvi., pp. 155- 
 167. 
 
 Review of Lockslcy Hall Sixty Years After in The AVrc 
 Princeton Peviezv, vol. iii., pp. 265-271. 
 
 Review of Lockslcy Hall Sixty Years After in The Academy, 
 by H. C. Beeching, vol. xxxi., pp. i, 2. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 1 73 
 
 Review of Lockslcy Hall Sixty Years After in The Athena:- 
 
 71711, 1887, vol. i., pp. 31-33. 
 Review of Loeksley Hall Sixty Years After in To-Day, vol. 
 
 vii., pp. 93-95- 
 Review of Loeksley Hall Sixty Years After in Leisure Hour, 
 
 vol. xxxvi., pp. 137-140. 
 Review of Loeksley Hall and Loeksley Hall Sixty Years 
 
 After and The Jubilee in The Nineteenth Century, by 
 
 W. E. Gladstone, vol. xxi., pp. 1-18. 
 Same article in LittelPs Living Age, vol. clxxii., and in 
 
 Eclectic Magazine, vol. cviii. 
 Article on Loeksley Hall and Liberalism in The National 
 
 Revie7v, by M. Dyncley, vol. viii., pp. 641-647. 
 Article on The Palace of Art — growth of the poem — in The 
 
 Ne7v Princeton Rez'ie'v, by H. Van Dyke, vol. iv., pp. 
 
 65-74- 
 A Word about Tennyson, by Walt Whitman, in The Critic, 
 
 vol. X., pp. I, 2. 
 Translation : Ausgezvdhlte Dichtungen. Ubersetzt von A. 
 
 Strodtmann. Hildburghausen, 1867. Leipzig, 1887-1890 
 
 (Meyer's Volksbiicher). 
 Selections from Tennyson, with notes for the use of Italians, 
 
 by T. C. Cann. Florence. (Part of " Cann's Scholastic 
 
 Series.") 
 Enoch Arden. Trad, par Y,.. Marmier. Paris. 
 Tennyson visited St. David's and the Channel Islands. 
 The Complete Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyso.v. 
 
 A new edition in 8 vols. Macmillan & Co. {7' he Idyll of 
 
 Geraint was in this edition divided into The Marriage of 
 
 Geraint and Geraitit and Enid a.r\d some suppressed poems 
 
 restored.) 
 Selections from Tennyson, with introduction and notes by 
 
 F. J. Rowe and W. T. Webb. Macmillan & Co., pp. xiv., 
 
 154 (printed in Glasgow). 
 Tennyson in Literary Essays, by R. H. Hutton. 3d edi- 
 tion, pp. 361-436. 
 Article on Tennyson in I^he Methodist I\e7>ie7v, by C. J. 
 
 Little, vol. Ixx., pp. 203-221. 
 Review of The Ldylls of the King in The Dublin Revieiv, Ijy 
 
 J. M. Stone, vol. ciii., pp. 259-274. 
 
174 A TICNNVSDN I'KIMKk. 
 
 A Conipaiiioii to In MciiioriaDi, by Eli/.abcth R. Chap- 
 man. London and New York : Macmillan & Co., pp. 72. 
 Studies on the Legeud of the Holy Grail, by Alfred Nutt. 
 
 London : David Nutt. 
 Is Tennyson a Spiritualist i' in T/ie Pall Mall Gazette 
 
 (December 20). 
 Dethroning Tennyson, by A. C. Swinburne, in The A^ine- 
 
 teenth CentiMry (January). 
 The Tennyson Flora, by L. H. Grindon. (Appendi.v to 
 
 the Report of the Manchester Field Naturalists ami Arch- 
 
 seological Society, 1SS7.) 
 Tennysonian Trees, in The Gardeners' Magazine (Decem- 
 ber 29). 
 Tennyson's Idylls, by A. V. Dorsey, in The American 
 
 Magazine (May). 
 Tennyson' s Idylls, by R. W. Boodle, in 'J'he Canadian 
 
 Monthly (April). 
 Translations : Loeksley Hall . , , iibersetzt von F. Frei- 
 
 ligrath {Locf:sley Hall nach seehzig Jahren. A/is devi 
 
 Englisehen, von J. Feis), pp. 59. Leipzig. 
 Loeksley Hall seehzig Jahre spdter. A iitorisierte iilhrsetzung, 
 
 von Karl B. Esmerch, p. 32. Gotha. 
 Enoch Arden frei bearbeitet filr die Jiigend. llausbiblio- 
 
 thck. Leipzig, pp. 2g. 
 Enoch Arden. Traduction fran^aise litterale (in prose), par 
 
 R. Courtois, pp. 33. Paris. 
 Enoch Arden. Te.xte Anglais. An not/ par R. Courtois, 
 
 pp. viii., 41. Paris. 
 Idylles et Fohnes. Traduction par A. Buissondu Berger. Paris. 
 Enid metrisch vertaald door D. E. M. van Herwerden nut 
 
 platen naar G. Dore, pp. 70. Zwolle. 
 La Prima Lite. Estratto dal Giornale " La Baltaglia 
 
 Bizantina." Traduzione di V. T. Pavolini. Bologna. 
 [SS9. DKMKri'-.K, AND Otiikr PoiCMS, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 
 
 D.C.L., P.L. London and New York : Macmillan i!v: Co. , 
 
 pp. vi., 175 (printed Edinburgh). 
 The Throstle in The A^ew Ke7'ie-a< (October). (Published in 
 
 May as a leaflet, title and one page of te.xt.) 
 The IVorhs of Alfred, lord Tennyson, in one vol., pp. v. 
 
 S07. Macmillan ^t Co. 
 
A 'n':NNYS()N rkiMicK. 175 
 
 Idylls of the King, In Tioclve Books (first so entitled in 
 this edition). 
 
 Interludes, Lyrics, and Idylls, from the poetic and dramatic 
 works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, pp. 190. Houghton, 
 Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York. (Printed in Cam- 
 bridge, Mass.) 
 
 Poeiiis ( To luhvard Lear on his Travels in Greece, The Pal- 
 ace of Art, 'The Daisy). Illustrated by Edward Lear. 
 (With a memoir of Lear by F. Lushington.) London and 
 New York : Boussod, Valadon & Co., pp. iv., 51 (one 
 hundred copies printed and signed by Tennyson). 
 
 Lancelot and /Claine, with notes by C. C. Flanagan. 2 parts. 
 Madras. (Being pp. 77-102 of Macmillan's School Edition 
 bound up with notes.) 
 
 The Idylls of the Kint^. . . . Illustrated. In shorthand, by 
 A. G. Doughty, ff. 102. Montreal : The Dominion Illus- 
 trated Press. 
 
 "Prolegomena to In Afeutoriain." With an index to the 
 poem, pp. vi., 177. Boston and New York: Houghton, 
 Mifflin & Co. (Printed in Cambridge, Mass.) 
 
 Ecrivains modernes de I'Ani^leterre. Deuxi6me S6rie. (Al- 
 fred Tennyson, p. 349.) By Emile Montd'gut. (Printed 
 in Paris.) Coulommiers. 
 
 Essays on Literature and Ethics, by W. A. O'Connor. 
 (Tennyson's Palace of Art, pp. 25-56.) Manchester. 
 
 Lord Tennyson. Studi, di Francesco Rodriguez. Roma, 
 pp. 198. 
 
 Alfrdd Tenttyson. Kirdly. Idylljei for<lil(illa es fievezetle 
 Szasyk. (with critical introduction), pp. 556. Buda- 
 pest. 
 
 Tennyson's Touch with A^«/Mr^ (illustrated), in The Sunday 
 Ma^i^azine, by A. Lamont, vol. xviii., pp. 378-387. 
 
 Tennyson's Spiritual Service to his Generation, in The 
 Andover Review, vol. xii., pp. 291-296. 
 
 Paper on L.ord 'Tennyson, with portrait, in Tinsley's Mai;a- 
 zinc, pp. 580-584. 
 
 Tennyson and Brotvnin;^, in 'J'he Spectator, vol. Ixiii., pp. 
 879, 880. 
 
 Tennyson as a Prophet, in 'J'he Nineteenth Century, by 
 F. H. Myers, vol. xxv., pp. 381-396. 
 
176 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 (Same article in LittclVs Liviui:; Age, vol. clxxx., and Eclectic 
 Magazine, vol. cxii.) 
 
 Tennyson at Eighty. Sonnet to Tennyson on his birth- 
 day, by Theodore Watts, in Tlie Athenceum, vol. ii., 
 p. 191. 
 
 Tennyson at Eighty. Sonnet by the Rev. H. D. Rawns- 
 ley, in Macinillans Magazine (August), vol. Ix., p. 
 
 293- 
 To Lord Tennyson, lines by Lewis Morris, in Macniillans 
 
 Magazine (August). 
 A Poem, by Alfred Austin, in The Spectator, vol. Ixiii., 
 
 P- 175. 
 Article in The Critic, vol. xv. , pp. 6g, 70. 
 Article in The Critic, vol. xv., pp. 105-107, by Edmund 
 
 Gosse. 
 Article on The Bible in Tennyson, with portrait of Ten- 
 nyson, by H. Van Dyke, in 7'he Century Magazine, vol. 
 
 xvi., pp. 515-522. 
 Article on Tennyson's First Flight, in .Scrilnicr' s Magazine, 
 
 by H. Van Dyke. 
 Both reprinted in Tlie Poetry of Tennyson, by Henry Van 
 
 Dyke. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons, pp. xiii., 296. 
 The Two Locksley Halls, by T. R. Lounsbury, in Scribner's 
 
 Magazine, vol. vi., pp. 250-256. 
 'R.Qv\evi ol Demeter, and Other Poe»ts, in The Academy, by H. 
 
 B. Garrod, vol. xxxvi., pp. 413, 414. 
 Review of Demeter, and Other Poems, in The Athenccum, 1889, 
 
 vol. ii., pp. 883-885. 
 Review of Demeter, and Other Poems, in The Spectator, vol. 
 
 Ixiii., pp. 883, 884. 
 The Undertones of Tennyson, in The Spectator, vol. Ixii. 
 
 pp. 165, 166. 
 Tennyson's Art and Genins, in The Baptist Revie~v (Jan- 
 uary) (U. S.), by Eugene Parsons. 
 The Poets Laureate of England, in 'The Methodist Recorder 
 
 (February and March), by the Rev. G. Lester. 
 Homes and LLaunts of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, hy George 
 
 P. Napier. (Illustrated.) Pp. xvi., 204. (One hundred 
 
 copies for private circulation.) Published Glasgow : J. 
 
 Maclehose & Sons, 1892. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 1/7 
 
 Translations : Enoch Ardcn. Traduit de V Anglais par E. 
 Duglin, pp. 32. Beauvais. 
 
 Enoch Ardcn. Ubcrsetzting atis den Englischcn von Grie- 
 benow, pp. 35. Halle. 
 
 The Poetical Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. A new edi- 
 tion in one volume, pp. viii., 535. Also an edition con- 
 taining the dramas. London and New York : Macmillan 
 & Co., I vol., pp. v., 842. 
 
 Tennyson Pictures, by W. Paget and H. Dicksee (with 
 short criticisms of the poems illustrated). London : E. 
 Nister (Nuremburg printed), obi. 4°. 
 
 In Tennyson Land, by John C. Walters. Illustrated. Lon- 
 don : George Redway, pp. viii., 108. 
 
 The Laureate'' s Country, by Alfred J. Church, with illustra- 
 tions from drawings by E. Hull. London : Seeley & Co., 
 pp. Ill, fol. 
 
 The Makers of Alodertt English, by W. J. Dawson (Ten- 
 nyson, pp. 169-269). London. 
 
 Article on Lord Tennyson in Nuova Antologia (Rome), by 
 F. Rodriguez. 
 
 Tennyson's ballad. The Voyage of Maeldune, with music 
 by C. U. Stanford. London : Novello, Ewer & 
 Co. 
 
 Views and Reviews, by W. E. Henley. (Tennyson, pp. 154- 
 158). London. 
 
 Article on Tennyson in ChatUatiquan, vol, ii., pp. I73~I78, 
 by E. Parsons. 
 
 Tejinysoti and After? in The Fortnightly Review, vol. liii., 
 pp. 621-637. 
 
 (Same article in The Eclectic Magazine, vol. cxv.) 
 
 Tennyson and Browning, in The Edinbtirgh Review, vol. 
 clxxii., pp. 301-316. 
 
 Tennyson and Browning, in The Leisure Hour, vol. xxxix., 
 pp. 231-234, 
 
 Tennyson and the Questionings of Our Age, in The Arena, 
 by J. T. Brixby, vol, ii., pp. 57-71. 
 
 Review of Denieter, and Other Poems, \vl The National Review^ 
 by Alfred Austin, vol. xiv., pp. 694-702. 
 
 Review of De?neter, and Other Poems, in The Atlantic 
 Monthly, vol. Ixv., pp. 421-423, 
 
 L 
 
1/8 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 Review of Dcnu'tt-r, ami Otlu-r Forins, in Poet Lore, by 
 C. Porter, vol. ii., pp. 201-207. 
 
 Tenuvson's 1)1 Mrinoriam, in The N^e7i> Knglander, vol. liii., 
 p. 492. 
 
 Lo7'e Passages in Peniiyson, in T/ie A'ew E)iglaiide>\ by W. 
 Higgs, vol. liii., pp. 126-142, and pp. 276-2S3. 
 
 Tennyson s Pliiiosophy of tiie Future Life, in The Baptist 
 Quarterly Pgvifw, by J. W. White, vol. xii., pp. 158- 
 182. 
 
 Tennyson's Sehool Pays, in The Pall Mall Gazette, by C. J. 
 Caswell (June 19). 
 
 Paper on Tennyson in The Examiner (New York), by E. 
 Parsons (February). 
 
 " In King Arthur's Capital" in Igdrasil (the journal of 
 Ruskin Reading Guild), by J. C. Walters (November). 
 
 " Christmas with Lord Tennyson" in The Fireside Maga- 
 zine, by Rev. G. Lester (December). 
 
 " An Arthurian Journey" in The Atlantic Monthly (June). 
 
 Poem on Tennyson, in The Atlantic Monthly, by T. B. 
 Aldrich (March). 
 
 {The Lsles of Greece, Sappho and Ahwus, by Frederick 
 Tennyson. London and New York : Macmillan <S: Co., 
 pp. xiv., 443.) 
 
 Tennyson's portrait, by G. F. Watts, given to Trinity Col- 
 lege, Cambridge. 
 1S91. To Sleep, printed in The Keiv Revie-.o (March). 
 
 Pearl, an English poem of the fourteenth century. Edited 
 with a modern rendering by J. Gollancy, ^vith introductory 
 lines by L.ord Tennyson and a frontispiece by Holman 
 Hunt. London : D. Nutt, pp. lii., 142. 
 
 Lines in a volume of his Poems presented to Princess Louise 
 of Schlcswig-Holstein. 
 
 Lines on the christening of the daughter of the Duchess of 
 Fife. 
 
 The Poetical Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. A new edi- 
 tion in one volume, revised, with new portrait. Macmil- 
 lan ^^ Co., pp. 842. 
 
 The Coining of Arthur and The Passing of Arthur, with 
 introductions and notes by F. J. Rowe. Macmillan & 
 Co., pp. xliii., 78. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMP^R. 1 79 
 
 Aylmcr's Field, with introduction and notes by F. J. Rowc 
 and W. T. Webb. Macmillan & Co., pp. xxxi., 70. 
 
 Enoch Arden, with introduction and notes by W. T. Webb. 
 
 Macmillan & Co., pp. xxxiii., 60. 
 Tennyson for the Young, with introduction and nf)tcs by 
 A. Ainger. Macmillan & Co., pp. xiii., 120. 
 
 Illustrations of '/'cniiyson, by J. Churton Collins. Lon- 
 don : Chatto & Windus, pp. ix., 186. 
 
 Nature in Books, by P. A. Graham. (Tennyson, Art and 
 Scenery, pp. 44-65.) London. 
 
 Victorian Poets, by Amy Sharp. (Tennyson, pp. 1-39.) 
 London. 
 
 A Vision of Fair IVoinen, a dramatic paraphrase (in verse) 
 based upon Tennyson's Dream of luiir Woiiicn. Boston : 
 W. H. Baker & Co., pp. 15. 
 
 Tennyson's Foresters, in 'The Athcn(niiii , by Theodore Watts, 
 vol. ii., pp. 461, 493, 494. (Same article in 'J'he Critic, 
 vol. xix., pp 238, 239.) 
 
 The Childhood of Tennyson, illustrated, in TJie Art Jour- 
 nal, by P. A. Graham, vol. xliii., pp. 13-18 and 46-50. 
 
 A Day tvith Tennyson, in The Forum, by E. Arnold, vol. 
 xii., pp. 536-548. 
 
 Illustrations of Animal Life in the Poems of Tennyson, in 
 The Cornhill Magazine, vol. Ixiii., pp. 145-151. (Same 
 article in LitteWs Living Age, vol, clxxxviii.) 
 
 Tennyson' s Farmers of Lincolnshire, in The Westmin- 
 ster Review, by J. J. Davis, vol. cxxxvi., pp. 132-137. 
 (Same article in LitteWs Living Age, vol. cxci.) 
 
 The Quotableness of Tennyson, in The Chautauquan, by 
 E. Parsons, vol. xiii., pp. 334-337. 
 
 Article on St. Agnes' Eve in Poet Lore, by A. S. Cook, vol. 
 iii., pp. 10-17. 
 
 The Study of Tennyson, in The Century Magazine, by 
 A. Van Dyke, vol. xx., pp. 502-510. 
 
 Reprinted in The Poetry of Tennyson. London : Elkin 
 Mathews. 
 
 The Literary Genealogy of Ulysses, in Poet Lore, by A. S. 
 Cook, vol. iii., pp. 499-504. 
 
 Lord Tennyson' s Birthday, in Notes and Queries (March 14), 
 by C. J. Caswell. 
 
l8o A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 A Comitia of Errors in BiriiiingJiam IVeckly Mercury, by 
 C. J. Caswell, April ii. 
 
 Translation : Maud, Ein GcJicltt . . . iibcrsctzt von F. W. 
 Weber. Zwcite verbesserte aujlage, pp. io8. Paderborn. 
 
 {Dap/me, and Other Poems, by Frederick Tennyson. Mac- 
 millan «& Co., pp. 522.) 
 
 Tennyson spent part of the spring on a Mediterranean 
 cruise, and in the same year visited Devonshire. 
 1S92. Lines on "The De.a.th of the Duke of Cl.'^rence and 
 AvoNDALE," printed in The Nineteenth Century (Febru- 
 ary). 
 
 The Foresters, produced at Daly's Theatre, New York 
 (March iq), with Mr. Drew and Miss Ada Rehan as Robin 
 Hood and Marian. 
 
 On the same day a single formal performance of The Fores- 
 ters, to secure copyright, was given at the Lj'ceum in Lon- 
 don. 
 
 The Foresters : Robin Hood and Maid Marian, by Alfred, 
 Lord Tennyson (a play in four acts, in verse and prose). 
 London and New York : Macmillan & Co., pp. 155. 
 
 The Death of CEnone, Akbar's Dream, and Other 
 Poems, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. London and New 
 York : Macmillan & Co., pp. vi., 113. 
 
 (Also an edition with five steel portraits of the author, pp. 
 vi., III.) 
 
 Gareth and Lynette, with introduction and notes by G. C. 
 Macaulay. Macmillan & Co., pp. xxxv., 108. 
 
 The Princess, with introduction and notes by Percy M. Wal- 
 lace. Macmillan & Co., pp. lii., 233. 
 
 The Marriage of Geraint ; Geraint and Enid, with intro- 
 duction and notes by G. C. Macaulay. Macmillan & 
 Co., pp. .xlv., 125. 
 
 Idylls of the A'ing {in twelve books). Macmillan & Co., 
 
 pp.421. (^"^ 
 
 "In Memoriam : Alfred, Lord Tennyson, born^"?^ugust, 
 iSog, died 6 October, 1892," "Crossing the Bar" [and] 
 " A Poem." London (?), 1892, s. sh. 8°. 
 Phases of Thought and Criticism, by Brother Azarias. Bos- 
 ton. {The Spiritual Sense of In Memoriam, pp. 183- 
 264.) 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. l8l 
 
 The Golden Guess, essays, etc., by J. Y. Cheney (Tennysf)n 
 
 and his Critics, pp. 161-201). 
 A Sermon (Heb. xiii. 7). preached by H. M. Butler, 
 
 Dean of Gloucester, in the Chapel of Trinity College, 
 
 Cambridge, in reference to the death of Lord Tennyson. 
 
 London : Macmillan & Bowes, pp. 15. 
 Tennyson and our Imperial Heritage, by W. H. P. Gres- 
 
 well. London : Gower & Co., pp. 23. 
 Tennyson and In Memoriam, an appreciation and a study, 
 
 by Joseph Jacobs. London : D. Nutt., pp. viii., 108. 
 Alfred, Lord Tennyson : A Brief Study of his Life ana 
 
 Poetry, by Arthur Jenkinson. London : J. Nisbet & Co., 
 
 pp. X., 127. 
 A Lecture : Tennyson s Idylls of the King, by W. M. Mac- 
 
 Phail. London : Hitchcock, pp. 36. 
 Popular Studies of Nineteenth Century Poets, by J. M. 
 
 Mather. London. {Tennyson the Moodist, pp. 125- 
 
 152.) 
 
 Tennyson's Life and Poetry, and Mistakes Concerning Ten- 
 nyson, by E. Parsons. Chicago : The Craig Press, pp. 29. 
 (Enlarged edition, 1893.) 
 
 Poets the Interpreters of their Age, by Anna Swanwick. 
 London. (Tennyson, pp. 380-387-) 
 
 In Memory of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the English Theocri- 
 tus, etc. (verses, with portrait), by E. S. Sterne. London. 
 
 Sermonettes from Tennyson, by A. Taylor, pp. 68. Bir- 
 mingham. 
 
 Shadotvs of the Stage, by William Winter. Edinburgh. 
 (Tennyson's Foresters, pp. 269-285.) Second series, 
 1893 (Tennyson, pp. 359-367)- 
 
 " Funeral of the Right Hon. Lord Tennyson, Westminster 
 Abbey, October 12, 1892" (order of service [including the 
 text of two poems by Lord Tennyson, " Crossing the 
 Bar" and "The Silent Yoices"]). London : Harrison & 
 Sons, s. sh. fol. 
 
 Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, and Broivning, by A. 
 Thackeray Ritchie, pp. 245. London : Macmillan^ Co. ; 
 New York : Harper & Brothers, pp. 190. 
 
 Tennyson died October 6. 
 
 Article on Tennyson, in The Academy, by Joseph Jacobs 
 
lS2 A TENNYSON TKIMKU. 
 
 (October 15), vol. xlii,, i^p. 335-337. (RcpriiUcd in 
 'J't-iinyson mil/ hi Mciiioriaiii [I). Nutt].) 
 Article on 'J'liinysoii, in T/ir Athi-iuriini , by 'riieodore 
 Watts (October 8 and 22), vol. 11., \>\\. 482, 483 and 
 
 555. 55f'- 
 Article on y'fiinysoii, in T/ie Aiu/oi'cr Kcviciv, by S. 11. 
 
 Thayer (November), vol. xviii., pp. 460-478. 
 Article on 'JViinysoii, in /.ii A't)//7Y//i' A'(TUi , by F. Lobee 
 
 (November i), pp. 173-181. 
 Article on 'J'l/iin'soii, in Daluini, with portrait, by K. 
 
 Koenijr (November 19), pp. 102-104. 
 Article on Tctinysoii, in Blackivooifs jU<i<;(i'iii'' (November), 
 
 vol. ciii., pp. 748-768. 
 Article on 'J'liiiiysoii, in the C<i//it>/ir JI'i'/-/,/, with portrait, 
 
 by M. F. Ejjan (November), vol. Ivi., pp. 149-157. 
 Article on 7\iiiiysoii, in 7V/(' Contemporary Ki'7<ic~d', by 
 
 Stopford A. Brooke (December), vol. l.\ii., pp. 761-7S5. 
 Article on Tiiuiysott, in '/'//(■ Cri/ic (October 15 and 29), 
 
 with portrait, pp. 203, 204, 237, by 11. \'an Dyke ; also 
 
 articles (November 5 and 12), pp. 254-257 and 2S5-290. 
 Article on Trniiyson, in T/ic Cosmopolitan, by G. Stewart 
 
 (December), vol. xiv., p. 169. 
 Article on Tennyson, in T/w Dial, Chicago (October 16), 
 
 vol. xiii., pp. 231-234. 
 Article on Tennyson, in Reiuie J^hiie, by Mary Darmcs- 
 
 teter, torn, xlix., pp. 619-623. 
 Article on Tennyson, in (7en//eman's J/',ii;inine, U.S. 
 
 (November), pp. 535-540. 
 Article on Tennyson, in Literary Worhi, Hoston (Octo- 
 ber 22), vol. xxxiii., ]ip. 372,373. 
 Article on Tennyson, in Maeinil/an's jVaoacine, by A. 
 
 .\in,i;er (November), vol. Ixvii.. pp. 76-So. 
 Article on Tennyson, in TJie A'ation, by J. W. Chadwick 
 
 (October 13), vol. Iv., pp. 276-278. 
 Article on Tennyson, in T/ie S/>ee/ator (October 8), vol. 
 
 Ixix., pp. 484, 485. 
 Article on Tennyson, \i\ Tlie S<itnri/ay A'eTien', \'o\. \\\\v. , 
 
 jip. 405, 406. 
 .\ilirle on Teniivson, in T/ie It'estminster A'er'ie:,' (De 
 
 cember), vol. exxxviii., pj). 589-596. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMKU 183 
 
 Article on Tennyson, in The Revicrv of Reviews, hy W. 
 T. Stead (illustrated), vol. vi., pp. 435-447. 
 
 Article on Tennyson, in "J'tie New Review, by Edmund 
 Gosse and I lerbert Paul (November), vol. vii. , pp. 5 1 3-537 
 (Same article Litlell's Living Age, vol. cxcv.) 
 
 Poem in The Spectator (October 15), by G. H. Warren, 
 p. 528. 
 
 Poem in The London Lllustrated Ne^us, by William Watson 
 (October 8). 
 
 Love and Duty in Tennyson and Bro'ioning, in Poet Lore, by 
 E. F. R. Stitt, vol. iv., pp. 271-274. 
 
 Tennyson and Whittier, with portraits, in The Arena, by 
 W. J. Fowler, vol. vii., pp. i-ii. 
 
 Relations of Tennyson and Whitman to Science, in The 
 Dial, Chicago, by J. Burroughs, vol. xiv., pp. 168, 169. 
 
 Aspects of Tennyson (ist paper), in 77/*? Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury, by H. D. Traill, vol. xxxii., pp. 952-956. (Same 
 article in LJttell's Living Age, vol. cxcvi.) 
 
 Bibliography of Tennyson, in The Critic, vol. xxi., p. 211. 
 
 Review of Death of QLnone, and Other Poems, in The Acad- 
 emy, by L. Johnson (November 5), vol. xlii., pp. 403, 
 404. 
 
 Review of Death of Ginone, and Other J'oeins, in Poet Lore 
 (December), vol. iv., pp 640-643. 
 
 Review of Death of (Enone, and Other 7'oems, in Athentrtim 
 (November 19), vol. ii., pp. 695-697. 
 
 Review of Death of (Enone, and Other L'oems, in Saturday 
 Review (November 5), vol. Ixxiv., pp. 536, 537. 
 
 Early French Estimates of Tennyson, in 'The A thenreum 
 (October 22), vol. ii., pp. 554, 555. 
 
 Fancy of Tennyson, in The Spectator (April 2), vol. Ixviii., 
 pp. 458, 459. 
 
 Review of Tennyson's Foresters in I'he Academy, by W. 
 Watson (April 9), vol. xli., pp. 341, 342. 
 
 Review of Tennyson's Foresters in The Saturday Review, 
 vol. Ixxiii., pp. 391, 392. 
 
 Review of Tennyson's Foresters in 'Plie A thena'um (April 
 16), vol. i., pp. 491-493. 
 
 Review of Tennyson's Foresters in The Gentleman' ^ Maga- 
 zine, U. S. (May), vol. xlviii., pp. 528-532. 
 
184 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 Maid Marian on the Stage, in The Theatre, by A. W. 
 
 Walkley, vol. xxviii., pp. 227-231. 
 Notice of the Funeral of Tennyson in The Literary World 
 
 (November 5), vol. xxiii., pp. 388, by J. R. Macquoid. 
 Notice of the Funeral of Tennyson in LittelVs Living Age 
 
 (November 19), vol. cxcv., p. 510. 
 Notice of the Fntieral of Tennyson in The Spectator (Octo- 
 ber 15), vol. Ixix., pp. 516, 517. 
 Notice of the Funeral of Tennyson in The Critic (November 
 
 26), pp. 286-290. 
 The Genius of Tennyson, in The Spectator (October 15), 
 
 vol. Ixix., pp. 522-524. 
 (Same article in The Eclectic Magazine, vol. cxix., and 
 
 LittelVs Living Age, vol. cxcv.) 
 Homes of Tennyson at Aldiuorih and Farringford, in The 
 
 English Illustrated Magazine, by Grant Allen, vol. x., 
 
 pp. 145-156. 
 In the Laureate's Footsteps, in Good Words (illustrated), by 
 
 G. Winterwood, vol. xxxiii., pp. 670-678. 
 The Celtic Element in The Lady of Shalott, in Poet Lore, by 
 
 A. R. Brown (August and September), vol. iv., pp. 408- 
 
 415. 
 
 The Latest V'erses of Tennyson, in The Gentle/nan's Maga- 
 zine, U. S. (December), vol. xlix., pp. 641, 642. 
 
 T/ie Literary Sensitiveness of Tennyson, in The National 
 Reviezi', by Alfred Austin (December), vol. xx., pp. 454- 
 460. 
 
 (Same article in Eclectic Magazine, vol. cxx.) 
 
 Art and Architecture in Tennyson's Poems, in The Ameri- 
 can Architect (November 5), vol. xxxviii., p. 87. 
 
 Poetical Tributes to Tennyson,, poems in The Nineteenth 
 Century, by the editor, T. H. Huxley, F. W. H. Myers, 
 and others (November), vol. xxxii., pp. 831-844. 
 
 Poetical Tributes to Tennyson in The Spectator, by D. Beale 
 (October 29), vol. Ixix , p. 595. 
 
 Tennyson iaiia, in The Athenueuiii (October 15, November 
 26), vol. ii., p. 517, pp. 741, 742. 
 
 Tennysoniana, in The Critic (December 3), vol. xxi . , pp. 
 
 315, 316. 
 Tennysoniana, in The Dial, Chicago, vol. .xiii., pp. 265-267. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 1 85 
 
 The Theology of Tennyson, in The Spectator, vol. Ixix., pp. 
 
 642, 643. 
 (Same article in Eclectic Magazine, vol. cxix.) 
 Visit to Tennyson, in The Critic, by W. J. Rolfe, vol. xxi., 
 
 pp. 285, 286. 
 Tennyson's Works, in The Spectator, vol. Ixviii., pp. 201, 
 
 202. 
 Enoch Arden. 7"exte Anglais pub liJ avec une notice sur la 
 
 vie et les cetivres de Tennyson, une etude sur la versification 
 
 du prime des notes . . . et des appendices par A. Beljame, 
 
 pp. 120. Paris, 
 Enoch Arden . . . avec . . . des notes . . .par A. Beljame. 
 
 Paris. 
 1893. Poems by Two Brothers. A reprint of the 1827 edition. 
 
 With facsimiles of part of the MS. and a preface by Hal- 
 lam, Lord Tennyson, pp. xix., 251. London : Macmil- 
 
 lan & Co. 
 Poems . . . illustrated (reprinted from the edition of 1857), 
 
 pp. xiii., 374. Macmillan & Co. 
 The Holy Grail. With introduction and notes by G. C. 
 
 Macaulay, pp. xl., 86. Macmillan & Co. 
 Selections from Tennyson. With introduction and notes by 
 
 J. F. Rowre and W. T. Webb. 2 parts. Macmillan & Co. 
 Maud : A Monodrama, pp. 69. Macmillan & Co. 4°. 
 Becket. As arranged for the stage by Henry Irving. Mac- 
 millan & Co. 
 Tennyson' s Heroes and Heroines. Illustrated by Marcus Stone. 
 
 London : Tuck & Sons. 
 The Teaching of Tennyson, by E. H. Blakeney. Reprinted 
 
 from The Churchman, pp. 8. 
 Essays, Addresses, etc., by the Rev. T. C. Finlayson. 
 
 (Tennyson's In Memoriam, pp. 1-35.) Macmillan & 
 
 Co. 
 The Scenery of Tennyson's Poems. Etchings after drawings 
 
 by various artists. With introduction and descriptive 
 
 letterpress by B. Francis. London : J. & E. Bumpus. 
 Questions at Issue, by Edmund Gosse. (Tennyson, pp. 
 
 175-198.) 
 " The Poems of A. H. Hallam, together with his Essay on 
 
 the Lyrical Poems of AWred Tennyson." Edited, with an 
 
1 86 A TENNYSOX TRIMKR. 
 
 introduction, by R. Le Galliennc, pp. xxxix., 139. E. 
 
 Mathews and John Lane. 
 Sfers am/ Siti^-^i/s, by A. D. Inncs. (Tennyson, pp. 26-49.) 
 Essays on Lord Tennyson's hlylls of the King, by Harold 
 
 Littlcdale, pp. x., 30S. 
 Nciv Stud'us ill Titinysoit, including a Commentary on 
 
 Maud, by Morton Luce (2d edition), pp. 96. Clifton : 
 
 J. Barker & Son. 
 The Pods ami t/u- IW/rv of the Century. (Frederick Tenny- 
 son to Clough.) (Alfred Tennyson, by A. H. Japp, pp. 
 
 67-102.) 
 Seieme ami a Future Life, by F. W. II. Myers. (Tennyson 
 
 as prophet, pp. 127-165.) 
 Tennyson as a Thinker, by Henry Salt, pp. 56. London ; 
 
 W. Reeves. 
 Death of Tennyson, by John Parnell (in verse), a single sheet. 
 
 London. 
 Alfred, Lord Tennyson and his Friends. A series of twenty- 
 five portraits in photogravure from the negatives of Mrs. 
 
 J. M. Cameron and H. H. H. Cameron. Reminiscences 
 
 by A. Thackeray Ritchie. With introduction by H. H. H. 
 
 Cameron. London : T. F. Unwin, folio. 
 Tennyson : Poet, Phiiosofher, Ldea/ist. Studies on the life. 
 
 work, and teaching of the Poet Laureate (Tennysonian 
 
 chronology). With portrait, pp. viii., 370. London : 
 
 Kegan Paul & Co. _ 1 
 Alfred, Lord 'Tennyson, by Arthur Waugh (2d edition, 
 
 enlarged), pp. x., 332. London : Heinemann. 
 Fni;/ish J'oetry from fiiahe to Broronim^', by W. Macneile 
 
 Dixon. (Tennyson, Arnold, Browning, pp. 1SS-200.) 
 
 Lonilon : Methuen .S: Co. 
 Article on V'ennyson, in Harpers Magazine, by A Fields 
 
 (January), vol. IxxxVi., pp. 309-312. 
 Article on Tennyson, in The Chureh Quarterly, vol. 
 
 XXXV., pp. 485-506. 
 ^ 7 ennyson and Proponing as Spiritual Forees, in The A^eio 
 
 World, by C. C. Everett (June), vol. ii., pp. 240-256. 
 Tennyson and the Meaning of Life, in The A'ineteent': 
 
 Century, by F. \V. H. Myers (^January), vol. xxxiii., pp. 93- 
 
 111. 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 1 87 
 
 7\n)iyson on the /'ti/iin' Life, in The Spectator (March 4). 
 
 vol. L\x., p. 283. 
 Tennyson as a Nature Poet, in 'The Nineteenth Century. 
 
 by Theodore Walts (May), vol. xxxiii., pp. 836-S56. 
 
 (Same article, June and July.) 
 Tennyson as the Poet of Evolution, in The Nineteenth 
 
 Century, by Theodore Watts (October), vol. xxxiv., pp. 
 
 657-672. (Same article, December.) 
 Tennyson as the Religious J<'.xponent of his Age, in The 
 
 Sicnday Magazine, by J. Wedgwood (January), vol. xxii., 
 
 pp. 34-38. 
 Aspects of 'Tennyson. One of a series of articles in The 
 
 NiTieteenth Century, by the editor (January), vol. xxxiii., 
 
 pp. 164-168. (Same article in Littell's Living Age, vo\. 
 
 cxcvi.) 
 At the Laureate's Funeral. A poem in 'J'he National 
 
 Revieto by the Duke of Argyll (January), vol. xx., pp. 
 
 581-586. 
 The Real Thomas Becket, in The Nineteenth Century, by 
 
 Agnes Lambert, vol. xxxiii., pp. 273-292. 
 "Becket at the Lyceum Theatre," in 'The Spectator i^chxa- 
 
 ary 25), vol. Ixx., p. 253. 
 "Becket at the Lyceum Theatre," in The Academy, by F. 
 
 Wedmore (February 18), vol. xliii., pp. 158, I5<.)- 
 "Becket at the Lyceum Theatre," in 'J'he Saturday Review 
 
 (February 11), vol. Ixxv., pp. 146-147. 
 " Becket at the Lyceum Theatre," in 'The Art Journal (\\\u^- 
 
 trated), by J. Hatton (April), vol. xlv., pp. 105-109. 
 Tennyson's Classical Poems, in 'The Nineteenth Century, 
 
 by H. Paul (March), vol. xxxiii., pp. 436-453- (Same 
 
 article, May.) 
 A Word inith Dissenters about 'Tennyson, in 'J'he Dial. 
 
 Chicago, by P. Shorey (February 16), vol. xiv., pp. 102, 
 
 103. 
 The Earliest Poems of 'Pennyson, in 'J'he Critic (May 2), 
 
 vol. xxii., pp. 333-335- 
 Tennyson's Elaine and Shake.^pcre's Miranda, in Poet Lore, 
 
 by S. D. Davies (January), vol. v., p. 15. 
 LJow to Study In Memoriam, in J'oet J.ore, by 11. A. 
 
 Clarke (November), vol. v.. pp. 574-582. 
 
1 88 A TENNYSON PRIMER. 
 
 The Two Lockslcy Halls, in Poet Lore (January), vol. v., 
 
 P- 34- 
 Tennyson^ s Place hi Poetry, in The Dial, Chicago, by E. 
 
 E. Hale (February i6), vol. xiv., pp. loi, 102. 
 Poem on Tennyson, in The AHneteenth Century, by A. C. 
 
 Swinburne (January), vol. xxxiii., pp. 1-3. (Same in Ec- 
 lectic Magazine, vol. cxx.) 
 Review of The Poetry of Tennyson in The Quarterly 
 
 Revieiv, vol. clxxvi., pp. 1-39. 
 Recollections of Tennyson, in TJie Century Magazine, by 
 
 J. A. Symonds (May), vol. xlvi., pp. 32-37. 
 The Study of Tennyson in Class, in Education, by H. M- 
 
 Reynolds (February), vol. xiii., p. 359. 
 Talks luith Tennyson, in Tlie Contemporary Revieio, by 
 
 A. G. Weld, vol. Ixiii., pp. 394-397. 
 Tennysoniana, in The Sunday Afagazine {]anua.ry, February, 
 
 March), vol. xxii., pp. 50-53, 122-125, 201-205. 
 The Voice of Tennyson, in The Century Magazine, by 
 
 H. Van Dyke, vol. xlv., pp. 539-544- 
 Was Tennyson Consistent ? in The Atnerican Catholic Quar- 
 terly, by G. P. Lathrop, vol. xviii., p. loi. 
 Was Tennyson either Gnostic or Agnostic? in The Spec- 
 tator (January 7), vol. Ixx., p. 10. (Same article in LittelVs 
 
 Living Age, vol. cxcvi.) 
 Translations : Des Koenigs. Idyllen metrisch vertaald door 
 
 J. H. F. Le Comte, pp. 296. Rotterdam. 
 Ay liner's Field . . . Deutsch von H. Griebenow, pp. 49. 
 
 Halle. 
 1894. Tennyson : His Art and Relation to Modern Life, by 
 
 Stopford A. Brooke, pp. vi., 490. London : Isbister & 
 
 Co. 
 Tenrtyson's Ldylls of the King and Arthurian Story from the 
 
 XVIth Century, by M. W. Maccallum. Glasgow : 
 
 Maclehose & Sons, pp. xiv., 435. 
 'Tis Sixty Years Since; or. The Tii'o Locksley Halls, by 
 
 H. S. Wilson. London : Kegan Paul & Co., pp. 45. 
 Article on Tennyson in The New Revierc, by Francis 
 
 Adams (March), pp. 311-323. 
 Tennyson and Dante, in Temple Par, by Francis St. J. 
 
 Thackeray (July), pp. 387-397' 
 
A TENNYSON PRIMER. 1 89 
 
 Tennyson as a Humorist, in The Nineteenth Century, by 
 
 H. D. Traill, vol. xxxv., pp. jbi-Tj^. 
 New Lights on Tennyson, in The Sunday Magazine, by 
 
 H. V. Taylor (May), pp. 344-347. 
 The Religion of Tennyson, in The Arena, by W. H- 
 
 Savage (April), pp. 582-592. 
 Turncoat of Tennyson, in The Westminster Review, by J. J. 
 
 Davies (November), pp. 558-566. 
 The Trees and Flowers of Tennyson, in Temple Bar (Novem- 
 ber), pp. 358-366. 
 A Visit to the Tennysons in 1839, '"^ Blackwood' s Magazine, 
 
 by B. Teeling (May), pp. 605-621. 
 Translation : Balladen und lyrische Gedichte iibcrtaagen von 
 
 Sophie von Harbon, pp. viii,, 208. Charlottenburg, 
 
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