Alfred Tennyson Part 19

And more, my son! 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 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.

Any words about Tennyson as a politician are apt to excite the sleepless prejudice which haunts the political field. He probably, if forced to "put a name to it," would have called himself a Liberal.

But he was not a social agitator. He never set a rick on fire. "He held aloof, in a somewhat detached position, from the great social seethings of his age" (Mr Frederic Harrison). But in youth he helped to extinguish some flaming ricks. He spoke of the "many-headed beast" (the reading public) in terms borrowed from Plato. He had no higher esteem for mobs than Shakespeare or John Knox professed, while his theory of tyrants (in the case of Napoleon III. about 1852) was that of Liberals like Mr Swinburne and Victor Hugo. Though to modern enlightenment Tennyson may seem as great a Tory as Dr Johnson, yet he had spoken his word in 1852 for the freedom of France, and for securing England against the supposed designs of a usurper (now fallen). He really believed, obsolete as the faith may be, in guarding our own, both on land and sea. Perhaps no Continental or American critic has ever yet dispraised a poetical fellow-countryman merely for urging the duties of national union and national defence.

A critic, however, writes thus of Tennyson: "When our poet descends into the arena of party polemics, in such things as Riflemen, Form!

Hands all Round, . . . The Fleet, and other topical pieces dear to the Jingo soul, it is not poetry but journalism." I doubt whether the desirableness of the existence of a volunteer force and of a fleet really is within the arena of PARTY polemics. If any party thinks that we ought to have no volunteers, and that it is our duty to starve the fleet, what is that party's name? Who cries, "Down with the Fleet! Down with National Defence! Hooray for the Disintegration of the Empire!"?

Tennyson was not a party man, but he certainly would have opposed any such party. If to defend our homes and this England be "Jingoism,"

Tennyson, like Shakespeare, was a Jingo. But, alas! I do not know the name of the party which opposes Tennyson, and which wishes the invader to trample down England--any invader will do for so philanthropic a purpose. Except when resisting this unnamed party, the poet seldom or never entered "the arena of party polemics."

Tennyson could not have exclaimed, like Squire Western, "Hurrah for old England! Twenty thousand honest Frenchmen have landed in Kent!"

He undeniably did write verses (whether poetry or journalism) tending to make readers take an unfavourable view of honest invaders. If to do that is to be a "Jingo," and if such conduct hurts the feelings of any great English party, then Tennyson was a Jingo and a partisan, and was, so far, a rhymester, like Mr Kipling. Indeed we know that Tennyson applauded Mr Kipling's The English Flag. So the worst is out, as we in England count the worst. In America and on the continent of Europe, however, a poet may be proud of his country's flag without incurring rebuke from his countrymen. Tennyson did not reckon himself a party man; he believed more in political evolution than in political revolution, with cataclysms. He was neither an Anarchist nor a Home Ruler, nor a politician so generous as to wish England to be laid defenceless at the feet of her foes.

If these sentiments deserve censure, in Tennyson, at least, they claim our tolerance. He was not born in a generation late enough to be truly Liberal. Old prejudices about "this England," old words from Henry V. and King John, haunted his memory and darkened his vision of the true proportions of things. We draw in prejudice with our mother's milk. The mother of Tennyson had not been an Agnostic or a Comtist; his father had not been a staunch true-blue anti- Englander. Thus he inherited a certain bias in favour of faith and fatherland, a bias from which he could never emanc.i.p.ate himself. But tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner. Had Tennyson's birth been later, we might find in him a more complete realisation of our poetic ideal--might have detected less to blame or to forgive.

With that apology we must leave the fame of Tennyson as a politician to the clement consideration of an enlightened posterity. I do not defend his narrow insularities, his Jingoism, or the appreciable percentage of faith which blushing a.n.a.lysis may detect in his honest doubt: these things I may regret or condemn, but we ought not to let them obscure our view of the Poet. He was led away by bad examples.

Of all Jingoes Shakespeare is the most unashamed, and next to him are Drayton, Scott, and Wordsworth, with his

"Oh, for one hour of that Dundee!"

In the years which followed the untoward affair of Waterloo young Tennyson fell much under the influence of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and the other offenders, and these are extenuating circ.u.mstances. By a curious practical paradox, where the realms of poetry and politics meet, the Tory critics seem milder of mood and more Liberal than the Liberal critics. Thus Mr William Morris was certainly a very advanced political theorist; and in theology Mr Swinburne has written things not easily reconcilable with orthodoxy. Yet we find Divine- Right Tories, who in literature are fervent admirers of these two poets, and leave their heterodoxies out of account. But many Liberal critics appear unable quite to forgive Tennyson because he did not wish to starve the fleet, and because he held certain very ancient, if obsolete, beliefs. Perhaps a general amnesty ought to be pa.s.sed, as far as poets are concerned, and their politics and creeds should be left to silence, where "beyond these voices there is peace."

One remark, I hope, can excite no prejudice. The greatest of the Gordons was a soldier, and lived in religion. But the point at which Tennyson's memory is blended with that of Gordon is the point of sympathy with the neglected poor. It is to his wise advice, and to affection for Gordon, that we owe the Gordon training school for poor boys,--a good school, and good boys come out of that academy.

The question as to Tennyson's precise rank in the glorious roll of the Poets of England can never be determined by us, if in any case or at any time such determinations can be made. We do not, or should not, ask whether Virgil or Lucretius, whether AEschylus or Sophocles, is the greater poet. The consent of mankind seems to place Homer and Shakespeare and Dante high above all. For the rest no prize-list can be settled. If influence among aliens is the test, Byron probably takes, among our poets, the next rank after Shakespeare. But probably there is no possible test. In certain respects Sh.e.l.ley, in many respects Milton, in some Coleridge, in some Burns, in the opinion of a number of persons Browning, are greater poets than Tennyson. But for exquisite variety and varied exquisiteness Tennyson is not readily to be surpa.s.sed. At one moment he pleases the uncritical ma.s.s of readers, in another mood he wins the verdict of the raffine. It is a success which scarce any English poet but Shakespeare has excelled. His faults have rarely, if ever, been those of flat-footed, "thick-ankled" dulness; of rhetoric, of common- place; rather have his defects been the excess of his qualities. A kind of John Bullishness may also be noted, especially in derogatory references to France, which, true or untrue, are out of taste and keeping. But these errors could be removed by the excision of half- a-dozen lines. His later work (as the Voyage of Maeldune) shows a just appreciation of ancient Celtic literature. A great critic, F.

T. Palgrave, has expressed perhaps the soundest appreciation of Tennyson:-

It is for "the days that remain" to bear witness to his real place in the great hierarchy, amongst whom Dante boldly yet justly ranked himself. But if we look at Tennyson's work in a twofold aspect,-- HERE, on the exquisite art in which, throughout, his verse is clothed, the lucid beauty of the form, the melody almost audible as music, the mysterious skill by which the words used constantly strike as the INEVITABLE words (and hence, unforgettable), the subtle allusive touches, by which a secondary image is suggested to enrich the leading thought, as the harmonic "partials" give richness to the note struck upon the string; THERE, when we think of the vast fertility in subject and treatment, united with happy selection of motive, the wide range of character, the dramatic force of impersonation, the pathos in every variety, the mastery over the comic and the tragic alike, above all, perhaps, those phrases of luminous insight which spring direct from imaginative observation of Humanity, true for all time, coming from the heart to the heart,--his work will probably be found to lie somewhere between that of Virgil and Shakespeare: having its portion, if I may venture on the phrase, in the inspiration of both.

A professed enthusiast for Tennyson can add nothing to, and take nothing from, these words of one who, though his friend, was too truly a critic to entertain the admiration that goes beyond idolatry.

Footnotes:

{1} Macmillan & Co.

{2} To the present writer, as to others, The Lover's Tale appeared to be imitative of Sh.e.l.ley, but if Tennyson had never read Sh.e.l.ley, cadit quaestio.

{3} F. W. H. Myers, Science and a Future Life, p. 133.

{4} The writer knew this edition before he knew Tennyson's poems.

{5} The author of the spiteful letters was an unpublished anonymous person.

{6} The Lennox MSS.

{7} Spencer and Gillen, Natives of Central Australia, pp. 388, 389.

{8} Tennyson, Ruskin, and Mill, pp. 11, 12.

{9} Life, p. 37, 1899.

{10} Poem omitted from In Memoriam. Life, p. 257, 1899.

{11} Mr Harrison, Tennyson, Ruskin, and Mill, p. 5.

{12} The English reader may consult Mr Rhys's The Arthurian Legend, Oxford, 1891, and Mr Nutt's Studies of the Legend of the Holy Grail, which will direct him to other authorities and sources.

{13} I have summarised, with omissions, Miss Jessie L. Watson's sketch in King Arthur and his Knights. Nutt, 1899. The learning of the subject is enormous; Dr Sommer's Le Mort d'Arthur, the second volume may be consulted. Nutt, 1899.

{14} [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]. He is referred to in inscriptions, e.g. Berlin, Corpus, iii. 4774, V. 732, 733, 1829, 2143-46; xii. 405. See also Ausonius (Leipsic, 1886, pp. 52, 59), cited by Rhys, The Arthurian Legend p. 159, note 4.

{15} Brebeuf; Relations des Jesuites, 1636, pp. 100-102.

{16} Malory, xviii. 8 et seq.

{17} Notices et Extraits des MSS. de la Bibliotheque Imperiale, I.

xix. pp. 643-645.

{18} See the Life, 1899, p. 521.