Tennyson and His Friends Part 46

The society in which Arthur lived most intimately, at Eton and at the University, was formed of young men, eminent for natural ability, and for delight in what he sought above all things, the knowledge of truth, and the perception of beauty. They who loved and admired him living, and who now revere his sacred memory, as of one to whom, in the fondness of regret, they admit of no rival, know best what he was in the daily commerce of life; and his eulogy should, on every account, better come from hearts which, if partial, have been rendered so by the experience of friendship, not by the affection of nature.

Arthur left Cambridge on taking his degree in January 1832. He resided from that time with the Editor in London, having been entered on the boards of the Inner Temple. It was greatly the desire of the Editor that he should engage himself in the study of the law; not merely with professional views, but as a useful discipline for a mind too much occupied with habits of thought, which, enn.o.bling and important as they were, could not but separate him from the everyday business of life, and might, by their excess, in his susceptible temperament, be productive of considerable mischief. He had, during the previous long vacation, read with the Editor the _Inst.i.tutes_ of Justinian, and the two works of Heineccius which ill.u.s.trate them; and he now went through Blackstone's _Commentaries_, with as much of other law-books as, in the Editor's judgment, was required for a similar purpose. It was satisfactory at that time to perceive that, far from showing any of that distaste to legal studies which might have been antic.i.p.ated from some parts of his intellectual character, he entered upon them not only with great acuteness, but considerable interest. In the month of October 1832, he began to see the practical application of legal knowledge in the office of an eminent conveyancer, Mr. Walters of Lincoln's Inn Fields, with whom he continued till his departure from England in the following summer.

It was not, however, to be expected, or even desired by any one who knew how to value him, that he should at once abandon those habits of study which had fertilized and invigorated his mind. But he now, from some change or other in his course of thinking, ceased in a great measure to write poetry, and expressed to more than one friend an intention to give it up. The instances after his leaving Cambridge were few. The dramatic scene between Raffaelle and Fiammetta was written in 1832; and about the same time he had a design to translate the _Vita Nuova_ of his favourite Dante; a work which he justly prized, as the development of that immense genius, in a kind of autobiography, which best prepares us for a real insight into the _Divine Comedy_. He rendered accordingly into verse most of the sonnets which the _Vita Nuova_ contains; but the Editor does not believe that he made any progress in the prose translation. These sonnets appearing rather too literal, and consequently harsh, it has not been thought worth while to print.

In the summer of 1832, the appearance of Professor Rosetti's _Disquisizioni sullo spirito Antipapale_, in which the writings of Arthur's beloved masters, Dante and Petrarch, as well as most of the mediaeval literature of Italy, were treated as a series of enigmas, to be understood only by a key that discloses a latent Carbonarism, a secret conspiracy against the religion of their age, excited him to publish his own Remarks in reply. It seemed to him the worst of poetical heresies to desert the Absolute, the Universal, the Eternal, the Beautiful and True, which the Platonic spirit of his literary creed taught him to seek in all the higher works of genius, in quest of some temporary historical allusion, which could be of no interest with posterity. Nothing, however, could be more alien from his courteous disposition than to abuse the licence of controversy, or to treat with intentional disrespect a very ingenious person, who had been led on too far in pursuing a course of interpretation, which, within certain much narrower limits, it is impossible for any one conversant with history not to admit.

A very few other anonymous writings occupied his leisure about this time. Among these were slight memoirs of Petrarch, Voltaire, and Burke, for the Gallery of Portraits, published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.[112] His time was, however, princ.i.p.ally devoted, when not engaged at his office, to metaphysical researches, and to the history of philosophical opinions.

From the latter part of his residence at Cambridge, a gradual but very perceptible improvement in the cheerfulness of his spirits gladdened his family and his friends; intervals there doubtless were when the continual seriousness of his habits of thought, or the force of circ.u.mstances, threw something more of gravity into his demeanour; but in general he was animated and even gay, renewing or preserving his intercourse with some of those he had most valued at Eton and Cambridge. The symptoms of deranged circulation which had manifested themselves before, ceased to appear, or at least so as to excite his own attention; and though it struck those who were most anxious in watching him, that his power of enduring fatigue was not quite so great as from his frame of body and apparent robustness might have been antic.i.p.ated, nothing gave the least indication of danger either to their eyes, or to those of the medical pract.i.tioners who were in the habit of observing him. An attack of intermittent fever, during the prevalent influenza of the spring of 1833, may perhaps have disposed his const.i.tution to the last fatal blow.

To any one who has watched the history of the disease by which "so quick this bright thing came to confusion," and who knows how near its subject must often, perhaps all his life, have been to that eternity which occupied so much of his thoughts and desires, and the secrets of which were so soon to open on his young eyes, there is something very touching in this account. Such a state of health would enhance, and tend to produce, by the sensations proper to such a condition, that habitual seriousness of thought, that sober judgment, and that tendency to look at the true life of things--that deep but gentle and calm sadness, and that occasional sinking of the heart, which make his n.o.ble and strong inner nature, his resolved mind, so much more impressive and endearing.

This feeling of personal insecurity--of life being ready to slip away--the sensation that this world and its on-goings, its mighty interests, and delicate joys, is ready to be shut up in a moment--this instinctive apprehension of the peril of vehement bodily enjoyment--all this would tend to make him "walk softly," and to keep him from much of the evil that is in the world, and would help him to live soberly, righteously, and G.o.dly, even in the bright and rich years of his youth. His power of giving himself up to the search after absolute truth, and the contemplation of Supreme goodness, must have been increased by this same organization. But all this delicate feeling, this fineness of sense, did rather quicken the energy and fervour of the indwelling soul--the [Greek: ti thermon pragma]

that burned within. In the quaint words of Vaughan, it was "manhood with a female eye." These two conditions must, as we have said, have made him dear indeed. And by a beautiful law of life, having that organ out of which are the issues of life, under a sort of perpetual nearness to suffering, and so liable to pain, he would be more easily moved for others--more alive to their pain--more filled with fellow-feeling.

The Editor cannot dwell on anything later. Arthur accompanied him to Germany in the beginning of August. In returning to Vienna from Pesth, a wet day probably gave rise to an intermittent fever, with very slight symptoms, and apparently subsiding, when a sudden rush of blood to the head put an instantaneous end to his life on the 15th of September 1833. The mysteriousness of such a dreadful termination to a disorder generally of so little importance, and in this instance of the slightest kind, has been diminished by an examination which showed a weakness of the cerebral vessels, and a want of sufficient energy in the heart. Those whose eyes must long be dim with tears, and whose hopes on this side the tomb are broken down for ever, may cling, as well as they can, to the poor consolation of believing that a few more years would, in the usual chances of humanity, have severed the frail union of his graceful and manly form with the pure spirit that it enshrined.

The remains of Arthur were brought to England, and interred on the 3rd of January 1834, in the chancel of Clevedon Church, in Somersetshire, belonging to his maternal grandfather, Sir Abraham Elton, a place selected by the Editor, not only from the connection of kindred, but on account of its still and sequestered situation, on a lone hill that overhangs the Bristol Channel.

More ought perhaps to be said--but it is very difficult to proceed.

From the earliest years of this extraordinary young man, his premature abilities were not more conspicuous than an almost faultless disposition, sustained by a more calm self-command than has often been witnessed in that season of life. The sweetness of temper which distinguished his childhood, became with the advance of manhood a habitual benevolence, and ultimately ripened into that exalted principle of love towards G.o.d and man, which animated and almost absorbed his soul during the latter period of his life, and to which most of the following compositions bear such emphatic testimony. He seemed to tread the earth as a spirit from some better world; and in bowing to the mysterious will which has in mercy removed him, perfected by so short a trial, and pa.s.sing over the bridge which separates the seen from the unseen life, in a moment, and, as we may believe, without a moment's pang, we must feel not only the bereavement of those to whom he was dear, but the loss which mankind have sustained by the withdrawing of such a light.

A considerable portion of the poetry contained in this volume was printed in the year 1830, and was intended by the author to be published together with the poems of his intimate friend, Mr. Alfred Tennyson. They were, however, withheld from publication at the request of the Editor. The poem of Timbuctoo was written for the University prize in 1829, which it did not obtain. Notwithstanding its too great obscurity, the subject itself being hardly indicated, and the extremely hyperbolical importance which the author's brilliant fancy has attached to a nest of barbarians, no one can avoid admiring the grandeur of his conceptions, and the deep philosophy upon which he has built the scheme of his poem. This is, however, by no means the most pleasing of his compositions. It is in the profound reflection, the melancholy tenderness, and the religious sanct.i.ty of other effusions that a lasting charm will be found. A commonplace subject, such as those announced for academical prizes generally are, was incapable of exciting a mind which, beyond almost every other, went straight to the farthest depths that the human intellect can fathom, or from which human feelings can be drawn. Many short poems, of equal beauty with those here printed, have been deemed unfit even for the limited circulation they might obtain, on account of their unveiling more of emotion than, consistently with what is due to him and to others, could be exposed to view.

The two succeeding essays have never been printed; but were read, it is believed, in a literary society at Trinity College, or in one to which he afterwards belonged in London. That ent.i.tled _Theodicaea Novissima_ is printed at the desire of some of his intimate friends. A few expressions in it want his usual precision; and there are ideas which he might have seen cause, in the lapse of time, to modify, independently of what his very acute mind would probably have perceived, that his hypothesis, like that of Leibnitz, on the origin of evil, resolves itself at last into an unproved a.s.sumption of its necessity. It has, however, some advantages, which need not be mentioned, over that of Leibnitz; and it is here printed, not as a solution of the greatest mystery of the universe, but as most characteristic of the author's mind, original and sublime, uniting, what is very rare except in early youth, a fearless and unblenching spirit of inquiry into the highest objects of speculation, with the most humble and reverential piety. It is probable that in many of his views on such topics he was influenced by the writings of Jonathan Edwards, with whose opinions on metaphysical and moral subjects he seems generally to have concurred.

The extract from a review of Tennyson's poems in a publication now extinct, the _Englishman's Magazine_, is also printed at the suggestion of a friend. The pieces that follow are reprints, and have been already mentioned in this Memoir.

We have given this Memoir almost entire, for the sake both of its subject and its manner--for what in it is the father's as well as for what is the son's. There is something very touching in the paternal composure, the judiciousness, the truthfulness, where truth is so difficult to reach through tears, the calm estimate and the subdued tenderness, the ever-rising but ever-restrained emotion; the father's heart-throbs throughout.

We wish we could have given in full the letters from Arthur's friends which his father has incorporated in the Memoir. They all bring out, in different but harmonious ways, his extraordinary moral and intellectual worth, his rare beauty of character, and their deep affection.

The following extract from one seems to us very interesting:

Outwardly I do not think there was anything remarkable in his habits, except _an irregularity with regard to times and places of study_, which may seem surprising in one whose progress in so many directions was so eminently great and rapid. _He was commonly to be found in some friend's room, reading or canva.s.sing._ I daresay he lost something by this irregularity, _but less than perhaps one would at first imagine_.

I never saw him idle. He might seem to be lounging, or only amusing himself, but his mind was always active, and active for good. In fact, his energy and quickness of apprehension did not stand in need of outward aid.

There is much in this worthy of more extended notice. Such minds as his probably grow best in this way, are best left to themselves, to glide on at their own sweet wills; the stream was too deep and clear, and perhaps too entirely bent on its own errand, to be dealt with or regulated by any art or device. The same friend sums up his character thus:

I have met with no man his superior in metaphysical subtlety; no man his equal as a philosophical critic on works of taste; no man whose views on all subjects connected with the duties and dignities of humanity were more large and generous, and enlightened.

And all this said of a youth of twenty--_heu nimium brevis aevi decus et desiderium_!

We have given little of his verse; and what we do give is taken at random.

We agree entirely in his father's estimate of his poetical gift and art, but his mind was too serious, too thoughtful, too intensely dedicated to truth and the G.o.d of truth, to linger long in the pursuit of beauty; he was on his way to G.o.d, and could rest in nothing short of Him, otherwise he might have been a poet of genuine excellence.

Dark, dark, yea, "irrecoverably dark,"

Is the soul's eye; yet how it strives and battles Through th' impenetrable gloom to fix That master light, the secret truth of things, Which is the body of the infinite G.o.d!

Sure, we are leaves of one harmonious bower, Fed by a sap that never will be scant, All-permeating, all-producing mind; And in our several parcellings of doom We but fulfil the beauty of the whole.

Oh, madness! if a leaf should dare complain Of its dark verdure, and aspire to be The gayer, brighter thing that wantons near.

Oh, blessing and delight of my young heart, Maiden, who wast so lovely, and so pure, I know not in what region now thou art, Or whom thy gentle eyes in joy a.s.sure.

Not the old hills on which we gazed together, Not the old faces which we both did love, Not the old books, whence knowledge we did gather, Not these, but others now thy fancies move.

I would I knew thy present hopes and fears, All thy companions with their pleasant talk, And the clear aspect which thy dwelling wears: So, though in body absent, I might walk With thee in thought and feeling, till thy mood Did sanctify mine own to peerless good.

Alfred, I would that you beheld me now, Sitting beneath a mossy ivied wall On a quaint bench, which to that structure old Winds an accordant curve. Above my head _Dilates immeasurable a wild of leaves_, Seeming received into the blue expanse That vaults this summer noon.

Still here--thou hast not faded from my sight, _Nor all the music round thee from mine ear: Still grace flows from thee to the brightening year, And all the birds laugh out in wealthier light_.

Still am I free to close my happy eyes, And paint upon the gloom thy mimic form, That soft white neck, that cheek in beauty warm, And brow half hidden where yon ringlet lies: With, oh! the blissful knowledge all the while That I can lift at will each curved lid, And my fair dream most highly realize.

The time will come, 'tis ushered by my sighs, When I may shape the dark, but vainly bid True light restore that form, those looks, that smile.

The garden trees _are busy with the shower_ That fell ere sunset: now methinks they talk, Lowly and sweetly as befits the hour, One to another down the gra.s.sy walk.

Hark the laburnum from his opening flower, This cheery creeper greets in whisper light, While the grim fir, rejoicing in the night, Hoa.r.s.e mutters to the murmuring sycamore.[113]

What shall I deem their converse? would they hail The wild grey light that fronts yon ma.s.sive cloud, Or the half bow, rising like pillar'd fire?

Or are they fighting faintly for desire That with May dawn their leaves may be o'erflowed, And dews about their feet may never fail?

In the Essay, ent.i.tled _Theodicaea Novissima_, from which the following pa.s.sages are taken, to the great injury in its general effect, he sets himself to the task of doing his utmost to clear up the mystery of the existence of such things as sin and suffering, in the universe of a being like G.o.d. He does it fearlessly, but like a child. It is in the spirit of his friend's words:

An infant crying in the night, An infant crying for the light, And with no language but a cry.

Then was I as a child that cries, But, crying, knows his father near.

It is not a mere exercitation of the intellect, it is an endeavour to get nearer G.o.d--to a.s.sert His eternal Providence, and vindicate His ways to men. We know no performance more wonderful for such a boy. Pascal might have written it. As was to be expected, the tremendous subject remains where he found it--his glowing love and genius cast a gleam here and there across its gloom; but it is brief as the lightning in the collied night--the jaws of darkness do devour it up--this secret belongs to G.o.d.

Across its deep and dazzling darkness, and from out its abyss of thick cloud, "all dark, dark, irrecoverably dark," no steady ray has ever, or will ever, come--over its face its own darkness must brood, till He to whom alone the darkness and the light are both alike, to whom the night shineth as the day, says, "Let there be light!" There is, we all know, a certain awful attraction, a nameless charm for all thoughtful spirits, in this mystery, "the greatest in the universe," as Mr. Hallam truly says; and it is well for us at times, so that we have pure eyes and a clean heart, to turn aside and look into its gloom; but it is not good to busy ourselves in clever speculations about it, or briskly to criticize the speculations of others--it is a wise and pious saying of Augustine, _Verius cogitatur Deus quam dicitur; et verius est quam cogitatur_.

I wish to be understood as considering Christianity in the present Essay rather in its relation to the intellect, as const.i.tuting the higher philosophy, than in its far more important bearing upon the hearts and destinies of us all. I shall propose the question in this form, "Is there ground for believing that the existence of moral evil is absolutely necessary to the fulfilment of G.o.d's essential love for Christ?" (_i.e._ of the Father for Christ, or of [Greek: ho pater] for [Greek: ho logos]).

"Can man by searching find out G.o.d?" I believe not. I believe that the una.s.sisted efforts of man's reason have not established the existence and attributes of Deity on so sure a basis as the Deist imagines.

However sublime may be the notion of a supreme original mind, and however naturally human feelings adhered to it, the reasons by which it was justified were not, in my opinion, sufficient to clear it from considerable doubt and confusion.... I hesitate not to say that I derive from Revelation a conviction of Theism, which, without that a.s.sistance, would have been but a dark and ambiguous hope. _I see that the Bible fits into every fold of the human heart. I am a man and I believe it to be G.o.d's book because it is man's book._ It is true that the Bible affords me no additional means of demonstrating the falsity of Atheism; _if mind had nothing to do with the formation of the Universe, doubtless whatever had was competent also to make the Bible_; but I have gained this advantage, that my feelings and thoughts can no longer refuse their a.s.sent to _what is evidently framed to engage that a.s.sent; and what is it to me that I cannot disprove the bare logical possibility of my whole nature being fallacious? To seek for a certainty above certainty, an evidence beyond necessary belief, is the very lunacy of scepticism_: we must trust our own faculties, or we can put no trust in anything, save that moment we call the present, which escapes us while we articulate its name. _I am determined therefore to receive the Bible as Divinely authorized, and the scheme of human and Divine things which it contains, as essentially true._

In the Supreme Nature those two capacities of Perfect Love and Perfect Joy are indivisible. Holiness and Happiness, says an old divine, are two several notions of one thing. Equally inseparable are the notions of Opposition to Love and Opposition to Bliss. _Unless, therefore, the heart of a created being is at one with the heart of G.o.d, it cannot but be miserable._ Moreover, there is no possibility of continuing for ever partly with G.o.d and partly against Him: we must either be capable by our nature of entire accordance with His will, or we must be incapable of anything but misery, further than He may for a while "not impute our trespa.s.ses to us," that is, He may interpose some temporary barrier between sin and its attendant pain. _For in the Eternal Idea of G.o.d a created spirit is perhaps not seen, as a series of successive states_, of which some that are evil might be compensated by others that are good, _but as one indivisible object of these almost divisible modes_, and that either in accordance with His own nature, or in opposition to it....

Before the Gospel was preached to man, how could a human soul have this love, and this consequent life? I see no way; but now that Christ has excited our love for Him by showing unutterable love for us; now that we know Him as an Elder Brother, a being of like thoughts, feelings, sensations, sufferings, with ourselves, it has become possible to love as G.o.d loves, that is, to love Christ, and thus to become united in heart to G.o.d. Besides, Christ is the express image of G.o.d's person: in loving Him we are sure we are in a state of readiness to love the Father, whom we see, He tells us, when we see Him. Nor is this all: the tendency of love is towards a union so intimate as virtually to amount to identification; when then by affection towards Christ we have become blended with His being, the beams of eternal love, falling, as ever, on the one beloved object, will include us in Him, and their returning flashes of love out of His personality will carry along with them some from our own, since ours has become confused with His, and so shall we be one with Christ, and through Christ with G.o.d. Thus, then, we see the great effect of the Incarnation, as far as our nature is concerned, _was to render human love for the Most High a possible thing_. The law had said, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy G.o.d with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength"; and could men have lived by law, "which is the strength of sin," verily righteousness and life would have been by that law. But it was not possible, and all were concluded under sin, that in Christ might be the deliverance of all. I believe that Redemption (_i.e._, what Christ has done and suffered for mankind) is universal, in so far as it left no obstacle between man and G.o.d, but man's own will; that indeed is in the power of G.o.d's election, with whom alone rest the abysmal secrets of personality; but as far as Christ is concerned, His death was for all, since His intentions and affections were equally directed to all, and "none who come to Him will He in any wise cast out."