Tennyson and His Friends Part 54

[55] See "Poets and Critics," one of his last poems.

[56] _Solaciolum_, "poor dear, some solace"; _turgiduli ... ocelli_ (see below), "her poor dear swollen eyes."

[57] _Miselle_, epithet of the dead like our "poor" So-and-so.

[58] Robinson Ellis notes, "The rhythm of the line and the continued _a_-sound well represent the eternity of the sleep that knows no waking,"

and that is just the effect that Tennyson's reading gave with infinite pathos; and then the sudden pa.s.sionate change, _da mi basia_----

[59] An old experiment, being written in 1859, finished in 1860. He himself only called it "a far-off echo of the _Attis_ of Catullus."

[60] See Carlyle, _Fr. Rev._ (Part I. Bk. v. c. ix), for the cry of the mob. And for Beranger, cf. _Memoir_, ii. 422.

[61] Compare Merlin's song, "From the great deep to the great deep he goes."

[62] Some commentators insist that Tennyson was born on August 5 because the date looks like 5th in the Register of his birth. He used to say, "All I can state is that my mother always kept my birthday on August 6, and I suppose she knew."

[63] I can confirm this last statement from more than one talk with him.

He would note the perfection of the metre. The second line affords an instance of the delicacy of his ear. We were speaking of the undoubtedly correct reading:

The lowing herd _wind_ slowly o'er the lea,

not, as is so often printed, _winds_. I forget his exact comment, but the point of it was that the double s, wind_s_ _s_lowly, would have been to his ear most displeasing.

Again, speaking of the line,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

he observed how seldom Gray seemed satisfied with this inversion of the accusative and the nominative, and how he himself endeavoured, as a rule, to avoid it.--H. M. B.

[64] My own writing he compared to "the limbs of a flea."

[65] In _Problems and Persons_ (Longmans), Appendix A.

[66] _Nineteenth Century_, January 1893.

[67] _Sunday, October 27, 1872._--I asked A. T. at Aldworth what he thought he had done most perfect. He said, "Nothing," only fragments of things that he could think at all so--such as "Come down, O Maid," written on his first visit to Switzerland, and "Tears, idle Tears."

He told me he meant to write the siege of Delhi, an ode in rhyme, but was refused the papers.

[68] ["Until absorbed into the Divine."--ED.]

[69] See Appendix C.

[70] See Translation by Frederick Tennyson, p. 56.

[71] Some extracts from the paper on Tennyson in _Studies and Memories_ are included in this chapter by kind permission of Messrs. Constable & Co.

[72] [First published as a preface to _Tennyson as a Student and Poet of Nature_ in 1910, and republished here by the kind permission of Sir Norman Lockyer and Messrs. Macmillan.--ED.]

[73] See the fine Pa.r.s.ee Hymn to the Sun (written by Tennyson when he was 82) at the end of "Akbar's Dream":

I

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 G.o.dlike, thee the changeless in thine ever-changing skies.

II

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!

[74] [See _Tennyson: a Memoir_, p. 259. "It is impossible," he said, "to imagine that the Almighty will ask you, when you come before Him in the next life, what your particular form of creed was: but the question will rather be 'Have you been true to yourself, and given in My Name a cup of cold water to one of these little ones?'" Yet he felt that religion could never be founded on mere moral philosophy; that there were no means of impressing upon children systematic ethics apart from religion; and that the highest religion and morality would only come home to the people in the n.o.ble, simple thoughts and facts of a Scripture like ours.--ED.]

[75] [He added, "_The_ Son of Man is the most tremendous t.i.tle possible."--ED.]

[76] From Tennyson's last published sonnet, "Doubt and Prayer."

[77] [Toward the end of his life he would say, "My most pa.s.sionate desire is to have a clearer vision of G.o.d."--ED.]

[78] [The eldest daughter of Sir John Simeon, who was my father's most intimate friend in later life--a tall, broad-shouldered, genial, generous, warm-hearted, highly gifted, and thoroughly n.o.ble country gentleman; in face like the portrait of Sir Thomas Wyatt, by Holbein.--ED.]

[79] This MS. was given back to Tennyson at his request after Sir John Simeon's death, and after Tennyson's death presented by his son and Catherine, Lady Simeon, to the library of Trinity College, Cambridge.

[80] He afterwards built a larger study for himself, "looking into the heart of the wood," as he said.

[81] "In the Garden at Swainston."

[82] Tennyson said to her, "Perhaps your babe will remember all these lights and this splendour in future days, as if it were the memory of another life."

[83] From "The Death of none and other Poems," afterwards published 1892.

[84] First published 1909, by Sidgwick and Jackson, Ltd., 1s. net., and kindly corrected by the author for republication here.

[85] Now Lady Ritchie.

[86] [Greek: ouranothen te huperrage aspetos aither.]

[87] See note by Tennyson in the "Eversley Edition" of the poems: "I made this simile from a stream (in North Wales), and it is different, tho' like Theocritus, _Idyll_ xxii. 48 ff.:

[Greek: en de myes stereoisi brachiosin akron hyp' omon estasan, eute petroi holoitrochoi, houste kylindon cheimarrous potamos megalais periexese dinais.]"

When some one objected that he had taken this simile from Theocritus, he answered: "It is quite different. Geraint's muscles are not compared to the rounded stones, but to the stream pouring vehemently over them."--ED.

[88] [I am much obliged to Mr. Sidgwick for having omitted his original statement that Tennyson "takes the anti-reform line" in the matter of the higher education of women. My father's friends report him to have said that the great social questions impending in England were "the housing and education of the poor, and the higher education of women"; and that the sooner woman finds out, before the great educational movement begins, that "woman is not undevelopt man, but diverse," the better it will be for the progress of the world. She must train herself to do the large work that lies before her, even though she may not be destined to be wife and mother, cultivating her understanding, not her memory only, her imagination in its higher phases, her inborn spirituality, and her sympathy with all that is pure, n.o.ble, and beautiful, rather than mere social accomplishments; then and then only will she further the progress of humanity, then and then only will men continue to hold her in reverence. See _Tennyson: a Memoir_, pp. 206, 208.--ED.]

[89] From Virgil's Georgics.