The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson Part 9

(As when the west wind tosses a deep cornfield rushing down with furious blast, and it bows with all its ears.)

Nothing could be more happy than such an adaptation as the following--

Ever fail'd to draw The quiet night into her blood,

from Virgil, 'Aen'., iv., 530:--

Neque unquam Solvitur in somnos _oculisve aut pectore noctem Accipit_.

(And she never relaxes into sleep, or receives the night in eyes or bosom),

or than the following (in 'Enid') from Theocritus:--

Arms on which the standing muscle sloped, As slopes a wild brook o'er a little stone, Running too vehemently to break upon it.

[Greek: en de mues stereoisi brachiosin akron hyp' _omon estasan, aeute petroi oloitrochoi ous te kylind_on cheimarrhous potamos megalais periexese dinais.]

--'Idyll', xxii., 48 'seq.'

(And the muscles on his brawny arms close under the shoulder stood out like boulders which the wintry torrent has rolled and worn smooth with the mighty eddies.)

But there was another use to which Tennyson applied his accurate and intimate acquaintance with the cla.s.sics. It lay in developing what was suggested by them, in unfolding, so to speak, what was furled in their imagery. Nothing is more striking in ancient cla.s.sical poetry than its pregnant condensation. It often expresses in an epithet what might be expanded into a detailed picture, or calls up in a single phrase a whole scene or a whole position. Where in 'Merlin and Vivian' Tennyson described

The _blind wave feeling round his long sea hall In silence_,

he was merely unfolding to its full Homer's [Greek: k.u.ma k_ophon]--"dumb wave"; just as the best of all comments on Horace's expression, "Vultus nimium lubricus aspici," 'Odes', I., xix., 8, is given us in Tennyson's picture of the Oread in Lucretius:--

How the sun delights To _glance and shift about her slippery sides_.

Or take again this pa.s.sage in the 'Agamemnon', 404-5, describing Menelaus pining in his desolate palace for the lost Helen:--

[Greek: pothoi d' uperpontias phasma doxei dom_on ana.s.sein.]

(And in his yearning love for her who is over the sea a phantom will seem to reign over his palace.)

What are the lines in 'Guinevere' but an expansion of what is latent but unfolded in the pregnant suggestiveness of the Greek poet:--

And in thy bowers of Camelot or of Usk Thy shadow still would glide from room to room, And I should evermore be vex'd with thee In hanging robe or vacant ornament, Or ghostly foot-fall echoing on the stair--

with a reminiscence also perhaps of Constance's speech in 'King John', III., iv.

It need hardly be said that these particular pa.s.sages, and possibly some of the others, may be mere coincidences, but they ill.u.s.trate what numberless other pa.s.sages which could be cited prove that Tennyson's careful and meditative study of the Greek and Roman poets enabled him to enrich his work by these felicitous adaptations.

He used those poets as his master Virgil used his Greek predecessors, and what the elder Seneca said of Ovid, who had appropriated a line from Virgil, might exactly be applied to Tennyson: "Fecisse quod in multis aliis versibus Virgilius fecerat, non surripiendi causa sed palam imitandi, hoc animo ut vellet agnosci".[4]

He had plainly studied with equal attention the chief Italian poets, especially Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto and Ta.s.so. On a pa.s.sage in Dante he founded his 'Ulysses', and imitations of that master are frequent throughout his poems. 'In Memoriam', both in its general scheme as well as in numberless particular pa.s.sages, closely recalls Petrarch; and Ariosto and Ta.s.so have each influenced his work. In the poetry of his own country nothing seems to have escaped him, either in the masters or the minor poets.[5] To apply the term plagiarism to Tennyson's use of his predecessors would be as absurd as to resolve some n.o.ble fabric into its stones and bricks, and confounding the one with the other to taunt the architect with appropriating an honour which belongs to the quarry and the potter. Tennyson's method was exactly the method of two of the greatest poets in the world, Virgil and Milton, of the poet who stands second to Virgil in Roman poetry, Horace, of one of the most ill.u.s.trious of our own minor poets, Gray.

An artist more fastidious than Tennyson never existed. As scrupulous a purist in language as Cicero, Chesterfield and Macaulay in prose, as Virgil, Milton, and Leopardi in verse, his care extended to the nicest minutiae of word-forms. Thus "ancle" is always spelt with a "c" when it stands alone, with a "k" when used in compounds; thus he spelt "Idylls"

with one "l" in the short poems, with two "l's" in the epic poems; thus the employment of "through" or "thro'," of "bad" or "bade," and the retention or suppression of "e" in past participles are always carefully studied. He took immense pains to avoid the clash of "s" with "s," and to secure the predominance of open vowels when rhythm rendered them appropriate. Like the Greek painter with his partridge, he thought nothing of sacrificing good things if, in any way, they interfered with unity and symmetry, and thus, his son tells us, many stanzas, in themselves of exquisite beauty, have been lost to us.

[Footnote 1: 'De Sublimitate,' xvii.]

[Footnote 2: Tennyson's blank verse in the _Idylls of the King_ (excepting in the _Morte d'Arthur_ and in the grander pa.s.sages), is obviously modelled in rhythm on that of Shakespeare's earlier style seen to perfection in _King John_. Compare the following lines with the rhythm say of _Elaine_ or _Guinevere_;--

But now will canker sorrow eat my bud, And chase the native beauty from his cheek, And he will look as hollow as a ghost; As dim and meagre as an ague's fit: And so he'll die; and, rising so again, When I shall meet him in the court of heaven I shall not know him: therefore never, never Must I behold my pretty Arthur more.

--_King John_, III., iv.]

[Footnote 3: 'Ill.u.s.trations of Tennyson'.]

[Footnote 4: Seneca, third 'Suasoria'.]

[Footnote 5: For fuller ill.u.s.trations of all this, and for the influence of the ancient cla.s.sics on Tennyson, I may perhaps venture to refer the reader to my 'Ill.u.s.trations of Tennyson'. And may I here take the opportunity of pointing out that nothing could have been farther from my intention in that book than what has so often been most unfairly attributed to it, namely, an attempt to show that a charge of plagiarism might be justly urged against Tennyson. No honest critic, who had even cursorily inspected the book, could so utterly misrepresent its purpose.]

IV

Tennyson's place is not among the "lords of the visionary eye," among seers, among prophets, but not the least part of the debt which his countrymen owe to him is his dedication of his art to the n.o.blest purposes. At a time when poetry was beginning to degenerate into what it has now almost universally become--a mere sense-pampering siren, and when critics were telling us, as they are still telling us, that we are to understand by it "all literary production which attains the power of giving pleasure by its form as distinct from its matter," he remained true to the creed of his great predecessors. "L'art pour art," he would say, quoting Georges Sand, "est un vain mot: l'art pour le vrai, l'art pour le beau et le bon, voila la religion que je cherche." When he succeeded to the laureateship he was proud to remember that the wreath which had descended to him was

greener from the brows Of him that utter'd nothing base,

and he was a loyal disciple of that poet whose aim had been, in his own words, "to console the afflicted, to add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier, to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, to feel, and therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous". [1] Wordsworth had said that he wished to be regarded as a teacher or as nothing, but unhappily he did not always distinguish between the way in which a poet and a philosopher should teach. He forgot that the didactic element in a poem should be, to employ a homely ill.u.s.tration, what garlic should be in a salad, "scarce suspected, animate the whole," that the poet teaches not as the moralist and the preacher teach, but as nature and life teach us. He taught us when he wrote 'The Fountain' and 'The Highland Reaper, The Leach-gatherer' and 'Michael', he merely wearied us when he sermonised in 'The Excursion' and in 'The Prelude'. Tennyson never makes this mistake. He is seldom directly didactic. Would he inculcate subjugation to the law of duty--he gives us the funeral ode on Wellington, 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', and 'Love and Duty'. Would he inculcate resignation to the will of G.o.d, and the moral efficacy of conventional Christianity--he gives us 'Enoch Arden'. Would he picture the endless struggle between the sensual and the spiritual, and the relation of ideals to life--he gives us the 'Idylls of the King'. Would he point to what atheism may lead--he gives us 'Lucretius'. Poems which are masterpieces of sensuous art, such as mere aesthetes, like Rosetti and his school, must contemplate with admiring despair, he makes vehicles of the most serious moral and spiritual teaching. 'The Vision of Sin' is worth a hundred sermons on the disastrous effects of unbridled profligacy. In 'The Palace of Art' we have the quintessence of 'The Book of Ecclesiastes' and much more besides. Even in 'The Lotos Eaters' we have the mirror held up to Hedonism. On the education of the affections and on the purity of domestic life must depend very largely, not merely the happiness of individuals, but the well-being of society, and how wide a s.p.a.ce is filled by poems in Tennyson's works bearing influentially on these subjects is obvious. And they admit us into a pleasaunce with which it is good to be familiar, so pure and wholesome is their atmosphere, so tranquilly beautiful the world in which the characters move and the little dramas unfold themselves. They preach nothing, but deep into every heart must sink their silent lessons. "Upon the sacredness of home life," writes his son, "he would maintain that the stability and greatness of a nation largely depend; and one of the secrets of his power over mankind was his true joy in the family duties and affections." What sermons have we in 'The Miller's Daughter', in 'Dora', in 'The Gardener's Daughter' and in 'Love and Duty'. 'The Princess' was a direct contribution to a social question of momentous importance to our time. 'Maud' had an immediate political purpose, while in 'In Memoriam' he became the interpreter and teacher of his generation in a still higher sense.

Since Shakespeare no English poet has been so essentially patriotic, or appealed so directly to the political conscience of the nation. In his n.o.ble eulogies of the English const.i.tution and of the virtue and wisdom of its architects, in his spirit-stirring pictures of the heroic actions of our forefathers and contemporaries both by land and sea, in his pa.s.sionate denunciations of all that he believed would detract from England's greatness and be prejudicial to her real interests, in his hearty sympathy with every movement and with every measure which he believed would contribute to her honour and her power, in all this he stands alone among modern poets. But if he loved England as Shakespeare loved her, he had other lessons than Shakespeare's to teach her. The responsibilities imposed on the England of our time--and no poet knew this better--are very different from those imposed on the England of Elizabeth. An empire vaster and more populous than that of the Caesars has since then been added to our dominion. Millions, indeed, who are of the same blood as ourselves and who speak our language have, by the folly of common ancestors, become aliens. But how immense are the realms peopled by the colonies which are still loyal to us, and by the three hundred millions who in India own us as their rulers: of this vast empire England is now the capital and centre. That she should fulfil completely and honourably the duties to which destiny has called her will be the prayer of every patriot, that he should by his own efforts contribute all in his power to further such fulfilment must be his earnest desire. It would be no exaggeration to say that Tennyson contributed more than any man who has ever lived to what may be called the higher political education of the English-speaking races. Of imperial federation he was at once the apostle and the pioneer. In poetry which appealed as probably no other poetry has appealed to every cla.s.s, wherever our language is spoken, he dwelt fondly on all that const.i.tutes the greatness and glory of England, on her grandeur in the past, on the magnificent promise of the part she will play in the future, if her sons are true to her. There should be no distinction, for she recognises no distinction between her children at home and her children in her colonies. She is the common mother of a common race: one flag, one sceptre, the same proud ancestry, the same splendid inheritance. "How strange England cannot see," he once wrote, "that her true policy lies in a close union with her colonies."

Sharers of our glorious past, Shall we not thro' good and ill Cleave to one another still?

Britain's myriad voices call, Sons be welded all and all Into one imperial whole, One with Britain, heart and soul!

One life, one flag, one fleet, one Throne!

Thus did the poetry of Tennyson draw closer, and thus will it continue to draw closer those sentimental ties--ties, in Burke's phrase, "light as air, but strong as links of iron," which bind the colonies to the mother country; and in so doing, if he did not actually initiate, he furthered, as no other single man has furthered, the most important movement of our time. Nor has any man of genius in the present century--not d.i.c.kens, not Ruskin--been moved by a purer spirit of philanthropy, or done more to show how little the qualities and actions which dignify humanity depend, or need depend, on the accidents of fortune. He brought poetry into touch with the discoveries of science, and with the speculations of theology and metaphysics, and though, in treating such subjects, his power is not, perhaps, equal to his charm, the debt which his countrymen owe him, even intellectually, is incalculable.

[Footnote 1: See Wordsworth's letter to Lady Beaumont, 'Prose Works', vol. ii., p. 176.]