Alfred Tennyson

in English poetry had not brought a golden harvest. Mr Moxon appears to have supplied ￡300 "in advance of royalties." The sum, so contemptible in the eyes of first-rate modern nov

at of Sir Abraham Elton, hard by the church where Arthur Hallam sleeps. The place is very ancient and beautiful, and was a favourite haunt of Thackeray. They passed on to Lynton, and to Glastonbury, where a collatera

on is Anacreontic, but he was not really set on kissing the Maids of Honour, as he is made to sing. Rogers had declined, on the plea of extreme old age; but it was worthy of the great and good Queen not to overlook the Nestor of English poets. For the rest, the Queen looked for "a name bearing such distinction in the literary world as to do credit to the appointment." In the previous century the great poets had rarely been Laureates. But since Sir Walter Scott declined t

ur kings in England have not maintained the old familiarity with many classes of their subjects. Literature has not been fashionable at Court, and Tennyson could in no age have been a courtier. We hear the complaint, every now and then, that official honours are not conferred (except the Laureateship) on men of letters. But most of them probably think it rather distinguished not to be decorate

hich to a great extent former alien owners had been unsuccessful in guarding from Britons. The Tennysons had lost their first child at his birth: perhaps he is remembered in The Grandmother, "the babe had fought for his life." In August 1852 the present Lord Tennyson was born, and Mr Mauric

eing then nine years of age, I heard of a poet's visit, and asked, "A real poet, like Sir Walter Scott?" with whom I then supposed that "the Muse had gone away." "Oh, not like Sir Walter Scott, of course," my mother told me, with loyalty unashamed. One can think of the poet as Mrs Sellar, his hostess, describes him, beneath

el that in her society and that of her husband, the Greek professor, and her cousin, Miss Cross, and in

boomed from the coast. In May Tennyson saw the artists, of schools oddly various, who illustrated his poems. Millais, Rossetti, and Holman Hunt gave the tone to the art, but Mr Horsley, Creswick, and Mulgrave were also engaged. While Maud was being composed Tennyson wrote The Charge of the Light Brigade; a famous poem, not in a m

y different poem, The Lady of the Lake. The author, Sir Walter, had suffered, like the hero of Maud, by an unhappy love

y couch may h

rst phantom o

ned the sce

nt undoubt

soul he in

ose hearts were

in dim proc

e faithless,

hand, each

y parted

stracts him

s senses fa

of death, o

all a vis

cite the passage because the extreme reticence of Scott, in his undying sorrow, is in contrast with what

ve. To be sure, the hero of Locksley Hall is in this attitude, but then Locksley Hal

t, when

oolish tears

n

were thine err

nger, being

istress. There is no reason to suppose that the poet had ever any such mischance, but many readers have taken Locksley Hall and Maud for autobiographical revelations, like In Memoriam. They are, on the other hand, imaginative and dramatic. They illustrate the pangs of

rt of furio

l awake a nobler than the commercial spirit. Into the rights and wrongs of our quarrel with Russia we are not to go. Tennyson, rightly or wrongly, took the part of his country, and must "thole the feud" of those high-souled citizens who think their country always in the wrong-as perhaps it very frequently is. We are not to expect a tranquil absence of bias in the midst of military excitement, when very laudable sentiments are apt to misguide men in both direc

lost his hat in the Kelpie Flow) are nearly identical. The families and fathers of both have been ruined by "the gray old wolf," and by Sir William Ashton, representing the house of Stair. Both heroes live dawdling on, hard by their lost ancestral homes. Both fall in love with the daughters of the enemies of their houses. The loves of both are baffled, and end in tragedy. Both are concerned in a duel, though the Master, on his way to the ground, "stables his steed in the Kelpie Flow," and

ry merr

y merr

in passages rath

ess of the hero against the brother and the parvenu lord and rival strikes a jarring note. In England, at least, the general sentiment is opposed to this moody, introspective kind of young man, of whom Tennyson is not to be supposed to

himself is fonder

d in nature, a spiri

s whole nature," the world failed to perceive, especially as the sanity was only a brief lucid interval, tempered by hanging about the garden to meet a girl of sixteen, unknown to her relations. Tennyson added that "different phases of passion in one person take the place of different characters," to which critics replied that they wanted different characters, if onl

giant deck and

eople shouting

the Crimean winters brought him back to his ori

Memoriam. The poem took its rise in old lines, and most beautifu

'twere p

ng grief

e arms of

e once

the origin of the situation, encount

. "No modern poem," said Jowett, "contains more lines that ring in the ears of men. I do not know any verse out of Shakespeare in which the ecstacy of love soars to such a height." With these comments we may agree, yet may fail to follow Jowett whe

ould take no notice of them except to speak of them in a half-pitiful, half-humorous, half-mournful manner." The besetting

erse. Criticised as a tale of modern life (and it was criticised in that character), it could not be very highly esteemed. Bu

ful hollow behind

"dabbled with blood-red heath," the "red-ribb'd ledges," and "the flying gold

the village, the ring

hich live in the memory, as

ds break from the

heard in the

e ballad gal

he far-off waving of a white hand, "betw

the high H

light wa

aud, Ma

crying and

ourite of

id to have asked a lady suddenly,

, who did not probably remember any

e rooks," ans

umphant ring, and a soaring exultant note. Then the poem drops from its height, like a

ely

pure as

lows the

'twere p

mb gnawing confusion of pain and wandering memory; the hero be

a broadside from "that pompholygous, broad-blown Apollodorus, the gifted X." People who have read Aytoun's diverting Firmilian, where Apollod

ess of Maud enabled Tennyson to buy Farringford, so he must have been

urian themes, "the only big thing not done," for M

Table Rou

learned Welsh enough to be able to read the Mabinogion, which is much more of Welsh than many Arthurian critics possess. The two first Idylls were privately printed in the summer of 1857, being very rare and much desired of collectors in this embryonic shape. In July Guinevere was begun, in the middle, with Arthur's valedictory address to his erring consort. In autumn Tennyson visited

ing to young poets: they had no sons in Apollo, like Ben Jonson. But both were kept in a perpetual state of apprehension by the army of versifiers who send volumes by post, to whom that can only be said what Tennyson did say to one of them, "As an amusement to yourself and your friends, the writing it" (verse) "is a

To others it seems that Thackeray was eternally striking this note: at that time in General Lambert, his wife, and daughters, not to speak of other characters in The Virginians. Who does not condone the frailties of Captain Costigan, and F. B., and the Chevalier Strong? In any case, Tennyson took his own time, he was (1858) only beginning Elaine. There is no doubt that Tennyson was easil

critics may be in the right, and of all great poets, Tennyson listened most obediently to their censures, as we have seen in the case of his early poems. His prolonged silences after the attacks of 1833 and 1855 were occupied in work and reflection: Achilles

who has the good fortune to know a man of genius to do any trifling service they can to lighten his work." To do every service in his power to every man was the Master's life-long practice. He was not much at home, his letters show, with Burns, to whom he seems to hav

l eagerly to reading an early copy of Darwin's Origin of Species, the crown of his own early speculations on the theory of evolution. "Your theory does not make against Christianity?" he asked Darwin later (1868), who replied, "No, certainly not." But Darwin has state

e of Argyll, the Master of Balliol, and Clough, while Ruskin showed some reserve. The letter from Thackeray I cannot deny myself t

one, Se

w Square

and I thought, "Oh, I must write to him now, for this pleasure, this delight, this splendour of happiness which I have been enjoying." But I shoul

and beauties and purple landscapes and misty gray lakes in which you have made me live. They seem like facts to me, since about three weeks ago (three weeks or a month was it?) when I read the book. It is on the table yonder, and I don't like, somehow, to disturb it, but the delight and gratitude! You have made me as happy as I was as a child with the Arabian Nights,-every step I have walked in Elfland has been a sort of Paradise to me. (The landlord gave two bottles of his claret and I think I drank the most) and here I have been lying back in the chair and thinking of those delightful Idylls, my thoughts being

quite as fine. How can you at 50

think six weeks after th

ave a contribution from T. was the publishers' and editor's highest ambition. But to ask a man for a favour, and to praise and bow down before him in the same page, seemed to be so

laret and gratitude. If you can't write for us you can't. If you can by chance some day, and help an old friend, how pleased and happy I shall be! This however must be left to fate and your convenience: I don't intend to give up hope, but accept the good fortune if it comes. I see one, two, three quarterlies advertised to-day, as a

f admir

urs, my d

Thac

f Argyll announced the conversion of Macaulay. The Master found Elaine "the fairest, sweetest, purest love poem in the Eng

were those of Tennyson. Perfection in art is sometimes more sudden than we think, but then "the long preparation for it,-that unseen germination, that is what we ignore and forget." But he wisely kept his pieces by him for a long time, restudying them with a fresh eye. The "unreality" of the subject also failed to please Ruskin, as it is a stumbl