Εικόνες σελίδας
PDF
Ηλεκτρ. έκδοση

THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

ART. 1.-1. Poems by Two Brothers. London and Louth,

MDCCCXXVII.

2. Timbuctoo. By A. Tennyson, of Trinity College, Cambridge. Prolusiones Academica: Cantabrigiæ, MDCCCXXIX.

3. Poems, chiefly Lyrical. By Alfred Tennyson. London, 1830.

4. Poems. By Alfred Tennyson. London, MDCCCXXXIII. 5. The Lover's Tale. By Alfred Tennyson. London,

MDCCCXXXIII.

6. Poems. By Alfred Tennyson. In Two Vols. London,

MDCCCXLII.

7. The Princess; A Medley. By Alfred Tennyson. London,

MDCCCXLVII.

8. In Memoriam. London, MDCCCL.

9. Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington. Tennyson, Poet Laureate. London, 1852.

10. Maud, and other Poems.

By Alfred

By Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L.,

Poet Laureate. London, 1855.

11. Idylls of the King. By Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet

Laureate. London, 1859.

12. Enoch Arden, &c. By Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet

Laureate. London, 1864.

13. The Window; or, the Loves of the Wrens. Canford Manor, 1867.

14. The Holy Grail, &c. By Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet Laureate. London, 1869.

15. Gareth and Lynette, &c. By Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L.,

Poet Laureate. London, 1872.

16. Queen Mary. A Drama. By Alfred Tennyson. London, 1875.

17. Harold. A Drama. By Alfred Tennyson.

[blocks in formation]

London,

[blocks in formation]

18. The Lover's Tale. By Alfred Tennyson. London, 1879. 19. Ballads and other Poems. By Alfred Tennyson. London, 1880.

20. The Cup and the Falcon. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson. London, 1884.

21. Becket. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson. London, 1884.

22. Tiresias, &c. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson, D.C.L., P.L. London, 1885.

23. Locksley Hall Sixty Years After. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson, P.L., D.C.L. London, 1886.

24. Demeter and other Poems. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson, P.L., D.C.L. London, 1890.

25. The Foresters. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson. London, 1892. 26. The Death of Enone, &c. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson, P.L., D.C.L. London, 1892.

27. Alfred, Lord Tennyson. By Arthur Waugh. London, 1892. 28. Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, and Browning. By Annie Ritchie. London, 1892.

A FORCE de vivre son étoile sums the mournful

close of the career of a French national hero. No such sadness of farewell mingled with the departure of Lord Tennyson. His life exemplified, in a striking manner, the truth of the saying, 'Whom the gods love die young.' The frost of age never chilled the fires of his youth. He died with the poet's heart yet young within his breast, with his enthusiasms still warm, his interests deepened rather than narrowed, his sympathies mellowed and not embittered.

Fifty years ago Lord Tennyson rose above the region of parody, of satire, of depreciatory criticism. Since 1842 his fame has more than once suffered a temporary eclipse. Yet, for half a century, he has been the central figure in a great period of literature, in turn the Tyrtæus, the Theocritus, and the Virgil of the nation, the articulate voice, which gave the fullest utterance to the heart of a people, speaking with conscious authority because behind his words lay the sympathy and confidence of the English race. The spectacle offered by his funeral in Westminster Abbey did not prove that poets, rather than statesmen or men of science, are the legislators of the world; but it unquestionably did reveal the undisputed personal supremacy of the religious thinker, moral teacher, and patriotic singer, whose mysterious, picturesque figure was scarcely known to one in ten thousand Englishmen.

To have devoted a long life to the noblest of arts; to have gained, almost to the end, fresh mastery over his instrument; to

bave spoken for fifty years as the ' sacer vates' of England; to have done, with all his might, and without stain in the doing, that which he was born to do,-these conditions constitute an enviable fate, and they were pre-eminently the lot of Lord Tennyson. His single-souled cultivation of the poetic art was the most unwearying, the most exclusive, devotion that our literature has ever witnessed. Unknown to the world except in his singing robes, he was simply a professional poet. A type of the highest form of specialism, he brought to his work something of the spirit of science, not so much in his scientific studies as in the inexhaustible vigilance of his poetic methods. In smaller men this undivided concentration has sometimes prejudiced alike their influence and their art. It has tempted them to prefer the thymy plots of Paradise to every-day life, to sacrifice truth to fancy, to abandon the world of God and Nature to an unreal region of their own creation. It has made their art stiff, mannered, artificial, or prompted them to rest satisfied with mere verbal conceits and fancifulness of illustration. But Tennyson's breadth of sympathy, love of nature, and human interests, preserved him from either danger. His art was the object of his lifelong worship; yet he despised the licences of its so-called independence, and he never idolised, without conscience or aim, Art for Art's sake. His fastidious devotion to poetry was combined with its consecration to the service of morality. He never wasted his music on fleshly fevers or amorous maladies. He held open the avenues of his mind on every side, without anxiety lest the learning of his day might dwarf his imagination. He suffered no ideal world to interpose its screen to his observation of men or things. Eager for knowledge, he asked it of the present as well as of the past, and without fear questioned the future. He strove persistently to make his poetry true to the heart of his contemporaries, to harmonise his practical with his poetical existence, to reconcile his human aspirations with his divine prerogatives. In his outer life, indeed, he withdrew from the highways of the age; but he remained keenly alive to the enthusiasms of his contemporaries, and, even in his solitude, his magic mirror has caught and reflected the rush and throng of the century with faithful exactitude.

Tennyson's exclusive devotion to poetry was richly rewarded. To it he owed the permanence of his powers, his versatility, and his equality of treatment. Through it his art became so much a second nature, that his command of its resources never failed even under the winter-weight of his years. He might sweep the chords of his lyre with a feebler hand, and awaken

B 2

notes

notes that sounded like echoes from his more vigorous youth, but the touch never lost its truth and sweetness. The same absolute worship gave him his versatility. He had so profoundly mastered the principles of his art, that he did well in every theme, form, or manner which he attempted. A fresher, more natural charm belongs to the 'woodnotes wild' of some of his predecessors. Through the melodies of others there breathes a fuller inspiration, or sounds a deeper voice. But no English poet has manifested a wider command of his poetic gift. There are, in our literature, peaks, which soar upwards to a height beyond his highest; but to no poet of the century belongs a range at once so uniformly elevated, so varied, and so extensive. A consummate literary artist, he achieved signal success in every department of English poetry, except the dramatic. Every variety of verse took new grace, felicity, and melody at his hands. The same devoted concentration upon his art secured him his singular uniformity in the quality of his production. Below the greatest in robust strength, dramatic vigour, and originality of conception, he is above the greatest in equality of performance and adequacy of expression to thought. Without the untutored tenderness of this poet, or the epic sublimity of that; without the careless strength of one, or the lyrical intoxication of another, his work is always wrought to the same pitch of literary perfection by the patient hand of genius. Even in his official odes, his dignity and elevation of manner raised his verse above the level of rhetorical exercises, and stamped them as genuine, though slightly artificial, poetry. No English poet has in fact possessed a more complete command of his genius in its highest form. In none, certainly, can fewer passages be found which are trivial or imperfect. No crudities of imagery like those of Byron, nor cloudy word-phantasms such as those of Shelley, nor fanciful affectations like those of Keats, nor versified prose such as that of Wordsworth, mar his equality of treatment. In all his poetry the workmanship is highly finished; and the form of the art is uniformly worthy of the substance.

As the eye wanders from point to point over the wide range of his poetic achievement, the sense of gratitude overpowers the desire to discriminate. It seems a sorry task to attempt to decide, whether Tennyson is among the gods or the giants. For more than sixty years, he has given England of his best, lingering over the final finish of his work with the conscientious fidelity of a medieval craftsman. A purist in the employment of words, he tolerated no abuse of the English tongue by himself or others, and handed on the national language to his

successors,

« ΠροηγούμενηΣυνέχεια »