Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, April 1885 - Various 9 стр.

The dominant note of Tennysons poetry is assuredly the delineation of human moods modulated by Nature, and through a system of Nature-symbolism. Thus, in Elaine, when Lancelot has sent a courtier to the queen, asking her to grant him audience, that he may present the diamonds won for her in tourney, she receives the messenger with unmoved dignity; but he, bending low and reverently before her, saw with a sidelong eye

The Morte dArthur affords a striking instance of this peculiarly Tennysonian method. That is another of the very finest pieces. Such poetry may suggest labor, but not more than does the poetry of Virgil or Milton. Every word is the right word, and each in the right place. Sir H. Taylor indeed warns poets against wanting to make every word beautiful. And yet here it must be owned that the result of such an effort is successful, so delicate has become the artistic tact of this poet in his maturity.1 For, good expression being the happy adaptation of language to meaning, it follows that sometimes good expression will be perfectly simple, even ordinary in character, and sometimes it will be ornate, elaborate, dignified. He who can thus vary his language is the best verbal artist, and Tennyson can thus vary it. In this poem, the Morte dArthur, too, we have deep-chested music. Except in some of Wordsworth and Shelley, or in the magnificent Hyperion of Keats, we have had no such stately, sonorous organ-music in English verse since Milton as in this poem, or in Tithonus, Ulysses, Lucretius, and Guinevere. From the majestic overture,

onward to the end, the same high elevation is maintained.

But this very picturesqueness of treatment has been urged against Tennyson as a fault in his narrative pieces generally, from its alleged over-luxuriance, and tendency to absorb, rather than enhance, the higher human interest of character and action. However this be (and I think it is an objection that does apply, for instance, to The Princess), here in this poem picturesqueness must be counted as a merit, because congenial to the semi-mythical, ideal, and parabolic nature of Arthurian legend, full of portent and supernatural suggestion. Such Ossianic hero-forms are nearly as much akin to the elements as to man. And the same answer holds largely in the case of the other Arthurian Idylls. It has been noted how well-chosen is the epithet water applied to a lake in the lines, On one side lay the ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and the moon was full. Why is this so happy? For as a rule the concrete rather than the abstract is poetical, because the former brings with it an image, and the former involves no vision. But now in the night all Sir Bedevere could observe, or care to observe, was that there was some great water. We do not he did not want to know exactly what it was. Other thoughts, other cares, preoccupy him and us. Again, of dying Arthur we are told that all his greaves and caisses were dashed with drops of onset. Onset is a very generic term, poetic because removed from all vulgar associations of common parlance, and vaguely suggestive not only of wars pomp and circumstance, but of high deeds also, and heroic hearts, since onset belongs to mettle and daring; the word for vast and shadowy connotation is akin to Miltons grand abstraction, Far off His coming shone or Shelleys, Where the Earthquake Demon taught her young Ruin.

It has been noted also how cunningly Tennyson can gild and furbish up the most commonplace detail as when he calls Arthurs mustache the knightly growth that fringed his lips, or condescends to glorify a pigeon-pie, or paints the clowns astonishment by this detail, the brawny spearman let his cheek Bulge with the unswallowed piece, and turning stared; or thus characterizes a pun, and took the word, and playd upon it, and made it of two colors. This kind of ingenuity, indeed, belongs rather to talent than to genius; it is exercised in cold blood; but talent may be a valuable auxiliary of genius, perfecting skill in the technical departments of art. Yet such a gift is not without danger to the possessor. It may tempt him to make his work too much like a delicate mosaic of costly stone, too hard and unblended, from excessive elaboration of detail. One may even prefer to art thus highly wrought a more glowing and careless strain, that lifts us off our feet, and carries us away as on a more rapid, if more turbid torrent of inspiration, such as we find in Byron, Shelley, or Victor Hugo. Here you are compelled to pause at every step, and admire the design of the costly tesselated pavement under your feet. Perhaps there is a jewelled glitter, a Pre-Raphaelite or Japanese minuteness of finish here and there in Tennyson, that takes away from the feeling of aërial perspective and remote distance, leaving little to the imagination; not suggesting and whetting the appetite, but rather satiating it; his loving observation of minute particulars is so faithful, his knowledge of what others, even men of science, have observed so accurate, his fancy so nimble in the detection of similitudes. But every master has his own manner, and his reverent disciples would be sorry if he could be without it. We love the little idiosyncracies of our friends.

I have said the objection in question does seem to lie against The Princess. It contains some of the most beautiful poetic pearls the poet has ever dropped; but the manner appears rather disproportionate to the matter, at least to the subject as he has chosen to regard it. For it is regarded by him only semi-seriously; so lightly and sportively is the whole topic viewed at the outset, that the effect is almost that of burlesque; yet there is a very serious conclusion, and a very weighty moral is drawn from the story, the workmanship being labored to a degree, and almost encumbered with ornamentation. But the poet himself admits the ingrained incongruity of the poem. The fine comparison of the Princess Ida in the battle to a beacon glaring ruin over raging seas, for instance, seems too grand for the occasion. How differently, and in what burning earnest has a great poet-woman, Mrs. Browning, treated this grave modern question of the civil and political position of women in Aurora Leigh! Tennysons is essentially a mans view, and the frequent talk about womens beauty must be very aggravating to the Blues. It is this poem especially that gives people with a limited knowledge of Tennyson the idea of a pretty poet; the prettiness, though very genuine, seems to play too patronizingly with a momentous theme. The Princess herself, and the other figures are indeed dramatically realized, but the splendor of invention, and the dainty detail, rather dazzle the eye away from their humanity. Here, however, are some of the loveliest songs that this poet, one of our supreme lyrists, ever sung: Tears, idle tears! The splendor falls, Sweet and low, Home they brought, Ask me no more, and the exquisite melody, For Love is of the valley. Moreover, the grand lines toward the close are full of wisdom

I feel myself a somewhat similar incongruity in the poets treatment of his more homely, modern, half-humorous themes, such as the introduction to the Morte dArthur, and Will Waterproof; not at all in the humorous poems, like the Northern Farmer, which are all of a piece, and perfect in their own vein. In this introduction we have The host and I sat round the wassail bowl, then half-way ebbd; but this metaphorical style is not (fortunately) sustained, and so, as good luck would have it, a metaphor not being ready to hand, we have the honester and homelier line, Till I tired out with cutting eights that day upon the pond; yet this homespun hardly agrees with the above stage-kings costume. And so again I often venture to wish that the Poet-Laureate would not say flowed when he only means said. Still, this may be hypercriticism. For I did not personally agree with the critic who objected to Enoch Ardens fish-basket being called ocean-smelling osier. There is no doubt, however, that Stokes, and Nokes, and Vokes have exaggerated the poets manner, till the murex fished up by Keats and Tennyson has become one universal flare of purple. Beautiful as some of Mr. Rossettis work is, his expression in the sonnets surely became obscure from over-involution, and excessive fioriture of diction. But then Rossettis style is no doubt formed considerably upon that of the Italian poets. One is glad, however, that, this time, at all events, the right man has got the porridge!

In connection with Morte dArthur, I may draw attention again to Lord Tennysons singular skill in producing a rhythmical response to the sense.

Here the anapest instead of the iambic in the last place happily imitates the sword Excaliburs own gyration in the air. Then what admirable wisdom does the legend, opening out into parable, disclose toward the end! When Sir Bedevere laments the passing away of the Round Table, and Arthurs noble peerage, gone down in doubt, distrust, treachery, and blood, after that last great battle in the West, when, amid the death-white mist, confusion fell even upon Arthur, and friend slew friend, now knowing whom he slew, how grandly comes the answer of Arthur from the mystic barge, that bears him from the visible world to some far island valley of Avilion, The old order changeth, yielding place to new, and God fulfils Himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world! The new commencement of this poem, called in the idyls The Passing of Arthur, is well worthy of the conclusion. How weirdly expressive is that last battle in the mist of those hours of spiritual perplexity, which overcloud even strongest natures and firmest faith, overshadowing whole communities, when we know not friend from foe, the holiest hope seems doomed to disappointment, all the great aim and work of life have failed; even loyalty to the highest is no more; the fair polity built laboriously by some god-like spirit dissolves, and all his realm reels back into the beast; while men falling down in death look up to heaven only to find cloud, and the great-voiced ocean, as it were Destiny without love and without mind, with voice of days of old and days to be, shakes the world, wastes the narrow kingdom, yea, beats upon the faces of our dead! The world-sorrow pierces here through the strain of a poet usually calm and contented. Yet Arthur shall come again, aye, twice as fair; for the spirit of man is young immortally.

Who, moreover, has moulded for us phrases of more transcendent dignity, of more felicitous grace and import, phrases, epithets, and lines that have already become memorable household words? More magnificent expression I cannot conceive than that of such poems as Lucretius, Tithonus, Ulysses. These all for versification, language, luminous picture, harmony of structure have never been surpassed. What pregnant brevity, weight, and majesty of expression in the lines where Lucretius characterizes the death of his namesake Lucretia, ending and from it sprang the commonwealth, which breaks, as I am breaking now! What masterly power in poetically embodying a materialistic philosophy, congenial to modern science, yet in absolute dramatic keeping with the actual thought of the Roman poet! And at the same time, what tremendous grasp of the terrible conflict of passion with reason, two natures in one, significant for all epochs! In Tithonus and Ulysses we find embodiments in high-born verse and illustrious phrase of ideal moods, adventurous peril-affronting Enterprise contemptuously tolerant of tame household virtues in Ulysses, and the bane of a burdensome immortality, become incapable even of love, in Tithonus. Any personification more exquisite than that of Aurora in the latter were inconceivable.

M. Taine, in his Litterature Anglaise, represents Tennyson as an idyllic poet (a charming one), comfortably settled among his rhododendrons on an English lawn, and viewing the world through the somewhat insular medium of a prosperous, domestic and virtuous member of the English comfortable classes, as also of a man of letters who has fully succeeded. Again, either M. Taine, M. Scherer, or some other writer in the Revue des deux Mondes, pictures him, like his own Lady of Shalott, viewing life not as it really is, but reflected in the magic mirror of his own recluse fantasy. Now, whatever measure of truth there may formerly have been in such conceptions, they have assuredly now proved quite one-sided and inadequate. We have only to remember Maud, the stormier poems of the Idylls, Lucretius, Rizpah, the Vision of Sin. The recent poem Rizpah perhaps marks the high-water mark of the Laureates genius, and proves henceforward beyond all dispute his wide range, his command over the deeper-toned and stormier themes of human music, as well as over the gentler and more serene. It proves also that the venerable masters hand has not lost its cunning, rather that he has been even growing until now, having become more profoundly sympathetic with the world of action, and the common growth of human sorrows. Rizpah is certainly one of the strongest, most intensely felt, and graphically realized dramatic poems in the language; its pathos is almost overwhelming. There is nothing more tragic in Œdipus, Antigone, or Lear. And what a strong Saxon homespun language has the veteran poet found for these terrible lamentations of half-demented agony, My Baby! the bones that had sucked me, the bones that had laughed and had cried, Theirs! O no! They are mine not theirs they had moved in my side. Then the heart-gripping phrase breaking forth ever and anon in the imaginative metaphorical utterance of wild emotion, to which the sons and daughters of the people are often moved, eloquent beyond all eloquence, white-hot from the heart! Dust to dust low down! let us hide! but they set him so high, that all the ships of the world could stare at him passing by. In this last book of ballads the style bears the same relation to the earlier and daintier that the style of Samson Agonistes bears to that of Comus. The Revenge is equally masculine, simple, and sinewy in appropriate strength of expression, a most spirited rendering of a heroic naval action worthy of a place, as is also the grand ode on the death of Wellington, beside the war odes of Campbell, the Agincourt of Drayton, and the Rule Britannia of Thomson. The irregular metre of the Ballad of the Fleet is most remarkable as a vehicle of the sense, resonant with din of battle, full-voiced with rising and bursting storm toward the close, like the equally spirited concluding scenes of Harold, that depict the battle of Senlac. The dramatic characterizations in Harold and Queen Mary are excellent Mary, Harold, the Conqueror, the Confessor, Pole, Edith, Stigand, and other subordinate sketches, being striking and successful portraits; while Harold is full also of incident and action a really memorable modern play; but the main motive of Queen Mary fails in tragic dignity and interest, though there is about it a certain grim subdued pathos, as of still life, and there are some notable scenes. Tennyson is admirably dramatic in the portrayal of individual moods, of men or women in certain given situations. His plays are fine, and of real historic interest, but not nearly so remarkable as the dramatic poems I have named, as the earlier St. Simeon Stylites, Ulysses, Tithonus, or as the Northern Farmer, Cobblers, and Village Wife, among his later works. These last are perfectly marvellous in their fidelity and humorous photographic realism. That the poet of Œnone, The Lotus-eaters, and the Arthur cycle should have done these also is wonderful. The humor of them is delightful, and the rough homely diction perfect. One wishes indeed that the dramatic fragments collected by Lamb, like gold-dust out of the rather dreary sand-expanse of Elizabethan playwrights, were so little fragmentary as these. Tennysons short dramatic poems are quintessential; in a brief glimpse he contrives to reveal the whole man or woman. You would know the old Northern Farmer, with his reproach to God Amoighty for not letting him aloan, and the odious farmer of the new style, with his Proputty! Proputty! wherever you met them. But Dora, the Grand-mother, Lady Clare, Edward Gray, Lord of Burleigh, had long since proved that Tennyson had more than one style at command; that he was master not only of a flamboyant, a Corinthian, but also of a sweet, simple, limpid English, worthy of Goldsmith or Cowper at their best.